Carolyne Wahlen - GAP HR

The Goldilocks Principle (and rats!)

Last month, my daughter saw a rat.

She was in our (very messy) garage with our miniature schnauzer Comet, and it scuttled right in front of them.

Comet successfully ignored generations of breeding and let the rat go, choosing to focus on a manky tennis ball instead.

Luckily, one of our clients specialises in pest extermination, so – after witnessing Comet’s failure – we called them and they arrived the next day.

Three weeks later, the rats were gone, and we were under no illusions about how they’d got into the garage – the old wooden door frame, which clearly needed replacing without delay.

I contacted three companies – two from Checkatrade, and one via recommendation.

All three came round. All were likeable, knowledgeable, could provide what I wanted – a grey anthracite roller door – and could do it for about the same price and in the same time frame.

I was dreading getting the quotes and having to make a choice because they were all so similar – how was I going to make the choice?!

Employment Law Scrapped

Employment Law Scrapped I was speaking to a prospect the other day, and while he was interested in our support, it quickly became clear that he didn’t feel he would need it going forward. Not because he wouldn’t experience issues in his organization, but because – in his words – “Now we’ve had Brexit, the … Read more

Can you make an employee get the vaccine?

Can you make an employee get the vaccine?

I got a question today from an employee asking whether he could be disciplined for not getting the vaccine if/when it is offered.

The government has been pleasantly surprised with the take up of the vaccination programme in the UK so far – they were hoping for a 75% uptake, and they have over 90% uptake in the “at risk” groups so far.

But regardless of how good the uptake is, some people are refusing, and will continue to do so, and right now, there are no plans to make any of the vaccines compulsory.

As an employer, you have no right to insist on any vaccinations, either during employment or as a condition of employment. It’s also unlikely that you could make staff get vaccinated on health and safety grounds.

Can I make them return to work after lockdown?

Can I make them return to work after the lockdown?

If you’re anything like me, you’ve definitely got an ear to the ground for the inevitable leaks that’ll come from the government ahead of Boris’ big speech on Monday.

You’re probably also thinking about your employees, can I make them return to work after lockdown?

And as things start to ease, there’ll definitely be challenges for employers.

There’s one particular challenge we’re already getting a lot of questions about:

“If staff prefer to work from home, can I ask them to return after lockdown?”

The answer is a pretty unequivocal “yes”.

As ‘working from home’ was always a temporary arrangement for most employees, you’re well within your rights to ask them to return to their usual way of working.

If they do want to continue from home, then the onus is on them to make a “flexible working request”; something that all staff with 26 weeks + service can do.

Filling the GAP in HR services: Pregnancy myths shattered with a rant…

Filling the GAP in HR services: Pregnancy myths shattered with a rant…

I got an email from a business coach the other day, and halfway through it, I felt like I’d been slapped.

In the middle of a perfectly acceptable rant about poor service, the rant segued into saying how no business owner should ever employ a woman of childbearing age, as they “take a year off on maternity leave – again and again”!

Ignoring the gross over-simplification that all women always get pregnant, it was interesting that he thought pregnancy was the biggest thorn in an employer’s side.

We work at the “sharp end” with staff issues, and I can tell you straight away that it’s absolutely nonsense.

In fact, the reality is that 95% of the staff issues we deal with are to do with men over the age of 30.

Very occasionally we have had a “tricky” pregnancy situation to resolve. (By occasionally, I mean two in the last 14 years):

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!”.

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)”

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.

Filling the GAP in HR services: Undeserved reputation

Filling the GAP in HR services: Undeserved reputation

You might think that once you’ve got a box of Christmas decorations, you’re done – the same collection can come out and go on the tree each and every year.

But that’s not how I operate – despite developing a reputation for Grinchiness, I do rather love the festive season, which is why I’ve been busy this week, buying more decorations.

And not just any decorations – some beautiful pieces from Taitu; an Italian company and my favourite craft company.

They’ve “discovered” email marketing this year, which means I’ve been getting missives from them several times a week with new products.

One of those emails featured a truly beautiful heart shaped decoration that I just had to have, so – after managing to navigate the website with only a cursory knowledge of Italian, I put the item in my basket and headed to the checkout.

And that’s when my first roadblock presented itself – it turned out that to get free P&P in the EU I needed to spend €40.

Filling the GAP in HR services: Cynicism gives way to desire

Filling the GAP in HR services: Cynicism gives way to desire

As you’ll know, from the many, many (many) emails sent out by retailers, last week was Black Friday – the one time of the year when my cynicism gives way to be desire for a bargain.

I’ve wanted a robot vacuum cleaner for ages, and the discount day gave me the perfect excuse to splurge.

Not that I needed much of an excuse – with two teenagers and a small dog in the house, there is A LOT of dirt brought in every day.

And when you add in the fact that I’m usually barefoot at home thanks to our underfloor heating (which I really wouldn’t be without), it’s fair to say that we need our ground floor vacuumed pretty much every day.

Thing is: life’s too short to be doing this, which means that for a long time I’ve just been putting up with a floor that really fails the ‘clean enough to eat off’ test.

Redundancy Announcement Script – General Meeting

Why The Redundancy Announcement Script? A redundancy announcement can be a very hard thing to do. It is one of the most unpleasant tasks that you will have to do, telling staff that their position in the company is potentially no longer needed. Unfortunately, it is a task that nearly every employer will have to … Read more

Redundancy Pay – Zero hour contracts

So, to know how much you need to pay zero hours workers for redundancy, you need to look at the last 12 weeks of pay that they have received. You would discount any weeks that they haven’t actually worked, or they’ve been on holiday and you look at the last 12 weeks of actual work, and … Read more

Redundancy Communication – Not at risk

You are putting one department on risk of redundancy that department will have told the other departments by that afternoon. So, you need to be having a combined communication strategy. This means that someone (club manager, couple of committee members) are talking to the department that’s at risk. In the meantime, all the other employees … Read more

Furlough Communication – Zoom

So, you can use zoom a lot more. That’s a lot you can do a group meeting to talk to everybody on zoom, they don’t have to have their video turned on. And then inform them that way. You can talk to them on the telephone. You can talk to them by email, you can … Read more

Redundancy Costs

Costs of redundancy, so that you have this in mind is you need to do three weeks consultation. Which is a normal salary and you’re paying tax and national insurance on that. Plus, their notice period, which again, is their normal salary with tax and national insurance paid on it You can pay them in … Read more

Voluntary Redundancy

To make the process a bit easier is to ask for volunteers a little red man there putting up his hand. Voluntary redundancies, so the way to get people to volunteer for redundancy is to offer them more than they would have got if they were made compulsory redundant. So, if you might need to … Read more

Redundancy Pool

If you only have one person in your redundancy pool, the courts see that as unfair dismissal. They see it as a not a fair redundancy process they see it as the employer trying to get rid of one employee. And that is, unfortunately, going to be the case that many committees are going to say “oh … Read more

What other jobs do you have to offer them?

So you’ve spoken to them individually. You’ve offered them all the jobs that are open, you don’t make any decision at this stage about whether they are suitable for them or not. You don’t say, “Oh but that s not going to pay enough so therefore, I’m not going to offer it”. You offer every … Read more

Redundancy Process

The process normally is three weeks consultation – it is a grey area. The ACAS guide is that it should be a reasonable consultation period. I have argued with clients, who then didn’t stay clients for very long, that one day was a reasonable consultation period. No, it’s not and you don’t want to be paying a … Read more

Filling the GAP in HR services: The most popular page…

Filling the GAP in HR services: The most popular page…

Every now and again I take a look at the most popular pages on our website.

And pretty much every time I do, the same answer comes up, which is an article on the penalty for not issuing an employment contract.

Since it’s proved very popular online, it’s clearly an important topic, so I thought I’d dedicate an email to explaining the answer, to ensure you’ve got absolute clarity on where you stand.

So here goes…

Filling the GAP in HR services: Off to the Apollo….

Filling the GAP in HR services: Off to the Apollo….

Got any plans for tonight?

I’m off to the Apollo to see Jimmy Carr. I’ll get into the Big Smoke early, grab myself a bite to eat and enjoy an evening out.

Not really.

That was the plan, before Lockdown 2.0 got involved.

Now I’ll be fighting over a takeaway menu with a teenager having already lost the battle over the remote.

But although I’m disappointed not to be enjoying Jimmy’s acerbic wit this evening, I haven’t given up hope.

You see, the Apollo has learnt from the last lockdown.

Filling the GAP in HR services: Canny employees will hate this shift

Employers rejoice – the eternal battlefield of employment law has made a small but significant shift in favour of the employer.

And it’s in the area of disciplinaries.

Some employees are extremely canny when it comes to the disciplinary procedure.

They’ll push and push and push until it seems they can push no more, and they’ll receive a final written warning for their trouble.

Then they’ll commit a completely unrelated offence; one that has no relationship to the original offence.

Can you dismiss them for the unrelated offence?

Well, you couldn’t. But now you can.

Filling the GAP in HR services: Square Root of Diddly Squat

Filling the GAP in HR services: Square Root of Diddly Squat

I doubt I’m alone in feeling a sense of déjà vu this week – the shelves are bare, Zoom quizzes are already being organised, and I’m receiving scores of emails from restaurants, hotels and other businesses explaining the degree to which they’re open or closed.

Which has afforded me the wonderful opportunity to shed the number of lists I’m on rather dramatically.

Unsubscribe. Unsubscribe. Unsubscribe.

Filling the GAP in HR services: But you never said

Many employers don’t like to have formal meetings, i.e. in private, with closed doors, with staff who are not performing.

Instead, they feel that an “informal” comment at their desk or the coffee machine will be enough for the person to understand the feedback and act on it.

In an ideal world, that would be the case. But years of experience shows me that it’s not.

And a recent incident highlights the point:

I was called in to “deal with” the PA to the MD.

And by “deal with”, I mean that – of course – he wanted to get rid of her.

Filling the GAP in HR services: Substandard Salcombe

Filling the GAP in HR services: Substandard Salcombe

I was in Devon last week. First stop Salcombe for a marketing seminar, and then client visits in Torquay.

It was my first few nights away since February, so hearing great things about one of the hotels in Salcombe, I decided to treat myself and book it, since that was where the seminar was.

And on paper, it ticked a lot of boxes.

Amazing location.

Good rating on Trip Advisor.

Lots of pretty pictures showing how beautiful it was.

Unfortunately this was a world away from the reality.

Filling the GAP in HR services: 2 plus 2 equals…?

Filling the GAP in HR services: 2 plus 2 equals…? As you can imagine, we’ve been very busy during lockdown and furlough, so much so that we need to take on more staff. We’ve got very high standards, as you might expect, and as a result, we’ve got a pretty stringent recruitment process in place. … Read more

Filling the GAP in HR services: Stuffed during staycation

Filling the GAP in HR services: Stuffed during staycation

We had our “staycation” last weekend.

With holidays cancelled and school and university looming, it was time for a bit of TLC, and instead of travelling anywhere, the kids and I decided we’d go out every night to a new restaurant.

And I’m glad we did, because we discovered a new gem as a result: Atomic Burger in Oxford.

The instant I walked in, I knew it was my sort of place – superhero décor and 80s pop videos on the TV – the latter in particular making me feel right at home, as the 80s was probably the last time I actually watched pop videos!

Filling the GAP in HR services: Dangerous Air Con

Filling the GAP in HR services: Dangerous Air Con

As you probably know, you’ve got a duty of care to provide a safe work place.

But in usual circumstances, the commute to work is another matter – you’ve got no legal obligation to provide a safe commute; it’s up to the employee to discern what’s safe and what’s not.

However, in the current climate, you may need to make “reasonable adjustments” if your employees are in one of the extremely clinically vulnerable groups and they’re concerned about their safety.

The phrase “reasonable adjustments” can mean a whole load of different things, but what it doesn’t mean is allowing an employee not to drive to work in his company car because it doesn’t have air conditioning and it’s “too hot”!

You’ve probably guessed that I haven’t plucked that example out of thin air.

Filling the GAP in HR services: A gym too far

Filling the GAP in HR services: A gym too far

My son Christopher is now 16.

For him, it means he can finally be a “proper” member of the local gym.

The gym is at The Swan – the ‘famous’ hotel from Three Men and a Boat, and they don’t accept under-16s, which means we’ve been driving the 5 miles to Cholsey whenever he wants to go.

But now he’s 16, he can stop relying on me and walk there whenever he wants.

Or so we thought.

14 Day Isolation Letter

The government is announcing instant lockdowns on an almost daily basis on Twitter.

Your staff may have to go into self-isolation after a week in sunny Manchester.

Therefore we recommend giving out this letter to all staff who have a holiday booked in the next month, so that everything is clear before they go.

All staff will need to be paid the same amount, i.e. all take unpaid leave, or all get SSP.

Do not discriminate between departments or full time/part time staff.

Redundancy Process (Video and Transcript)

What other jobs do you have to offer them? (video and transcript)

What other jobs do you have to offer them? (video and transcript) So you’ve spoken to them individually. You’ve offered them all the jobs that are open, you don’t make any decision at this stage about whether they are suitable for them or not. You don’t say, “Oh but that s not going to pay … Read more

Redundancy Pool (video and transcript)

Redundancy Pool (video and transcript) If you only have one person in your redundancy pool, the courts see that as unfair dismissal. They see it as a not a fair redundancy process they see it as the employer trying to get rid of one employee. And that is, unfortunately, going to be the case that … Read more

Redundancy Costs (video and transcript)

Redundancy Costs (video and transcript) Costs of redundancy, so that you have this in mind is you need to do three weeks consultation. Which is a normal salary and you’re paying tax and national insurance on that. Plus, their notice period, which again, is their normal salary with tax and national insurance paid on it. … Read more

Redundancy Pay – Zero hour contracts (video and transcript)

Redundancy Pay – Zero hour contracts (video and transcript) So, to know how much you need to pay zero hours workers for redundancy, you need to look at the last 12 weeks of pay that they have received. You would discount any weeks that they haven’t actually worked, or they’ve been on holiday and you … Read more

Voluntary Redundancy (video and transcript)

Voluntary Redundancy (video and transcript) To make the process a bit easier is to ask for volunteers a little red man there putting up his hand. Voluntary redundancies, so the way to get people to volunteer for redundancy is to offer them more than they would have got if they were made compulsorily redundant. So, … Read more

Filling the GAP in HR services: Royal Mail made me buy an iPad

Filling the GAP in HR services: Royal Mail made me buy an iPad

I love reading.

But, with a busy business, and two teenagers, I don’t usually get to do as much as I’d like.

Lockdown was different though – the extra time at the weekends meant I could indulge my passion to the full.

While I’m mainly reaching for a novel, the one weekly publication I never usually miss is the Economist.

However, during lockdown it started getting delivered on a Monday rather than a Friday or Saturday, which meant I didn’t have time to get through it before the next weekend, by which point it was often pretty out of date.

In the end, I turned to the digital version.

Redundancy Pay

This applies to all staff over two years’ service. If staff have under 2 years continuous service, they are not entitled to statutory redundancy pay. When you make an employee redundant, you need to pay them their notice period and statutory redundancy pay. Some employers also have an increased level of contractual redundancy pay, but … Read more