A company secretarial firm keeps other companies' boards, minutes, registers and annual filings in order. The work is calendar-driven and detail-heavy, and a missed date lands on the client. People hold the knowledge of each client's records.
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Share your requirementsA secretarial firm looks after the minute books, registers, board and shareholder meetings, annual returns and event-based filings of many client companies, from startups to listed groups. The team has practising company secretaries or partners, senior executives who own client portfolios, assistants who draft notices and minutes, and a filing desk. Work follows a calendar of board dates, annual meetings and due dates that clients cannot move. Each client has its own habits, signatories and folders. Seasons peak around year end and meeting cycles. Trainees and executives are sought by the legal and compliance teams of those same clients. A secretary on leave leaves a portfolio that others struggle to read. See also HR for professional services.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
GullyHR runs talent acquisition for permanent roles in company secretarial firms. For each role we agree the job description with you, find and screen candidates against it, and support the offer through to joining. Tell us the role and the number of people, and we start there.
We recruit permanent employees. We do not supply contract or temporary staff.
Every business interviews, but few have a written process that works the same way for every role and every interviewer. GullyHR designs yours, from the role brief to the offer, trains your managers to run it, and can run it for you on the roles you hand us.
We agree what the role must deliver, the must-have and nice-to-have skills, and how each will be scored.
Screening call, assessment, interview rounds and decision points, sized to the role and the number of people you hire.
Structured questions for each role family and a rating guide, so two interviewers judge the same answer the same way.
A short briefing for your managers on what to ask, what to avoid and how to give a clear yes or no.
Who approves, how the offer is made, and how candidates are kept informed from first call to joining.
The senior knows which director signs late, which client changes dates and where the old registers are, and nobody else can step in.
Board, committee and annual meeting notices pile up in the same weeks as annual filings, and the team works late on documents that cannot slip.
Minutes and notices travel between the assistant, senior, partner and client, with no rule on how many rounds are acceptable.
They are pulled onto whichever client is urgent, so they see many files and master none, then leave for a company role.
Some registers are in folders, some on shared drives and some on a laptop, and a departure can lock away a client's history.
A senior carrying twenty clients is paid close to someone with five, since the firm bills by client rather than by load.
Staff see board papers and unpublished matters, yet few firms spell out confidentiality in writing or what to do on exit.
A colleague is asked at short notice to handle a portfolio she has never seen, and errors follow.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Career and Succession Management; Employee Administration; Compensation, Payroll and Benefits. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for professional services, not in general.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a company secretarial firms business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
Signatories, meeting pattern, due dates, record locations and quirks, so another person can take over.
Signatories, meeting pattern, due dates, record locations and quirks, so another person can take over. The employee information management approach helps keep it current.
Each client has a named primary and secondary, who sees the calendar and sample drafts monthly.
Each client has a named primary and secondary, who sees the calendar and sample drafts monthly.
Agree that a draft gets one assistant pass, one senior review and one partner glance, with a rule for when a second round is allowed.
Agree that a draft gets one assistant pass, one senior review and one partner glance, with a rule for when a second round is allowed.
A fixed sequence of client types and tasks over months, with a named mentor.
A fixed sequence of client types and tasks over months, with a named mentor. The learning and development process sets it out.
Terms for handling board papers, device rules and handover duties on leaving, documented through the HR documentation process.
Terms for handling board papers, device rules and handover duties on leaving, documented through the HR documentation process.
A simple measure of client count and complexity per senior, used to set bands.
A simple measure of client count and complexity per senior, used to set bands. See compensation benchmarking.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
Orderly records of who holds which portfolio, access and training.
A trainee path with rotation by plan, not by emergency.
Confidentiality terms and handover duties in writing.
Bands that reflect portfolio load, so heavy seniors are not paid like juniors.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in professional services, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Why associates and managers leave consulting, accounting, legal and advisory firms, and how to ask about progression, workload and partners at exit.
6 min readRead article
A two-hour exercise that names the roles you could not fill quickly, who could cover them, and what readiness would actually require.
7 min readRead article
Payroll says one joining date, the personal file says another and the manager remembers a third. How to establish a single trustworthy employee record and keep it that way.
7 min readRead article
Simple variable pay structures for product and engineering teams: four options, why individual metrics backfire, a build plan and a one page outline to adapt.
6 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Write a sheet per client, name a backup, and let the backup review a few drafts each month. Handover then becomes a habit, not a crisis.
Map board and annual meeting dates for all clients on one calendar, mark clashes early and arrange temporary help or staggered leave before the rush.
Many see a legal or compliance role in a company as the next step. A visible senior track, real portfolio ownership and a fair raise at qualification help the firm compete.
Set a norm, for example one assistant pass, one senior pass and one partner look. More rounds are fine for rare complex documents, but they should be the exception.
Agree written rules on devices, storage and sharing, and have staff sign them. Ask a qualified professional what is required for your clients.
Typically the portfolio handover sheets, trainee rotation and senior load, plus written confidentiality terms. We first listen to how your calendar and clients work. Scope, timing and fees follow in writing.
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