HR Advice For Small Businesses
I know that in the doom and gloom of January, harking back to the festivity and frivolity of Christmas isn’t exactly a popular move.
But I hope you’ll forgive me for doing exactly that today – there is a good reason!
The Christmas Day just gone was the best one I’ve had for decades, despite returning from Thailand cursing the weather and feeling very “bah humbug” about the whole thing in the run-up to it.
So, why was it the best?
I’ve been here, there, and everywhere these last few weeks, delivering employment law talks to the great and good.
Which means a lot of miles on the road and plenty of hotel rooms, too.
I’ve always found hotels fascinating. The fact that you can pay roughly the same and yet have an entirely different experience from place to place is bizarre and interesting in equal measure.
The last hotel I stayed in was a case in point: staff were friendly, they upgraded my room, but when I got upstairs, there were two rather weird elements.
First, the (seemingly now) standard freezing cold room and incorrect thermostat – I had to crank it to 25 degrees just to get 21 degrees on the bedside table.
Second, slightly rarer: the WiFi code was nowhere to be seen.
I’ve recently ticked something very special off my bucket list – polar bears, in the wild, in Canada.
Jaw-dropping. And rather cold.
Sometimes ticking something off your list can be a bit underwhelming: you’ve built it up so much in your head that the reality doesn’t match the vision.
This was absolutely not one of those occasions.
Everything was perfect, from first to last, and there were a couple of nice little touches that I thought were worth highlighting – inspiration for anyone in business.
I had a fantastic time at a recent conference, in no small part down to the emphasis on building the right team and looking after the staff that make our organisations great.
(Long overdue, in my opinion!)
If you were there, you’d know “Employee Assistance Programmes” (EAP) were mentioned quite a lot.
What is an Employee Assistance Programme?
A confidential helpline dedicated to helping your employees smooth out personal and work-related problems.
Yes, it might seem a bit touchy-feely, but the reality is that it really does make a difference and can help you keep your team together, turning up and functioning as you need them to.
Two things are about to intertwine, and I’m fearing the worst: The new sexual harassment laws, which came into effect in October 2024 Christmas The festive season has long been a hotbed for sexual harassment and inappropriate behaviour, so before silly season arrives, I thought it best just to drop you some information to help … Read more
I’ve always loved buying things, from when I was a little girl, counting out the pennies for a paper bag of cola bottles, right through to now, when everything is available with the click of a button, or swipe of an iPhone.
The internet really has reduced purchasing friction, and I’m regularly finding myself drawn to products advertised to me on Instagram and buying them before I’ve even thought twice about it.
And – philanthropist that I am – in the last couple of years, most of those products aren’t even for me, but for our beloved miniature schnauzer.
I’ve been trying to sell my son’s moped for 18 months now.
Why the delay?
A combination of my lack of motivation, paired with a significant lack of understanding of the second-hand moped market.
I started off by putting ads out at a sales price I considered eminently reasonable.
The prospective buyers did not agree. Zero enquiries.
It’s rapidly approaching that time of year again – the skeleton crew is in operation, staff disappear to make merry, and you lose half of December to run your business!
Before we get into the silly season, let’s answer some of the key questions we get around holiday:
How much holiday entitlement do my employees get?
“It depends” is the short answer.
Normally, this would be specified in their contract of employment.
I’ve stayed in a lot of different hotels this year, from humble hostels to five-star specials.
But regardless of the brand or quality, they’ve ALL had one thing in common: a woefully inaccurate thermostat in the bedroom.
The one that really took the biscuit was the Hotel Adlon in Berlin – a beautiful hotel, but with a thermostat that swore blind that it was 18 degrees in the room.
And having set my home thermostat at that temperature to keep costs down, I can tell you one thing: I KNOW what 18 degrees feels like.
As I’ve experienced over many months now, 18 degrees means warm socks, a woolly jumper, and a blanket if I’m watching TV.
“18 degrees” at the Adlon? A different temperature entirely – the kind you could sit in wearing a summer dress and still feel pleasantly warm.
As the saying goes, when it rains, it pours, and in the last month, we’ve had a particularly dense deluge of “employee incidents” to deal with:
Yep, as I mentioned, it’s been busy.
It’s finally here: the widely trailed Employment Rights Bill, which most employers have been anticipating since Labour came into power at the beginning of July, has been unveiled in the House of Commons today. No doubt you’ve seen some of the details covered by the media – giving employees “day one rights” to protection from … Read more
If you’ve dealt with committees before, then this won’t be news to you, but I just felt the need to write this after dealing with several incidents recently made a whole lot worse by committees…
So I am sure that you can see how committees are like teenagers now:
We’re recruiting again – there seem to be no end to staff issues at the moment, so we’re pretty much at capacity.
And when it comes recruitment, I’m pretty ruthless – after all, I’ve got to be happy with the successful candidate giving out critical HR advice in our name, so they’ve got to know what they’re doing.
Step one of The Wahlen Gauntlet is designed to quickly and painlessly weed out the people who aren’t HR experts – a straightforward 10-question employment law quiz, which requires a minimum of 70% to proceed to the next stage.
You’d think everyone applying for an HR job would ace it, but you’d be wrong – only 20% applicants actually make the grade.
Stephen King coined the phrase, “Books are a uniquely portable magic”.
I’m in total agreement – books are pretty much my joint favourite thing.
The trouble is, the other thing at the top of the list is travelling, so I really do need my books to be extremely portable.
Enter my Kindle, allowing me to take 300 books on the go.
It’s had more than its fair share of use over the last year or so though and is slowing down as a result, and though I could just go on less holidays, I decided a new Kindle was a better bet – it’d been to five of the seven continents, so a pretty good innings.
There’s a golf club that’s keen to use us for their HR support, but there’s just one snag:
They’re with Citation.
Having been with them for three years, they’ve decided they’re not getting the bespoke, personalised support they need, and see the value in working with someone that specialises in golf clubs.
Anyway, they’d fulfilled their original three-year contract, and while they didn’t imagine they could leave straight away, they assumed it’d be a case of giving six months’ notice and they’d be free to go.
No dice.
There have been thousands of column inches devoted to what Labour is going to do when it comes to employment law – some of it true, some of it less so.
But one thing that seems pretty certain (albeit without a specific time frame) is that they’ll make Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) a day-one right that applies to ALL staff.
What is Statutory Sick Pay?
Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) was introduced in 1983. The amount increases every April and is currently £116.75/week.
All workers are entitled to it as long as:
Greenkeeper Bob went off sick at a club we work with the other day.
The story goes that he was working alone on the course on a Sunday, picked up a divot box, and put his back out.
You’d assume that that’d be the end of his working day, but apparently he continued to lift another 7 or 8 divot boxes before heading home, freshening up and out to a crowded pub where he stood in the throngs watching England lose the Euros final.
Next morning, he turned up for work at 6am, and by 8:30am his back was hurting too much to continue and he headed off home.
I’ve lived without a coat rack for the last six months.
I know, it’s been quite the hardship.
I had my hallway repainted at the turn of the year – a lovely, dark blue, and once it was done, I decided not to bother putting the coat rack back up; it was worn, old and time for a change.
Fully intending to research and invest immediately, life quickly got in the way, and my coats quickly found alternative places to hang.
Six months flew by, as they tend to.
I’m no forensic accountant, but I’m currently embroiled in a financial fraud case.
A general manager started a new position at a club and was given the “good news” that he didn’t need to worry about it – “John” had taken care of it for years, so he’d keep doing that.
General managers have got plenty to do, the accounts all seemed to be up to date, so he was happy to leave it to John.
Then the power bill came in, which was a bit of a shock, seeing as it had gone up from £1,500 a quarter to £77,000. It was quite the jump.
Then another demand came in – apparently, the club owed an additional £120,000 and hadn’t paid the energy bill for a long time.
“We need to talk”, says John.
The predictions were right, and the polls were fairly accurate – we’ve woken up to a Labour government.
Understandably, you might be wondering what this means for your organisation—whether there will be any big changes in the world of employment law and whether you’ll need to do anything differently.
First thing to say here is don’t panic about any changes you read or hear about – they will not happen overnight. Laws take time to be changed, and you’ll have enough notice to change your staff strategy if that’s required.
(And as we all know, just because something was in a manifesto, it does not mean that it will be implemented in the form promised, or at all.)
This time next week, we’re going to be waking up on the other side of the General Election – the prime minister for the next few years will be confirmed. There’s been plenty of media hype about what the various different parties might change when it comes to employees and employment law; from the sublime … Read more
Whilst sometimes necessary to secure the future of your business, making employees redundant can be a minefield for employers. If you fail to properly consult with employees during a redundancy process, any subsequent dismissals will likely be unfair and expose you to unfair dismissal claims. There are strict minimum timescales for consultations when the redundancy … Read more
“Hide and seek the general manager” – can’t see it usurping the traditional form of the game, but nevertheless, we have plenty of fun playing it in the Gap HR office.
Here’s how it works:
Sounds easy, and it should be.
We’ve had two new clients sign up on retainer this week, both with really meaty staff issues; the kind we really like to get our teeth into.
There’s something else they have in common – both were already paying retainers to other HR companies when they approached us and asked us to help them with their HR.
And as it turned out, it would have been just as effective for them to set the money on fire as it was to send it to the HR companies in question.
Because when tricky staff issues come along, the pretenders get found out.
We’re recruiting at the moment – a steady stream of new clients over the last few months means we need to grow our team.
Our recruitment process is pretty hardcore: after all, the person we hire will be giving advice to our clients, which means it’s got to be spot on.
As part of the process, we ask a lot of HR questions, and there’s one question that candidates keep failing – when they do, it’s a pretty big red flag.
I’ll be blunt: we have seen a large increase in sexual harassment in golf clubs in recent months.
Not between employees. For the most part, they abide by the rules, and when there is an incident, it’s dealt with quickly, effectively and by the book.
So, what’s the problem?
In a word: the members.
I won’t teach you to suck eggs, but we both know that – for the most part – golf club membership is dominated by white males, from a previous generation.
Chances are you’ve had to deal with your fair share of challenges from this demographic – I’ve had plenty of managers tell me about members who felt they owned the club and had the right to be involved in all decisions, despite not stepping up to take any responsibility.
How about this one.
The scammers targeted a new employee, let’s call her Sarah, less than two weeks in the company.
They sent them an email, allegedly from the managing director, asking Sarah to buy some John Lewis and Apple gift cards to be used as gifts for valued employees. The email asked her to keep it confidential so as not to spoil the surprise for those employees.
As the employee was so new, she somehow did not question why the MD was speaking to her, rather than literally ANYONE else in the office to do this important task. Despite the email address and language of the emails not being at all what the MD would use, because Sarah was so new, she didn’t realise.
They asked her to buy £2000 of gift cards at £500 each. She, and this is so sad, said that she only had £200 in her account, and apologised to the MD/scammers that she could only buy this much.
A client emailed this week, wanting to issue a final written warning for the chef at his club.
He’d been drunk at work twice now, and they’d had enough.
On the face of it, that all seems sensible – it’s clearly a disciplinary offence; potentially a dismissal.
There was one teeny little snag, though: this was the first time we’d heard about any sort of disciplinary process for this member of staff.
And generally, this means one thing: it hasn’t been carried out correctly.
So it proved, when I started asking general questions – how long had the chef been there for, could they send over the investigation notes, what did the previous warnings say, and so on.
We learnt plenty about osmosis during “O” level biology; trouble was that by the time it came to the exams, I’d forgotten it all.
Perhaps I thought the process of osmosis would bail me out – just sleep with the textbook under the pillow, and my brain would be magically instilled with everything I needed to know.
Fanciful and bizarre, maybe, but I’ve noticed a similar approach being adopted by plenty of employers, with one recent story springing to mind.
A client got in touch about an employee being off sick.
They’d not followed the absence reporting procedure, so there was a chance they could be dismissed, which was the employer’s preferred outcome.
I just needed to check one tiny little thing – that the handbook containing the absence reporting procedure HAD been given out to all staff.
The answer wasn’t reassuring:
Words are important. Any serious Scrabble player reaching for the dictionary will tell you that.
And when it comes to employment law, your choice of words couldn’t be more important.
I experienced this recently when a golf club committee member got in touch.
A member of staff at the club had submitted a grievance against the manager, and we’d worked on the response, which was a robust rejection of the grievance claims.
He’d agreed that we should (and must) reject the grievance, but he didn’t like the way the response was worded – too formal, too unemotional.
Some of you need to start thinking about the Easter bank holidays! Keep reading if your holiday year runs from 1 April to 31 March AND you only give the statutory minimum annual leave entitlement (20 days + bank holidays). In 2024, the Easter bank holidays fall on 29 March and 1 April 2024. So, … Read more
The greenkeeper shot the apprentice
If one of your greenkeepers decided to shoot an apprentice with an air rifle, you’d assume it’d be okay to give them their marching orders, right?
Not so fast…
One of our clients decided to sign up with us having lost a big tribunal case based on exactly this transgression.
At first glance, it was difficult to see why they’d lost, but when we delved a little deeper, it all became clear.
The greenkeeper in question was out in the woods, with two colleagues and an apprentice, when they stumbled upon an air rifle.
Instead of leaving it where it was and calling the police, they decided to pick it up and use the age old, failsafe method to work out if it was loaded.
Yes, that’s right, by pulling the trigger.
While aiming at the apprentice’s buttocks.
This ad changed my life
We’ve all tried them – the fad diets.
5:2, 2:2, Atkins, Keto, the list goes on and on – if you’re anything like me, you get bombarded with ads and content promising to help you drop a dress size, lose a stone or climb a mountain on a daily basis.
I’m as sceptical as they come, but one of those ads has changed my life.
Granted, it wasn’t one from a snake oil salesman but the well-known Zoe nutrition, partly invented by Professor Tim Spector.
And rather than just trying to sell you some shakes or supplements, Zoe actually tests your body to understand how it responds to food, using a blood glucose monitor to see what happens as each food or drink is consumed.
As well as that, you send them a couple of samples (one being a stool, so don’t say you weren’t warned!) and eat a couple of their standardised muffins to help them understand your metabolism.
A week later, the results were in:
Blown away by Travelodge
I was at Eddie Izzard’s “Great Expectations” show last week (absolutely brilliant, highly recommended).
In days gone by, I’d likely have rushed out of the theatre to catch the last train home, but I’ve got to the age where that feels much more like trial than adventure, so I booked a hotel room close by and decided to make a “mini break” of it.
Having had some pretty lacklustre hotel experiences recently, I decided to go back to basics and plump for a Travelodge.
They’re not glitzy, they’re not glamorous, but you know what you’re getting, the beds are comfortable, and – obviously – they’re at the more affordable end of the spectrum.
Anyway, I got to the reception, gave them my name, and they tapped one key on the computer, pulled up my booking, and handed over the key.
Job done – the process probably took 20 seconds.
With better weather and the holidays hurtling towards us, I was reminded of a saying I read a while ago:
“Take time for quietness, and you will free yourself from being influenced by the wrong things”.
They had a point. Especially when it comes to the workplace.
You see, it’s that time of year again when the employees pour out, slap on their suntan lotion and head off on holiday, leaving a skeleton staff to run the office.
Last week I was giving a talk to trainee golf club managers.
And being the fun trainer I am, I decided to put together a quiz to see how employment law proficient they are.
Don’t worry – they’re not meant to be experts; that’s why we exist, after all!
Usually, they manage to get a few questions right, but this time, EVERY single person got one particular question wrong:
Can the shop assistant in the pro shop be self-employed?
They’re going to die anyway!
I saw the other day that Royal Dornoch Golf Club has installed defibrillators and first aid kits on six of its buggies.
Five of them are hired out to golfers with pre-existing conditions; the other is for their “roving ranger”, who can help if someone has a problem.
It seems highly sensible to me, and I was delighted to learn they want to go further and get them into all buggies going forward.
But it did remind me of a regional GCMA meeting a few years back when the British Red Cross came in to demo some defibrillators, offer some training and provide advice on where to station the defibrillators.
Buggies weren’t suggested, which maybe reflects how tech has moved forward in the last few years, but what I found remarkable was the number of managers poo-pooing having them at all.
The Red Cross team were suggesting one in the clubhouse and perhaps one in the halfway hut, but according to plenty of the room, there would be no point:
“If they have a heart attack, they’ll be so far from the clubhouse that we wouldn’t be able to get there in time”.
No harm, no foul?
We’ve experienced a significant increase in sexual assault and harassment cases recently:
• The member of a golf club committee that asked a waitress who was offering him a lift home if she was offering to give him a “little sex”
• The bar manager that complained about female bra straps always falling down employees’ arms and then pushed them up an 18-year-old’s arm and under her t-shirt for her.
• The 18-year-old trainee who was being shown the beer barrels down in the cellar when the bar manager said, “You know, no one would hear you if you screamed in here”.
• The bar manager, who, when asked what time he finished his shift by the new trainee, said, “Are you asking how I get off?”
The defence of all of these?
One of my friends got a new job the other day.
She’s been unemployed since being made redundant last summer and jumped at the chance to do some casual work that used her admin skills.
As you’d expect, I had my HR hat on, asking about her contract, sick pay and holiday and all that jazz.
Her response?
“Oh no, I don’t get any of that stuff because I’m a zero hours worker”.
I pointed out that however wonderful her new employer was, they were also operating illegally and not paying her what she was owed.
I offered to read the contract to check what else they had got wrong.
The employer had correctly worded the contact to make it a “zero hours” one: they did not have to offer work and the worker did not have to accept it.
Zero hours zero rights
One of my friends got a new job the other day.
She’s been unemployed since being made redundant last summer and jumped at the chance to do some casual work that used her admin skills.
As you’d expect, I had my HR hat on, asking about her contract, sick pay and holiday and all that jazz.
Her response?
“Oh no, I don’t get any of that stuff because I’m a zero-hours worker”.
I pointed out that however wonderful her new employer was, they were also operating illegally and not paying her what she was owed.
I offered to read the contract to check what else they had got wrong.
The employer had correctly worded the contract to make it a “zero-hours” one: they did not have to offer work, and the worker did not have to accept it.
But pretty much everything else was rubbish:
