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How Fiit used charlie’s HR Advice to prepare their business to  scale  

With Ben Wharfe, Chief People Officer

Fiit case study

  1  

dedicated HR advisor assigned to your company

10am-6pm

live on-demand chat support

 £299  

per month

Fiit

Industry

Fitness tech

Headquarters

London, UK

Bio

Fiit was founded in 2017 by three friends with a vision to make exercise a habit for everyone.

With access to more than 650 classes by 30 of the best trainers in the UK, users can track calories, heart rate and more via the Fiit wearable device and connect to a growing community of fitness enthusiasts.

Why Charlie?

Thanks to Charlie, Fiit were able to scale from 14 to 62 team members in three years, building a high performing and engaged team.

The challenge

As a small business founder, it's hard to find the time and headspace to build solid HR foundations. How do you know what policies and processes you need in order to be compliant?

The solution

"Charlie's HR Advice service gave us the confidence of always knowing what to do — whether we were implementing a new policy or tackling complex employee issues."

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Customers > Fiit

As a startup founder, it can be difficult to nail the way you look after the People side of your business — especially at the beginning, when you’re only setting the foundations to then go and grow your team.

With Charlie’s HR Advice, Ben got access to a personal HR advisor to help him set up all of the policies and frameworks they required to be compliant:

“Being able to understand what policies you need in place to be legally compliant was vital. Getting those policies off the shelf, revised and reviewed by Charlie, enabled us to free up our headspace and our thinking time to focus on the things that were more strategically important to us — such as our team’s growth and development.”  

Ben Wharfe, Chief People Officer

All the time Ben saved thanks to HR Advice was time he invested in making Fiit a great place to work. It was like having an extra member of the team — someone he could trust, and with a breadth of HR experience:

“Being able to take something from a partner that you can trust, and knowing that it’s going to be correct and you’re going to follow the right processes, that’s really important.”

Legally compliant Legally compliant

Too small to have an HR team? Get expert HR advice, whenever you need it

If you don’t have an HR background and your business is too small to have an HR team — that’s when you run the risk of making the wrong decisions.

Being able to rely on Charlie’s HR advisors gave Ben the peace of mind of always knowing what to do — both from a human and a legal point of view:

“When we found ourselves in difficult situations, we were able to reach out to the HR Advice team to understand what we needed to do to treat people fairly, and also to be compliant with rules and regulations. We felt reassured we were doing the right thing, the right way.”

Because of their size, Fiit is not planning on having a large HR team anytime soon. Ben explains:

“With HR Advice, it’s like having an extra member on your team. You have that kind of expertise you can lean on and tap into whenever you need it, without needing to hire someone in the business.”

Ben Wharfe, Chief People Officer

Talk via phone, email or chatTalk via phone, email or chat

Finding the right partners to bring your business to the next level

When choosing who to help him scale their business, Ben wanted someone who knew their challenges, who could keep their pace — someone who understood where he was coming from and where he was going:

“CharlieHR has got that kind of startup way of thinking. And we would much rather partner with people that have a similar mindset and values, than going with partners that don't understand what it is like to be in that energetic startup world. We like to have deep partnerships with people who see the world the same way that we do.”

Ben Wharfe, Chief People Officer

The team at Fiit are constantly focused on improving their product, on having a positive impact on their customers. In a similar way, Charlie is pushing the boundaries of what making work better for small companies means:

“I think Charlie is really starting to push the envelope, they listen to our feedback and release new features all the time. It’s very important for us to share that vision.”

Ben Wharfe, Chief People Officer

Life with and without charlieLife with and without charlie

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