With the current political turmoil in the UK, and the possibility that we may see a change in Government in the near future, this post looks briefly at the HR and employment related announcements made this month by the opposition and consider their effects on the profession. I should stress that I’m not looking at this from a political view – HR professionals (and businesses more widely) have a responsibility to ensure our organisations work within the law, whatever our personal views of a particular piece of legislation.
Five key announcements have been made by Labour’s John McDonnell in recent weeks, in a series of speeches.
1. Ban ‘zero hours contracts’. I’ve written before that this probably wouldn’t solve the underlying problem – since employers would either go down the route of full casualisation, or offer ‘1 hour per week with the option to do more’ contracts. But from an HR perspective, other than the admin time caused by changing existing contractual arrangements, it might cause businesses to rethink their reason why they use these types of contracts.
2. Raise the minimum wage to £10 per hour. Not really an issue from an HR perspective, as the current Government have previously said they want to raise the level to £9 per hour, this is more a political argument as to what level the minimum wage should be.
3. Sectoral Collective Bargaining. Collective agreements still exist on an industry wide basis – not just in the public sector – in some sectors. (I still need to dig out my ‘pink book’ – below – occasionally). But given that union membership is at a low level, doesn’t exist in certain sectors and employers aren’t currently obliged to participate in sectoral bargaining even if they do recognise unions, this seems to be more of a long-term aim than a change that will have an immediate impact on the way companies interact with their staff.
4. Right to paid leave for victims of domestic abuse. I don’t think anyone would disagree with the principle behind this (and we will shortly have to implement paid leave for child bereavement, so it’s not really an extra administrative task). But I can see a whole host of practical difficulties. Will individuals have to pre-declare to their employer that they are in an abusive relationship? At what point will the right kick in (physical abuse? Mental cruelty?)? What evidence will be needed? This isn’t to make light of a very serious issue, but it is a subject that requires sensitive handling from HR and simply setting it up a ‘procedure’ doesn’t seem to be the way forward. (I haven’t seen a policy document, simply the announcement, so if there is more detail on how this would work I’m happy to link to it).
5. Compulsory Share Ownership for Employees. This issue attracted the most media attention, primarily because employers with over 250 staff would be ‘forced’ to give employees a percentage of shares (up to 10% over a period of time), allowing them to earn dividends on top of their wages. Employee shareholding is not a new concept, there are many companies that operate schemes that allow some or all employees to be given shares in the organisation. Nor are ‘compulsory’ schemes anything unusual – companies are already required to enrol employees in a pension scheme and to make financial contributions to it, while a chunk of profits is already taken from larger companies in the form of the apprenticeship levy. In one sense the idea is simply a different approach to that taken by the Cameron government, but with the same aim – to allow workers a greater stake in their employer. From an HR perspective – having spent several years working in an employee owned business – the major immediate challenges will be for learning and development professionals who will need to devise training on the different roles and responsibilities of an employee and a shareholder, and responding to the argument “you can’t sack me, I’m a shareholder” in disciplinary hearings.
And while we shouldn’t undersestimate the possible cultural effects of these proposals, the devil will be in the detail for most of them. Will they go the way of the ill-fated “Statutory Dismissal and Grievance Procedures” introduced – and quickly abolished – in the early 2000s? Or will they become just part of the regulatory environment for HR, like maternity leave or compulsory redundancy consultation? Only time (and the result of the next general election) will tell.
