For a company that sells HR advice, AdviserPlus has an unusual ambition: give managers fewer reasons to ask for it. At electrical retailer Currys, its software and advisory service helped put 88% of employee relations tasks in managers’ hands. The interesting part is what happened to the people previously fielding those requests. They gained room to tackle work that had been waiting behind the daily queue.
Employee relations tasks
handled by managers
Employee relations, usually shortened to ER, covers the uncomfortable machinery of working life: sickness absence, performance concerns, grievances and disciplinary matters. A store manager needs to know what to do next. HR needs a consistent process and a record of what happened. Employees need their circumstances handled properly. The gap between those needs is where AdviserPlus makes its living.
The Currys case study describes an internal People Team drawn heavily into tactical casework. What needed fixing first was the division of labour. Managers depended on HR; HR kept supplying the next instruction. AdviserPlus’s response was to put more of those instructions inside a guided system, with specialists available when a situation called for judgment.
That makes the company a particular kind of HR supplier. Its proposition is an operating arrangement: software to guide everyday actions, advisers to help with difficult moments, and analytics to show where the same difficulties keep recurring. Buying the tool means deciding who should actually do the work.
A policy becomes a next step
The software is called empower®. It brings employee relations cases, documents, actions and reporting into a cloud platform. Its manager journeys break processes into steps aligned with an employer’s policies. A manager dealing with an absence can follow the relevant route, record progress and receive prompts instead of repeatedly asking someone else to translate the handbook.
Within the product offering, empower enable addresses case management, while the transform proposition adds the emphasis on manager self-service. The practical attractions include guided tasks, document generation, case visibility and escalation points. AdviserPlus describes lock points for complex cases, so moving responsibility closer to a team comes with places to stop and seek expert help.
Human support remains a substantial part of the package. Employers can outsource their ER advisory function or use the Flex service for overflow, temporary cover and specific projects. Alongside it sit HR consultancy, policy reviews and project support. That gives a customer several ways to address a problem, from rewriting an unclear process to bringing in capacity during organisational change.
The advice line also has a revealing habit: it calls back. AdviserPlus says more than half its advice-line calls are outbound, keeping cases moving through follow-ups. Software may remember the next task, but an adviser can chase the conversation that has not happened. For managers juggling customers, rotas and difficult discussions, that distinction has practical value.
- 01A manager raises a matterRecord the case and follow the relevant policy.
- 02The journey supplies the next stepPrompts, documents and a shared record keep it moving.
- 03Expert help at the escalation pointBring in HR judgment when the matter requires it.
- 04The record feeds the wider pictureLook for patterns that call for an intervention.
Three customers, three different scorecards
Currys began working with AdviserPlus in 2021. Its published account says the move to 88% manager-led tasks was achieved within three months. It also reports a 62% reduction in outsourced advice-line resources compared with the previous provider. That is a resource measure, rather than a disclosed reduction in the retailer’s total HR spending.
The efficiency of the implementation and the engaging onboarding process meant we could see the benefits almost immediately.
Alison Metcalfe
Head of ER and People Change, Currys
Sainsbury’s offers a different measure. Over a 12-month period, its case study reports that managers handled 63% of ER cases without HR intervention. It also says 70% of short-term sickness cases were self-served digitally. Those figures concern cases, rather than the individual tasks within them. One case can contain many actions; the denominators matter.
Starbucks UK introduced empower and the advice line in early 2024. AdviserPlus’s account reports a 10% reduction in sickness absence rates over 12 months, equivalent to around 15,000 frontline hours returned to stores. It also reports that managers handled 52% of sickness-case actions digitally. The advisers’ approach was configured around Starbucks UK’s language and cultural values.
These are published customer case-study results, rather than a controlled comparison of competing systems. They show different outcomes in different organisations. For a buyer, the useful question is which measure matches the problem: managers’ participation, HR workload, time to resolution or hours recovered. A high self-service percentage alone cannot tell the whole story.
More work in managers’ hands
The dashboard that led to autism training
Wickes supplies the most instructive example of what happens after a chart has been drawn. Its relationship with AdviserPlus also began in 2021. The retailer wanted managers to take more responsibility, better visibility of people metrics and a usable audit trail. Its case study reports that managers came to oversee 80% of ER tasks.
Then the data pointed toward a need for additional manager training in supporting neurodivergent employees. Wickes engaged the National Autistic Society to help build awareness of autistic colleagues’ experiences. That sequence is the interesting bit: record the work, recognise a pattern, change the support. The intervention extended beyond the case-management screen.
empower’s analytics combines case information with an organisation’s people and structural data. Dashboards can break activity down by location, business unit, duration and outcome. AdviserPlus also offers analysts’ interpretation and service reviews. An overnight people-data feed helps supply the context; the company says dashboards can refresh as frequently as daily.
The lesson a reader can copy is straightforward. Pick a recurring issue, record it consistently and look for concentrations before prescribing training everywhere. Then investigate what the pattern means. A location with more cases may need support, but a count alone does not establish a cause. The useful work begins when someone asks why.
An outsourcer changes its own economics
AdviserPlus was founded by Karl Chapman in 2001, initially building its business around outsourced employee relations services. Limerston Capital acquired it through a management buyout in November 2016. The investor’s account identifies the attraction: enterprise customers and recurring revenue. It also describes a plan to reduce delivery costs and shorten implementation.
Manager self-service became the chosen route. Limerston says it invested in developing a SaaS platform to move the business toward a more technology-enabled model. empower launched in 2021. The shift is commercially revealing: the supplier could sell customers the ability to handle more routine work while retaining a role in software, advice and interpretation.
The business model combines contracted technology and services. Limerston describes recurring, multi-year enterprise revenue; AdviserPlus sells advisory support through tailored commercial proposals. A buyer therefore needs to examine the complete package: implementation, policy configuration, data connections, manager training and the amount of expert support included. The economics depend on the work the arrangement actually changes.
For that assessment, use a baseline. Count the time HR and managers already spend on a chosen process, then compare the proposed cost with capacity released and outcomes improved. Currys’ resource reduction is a useful prompt for that conversation. It should not become an automatic saving in somebody else’s budget spreadsheet.
A specialist in a crowded HR shopping basket
AdviserPlus occupies the space between employee relations software and outsourced HR expertise. HR Acuity is an alternative for specialist ER case management; ServiceNow’s HR Service Delivery covers a broader set of employee services and workflows. Keeping the work within an internal HR team is another choice. These options answer overlapping questions, with different commercial and operational commitments.
AdviserPlus’s distinguishing pitch is the combination: manager journeys built around policies, access to advisers and interpretation of case data. The public customer roster includes retailers, Network Rail, United Utilities and Bradford Council. The mix suggests relevance wherever managers are spread across locations and HR needs an intelligible view of how people matters are being handled.
The model asks something of those customers. Managers need time and confidence to use the journeys. Policies must be clear enough to configure. People data must be maintained, and escalation points must lead to someone able to help. Where those conditions are absent, adding software can give an unresolved operating problem a tidier interface.
A sensible implementation starts with one process and a measurable ambition. AdviserPlus itself describes targeted pilots, including absence campaigns, as a way to demonstrate value. That lets an employer test adoption and support before extending the approach. The test is whether a manager can take the next appropriate action, and whether the employee receives better handling.
Choose one recurring people problem.
Measure it. Guide the next action.
Check what actually improves.
Behind the software, a larger people business
AdviserPlus now sits within Empowering People Group, alongside employment-law specialist Halborns, career-transition business Working Transitions and digital-learning provider Learning Nexus. The group structure broadens what can be brought into an assignment. It also matters when reading company figures: the reach of the wider group is not a count of AdviserPlus software customers.
There is a recognisably human organisation behind the automation. AdviserPlus’s inclusion programme includes a colleague working group called Inclusivity+, and the company holds Disability Confident Leader status. Its careers material describes flexible working, development and social activities. In February 2024, colleagues from across the group gathered at Chester Racecourse for an awards evening.
External recognition followed customer projects, too. Currys and AdviserPlus won Technology Partner of the Year at the British HR Awards in 2023. STARK UK’s work with AdviserPlus won Best HR Technology Strategy at the 2025 HR Excellence Awards. The Starbucks collaboration received a highly commended recognition at the 2026 British HR Awards.
The wider business is still expanding. In March 2026, NatWest announced an agreement to sell Mentor, its HR, employment-law, health-and-safety and environmental consultancy business, to Empowering People Group. The announcement put expected completion in the third or early fourth quarter of 2026. It is a parent-group transaction, extending the surrounding service offer.
For the manager back in a store or branch, ownership structures are distant from the immediate task. A conversation still needs to happen. A record needs completing. A difficult decision may need an expert. AdviserPlus’s proposition earns its keep if it makes those steps easier to take, and leaves HR enough time to notice what keeps going wrong.
