The HR Gap Nobody Talks About in South Yorkshire's Charity Sector

There's a version of this that plays out in charity boardrooms across Sheffield and South Yorkshire every week. A trustee raises a concern about a staff grievance. The CEO — who is also, in practice, the HR department — looks at the table and says something like, "We're handling it."

They're not handling it. Not really. They're Googling template letters at 11pm and hoping they get the tone right.

This isn't a criticism. It's a structural problem. Most charities in the region employ between five and fifty people. That's not enough headcount to justify a full-time HR hire — certainly not at the salary a decent one would cost. But it's more than enough people to generate the full range of employment issues you'd see in any mid-sized business. Sickness absence. Performance. Restructures. Safeguarding. Pay disputes. The lot.

And yet the default answer remains: the CEO handles it. Or the finance manager. Or whoever drew the short straw at the last trustee meeting.

The cost of getting it wrong

What makes this particularly sharp in the charity sector is the reputational dimension. A manufacturing firm that loses an employment tribunal pays the award and moves on. A charity that loses one — particularly one working with vulnerable people — faces questions about governance, safeguarding culture, and whether funders should continue backing them.

Sheffield has one of the highest concentrations of voluntary sector organisations in the country. South Yorkshire's charity infrastructure is deep and, in places, stretched. The organisations doing the most important work often have the thinnest people capability around them.

That's not because leaders don't care. It's because caring about your mission and knowing how to navigate a complex disciplinary process are two completely different skills. And pretending otherwise is where the risk lives.

What "good" looks like — without a full-time hire

The answer isn't always a head of HR on the payroll. For a charity with a turnover under £2m, that's rarely proportionate. What does work is access to senior people expertise when it matters — someone who's sat across the table from an employment solicitor, who's restructured teams, who understands the intersection of charity governance and employment law.

Not a helpline. Not a junior adviser reading from a script. Someone who'll actually own the problem with you.

That's the model we built King HR Advisory around. Senior people leadership, without the full-time hire. For founders, MDs, and CEOs of purpose-led organisations who know they've got a gap but haven't known how to fill it proportionately.

A conversation worth having

If you're a charity CEO in Sheffield or South Yorkshire and you've been carrying the HR function on your own — or worse, you've been assuming you don't need one — it's worth having an honest conversation about what you're exposed to.

Not a sales pitch. Just a proper look at where the gaps are.