If you have ever sat in a team meeting thinking "why are we here?", you are not alone. Unstructured, meandering team meetings are one of the biggest drains on time, energy, and money in scaling businesses.

In this episode of Peas in a Podcast, Kay and Rebecca (Directors of Peas in a Pod Consulting) unpack the human mechanics behind running genuinely effective team meetings. From six-hour marathon sessions to round-robins that descend into chat about the office coffee, we break down why meetings go wrong and how managers can get them right.

Stop letting meetings become expensive talking shops. Learn how to create structure, drive accountability, and get your team performing collectively.

Subscribe to the channel so you never miss an episode, share with a fellow leader, and leave us a comment with your biggest meeting pet peeves!

Connect with us:

peasinapodconsulting.org.uk

facebook.com/piapconsulting

instagram.com/peasinapodconsulting

This week, Rebecca and Kay tackle a term that sounds like pure corporate fluff but directly impacts your bottom line: Psychological Safety. A lack of psychological safety costs UK small businesses an estimated £15.7 billion a year. It does not show up as a line item on your balance sheet; it hides behind high staff turnover, low productivity, absenteeism, and silence.

The moment your employees go quiet is the exact moment you have something to worry about. Passionate disruption means your team still cares, whereas silence means they have checked out completely.

In this episode, we strip away the HR buzzwords to discuss what it actually looks like to lead without the corporate guff. We break down our new favourite mantra, "When you're furious, get curious," and share exactly how to stop focusing on the symptoms of underperformance so you can address the root cause.

Plus, we share our own spectacular project failures to explain the three practical leadership pillars you need to role-model every day: Clarity, Vulnerability, and Fallibility.

Remember, people problems don’t fix themselves, and healthy cultures never happen by accident.

Don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode, and share this with a fellow founder who needs to hear it!

Redundancy is easily one of the toughest parts of running a business. In this impromptu but highly timely episode of Peas in a Podcast, Kay and Bex strip away the corporate jargon to talk about the human reality of reducing headcount.

Focusing on small to medium businesses (up to 150 employees) navigating individual redundancies, they unpack what "fucking it up" actually looks like. Hint: it is usually treating a legal consultation process as a cold, tick-box exercise rather than a meaningful human conversation.

In this episode, we dive into:

• Why you must never conflate performance management issues with a genuine redundancy situation.
• The absolute necessity of a robust, well-documented business rationale before you start.
• How to give employees true agency and a voice during a difficult transition.
• The long-term strategic and reputational risks of getting it wrong (because online feedback is everywhere).
• Why providing individualised career transition and outplacement support is both the kind thing to do and a smart business move.

Whether you are a founder currently facing these difficult decisions or a manager wanting to support your team with dignity, this episode offers practical, empathetic, and grounded advice.

Peas in a Pod Consulting offers a free one-hour consultation for business owners navigating these challenging times. Reach out to the team at PIAP Consulting to find out how we can act as your sounding board.

Don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode, and share this with a fellow founder who needs to hear it!

Ever walked into an office, read a shiny placard about "Innovation and Integrity," and instantly rolled your eyes? You’re not alone. This week, Rebecca and Kay unpack a massive mistake founder-managers make when they’re moving fast: outsourcing their company values to the marketing department.

While marketing is brilliant at managing how your business is perceived, leadership is about how your business actually behaves. When there's a canyon between your website's marketing collateral and the reality of your workplace culture, it’s not just awkward—it’s dangerous for employee trust.

Tune in as we break down why your values shouldn’t be boring nouns, what it means for a value to be Memorable, Portable, and Emotional, and a rare peek behind the curtain at the 5 core values that keep Peas in a Pod real. Ditch the noun-based nonsense for values you’d actually lose money for.

Key Takeaways:
Why marketing looks at values outward, but leaders must look inward.
The 3 filters of a real company value: Is it memorable? Is it portable? Is it emotional?
How to turn useless noun values into "life-giving statements."
Real-life examples: From Timpson's culture to our own Pod non-negotiables.

Connect with us:

peasinapodconsulting.org.uk

facebook.com/piapconsulting

instagram.com/peasinapodconsulting

Subscribe for weekly HR advice without the corporate wank!

Welcome back to Season 2 of Peas in a Podcast! We are barreling headfirst into the crazy summer season, but before everyone jet-sets off on holiday, we need to talk about a massive, heavy burden currently landing in managers' inboxes: AI Grievances.

You know the score. Dave from Accounts, who usually struggles to string a coherent text together on Teams, suddenly submits a 70-page document packed with complex legalistic terminology and cited case law, sounding like he writes for the King’s Council.

It’s intimidating, it’s overwhelming, and quite frankly, it’s putting grievances on steroids. But behind the legalistic armor, AI is doing something incredibly dangerous: it's hallucinating fake case law, inflating employee expectations into delusional £500k tribunal claims, and completely destroying the true purpose of a grievance policy: conflict resolution.

In this episode, we unpack:
How to spot a heavily prompted, nebulous AI complaint (beyond just the bold text and bullet points).
The exact step-by-step reaction a founder or manager needs to have when a massive document lands on their desk.
How to modernise your grievance policy with specific boundaries around AI, summaries, and data confidentiality (GDPR).
Why an AI-generated grievance usually signals a deeper cultural failure, a lack of psychological safety, or a relationship that has completely imploded.
The ultimate takeaway? This isn't a court of law. You don't need to dismantle a 60-page AI manifesto point-by-point. You need to strip away the corporate wank, get curious, and get both parties in a room to talk.

Connect with us:
peasinapodconsulting.org.uk
facebook.com/piapconsulting
instagram.com/peasinapodconsulting

Subscribe for weekly HR advice without the corporate wank!

We’ve made it to Episode 10, and what a rollercoaster of a first season it has been! To celebrate hitting this milestone, Rebecca and Kay are tackling one of the single biggest hurdles managers face: holding employees accountable for their performance.

Too many managers fall into the trap of thinking it’s their job to solve every employee problem, carry the emotional labour, and fix every mistake. In this episode, we unpack why performance is a two-way contractual relationship and how to stop playing what we call "shitty tennis" (where the ball of responsibility keeps getting smacked back into your court!).

In this season finale, we discuss:

• The Performance Triangle: Balancing organisational framework, managerial guidance, and the employee’s ultimate responsibility.
• Enablement vs. Accountability: Why you can’t have one without the other (and how to do your due diligence first).
• You-Centred Questioning: Moving away from fixing things and using coaching skills to keep the ownership firmly with the employee.
• The GROW Framework Shortcut: How to walk through Goal, Reality, Options, and Way Forward without drowning in corporate jargon.

Note: We are taking a quick 4-week summer breather to compile your burning questions and plan Season 2! We will be back in your ears on the first Tuesday of July. Have a topic you want us to cover? Drop a comment below or message us on our socials!

Connect with us:

peasinapodconsulting.org.uk

instagram.com/peasinapodconsulting

Subscribe for weekly HR advice without the corporate wank!

Ever experienced that heavy sinking feeling in your stomach when you walk into a team meeting and immediately get hit with eye-rolling, heavy sighing, or a wall of passive-aggressive silence?

As business owners and managers, we have all been there. You might pick up the phone to your HR team out of sheer frustration and say that an employee has a terrible attitude. But as we unpack in this episode, labelling someone like that is actually the quickest way to guarantee a feedback session fails. It feels personal, it triggers defensive deflection, and it completely kills accountability.

In this penultimate episode of Season 1, we drop the corporate guff to look at the messy, human reality of behavioural misconduct. We talk about why your most technically astute high performers are often your worst cultural offenders, and we break down how to handle the staff members who simply refuse to listen to reasonable instructions.

You will learn how to use the 'CCTV method' to swap subjective opinions for undeniable, physical facts. We also discuss how to balance genuine empathy for an overworked team member with the firm boundaries of your disciplinary policy. Finally, we share how to handle outright belligerence, including the art of holding a terrifyingly uncomfortable silence to make a difficult employee take responsibility for their actions.

Your team is watching how you handle disruption. Protecting a toxic person does not save your business, it just destroys your credibility with everyone else.

Connect with us:

peasinapodconsulting.org.uk
facebook.com/piapconsulting

instagram.com/peasinapodconsulting

Subscribe for weekly HR advice without the corporate wank!

#PeopleManagement #DifficultEmployees #WorkplaceCulture #HRAdvice #SmallBusinessOwner #LeadershipTips #PeasInAPodcast #ConflictResolution #Misconduct

Think employment law obligations only kick in once someone signs a contract? Think again. In this episode of Peas in a Podcast, Rebecca and Kay unpack the minefield that is legal risk in recruitment.

From discriminatory job adverts on shopfronts to the subtle ways unconscious bias sneaks into your yes and no piles, we break down the three critical stages where small business owners accidentally trip up: the terms, the assessment, and the decision.

We also dive into data protection rules, the right to work checks you absolutely must run for everyone, and how a poorly worded offer letter might accidentally lock you into paying a notice period for someone who hasn't even started. It's compliance, candidate experience, and a heavy dose of common sense (minus the corporate wank).

Connect with us:

peasinapodconsulting.org.uk
facebook.com/piapconsulting

instagram.com/peasinapodconsulting

Subscribe for weekly HR advice without the corporate wank!

#Recruitment #SmallBusinessUK #EmploymentLaw #CompanyCulture #PeasInAPodcast #HRAdvice #FounderTips