Bristol company The HR Dept is seeking to attract human resources and health and safety workers threatened by redundancy.

The HR Dept, and its sister company, The HS Dept, need people to run one of their new offices across the country, buying into an office as a licensee to run it as their own-branded business.

The HR Dept works with smaller businesses clients to prevent personnel problems getting out of hand by providing advice on recruiting and employing staff.

It was launched in 2003 by Sue Tumelty, a human resources manager, and has its head office in Winterbourne Down, South Gloucestershire. It has 28 offices across the country, run by HR professionals as licensees.

The HS Dept has four offices providing health and safety expertise to businesses and ensuring clients have excellent safety standards and comply with the law.

Sue, who was runner up in the Jurys Hotel Business Person of the Year competition in 2007, said: "Often when businesses restructure, HR and training are the first areas to go, whilst health and safety support is out-sourced. That means there's potentially a huge waste of talent and experience out there.

"Through our expansion programme we hope to offer an alternative career path for some of those HR and HS professionals – and enable our clients to benefit from that talent.

"Despite the recession, it's not all gloom and doom and many small and medium-sized businesses need HR support to ensure they are legally compliant and have the right staffing numbers and skills to remain competitive, and HS support to ensure they meet health and safety requirements."

"We are perfectly positioned to provide that support, which means there are fantastic opportunities for us to expand and recruit. Despite the recession this could be the best year yet for our businesses."

Call The HR Dept on 0845 202 1999 or visit its website, www.hrdept.co.uk.