An attestation service gets certificates, degree papers and commercial documents stamped and legalised through offices and embassies. The work depends on runners, queue knowledge and original documents that belong to someone else.
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Share your requirementsAn attestation service helps people and companies get degree certificates, marriage papers, commercial invoices and police clearances attested by the offices, chambers and consulates that must sign them. Staff include the owner, process executives who know the required steps for each country and document, runners who queue at government and embassy counters, client coordinators who check papers on intake, and courier and delivery staff. Originals are valuable and cannot be replaced easily. Each office has its own timings, rules and moods, and the experienced runner knows which counter to try. Rules change with little notice. Customers are anxious about visas and jobs abroad and ask for updates daily. 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 document attestation services. 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.
A certificate may pass through intake, a runner, a counter, a courier and back, and if one handover is not logged, nobody knows where the paper is.
Which window is open, which officer is strict and which time to queue are known by habit, and a runner leaving takes it along.
A new requirement at an embassy reaches one executive, and others keep sending files that will be rejected.
A returned document sends a runner back for another day in the queue, with no record of the reason or who could have caught it.
Heat, rain and waiting hours are part of the job, with little attention to travel, meals or safety.
Runners hold cash for government and agent fees, and without a clean float and receipt routine, disputes arise.
Anxious clients call and message constantly, and coordinators who lack a status screen answer from memory.
Pay depends on who gets the better route, and arguments follow when a trip goes wrong.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Employee Administration; Health, Safety and Wellbeing; Compensation, Payroll and Benefits. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for professional services, not in general.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
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.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
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.
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 document attestation services business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
Each handover signed or scanned, with date, time and person, so a document's whereabouts are known at any moment.
Each handover signed or scanned, with date, time and person, so a document's whereabouts are known at any moment. Document it through the HR documentation process.
A shared record per office of timings, requirements, tips and recent changes, updated by anyone who learns something new.
A shared record per office of timings, requirements, tips and recent changes, updated by anyone who learns something new.
A short sheet that shows the cause and who prepared the file, reviewed weekly to improve intake checks.
A short sheet that shows the cause and who prepared the file, reviewed weekly to improve intake checks.
Travel allowance, drinking water, rest breaks and emergency contacts, covered by workplace health, safety and wellbeing.
Travel allowance, drinking water, rest breaks and emergency contacts, covered by workplace health, safety and wellbeing.
A fixed float, a daily reconciliation and a rule on advances, with settlement through the payroll process.
A fixed float, a daily reconciliation and a rule on advances, with settlement through the payroll process.
A clear rate per trip or day, how failed trips are treated and what extras are allowed, agreed in writing.
A clear rate per trip or day, how failed trips are treated and what extras are allowed, agreed in writing.
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.
Written terms for runners and a custody rule for client originals.
Basics for long days outdoors and on the road.
A clear pay and advance cycle for trip-based and daily staff.
Sharing counter knowledge so it does not rest in one runner.
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.
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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.
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A shift, weekly and monthly safety routine for rubber plants that names who checks platen guards, mill trip bars, autoclave doors, burst-test cages and slings, and who acts on near misses.
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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.
Log every handover with date, time and person, keep originals in one locked place and match the log to the file each evening.
Ask runners to add what they learn to a shared notebook and pair a new runner with an experienced one for the first weeks.
Choose a clear basis, per trip or per day, say how failed trips are handled and put it in writing. Check treatment with a qualified professional.
Log reasons, find the common ones and add checks at intake. Most rejections repeat a few causes.
Travel arrangements, water, breaks, a way to reach someone in trouble and attention to weather. Small steps show care and keep people.
Custody of originals, runner pay and cash, shared counter knowledge and field wellbeing are common starting points. We begin by hearing how a document travels through your office. Scope, timing and fees are agreed in writing.
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