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. [Read more…]

I like to keep an eye on the competition.

So, when one of our golf club clients mentioned a firm of employment solicitors that “really knew their onions”, I was understandably curious.

A Google search later, and I felt a lot happier, thanks to their 3.8-star rating on Google My Business.

You might be thinking 3.8 isn’t too bad – it’s better than nothing after all.

But when you’re a professional adviser, slightly better than rank average isn’t exactly stellar.

I was curious to see why the rating was so low, so read the reviews.

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In a normal year, we’re hard at work advising our clients.

In the last 12 months, our busyness has been off the scale.

Thanks to the pandemic, more employers than ever have needed our help to ensure they do the right things, operate in the right way, and stay out of employment tribunals.

Unfortunately, not all employers have been so conscientious, and the latest stats drum that point home.

Between October and December 2020, Employment Tribunal claims rose 25% for single claims, and by 82% for multiple claims, when compared to the same quarter in 2019.

[Read more…]

At the best of times, dealing with corporate monstrosities is pretty challenging.

Since Covid, it’s become an utter nightmare, with more barriers and irrelevant questions in every single interaction.

Take Thames Water as an example – they called me yesterday to book a date to install a water meter.

The guy on the other end of the phone sounded bored out of his brain, and clearly reading from a script, launched straight into the all too familiar Covid questions:

• Is anyone self-isolating?
• Is anyone in the vulnerable categories?
• Has anyone in your household tested positive for Covid recently?
• Does anyone have Covid symptoms?

So far, so standard.

I replied “no” to all of them, and then he explained that the earliest date that an engineer could come would be May 21.

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What is the current default retirement age?

I ask this during my presentations quite a bit, and get A LOT of different answers, with “65” being the most common

The real answer?  There isn’t one. It was abolished in October 2011, with a short transition period where you were allowed to give your employees six months’ notice of retirement.

That concluded in 2012.

What does that mean for you as an employer?

Quite a bit as it happens.

Most obviously, it means there is no “retirement” anymore.  The only way people leave is to resign.

You can’t wait for that awkward member of staff to retire, because there’s no guarantee they will.

You can’t put off managing a poor performer because they haven’t got long left, because you’ve got no idea whether they will.

However old your staff member is, if they’re not performing, they need managing.

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We’ve had a few clients failing at the “dismissal stage” recently.

Each one for exactly the same thing – not telling us that they KNEW the employee had long term mental health issues.

As the saying goes – the truth will out, and it always does, just as soon as the employee contacts ACAS Early Conciliation.

Then it comes to us, we see what’s being claimed by the employee, and end up having an uncomfortable conversation with the client, who’s clearly conveniently ignored what they KNEW about the employee’s mental health.

Why?

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