Month: January 2021

Filling the GAP in HR services: Insert expletive of your choice

Filling the GAP in HR services: Insert expletive of your choice

‘It is a real shame that ACAS is falling down in its main job: supporting people who have been unfairly treated by their employers.

We’ve always had a lot of contact on our client’s behalf with ACAS at the Early Conciliation level (the month before they start an official tribunal).

Their conciliators have always only been a messenger, without legal power and no jurisdiction to decide who is “right”.

Generally, they have been very realistic and informed and helpful in the process.

But that was before Coronavirus.

In the past two months, we’ve had to deal with two nightmares “conciliators” who had no idea about the law or how to do their job.

The first one felt that it was unfair (!) that an employee had been fired after 4 months service without following a full disciplinary process.

As you probably know, under 2 years there is no protection from unfair dismissal for employees. And we have in our contracts and handbook that we will not be using the disciplinary process on staff under 2 years.

Absolutely legal.

But the ACAS conciliator had not heard of it, telling me bluntly, “You are not allowed to do that!”.

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Filling the GAP in HR Services: No choice but to share this idiocy

Filling the GAP in HR Services: No choice but to share this idiocy

As you’d expect, we read about tribunal cases all the time.

And occasionally, as last week, I feel I have no choice but to share with you the idiocy of the employer involved, in the hope that you won’t make the same mistakes.

This week is no different, and this time it’s the NHS in the firing line.

As this case went all the way to a tribunal, we know exactly what was said.

A job applicant had been refused a job because they would, “Not fit with the team”.

Plus, they were told by the manager, Dr Lee, that he, “Would feel uncomfortable asking you to do things given you have an 11-year-old child”.

Dr Lee also said that the applicant, “Had so much more to give compared to other applicants”, but that it was “better to employ someone at an earlier stage of their career as they would then progress to develop their career over a longer period elsewhere in the NHS”.

Wow! So effectively, Dr Lee was saying, “You’re great but we are going to hire someone younger”!

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Filling the GAP in HR services: Women are more expensive than men

Filling the GAP in HR services: Women are more expensive than men

It’s an accepted “fact” of business life – women are more expensive to employ than men.

But is it true?

Few people like to go on the record about it – largely through fear of getting a knock on the door from politically correct vigilantes.

Employers and employment bodies have traditionally been shy of undertaking any kind of meaningful study into the costs of women in the workplace.

Despite this, there appears to be a real fear that employing women can cost a business dearly.

A survey of HR professionals by Croner Consulting suggests that some four fifths of employers instinctively think twice about employing women of ‘childbearing age’ – which is basically all women nowadays, as the current UK oldest new mother is 66!

That means the assumption that women are more expensive to employ could be affecting 10.9 million women throughout the UK.

Even removing the subjective from the discussion, leaving out the whys and the wherefores, answering the simple question ‘are women more expensive to employ than men?’ takes diplomacy to entirely new levels.

So how does the expense theory stand up to scrutiny?  Here are some of the most common assumptions (and the truth behind them)”  

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Filling the Gap in HR services: Incurably itchy wrist

Filling the Gap in HR services: Incurably itchy wrist

I bought myself a new Fitbit for Christmas.

I kind of had to, because I lost my old one at the end of last year, and while health is actually the point of exercise, turning it into a competition makes me far more likely to engage with it!

I didn’t want one of the big watch ones.

In fact I didn’t want a watch at all, I wanted something to clip onto my belt.

You see, I haven’t been able to wear anything on my wrists for any length of time for years; since the children were born.

I used to love watches, that was my reward when things went well at work: buy a new watch.

But as soon as Frances and Christopher came along, all of a sudden I couldn’t wear a leather strap, nor metal or plastic, without developing an incurably itchy wrist.

Gold bracelet? Nope.

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