Old user guide (pre combined search)

Working with search results
In addition to a list of articles matching your search criteria, the search results page will also display the search terms that you entered, the number of articles found and the number of pages on which they are displayed.

Your search results will be returned with the most relevant articles appearing first. Relevance is determined by the number of times your search word(s) or phrase(s) appear in an article. So if you search for the phrase "garden leave", for example, the article at the top of the results list will be the one where the phrase "garden leave" occurs the highest number of times.

Search results page

The following tips will help you get the most out of your search results:

Note: Quick search will not search across the UK and EU legislation components of the HR & Compliance Centre service. These are presented in the LexisNexis Butterworths Netbos format and can only be searched within that section of the HR & Compliance Centre site. See Legislation for further details.



Information categories
XpertHR's team of editors categorise articles that are added to the site in a unique way that enables you to access the information you require quickly and efficiently. Categories used include topics, subtopics, information types, market sectors and publishers.

Advanced search form - topic and subtopic selection boxes

Information category descriptions
Topics: There are 11 topics, each of which represents a main area of interest to HR professionals. Topics include recruitment, contracts of employment, pay and benefits, equal opportunities, health and safety, and termination of employment, for example. A single article may be associated with one or more topics.
Subtopics: There are more than 100 subtopics, each of which represents a specialist area within a topic. Subtopics within the topic of equal opportunities include age, disability, sex and race, for example. A single article may be associated with one or more subtopics.
Information types: There are 15 information types, each of which represents a particular type of article. Information types include news, law reports, case studies and legal guidance, for example. A single article will be associated with only one information type.
Market sectors: There are 16 market sectors, representing broad areas of the UK economy and based on the standard industrial classification used by the Government's statistics agency among others. Market sectors include retail, financial services and public services, for example. A single article may be associated with one or more market sectors.
Publishers: There are three publishers, representing HR & Compliance Centre and our associate publishers. These are the Personnel Today portfolio, IRS and HR & Compliance Centre. A single article will be associated with only one publisher.

Note on sectors: All articles are tagged with one information type, one publisher and one or more topics and subtopics, but only some articles will be tagged with one or market sectors. Many articles do not contain sector-specific content and so are not associated with any sector.

The assisted search link


XpertHR's assisted search guides users through five simple steps designed to produce a manageable set of relevant results.

Step 1 - Choose your search words. Click the "Tip on search words" link under the search box to get the most out of the assisted search feature, then enter your search word(s) or phrase(s) and click "Next" to move to Step 2.

Assisted search - step 1

Step 2 - Narrow your search by topic. This screen shows the number of hits that match your search word(s) or phrase(s), along with a list of the top results so far. It also shows the number of hits broken down by topic.

Assisted search - step 2
 

You have three options at this point:

Step 3 - Narrow your search by subtopic. You will see this screen if you have selected a topic at Step 2. The screen shows the number of hits that match your search words, along with a list of the top results so far. It also shows the number of hits broken down by the subtopics that relate to your chosen topic.

Assisted search - step 3
 

You have three options at this point:

Step 4 - Narrow your search by information type. This screen shows the number of hits that match your search words and any topic and subtopic that you have selected at Steps 2 and 3, along with a list of the top results so far. It also shows the number of hits broken down by information type.

Assisted search - step 4
 

You have three options at this point:

Step 5 - Narrow your search by date and/or publisher. This screen shows the number of hits that match your search words, any topic and subtopic that you have selected at Steps 2 and 3, and any information types you have selected at Step 4, along with a list of the top results so far. It also provides boxes for entering a published after date, or a published between date range, and shows the number of hits broken down by publisher.

You have three options at this point:

Assisted search results page. This screen shows the number of hits that match your search words, any topic and subtopic that you have selected at Steps 2 and 3, any information types you have selected at Step 4 and any date range and/or publishers that you have selected at Step 5, along with the first page of search results.

Assisted search results page

You have five options at this point:

Advanced search
Our innovative approach to categorising information enables HR & Compliance Centre to offer an outstanding advanced search facility. To open the advanced search, click the "Assisted search" link under the quick search box which is displayed at the top right-hand side of every main page on HR & Compliance Centre.

The assisted search link

Advanced search gives you the option of entering your search word(s) or phrase(s), along with the ability to target your search within your chosen combination of:

Specifying the date range of the material you are searching for will limit the search results returned to articles originally published, or subsequently updated, within your specified time frame.

You can pre-select the number of search results you wish to be returned on each page of search results - from as few as 10 to as many as 100.

Click the red "Search" button to proceed to the search results page. The query submitted will initiate a search for articles that contain only the combination of words, phrases, topics, subtopics, information types, publishers and the date-range that you entered.

Note: Advanced search will not search across the UK and EU legislation components of the HR & Compliance Centre service. These are presented in the LexisNexis Butterworths Netbos format and can only be searched within that section of the HR & Compliance Centre site. See Legislation for further details.

Advanced search form

Search by sector
Around a quarter of the articles published on HR & Compliance Centre are associated with one or more market sectors. The search by sector facility allows you to refine your search by market sector.

To open the search by sector form, click the "Information & News" button on the side navigation menu and then select the yellow "Search by Sector" button.

The search by sector form shows 16 market sectors. You may select one or more of these, or all of them. Click the "Where's My Industry?" link for details of HR & Compliance Centre's sector classifications.

The search by sector form gives you the option of entering your search word(s) or phrase(s), along with the ability to target your search within your chosen combination of market sector(s) and information types. Sector categories are applied to articles of only four information types:

Search by sector

The screen shot below shows an example of one of these local search facilities - on the questions and answers page.

Questions and answers - quick search box and full search link

You can either enter your search word(s) or phrase(s) in the search box (similar to Quick search ) or select the "Full search" link.

A full search is similar to the Advanced search feature - except that your search is limited to articles belonging to a certain part of the site. Enter any combination of words, phrases, topics, subtopics, publishers and date ranges to focus your search.

Questions and answers - full search form

Note: Searches can also be restricted to specific sectors.  See Search by Sector. 



Wildcards and Boolean operators
Searching on HR & Compliance Centre can be further improved using two common search techniques: wildcards and Boolean operators.

The character used for a wildcard in HR & Compliance Centre searches is the asterisk (*).  This can be added to the end of a word to truncate it. For example, if you entered "employ*" into any of the HR & Compliance Centre search boxes, the search engine would retrieve documents including the word employ and other words beginning with the same six letters, such as employs, employer, employee, employees and employment. Or if you entered the phrase "annual* hours", the search would return articles containing the phrase "annualised hours" as well as those containing the phrase "annual hours".

Boolean operators are a useful tool allowing you to further refine your text-based searches. The Boolean operators supported in HR & Compliance Centre are:

Examples of Boolean operators in action
Searching for maternity AND pay will retrieve articles containing both the words "maternity" and "pay" but not necessarily next to each other.

You don't actually have to type "AND". HR & Compliance Centre assumes that your search words are separated by "ANDs" unless you use one of the other Boolean operators, OR, NOT or NEAR, described below.

My HR & Compliance Centre

Using My HR & Compliance Centre
The My HR & Compliance Centre section of the site can be personalised to reflect the issues that most concern you. My HR & Compliance Centre will search, store and even e-mail the latest information on topics that you have selected.

To open the My HR & Compliance Centre section, click the "My HR & Compliance Centre" top navigation button, which is displayed at the top of all main pages on HR & Compliance Centre.

Four navigation tabs, entitled "My Update", "My Searches", "My Articles" and "My Shortlists" provide access to the areas of the site that you can personalise. When you open the My HR & Compliance Centre section, the My Update page is displayed and the "My Update" tab is highlighted in blue.

My HR & Compliance Centre - My Update page, navigation tabs and "Your preferences" link

My Update
Once you have selected your topics of interest, the My Update page will display the latest articles matching your selections. However, the first time you view the My Update page, no articles will be displayed. Instead, the page will display the "Your preferences" facility, described below, which allows you to select from the topics and subtopics available.

Using the "Your preferences" facility to select your topics
To select your topics of interest for the first time, click the "My HR & Compliance Centre" top navigation button. This will open the My Update page displaying the "Your preferences" facility.

To change or add to your topics of interest on second and subsequent occasions, open the My Update page and click the "Your preferences" link to open the "Your preferences" settings page.

My Update - "Your preferences" settings page

To set your preferences, first select a topic from the list. A new page will open showing the subtopics associated with that topic.

Click the "What's Included?" link to view examples of the kinds of issues that are covered by the subtopics.
Add subtopics to your selection by moving them from left to right using the single central chevron  or by double clicking on the subtopic title.

Using the double chevron  will move all of the subtopics. Follow the same procedure in reverse to remove one or more subtopics from your selection.

Click the "Clear preferences" link if you wish to remove all your topic and subtopic selections.

Click the red "OK" button at the bottom of the page to complete your selection from that topic and to return to the "Your preferences" settings page. Your subtopic selections will now be displayed next to the appropriate topic. You may now choose another topic, and repeat the process until you have identified all your areas of interest.

My Update - Subtopic selection page

You can return to the "Your preferences" settings page to re-set your preferences at any time.

Track this topic
You can also change your topic and subtopic preferences by clicking the "Track this topic" link displayed at the top of article detail pages.

Track this topic link

Click the "Track this topic" link on any article and the red "Confirm" button to update your topic and subtopic preferences to include the topics and subtopics associated with that article.

Email update preferences

Use the email update options section to:

When you re-run a saved search it will return all your original search results along with any articles that meet your search criteria that have been added to HR & Compliance Centre since the first time you ran the search.

Removing a saved article from your personal list does not remove it from the HR & Compliance Centre system. It will continue to be displayed elsewhere on the site and returned in searches, and will be available for you to view or indeed for you to save again to your "My Articles" page if you wish.

My shortlists
XpertHR's advanced shortlisting feature allows you to build your own shortlists using the suppliers listed in the service providers section of the site.

You can access the service providers section of the site by clicking the "Service Providers" button on the side navigation menu. Here the HR & Compliance Centre directory displays the details of organisations, companies and consultants that supply services to HR professionals (see Service providers).

But before you can save details of a service provider to a shortlist, you need to create the shortlist.

To create a shortlist or view your existing shortlists, open the My Update page by clicking the "My XpertHR" top navigation button and then click the "My Shortlists" tab.

My Xpert HR - My Shortlists page 

On the "My Shortlists" page, you can create and name any number of shortlists, and add to or amend them as often as you like.

Simply enter the name for a new shortlist in the "New shortlist name" box, add your descriptive notes if required in the "Notes" box, and click the red "Add Shortlist" button. This shortlist is now available for you to use when you wish to add the name of a service provider from the directory.

Use the "Add to shortlist" option in the directory of service providers to add suppliers to your shortlists.

The "My Shortlists" page lists your saved shortlists by name in alphabetical order. The "View contents" link displays the contents of the shortlist and the "delete" link removes the shortlist from your list.

Clicking the "View contents" link next to a shortlist name opens a new page displaying the suppliers that you have added to this shortlist. On this page you may add notes to individual supplier entries, delete entries, or generate a printer-friendly version of the shortlist by clicking the "Format for print" button at the bottom left of the screen.

Information and news

You may use wildcards and Boolean operators. Please refer to the section of this user guide on Searching for further guidance.

Reference manual - search results page

The employment law reference manual search results page displays the article titles and summaries of reference manual sections that match your search terms in order of relevance, with the most relevant at the top. As in other searches on HR & Compliance Centre, relevance is defined by the number of times your search word(s) or phrase(s) appear in the articles.

The following tips will help you get the most out of your reference manual search results:

When you open a reference manual section from the search results list,

To return to the search results page from a law reports article, press the "Back" button on your internet browser or the backspace key on your keyboard, or click the "Back" link at the bottom of the page.



Browsing the latest case law reports
To browse the latest case law reports, click the "Latest" tab, which is displayed along with the "Topic", "Search", "Case title" and "Stop press" tabs above the topic or subtopic buttons at the top of every case law reports page.

Case law reports - latest page

The case law reports latest page displays the article titles and summaries of the ten most recently published law reports articles, with the most recent at the top.

Click an article title to view the full law reports article. To return to the latest case law reports page from a law reports article, press the "Back" button on your internet browser or the backspace key on your keyboard, or click the "Back" link at the bottom of the page.

Case law reports stop press
To view the stop press page, click the "Stop press" tab, which is displayed along with the "Topic", "Search", "Case title", and "Latest" tabs above the topic or subtopic buttons at the top of every case law reports page.

Case law reports - stop press page

The case law reports stop press page displays breaking news on latest case law developments. Items are removed from the stop press page when full law reports on the cases in question are published on HR & Compliance Centre.

Legislation
The HR & Compliance Centre legislation section provides an up-to-date full text resource of all employment-related legislation affecting the UK - including statutes, statutory instruments and European treaties and directives, published in association with the UK's leading legal publisher LexisNexis Butterworths.

Open the legislation section by clicking the blue "Employment Law" button and then the yellow "Legislation" button on the side navigation.  

Legislation page

The legislation service is presented in the Netbos format, designed by LexisNexis Butterworths to help users navigate around large repositories of legislation. The Netbos service comes complete with a specific help guide that explains how to get the most from the system. Click the "Help" link on the top of any legislation detail page (and highlighted in the screen shot above) to view this guide.

Statutory rates
HR & Compliance Centre has pulled together in one place details of current statutory rates, such as tax allowances, statutory sick pay and maternity pay. This section is regularly updated and carries links to relevant official websites for more details.

Open the statutory rates section by clicking the blue "Employment Law" button and then the yellow "Statutory Rates" button on the side navigation.



Legal advice
XpertHR's unique legal advice service offers the option of putting your question to a specialist employment lawyer. The service is available to HR & Compliance Centre subscribers 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The advice is provided by Abbey Legal Services - one of the country's leading specialist legal advice line operators.

Open the legal advice section by clicking the blue "Employment Law" button and then the yellow "Legal Advice" button on the side navigation.

You may submit your question by email or by phone.

To ask your question by email, click the "Email a question" link towards the top right of the legal advice page. This will open the email advice page, which allows you to type in your question and click "Send". You should receive an immediate acknowledgement followed by a response within one hour during the working hours of 9.00am to 5.30pm Monday to Friday (except bank holidays). Email questions received after 5.30pm will be answered at the start of the next working day.

To ask your question by phone, click the "Telephone helpline" link at the top right of the legal advice page. This will open the telephone helpline page on which the helpline number is displayed along with a weekly code. When you phone the helpline with your question you will be asked for the weekly code to help our advisers verify that you are authorised to use the service. Our lawyers are available to respond to your phone calls 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Legal advice - links to the email and phone advice pages

If your subscription entitles you to legal advice and you cannot get access to the telephone helpline page or the email advice page, please email helpdesk.uk@brightmine.com or call the helpdesk on 020 8652 4055.

Find a lawyer
Major legal firms with employment law practices, taken from HR & Compliance Centre's directory of suppliers to the HR profession, are listed on the find a lawyer page.

Open the find a lawyer page by clicking the blue "Employment Law" button and then the yellow "Find a Lawyer" button on the side navigation.

Click a firm name for full contact details. Click "Add to shortlist" to add a firm to one your supplier shortlists. For guidance on creating a shortlists see the section of this user guide on My Shortlists.

Quick reference
XpertHR's quick reference service pulls together in one place key employment law facts, such as qualifying periods for employment rights and statutory minimum notice periods.

Open the quick reference page by clicking the blue "Employment Law" button and then the yellow "Quick Reference" button on the side navigation.

Recruitment

The recruitment homepage
XpertHR's recruitment service provides recruitment news, reference, and commentary and analysis along with access to a full range of services, from provider sourcing to CV checking.

Open the recruitment homepage by clicking the "Recruitment" button on the side navigation menu. Selecting this button will also reveal a submenu of  four yellow buttons corresponding to areas within the recruitment service: recruit online, check CVs, find provider and market rates.

The recruitment homepage

The central column on the recruitment homepage displays "Upfront" articles that keep you up to date with recent recruitment developments and link to further resources on HR & Compliance Centre. Simply click the title to view further details.

The boxes displayed in the right-hand column of the recruitment homepage provide links to HR & Compliance Centre's free and pay-as-you-go recruitment services, along with links to the recruitment sections of the employment law reference manual.

Market rates
Open the market rates page by clicking the blue "Employment Law" button and then the yellow "Market Rates" button on the side navigation, or by clicking the "Check market rates" link in the pay-as-you-go services box on the recruitment homepage. HR & Compliance Centre has partnered with R£WARD to offer a pay-as-you go online pay search service.

Pay and benefits

The pay and benefits homepage
From HR & Compliance Centre's pay and benefits section you can browse the latest pay and benefits news, case studies, surveys, commentary and analysis, or select your sector to view pay intelligence for your industry.

Open the pay and benefits homepage by clicking the "Pay & Benefits" button on the side navigation menu. Selecting this button will also reveal a submenu of  four yellow buttons corresponding to areas within the pay and benefits service: pay upfront, data by sector, economic indicators and official figures.

The pay and benefits homepage



Under the heading "Pay & Benefits Latest", the central column on the the pay and benefits homepage displays titles and summaries of the latest pay news articles from IRS. These are displayed in date order, with the most recent at the top. Click a title to view a full article. To view older IRS pay news articles, click the "…more" link at the bottom right of the page.

Use the drop down "Select information type" menu at the top of the central column to change the list so that it displays titles and summaries of the latest pay news from magazines in the Personnel Today portfolio, the latest pay case studies, the latest pay surveys and statistics, or the latest pay commentary and analysis.