Employee relations case management software that improves outcomes
empower® combines cloud-based employee relations case management software, guided manager journeys, policy-aligned processes, analytics and optional expert HR advice in one integrated operating model.
Traditional HR case management systems record activity –
empower® improves employee relations outcomes
As employment rights legislation evolves, AI-driven grievances increase and employee relations caseloads grow, HR teams need a more scalable way to manage employee relations. empower® supports the full range of employee relations matters, including:
- Disciplinaries and misconduct
- Grievances
- Workplace investigations
- Sickness absence
- Performance and capability concerns
- Flexible working requests
- Bullying and harassment complaints.
Built for HR, employee relations and people teams managing high-volume ER activity, empower® brings every case, decision, action and insight together in one place to help organisations reduce risk, strengthen compliance and build manager capability at scale.
Trusted by leading UK employers
Why leading organisations choose empower®
Built for managing employee relations cases
Bringing together employee relations technology and expert HR advice, underpinned by a quarter of a century of ER expertise, empower® helps organisations:
- Resolve employee relations issues earlier
- Reduce unnecessary escalation to HR
- Improve consistency across employee relations processes
- Strengthen manager capability and decision-making
- Gain visibility of risk, trends and performance
- Create capacity for HR to focus on strategic priorities.
Read our latest whitepaper to discover the five priorities that are shaping people strategies in an increasingly litigious landscape, and how empower® can help reduce risk.
Key stat
10%
reduction in absence rates in 12 months
The employee relations operating model in action
Best-of-breed ER case management
Create a single system for managing employee relations cases, documentation and decisions to:
- Manage employee relations cases in one platform
- Reduce risk with secure audit trails and case records
- Create a single source of truth for ER case activity
- Improve governance through policy-aligned workflows.
Outsourced HR advisory services
Optional expert HR advisory support gives managers direct access to experienced HR advisers for expert guidance to:
- Reduce pressure on HR teams managing complex cases
- Improve confidence in higher-risk people decisions
- Ensure a consistent approach across the organisation
- Strengthen manager capability through expert guidance.
Manager self-service
Give managers the tools and guidance to handle routine people matters with confidence to:
- Resolve employee relations issues earlier
- Reduce unnecessary escalation to HR
- Increase ownership of people matters
- Create capacity for HR to focus on complex cases.
Insightful workforce analytics
Transform employee relations data into actionable workforce intelligence, enabling HR teams to:
- Identify trends and emerging employee relations risks
- Benchmark employee relations data
- Target support for managers who need it most
- Make data-driven workforce planning and people decisions.
Compliant documentation and audit trails
Create a clear, auditable record of employee relations activity, enabling organisations to:
- Align documentation with policies and procedures
- Maintain robust audit trails across all ER cases
- Support consistent, defensible decision-making
- Give HR oversight of ER case activity and rising risk.
Robust security and auditability
Hosted on Microsoft Azure, empower® protects sensitive employee data, enabling organisations to:
- Enable authentication with MFA
- Maintain full auditability with data stored in the UK
- Control access through role-based permissions
- Simplify Subject Access Requests.
Employee Relations as a Service
We call this future-proof operating model Employee Relations as a Service (ERaaS), combining purpose-built case management technology, manager enablement, workforce analytics and optional access to a specialist HR advice line. Unlike traditional HR case management software, which primarily records and tracks cases, ERaaS is designed to help organisations improve how employee relations issues are prevented, managed and resolved. The result is greater consistency, stronger manager capability and reduced risk.
Flexible employee relations case management solutions
Not every organisation is at the same stage of their employee relations transformation journey. That’s why empower® offers two solutions to help organisations build the right foundations, whether the immediate priority is improving visibility and governance or enabling managers to take greater ownership of people matters. empower® provides a scalable employee relations operating model that grows with organisational needs.
empower® enable helps HR teams streamline employee relations case management, strengthen consistency and enable data-driven strategies. empower® transform goes a step further, guiding managers through employee relations processes so they can confidently self-serve appropriate people matters whilst maintaining HR oversight.
HR transformation through streamlined case management and enhanced analytics
Create capacity by optimising your ER case advisory team’s delivery.
Collaborate with colleagues to manage caseload across the organisation.
Mitigate risk through robust audit trails and case reports.
Ensure adherence to policy and process, achieving a consistency of approach.
Reduce the administrative overhead of case tracking, letter generation and DSARs.
Gain insight into key people metrics through inbuilt dashboarding.
Business transformation through manager empowerment, proactive actions and automation
Includes everything in empower® enable, plus:
Improve line managers’ confidence and capability, typically enabling self‑service of 90% of ER tasks.
Create better employee engagement through early intervention and better managed processes.
Reduce employment tribunal claims by up to 50% and improve preparation time.
Achieve significant efficiencies and boost the impact of your ER case advisory team.
Reduce sickness absence rates by up to 10% and improve performance through targeted interventions.
Stay ahead of upcoming legislative changes to reduce their impact on your business.
empower® - Empowering managers video
Get a glimpse of how empower® can help build manager confidence.
empower® - Lower employment tribunals video
Discover how empower® helps organisations reduce tribunal claims.
empower® - Reduce sickness absence video
Find out how empower® helps reduce sickness absence costs.
STARK UK transformed its employee relations operating model, enabling 70% of employee relations tasks to be manager-led, while reducing tribunal claims and legal costs by 60%. With recognition at the HR Excellence Awards, the case study won Best HR Technology Strategy – Read the case study.
Reduce employment tribunal claims
60%
Unlock the power of people insights for your HR teams
empower® enable helps HR teams streamline employee relations case management, maintain robust audit trails and turn employee relations data into actionable workforce insights. By bringing cases, documentation and reporting together in one platform, HR can spend less time managing admin and more time identifying trends, reducing risk and supporting the business.
Consistent ER processes
Bring consistency, control and visibility to every employee relations case:
- Standardise employee relations processes from start to finish
- Guide consistent decision-making through structured workflows
- Capture the right data at every stage of the case lifecycle.
Operational efficiency at scale
Reduce administration and create capacity for higher-value HR work:
- Automate routine tasks and manual processes
- Prompt actions at the right time
- Streamline correspondence, documentation and DSARs.
HR workforce intelligence
Turn employee relations data into decisions that improve outcomes:
- Spot trends, hotspots and emerging risks earlier
- Benchmark performance across teams and business units
- Prioritise interventions that will have the greatest impact.
Empower managers to self-serve employee relations matters
 |
empower® transform builds manager confidence and capability through built-in guided journeys that help managers handle people matters consistently and in line with organisational policy. By enabling earlier intervention and reducing unnecessary escalation to HR, organisations can improve ER case outcomes, strengthen manager decision-making and create capacity for HR to focus on strategic priorities. |
Build manager capability
Help managers handle people matters earlier, more consistently and with greater confidence:
- Guide managers through ER case processes
- Encourage early intervention before issues escalate
- Improve ER case outcomes.
Deliver measurable savings
Reduce the cost of managing employee relations without compromising quality or compliance:
- Save up to 62% on ER advisory service costs
- Cut employment tribunal claims by up to 60%
- Lower absence rates and costs by up to 10%.
Unlock productivity gains
Reduce friction across employee relations processes and create capacity to:
- Reduce ER case resolution time
- Recover thousands of hours lost to absence
- Improve business performance.
“Manager adoption is high and the access to insight has helped us focus our resources on building capability where it is most needed. This is a true cultural enabler. We feel like we have a genuine partnership with AdviserPlus that is enabling us to focus on driving colleague engagement and building manager capability.”
Head of ER and People Change, Currys
Watch this video to find out more about empower®
empower® transform unlocks substantial hidden savings for your organisation
Find out how much you could be saving by digitally transforming your employee relations (ER) processes.
Take your workforce’s productivity to the next level with empower®
Book a no-obligation demonstration with one of our experts.
Next-level employee relations
Wickes case study
Wickes transformed its employee relations operating model, enabling managers to self-serve 80% of ER tasks and reducing employment tribunal claims by 50%. The transformation won the Digital HR and Technology Award at the Personnel Today Awards.
Currys case study
Within three months, Currys managers were self-serving 88% of employee relations tasks. The new operating model created capacity for HR to focus on strategic priorities, including a comprehensive Equality, Diversity and Inclusion policy overhaul.
Sainsbury's case study
Within 12 months, Sainsbury’s managers were handling 63% of employee relations cases. 70% of short-term sickness absence cases are managed through self-service journeys and automated workflows, creating greater capacity for HR to focus on strategic priorities.
Frequently asked questions
Employee relations cases are increasing, becoming more complex and carrying greater risk. Empowering People Group research found that 71% of organisations have seen case volumes rise, while 61% say management and leadership capability gaps are contributing to the increase.
AI is also changing the landscape as employees are increasingly using AI to create more robust grievances, raising the bar for how cases are handled and documented. Despite this, 77% of organisations still manage employee relations using spreadsheets.
That’s why many organisations are moving away from manual processes and investing in employee relations case management solutions that provide greater consistency, visibility and control.
empower® supports disciplinary and misconduct matters, grievances, workplace investigations, sickness absence, performance and capability concerns, flexible working requests, bullying and harassment complaints, and other policy-led employee relations processes.
Guided manager journeys, governance controls and comprehensive audit trails help organisations manage cases consistently and in line with their own policies.
Yes. empower® can support both HR-led and manager-led approaches to employee relations. Organisations can deploy HR-led case management through empower® enable or manager-led guided journeys through empower® transform, maintaining HR oversight.
Traditional HR case management systems, spreadsheets and ticketing tools focus on recording activity. empower® goes a step further, empowering managers to handle appropriate employee relations matters confidently while giving HR the visibility, insight and oversight needed to proactively reduce risk.
By combining employee relations case management, guided manager journeys, workforce analytics and optional expert HR advisory support, organisations can transform the HR operating model.
empower® builds manager confidence and capability through guided journeys that help managers self-serve people matters consistently and in line with organisational policy.
Embedded guidance, policy-aligned workflows and optional access to an HR advice line support better decision-making, earlier intervention and reduced reliance on internal HR teams, creating capacity for HR to focus on strategic priorities.
We work in partnership with our clients to continuously evolve, helping them achieve a desired balance of manager empowerment and HR oversight.
empower® helps organisations manage employee relations matters more consistently through guided manager journeys, policy-aligned workflows, workforce analytics and comprehensive audit trails. This gives HR greater visibility of emerging risks, supports defensible decision-making and helps identify trends before they escalate.
empower® is configurable and handles this with ease. We can either configure different processes relating to the same policy, or branch a process to handle more subtle nuances.
We can also ensure that a manager navigates the right process and views the appropriate content aligned to the employee case subject. We can host different views of the content and configuration in different brands, and ensure that users view the solution in the appropriate brand for them.
Employee relations analytics provide the visibility needed to identify emerging risks, understand what’s driving workplace issues and make better workforce decisions. By turning employee relations data into actionable insight, organisations can improve consistency, strengthen manager capability and target interventions before issues escalate.
As part of an Employee Relations as a Service (ERaaS) operating model, employee relations analytics help HR teams measure impact, demonstrate value and continuously improve employee relations case outcomes across the organisation.
empower® is hosted in the Microsoft Azure cloud in the UK. We provide offer geo-replication between Microsoft’s South and West England hosting centres.
Our technologies are subject to regular independent third party penetration tests, as well as performance testing to ensure our services scale to meet our largest clients’ demands.
All maintenance is undertaken by ourselves and the technology solution is subject to a programme of continuous improvement, drawing its requirements and priorities from market analysis, customer engagement and user inputs.
To see empower® in action and explore how it could support your employee relations goals, request a discovery call with one of our experts. We’ll take time to understand your requirements before arranging a tailored demonstration.
Business changing results seen by organisations
Up to 50%
reduction in employment tribunal claims
Up to 10%
reduction in sickness absence
Up to 90%
of ER tasks self-served by line managers
Up to 62%
reduction in ER advisory costs
Get in touch
Or speak to an HR expert on: 0844 327 2293