Bad hires cost more as employment rights arrive sooner. Zinc's Sam Norman and Tom Jewell on pre-employment checks, re-checking staff and keeping culture intact.

Zinc is a pre-employment screening company. Its software automates identity and background checks so HR and talent teams can spend their time finding and keeping good people. Sam Norman, Zinc's COO, and Tom Jewell, Zinc's Chief Customer Officer, join Kevin to talk about what goes wrong in hiring and how to avoid it.

They cover why background checks are too often treated as a box to tick at the end of the process, how AI-polished CVs are making screening harder, and why the Employment Rights Act's move towards six-month rights could push employers to run checks earlier. They also explain why checking staff once is not enough, and why Zinc offers the DBS Update Service free of charge.

The second half turns to what happens to company culture when a business grows. Zinc has gone from nine people in 2022 to 170 today. Sam explains how the team keeps people connected, and why first-time managers carry so much of the culture. Tom explains why autonomy needs more support and context as a business scales.

The pressure to grow is real for UK small businesses. Employment Hero's Employment Index shows 35% of the SME leaders surveyed plan to expand headcount over the next 12 months, while 32% report high or critical operating pressure (Apr–Jun 2026 survey, run with GWI).

What you'll learn:

• Why pre-employment checks work best as part of the hiring process, not a final tick-box
• How AI-polished CVs are changing what employers need to verify
• What the Employment Rights Act's six-month rights could mean for when employers run checks
• Why one-off background checks leave gaps, and what re-checking staff looks like in practice
• How Zinc keeps people connected as it grows, including randomised Monday team lunches
• Why first-time managers shape company culture, and why autonomy needs more support as a business scales

[00:00] Introduction: Kevin welcomes Sam Norman and Tom Jewell [01:35] What Zinc does: automated pre-employment screening [02:30] The UK hiring market: AI-first growth, funding squeezes and regulated sectors [04:26] Scaling from nine to 170 people in 2026's hiring climate [07:57] Why background checks are not a box-ticking exercise [10:34] The Employment Rights Act and why six-month rights could bring checks forward [11:48] Zinc's candidate report: why HR teams feel they can't afford a bad hire [14:53] How do you protect culture as a company grows? [16:05] Randomised Monday lunches and staying small by design [16:53] Empowering first-time managers and "relaxed professionalism" [18:11] Why autonomy needs more support as a business grows [20:38] Why background checks should not be a one-off: the case for re-checking [24:06] Why Zinc offers the DBS Update Service free of charge [25:34] The one thing UK businesses should change about hiring compliance

Employment Hero helps growing UK businesses hire, onboard and manage their people in one place. See how it works: https://employmenthero.com/uk/

Follow Inside the Workroom for more conversations on running a better business.

SEO NOTES (for the SEO team, remove before publishing)

Scope. GB, English. All volumes are third-party estimates (Google via DataForSEO; AI search volume via the AEO tool), not Search Console data. Where I give two figures they are the 12-month headline volume and the latest month (Aug 2026).

Topic mix, from the SRT (28:14). Hiring, screening and compliance take the larger share of runtime: by my tagging of the timestamps, about 62% hiring and screening, 20% culture, 12% mixed and 6% intro, and a keyword-density check on one-minute windows gave the same direction. Culture, autonomy and first-time managers sit in one block of about five to six minutes (14:53 to 20:38). The description and bullets follow that order. The split depends on how the 04:26 segment is classed.

The Fair Work Agency launched in April 2026 with new powers to enforce employment rights. Its CEO, Lisa Pinney MBE, joins us to tell UK SMEs exactly what to expect.

The Fair Work Agency is the UK government's new enforcement body, created under the Employment Rights Act 2025 to bring existing enforcement functions together into one place. For UK employers, especially small businesses, understanding what it does, what triggers an investigation and how to reduce your risk isn't optional.

Lisa Pinney MBE is the Fair Work Agency's Chief Executive. She spent over 20 years at the Environment Agency in senior enforcement and regulatory roles before leading the Mining Remediation Authority as CEO. She brings practical experience of how government enforcement bodies work, not just in theory.

What you'll learn:

• What the Fair Work Agency is and how it differs from previous enforcement bodies
• What triggers an FWA investigation and what legitimate businesses should watch out for
• Where the FWA is focusing first: National Minimum Wage, employment agency compliance, holiday pay and statutory sick pay
• Why the FWA is encouraging self-reporting and what that means if you've made a mistake
• How AI could be used to analyse payroll and working time data at scale
• What UK SMEs can do right now to reduce their compliance risk

Setting unrealistic growth targets doesn't just hurt results. It breaks your team's trust in you. Alex Olley, Co-Founder of Reachdesk, learnt that the hard way.

After Reachdesk raised $43 million in a Series B and delivered 600% growth, the board asked for more. Alex said yes without properly interrogating whether it was achievable. What followed cost him trust with his team. He talks through what he did to turn it around, and what he'd tell any leader facing the same pressure from investors or boards.

Alex Olley is Co-Founder and Chief Revenue Officer at Reachdesk, a B2B gifting platform that's scaled through some of the toughest conditions in the tech sector. He's also a Forbes Business Council member and Executive Member at Pavilion.

Research from the CIPD Good Work Index shows workers with poor managers are 50% more likely to say work harms their mental health, a reminder that this isn't just a performance issue.

What you'll learn:

• Why agreeing to unrealistic targets is a leadership failure, not a sign of ambition
• How to build a stress-tested, data-grounded plan your team can actually believe in
• What "wartime revenue leaders" means and why it matters for how you hire
• Why the rise of AI has made human connection in business more valuable, not less