Call brief · prepared for Anna Semple
The UK's only Fraunhofer institute — the Centre for Applied Photonics, Glasgow. ~55 people, not-for-profit, Great Place to Work-certified. Photonics and quantum PhDs. And their HR lead booked us herself, inbound.
When
Tue 15 Sep · 10:30–11:00
Who
Kelly Niven
HR Manager, MCIPD
kelly.niven@fraunhofer.co.uk
confirm exact address from the invite
Link
In the Cal.com invite
Employer Enquiry · round-robin → Anna
Kelly is not a gatekeeper to get past. She is the people-and-culture decision-maker — and her whole professional identity is winning "best workplace" awards.
She personally led Fraunhofer UK's 2025 Great Place to Work campaign — four national awards and 92% employee engagement. She styles herself an "HR Change Leader — culture, growth and innovation."
So this is a culture and retention conversation, not a finance one. Halo Pay is a childcare benefit wrapped in a retention story — pitch it as the next award-worthy addition to a package she is already proud of. Her language, finished.
MCIPD, 17+ years, ex-Tesco Bank / Heathrow / Lloyds Pharmacy, runs her own culture consultancy on the side. She will expect substance, not a script.
Practical consequence: she is active on LinkedIn (a legitimate warm channel for a post-call connect), but she booked by email — keep follow-up on email. Confirm the exact address on the call.
Kelly is both the champion and the buyer. Finance and the Exec Director co-sign.
| Name | Role | Why they matter to us |
|---|---|---|
| Kelly Niven | HR Manager / HR Business Partner (MCIPD) | Our caller — the champion and likely buyer. Sole/lead HR person; owns the benefits offer. At Fraunhofer since Jan 2023. |
| Iona Dott | Head of Finance & Administration (CA) | The scrutiny. Qualified accountant — the funding mechanics (how the employer's own saving largely pays for the programme) must be watertight for her. Build the finance leave-behind for this reader. |
| Simon Andrews | Executive Director (CEng, CPhys) | The formal yes. CEO-equivalent, ultimate budget authority. Gets looped in for sign-off, not the first call. |
| Prof Loyd McKnight | Head of Centre, CAP (2025) | Scientific leadership — the population of high-value staff being retained. |
| Dr John-Mark Hopkins | Deputy Head of Centre | Scientific leadership. |
Ask directly: "When you add a benefit like this, who signs it off — is that you, or do Iona and Simon need to be in the room?" It confirms Kelly as the buyer, surfaces the finance objection early, and tells us who to arm her to convince internally.
~55
Average employees, FY2024 (up from 48)
+15%
Headcount growth in one year — expanding
92%
Say it's a great place to work (UK avg 54%)
£734k
Pension spend, FY2024 — benefits-forward
£3.39m
Cash at bank — solvent, grant-funded
2012
Established in Glasgow · company SC419797
A private company limited by guarantee (not-for-profit RTO, SIC 72190), so net assets and reserves show as £0 — that's normal: grants are carried as deferred income, not retained profit. It's cash-positive, funded by Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft plus UK public research money.
One Glasgow site — Level 5, 99 George Street, at the University of Strathclyde. Every parent we'd serve is in one city.
~55 staff is small — and Halo has no minimum headcount. The employer-NI mechanics work exactly the same at 55 as at 5,000.
Better: it's a growing, benefits-forward employer with a young, family-forming STEM workforce and 92% engagement to protect. That's the ideal fit, not the marginal one. (They're a standard NI-paying company, not a charity — so the employer saving that largely funds the programme applies.)
A strong package — and, unusually, childcare is not a blank. Handle that carefully.
Do not assume childcare is empty space. It's very likely priority/discounted access to a Strathclyde/Glasgow campus nursery, or Tax-Free-Childcare signposting — confirm which.
Neither delivers the income-tax + employee-NI saving on the full nursery bill that a compliant Section 318 workplace nursery does. The gap Halo fills is turning a vague "access" perk into a tax-advantaged, compliant, governed benefit — an upgrade to something she already values.
Fraunhofer's German parent has a strong, well-documented family-friendly culture — on-site nursery (Kita) provision is common across German Fraunhofer institutes.
The line: "Halo Pay lets Fraunhofer UK match the family-friendly childcare culture your German colleagues already have — compliantly, under UK tax law."
A 55-person, grant-funded not-for-profit with one HR lead and a CA watching every line. The fear is cost and admin.
Budget sensitivity plus admin-load fear is the core risk. Iona Dott (CA) will want the mechanics to be exact, and Kelly is the sole HR person — she can't take on a project.
"The programme is largely funded through the savings it generates for the employer, so the net cost to run it is modest — and your people get a real income-tax and NI saving on their nursery bill. We carry the compliance and the admin, not your team."
Then: "You've got one HR manager — so we run the governance and the paperwork. It's built for lean teams." Acknowledge grant-funding once (benefits sit in core/overhead, not project grants), then move on — don't let it become a gate.
| Who | What they'd pitch | Our line |
|---|---|---|
| Bright Horizons | Own-network nurseries, back-up care, established brand. | Their model ties you to their estate and suits large employers. Halo works with the nursery the parent already uses, built for a 55-person org with one HR lead — no minimum, no tie-in. |
| Enjoy Benefits | Childcare bundled into a generic flex-benefits catalogue. | A benefits catalogue is not a compliant, governed Section 318 scheme. HMRC has warned about "pay-and-look-away" workplace-nursery schemes; Halo is the governance layer that keeps it clean — that's the whole product. |
| Strathclyde / campus nursery | The incumbent — their current "Nursery access". | Campus access is helpful but delivers no tax or employee-NI saving on the fees, and only if the parent uses that one nursery. Halo delivers the tax advantage on any registered nursery, compliant by design. |
Fraunhofer UK's staff are specialist photonics and quantum researchers — among the most expensive people in the UK to replace, in a sector already short of skills.
And motherhood is where high-skill STEM employers lose them: over 40% of new mothers in STEM leave full-time work after their first child — roughly double the rate for new fathers (Frontier Economics). Treat the exact figure as indicative.
"Losing one photonics researcher to the return-to-work cliff costs you a year of recruitment and lost project delivery. A childcare benefit that makes it financially easier to come back after parental leave is one of the highest-ROI retention levers you have."
And it directly serves her Best Workplaces for Women and for Wellbeing ambitions, and protects the 92% engagement she's already built.
The agenda that worked last time: intros, a few sharp questions, show the product, drive to a close. Have a purpose — or you're 20 minutes in before you know it.
| Time | Phase | The move |
|---|---|---|
| 0–3 | Intro & frame | Warm intro; one line on what Halo is — "a compliant workplace-nursery childcare benefit — better for parents, and simple for you to run." Then the opener: "how did you come across us?" |
| 3–12 | Discovery | Run the five questions below, quickly. The goal is to let Kelly name the "Nursery access" gap herself and size the population of parents. Listen more than you talk. |
| 12–22 | Show it | Short platform walk-through — the parent journey, the Family Circle governance, the audit pack. Tie every screen back to what she just raised. Don't tour features; answer her question with the product. |
| 22–27 | Reassure | The funding model and Section 318 in one breath — "the programme is largely funded by the savings it generates, so the net cost to run it is modest; we carry the compliance and the admin." Keep the numbers for the Finance leave-behind (Iona). |
| 27–30 | Close | Agree the follow-up and a second call with Finance/Exec: "when you take this to Iona and Simon, what will they want to see?" Then send the pack the same day. |
The five discovery questions (the 3–12 block) — find her reason early, and let her name the gap.
"You already list 'Nursery access' as a benefit — what does that actually give your people today, and where does it fall short?"
Surfaces the incumbent and the gap, in her words, without us assuming childcare is empty.
"How many of your ~55 team have young children, or are heading into parental leave in the next year or two?"
Sizes the population and ties it straight to retention. Gets her counting.
"After four Great Place to Work awards, what do you want the benefits package to be known for next — is 'family-friendly / best for women' on that list?"
Aligns Halo to her own stated ambition. This is the culture-buyer's language.
"When you add a benefit like this, who signs it off — you, or do Iona and Simon need to be in the room?"
Maps the decision path: Finance (Iona Dott, CA) and the Exec Director (Simon Andrews).
"What's your worry here — is it cost, admin load on you as the sole HR lead, or the compliance side?"
Lets her name the objection so Anna can close the right one instead of guessing.
Don't let this become a tax pitch. Halo is a compliant platform and governance, not an adviser — and Kelly buys culture and retention, not tax mechanics. Keep the tax detail in the leave-behind for Finance; keep the live conversation about people.
Kelly booked the Employer Enquiry event on Cal.com — the round-robin the website's "Book a call" points at. It landed on Anna.
No prior contact: no outreach, no warm intro. Cold, self-served inbound.
The booking arrives with no referrer, no UTM, no campaign. Same blind spot as Walker Morris and MML Capital — inbound employer bookings we can't attribute.
Ask her early: "Out of interest, how did you come across Halo?" Her answer — LinkedIn? a peer HR network? a Great Place to Work event? a Strathclyde connection? — tells us the channel that's actually converting, and her prior awareness going in.
Swept with Exa, Firecrawl and Parallel on 25 Aug 2026, plus the statutory register (Companies House API).
Fraunhofer UK Research Ltd — Companies House SC419797 ·
Accounts to 31 Dec 2024 — filing history ·
Fraunhofer CAP — Organisation / Our People ·
Fraunhofer CAP — Careers & benefits ·
Kelly Niven — LinkedIn ·
Simon Andrews — LinkedIn ·
Great Place to Work UK — Fraunhofer UK Research ·
New Head of CAP (Prof Loyd McKnight) — Strathclyde ·
Fraunhofer as an employer (family-friendly culture) ·
Frontier Economics — gender equality in STEM