Turning legislative uncertainty into stronger recruitment and culture.
I’ve spent more than thirty years building, scaling, and supporting businesses. Through every development in markets, technology and policy, one thing has stayed true: the rules keep changing, but the fundamentals of leadership don’t. Right now, those rules are moving again.
There’s plenty of discussion about “day-one rights” at the moment, and new proposals that could again alter the balance between employer and employee. Depending on who you ask, it’s either long-overdue fairness or another layer of red tape for small businesses.
What matters more than the politics is the uncertainty it creates. The people shaping these laws rarely live with a monthly payroll or a small team to protect. They debate in theory what owners deal with in practice, and that gap between policy and reality makes progress harder for the very companies that keep the economy running.
Still, change will come, as it always does. The real question is how we respond to it.
We can wait for clarity, or we can use the uncertainty as a reason to raise our own standards, and to design something stronger, more inclusive and sustainable. That’s the route I’ve chosen.
The fog of change
When I first heard about day-one rights, my reaction was probably like yours: a sigh, a quiet shake of the head. Not because I disagree with fairness, but because I’ve seen how blunt policy can be when written far from the reality it governs. Recruitment is already one of the hardest parts of leading a business, and the idea that an untested employee could create instant legal exposure doesn’t make it easier. But frustration soon gave way to curiosity. Change, even when uncomfortable, can reveal weaknesses we’ve learned to ignore. It asks whether our current way of working is as robust as we think.
As that thought gained ground, I began to view these new proposals not as interference, but as a prompt and a reminder to look again at how we recruit, and at the kind of culture people are joining.
The reality for founders
A growing team can feel like progress. Often it can feel like a cycle of pressure and relief: someone leaves, workload rises, a replacement is needed fast. Decisions get rushed because the work won’t wait.
I’ve made that mistake more times than I’d like to count. In the early years I hired quickly, convinced that action was better than delay. Occasionally I got lucky; often I didn’t. One appointment in particular taught me the lesson properly. On paper, the candidate was ideal. In practice, they never really connected with the purpose of the business. The work got done, but the energy was off, and the team began to feel it too.
That experience, another of those critical life lessons, stayed with me. Poor hiring decisions rarely come from bad intentions; they come from unclear intent. I’d been filling gaps instead of building capability.
Choosing to build
When regulation becomes confusing, it’s easy to freeze. Yet a “wait and see” mindset rarely protects a business. So I decided that whatever the legislation brings, our recruitment will rest on purpose, inclusion and sustainability, things that I can control, and that no policy can undermine. This isn’t a reaction to external pressure. It’s part of building a business that can adapt without losing itself. Recruitment, done properly, becomes a lever for growth, not a box-ticking exercise.
Recruitment that builds futures
Most organisations still hire to replace rather than to advance. A vacancy appears, an advert goes out, and the cycle continues. It keeps the wheels turning but rarely moves the business forward.
I’ve come to see recruitment as one of the most strategic moments a leader ever has. It’s the point where you decide what kind of business you’re becoming next. Before writing any job description, we ask: “who will help us grow into the company we want to be two years from now?” Once you start thinking that way, the rest follows. Job descriptions become clearer, conversations more open, and candidates self-select for the culture you’re building. A well-written role isn’t a checklist; it’s an introduction to how your company thinks.
What we now value
We’ve moved away from hiring purely for skill. Skills evolve, technology changes, that will always be true. What lasts is behaviour; the way people think, act and respond when things are uncertain, and the way ahead is unclear.
We now look for curiosity, accountability and the ability to learn quickly. We want people who create energy rather than absorb it, who notice what needs doing and get on with it. Behavioural assessments and psychometrics help us understand motivation and working style, but they’re a conversation starter, not a verdict. They reveal how someone approaches decisions, how they handle setbacks, and where they find satisfaction in their work.
Capability matters, but alignment sustains performance. When someone joins who shares your sense of purpose and naturally raises the standard around them, everything strengthens from there.
Beyond the job description
Every role sends a message. It says what matters, what gets recognised, and how success is defined. We’ve started to weave sustainability and shared responsibility through every position. That doesn’t mean adding projects; it means linking daily choices to long-term outcomes.
In a warehouse, it might involve reducing waste. In a sales team, it could mean deepening client relationships instead of chasing quick wins. When people understand how their work connects to something lasting, ownership grows. And with ownership comes consistency, the kind that keeps culture steady when the external world shifts.
Frame, Floor, Focus
In my last blog I wrote about the idea of Frame, Floor, Focus as it exists in goal setting. This idea works just as well in all leadership decision making, and equally well in recruitment.
- Framedefines success.
- Floorsets the minimum standard you’ll accept.
- Focuskeeps attention on what matters.
If the frame is narrow, recruitment becomes short-term. If the floor is low, standards slip quietly. If focus wanders, effort gets wasted.
When we applied this approach to recruitment, the difference was immediately tangible. Because we took more time to ask better questions and made fewer compromises, new team members settled in faster and contributed sooner. Teams gained confidence, and leadership had more space to think ahead. Our recruitment strategy became an expression of direction rather than a response to circumstance.
Inside my own teams
When discussion about day-one rights resurfaced again a few months ago, we agreed to measure ourselves against a deceptively simple question: “If every new employee had full rights from their first day, how certain are we that we’d stand by every decision we’ve made in the last year?”
It was a quiet moment of pause and reflection because at its heart, we all knew the answer. That pause led us to revisit our process. We rewrote job descriptions to focus on values and expectations. We added a peer-led stage to interviews; a conversation about how people collaborate and solve problems. We reshaped onboarding so that new colleagues begin with context and purpose rather than paperwork.
The difference became real as we began to see a deeper and smoother integration into the wider team. People connected faster and contributed with more confidence, and retention improved because engagement started earlier. We didn’t make those changes for compliance. We made them because they make better businesses.
Inclusion as connection
Inclusion, to me, is less about policy and more about connection. It’s making sure everyone can see how their work contributes and that they have permission to shape it.
In every interview, we now ask one question:
“What difference do you want this company to make, and how could your role help achieve it?”
It’s another simple question, but it reveals how someone thinks about purpose, collaboration and responsibility, and it helps us see whether we’re inviting in a contributor or a bystander. It’s also a reminder for us as leaders: people join companies to belong to something meaningful. Our role is to make that meaning visible.
The meaning of day one
If new legislation is going to give employees more rights from day one, leaders need to create more belonging from the same moment. That balance; fairness matched with belonging, builds the trust that keeps people committed. Rights define protection; belonging defines pride, and together they form culture. And culture, once established, outlasts any set of employment rules.
Complexity and complacency
Over time I’ve realised that complexity isn’t the real obstacle to progress; complacency is. Complexity comes with ambition; the natural result of growth and learning. Complacency arrives when we decide our current standards are good enough.
For anyone who follows competitive sport, and I’ve always been a motorsport fan, especially Formula 1, it’s clear that winning rarely depends on a single massive breakthrough. Success is built on countless small improvements. Teams expect the rules to change. They study them, look for the edges, and innovate within them. The best use uncertainty as fuel for invention.
Business works in much the same way. We can’t control every change around us, but we can control how we respond. Some teams pause until the dust settles. Others get straight back to the garage, experimenting, learning, finding performance within new limits. That mindset, adapting quickly without losing integrity, is what keeps organisations moving forward.
Let’s wrap up
Everything described here is happening for us in real time. These are the conversations we’re having inside our own companies, refining roles, improving how we welcome people, lifting expectations. The aim isn’t repair; it’s progression. We’re building for what comes next.
This moment of legislative uncertainty simply reminds us that leadership is measured not by how closely we follow rules, but by the standards we set and uphold. If you’re working through the same questions and want to explore how recruitment could strengthen your culture and future capability, let’s have that conversation.
Because when the right people join for the right reasons, everything else tends to find its rhythm.
Mark Jarvis
6x Founder | Interim MD | NED | Coach & Mentor
Author of:
The Very Best Business Handbook You’ll Ever Own
The 63 Point Business Blueprint
Work with me:
I build companies worth owning by supporting owners, founders and leaders to create a scalable business that works without them, Book a call with me here to ask a question and get started.
Remember, there are only three types of people – those who make things happen, those who wait for things to happen, and those who talk about why things don’t happen for them. Which one are you?
Recent Comments