It’s now less than a year until – fingers crossed – my youngest child will be leaving home for university.

And as much as I love to faux-moan about him, I also love having him around, and everyone’s been telling me how much I’m going to miss having children in the house.

So I decided to do something about it to get ahead of the curve, and started looking for a holiday I’d NEVER take the children on, even though they’re both adults now.

Long story short, I’m now scheduled for a transatlantic cruise on the Queen Mary 2 to New York, with a balcony cabin; proper bucket list stuff.

[Read more…]

I was chatting to my favourite golf club the other day (the identity of the club will remain a secret!).

And they had good news – they’re at full membership AND they’ve got a 100-strong waiting list.

A position they haven’t been in for over a decade.

I congratulated them, and then my marketing head kicked in and I started asking a few questions.

“Okay, so you’ve got a hundred people on your waiting list – what do they get?”

            “What do you mean?” [Read more…]

The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) decided in 2014 that any overtime worked does count towards an employee’s holiday entitlement. Yikes!

What does that actually mean?

It means that if you have in their contracts that they work 20 hours a week, and they work 10 hours overtime every week, then their entitlement will be the same as if you had 30 hours in their contracts.

However, they can’t ever earn more than a full-time holiday entitlement of 28 days (which can include bank holidays), no matter how much overtime they work.

Do I need to worry?

Yes!

There is, unfortunately, no definition setting out how regularly overtime must be worked for it to be included. The general principle is that pay which is “normally received” should be included in holiday pay. If an employee has worked a settled pattern of overtime over a period of time, payment for that overtime is “pay that they normally receive” and must therefore be included in holiday pay.

A tribunal ruling in 2019 held that voluntary overtime must be included if it is part of a pattern of work that is sufficiently regular and settled for payments made in respect of it to amount to normal remuneration.

Where there is no settled pattern of overtime, the employer should calculate average pay over a reference period leading up to the period of annual leave. However, the courts have not addressed what a suitable reference period would be. I would normally work on a three-month reference period.

Read through all of Gap HR’s documents about contracts. When issuing a contract, it is important to always remember that you cannot make an employee sign away their rights. A contract is a document designed to let employees know what they are entitled to, but not to change their statutory rights. You can schedule a tribunal audit with Carolyne using this link to review your contract – and make sure you don’t end up in tribunal!

I have a SEAT Ateca.

It’s not the most fashionable car in the world, but I’ve had it for a few years, and it’s served me well.

SEATs come with a three-year warranty, which I’ve been keen to keep it alive, so I’ve headed to the local dealer each year for the service.

And I’d have kept going indefinitely, but the events of the last couple of months have changed all that.

I turned up for my service, waited in the queue and started observing the goings on at the front desk.

What was clear straight away was the distinction between the sales staff and the service staff – there were several sales guys standing around doing nothing and one harassed looking service staff member, running around like a headless chicken.

One of the serene looking salesmen make the mistake of approaching me and asking if he could help.

I explained what I was there for, and he responded:

“Oh sorry, I can’t help – I’m sales”

After uttering those words, he moved onto the next person, also in the service queue, asking the same question and giving the same response.

That was when I lost it: [Read more…]

It’s the consultant’s curse – people value your advice enough to ask for it, but try everything they can to avoid paying for it.

But this week, we experienced the complete opposite.

A golf club client of ours point blank refused to take the advice we gave them.

Advice that they’ve already paid for.

The club had received an ACAS Early Conciliation (EC) notification – EC is the stage just before formal tribunal, so they were – understandably – pretty worried.

The employee in question had worked for them for six years on a zero hours contract, had been given notice in February and left at the end of June because the notice period had been extended.

So what was the problem?

[Read more…]