Category Archives: HR Tips for Business and Charities

What it says on the tin – some useful guidance for smaller organisations on HR and employment law topics

Outgoing Personality Seeks Similar

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I’ve blogged before about how businesses should view recruitment as an investment decision, and spend the time ensuring – as much as they can – that they appoint the best candidate.

Interviews, as has been commonly recognised, are a pretty poor way of predicting future job performance, but are still an essential part of the recruitment process since (despite social media) we need to be sure that we can build a relationship on a personal level.

Larger businesses often use personality tests or inventories as part of their recruitment and increasingly these are targeted at smaller businesses too. But when, how and – in a market filled with initials like DISC, MBTI, 16PFand OPQ – which should you choose?

Personality questionnaires (they aren’t really tests, since there is no right/wrong or pass/fail) should give you an insight into aspects of an individual’s personality, which should give you an indication of how they will respond in a particular situation. This can be important in assessing how a prospective employee may “fit” in a particular environment or with colleagues. They aren’t infallible, nor are they a substitute for interviews or other selection methods. But used properly, they can be a very good way of gaining more information about a candidate.

So which one should you use? Here are some pointers to help you decide:

  • How many questions does it use to determine results? Fewer than 100 (yes, 100 – one well known one uses 256) and you are substantially increasing the risk of unreliability or a candidate manipulating their profile. The DISC based profile tools seem to be particularly prone to this (I’ve seen one version that only used 25 questions)
  • What psychological theory does it use? This might sound a bit arcane, but some tests are based on personality models which are now seen as outdated and/or incorrect. The well-known and often used Myers-Briggs or MBTI questionnaires have recently received a lot of criticism about this
  • Does it contain a “lie” scale within the tests? This is a set of questions within the test designed to find out if a candidate is trying to ‘fake’ their profile to give what they think you want (psychologists and test designers refer to this as the “social desirability” scale).
  • How much does it cost? You get what you pay for. Proper tests, which have been statistically validated and revalidated, are expensive. A free “personality profile” downloaded from the internet will be worth exactly what you paid for it.

Having read this you may decide that it all sounds too much hassle to be bothered with. But personality questionnaires are just like any other aspect of recruitment (or indeed business as a whole) – if you want good results, do it properly.

Brussels backs Brits on Fatties

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I’ve blogged before about the nonsense that tabloid (and sometimes more “reputable”) newspapers publish about employment law – for example here and here. So it didn’t surprise me when they cottoned on to the “obesity as a disability” story, particularly as it also allowed them to indulge in their other favourite pastime of bashing “Europe”. The Daily Star took the story to new heights of fantasy with this piece.

Of course, it’s no wonder that many small businesses have concerns about employment law when they read stories like this one. And it provides fuel for those with a political axe to grind. So let’s look at the facts in this case, rather than the fiction.

The reports reflect an opinion expressed by the Advocate General of the EU. Although this is merely an expert legal opinion, his view is usually – but not always – adopted by the European court when it makes a judgment. Updated 18 December 2014 – the European Court decision, which can be found here, does, as expected, broadly follow this, although it removes the reference to Body Mass Index below.

What the Advocate General said was that anyone who is “morbidly obese” (with a Body Mass Index of 40 or more) is not disabled. However there may be certain circumstances where the consequences of this obesity are that the person cannot fully participate in work. In such a situation the individual might be (but isn’t automatically) disabled and therefore governed by equality legislation.

This viewpoint is consistent with current UK case law, which states that obesity is not in itself a disability but it may lead people to suffer from conditions which are a disability.

In this respect, it places obesity on a similar footing to drug or alcohol addiction. Simply being dependent on drugs or alcohol is not a disability. But if someone develops a condition which is a disability (for example becoming HIV positive) as a consequence of their addiction they will be classed as disabled under the Equality Act.

Even if they are disabled, your duty as an employer is to make “reasonable adjustments”. What is reasonable for a small company in rented accommodation is vastly different to what is reasonable in a large employer with their own premises. You’re not necessarily obliged to strengthen floors, provide extra wide chairs or any of the other things that reports have mentioned.

So, as always, don’t panic when you read stories like this. Remember that newspapers are interested in juicy headlines, not the cold facts or the detail.

(Thanks are due to Equality & Diversity consultant Anne Tynan, who tweeted about the Daily Star story and Employment Barrister Daniel Barnett whose Employment Law bulletins provide a readable and accurate summary of the Advocate General’s opinion).

(I’m fully aware that the European Court is based in Strasbourg. But the alliterative headline is a tabloid staple, accurate or not)

Flexible friends…?

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Today (30 June) marks the extension of the right to request flexible working to all employees with more than 26 weeks service. It’s deemed significant enough to feature on the headlines of Radio 4’s flagship Today programme, and to have attracted this slightly hysterical article in the Daily Mail – so what does it mean in practice for small business?

Firstly, up to today, the right to request flexible working was restricted to those with young families or caring responsibilities (e.g. looking after an elderly relative). And to make this request there was a formal process with specified deadlines which both employer and employee to follow.

From today, anyone who’s worked for you for 26 weeks or more can make a request – without having to give you a reason why – and the cumbersome paperwork is no longer required (in reality, very few small employers bothered with the bureaucracy anyway).

The important thing is that it’s a right to ask. It’s not a right to demand. You can legitimately refuse a request if it would add to your business costs, provide a worse service to customers, affect quality or productivity, if you cannot reorganise workloads or recruit additional staff, or if there is not enough work at the time the individual wishes to work. In other words, the same common sense reasons why you wouldn’t make any other change to your business.

However, don’t make your default position “no”. Despite the tabloid nonsense, most people will make a request because they have something going on in their life outside work that is impacting on work. A small adjustment might be all that’s needed to retain and motivate a member of staff. And it’s not “take it or leave it” – you can discuss options with the employee concerned and often come to a solution that works for you and them. Again, in my experience smaller employers are not only willing to try to accommodate requests, but actually find that it can be an advantage in attracting staff from competitors. It’s the big bureaucracies with their fear of “setting a precedent” that are less willing to be flexible.

It’s ironic of course that for years business leaders and employers’ organisations have been calling for workers to be more “flexible and adaptable”. Since employment is a relationship, it’s not unreasonable that some employees might want their employer to be flexible too. But in practice, despite the scaremongers, I’m not expecting that my phone will be in meltdown today as hundreds of employees besiege my clients with flexible working requests!

 

 

 

One Bad Apple

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Originally posted May 2014

I’m currently the approved HR adviser for Knowsley Council’s Business Growth scheme, and recently that’s involved me working with a couple of entrepreneurs who are considering taking on their first members of staff.

What’s struck me on meeting them are 3 things

  • They want to be “good” employers – do things legally correctly and behave fairly to their staff
  • They have a perception that employment law is designed to stop them doing things
  • This perception is often based on the fact that they’ve  heard stories of other small businesses that have had problems with an employee and which ended “badly” for the employer (“He was doing X, Y and Z, they couldn’t get rid of him and when they did he took them to a tribunal which cost them ££”)

If you employ 5 or 6 people then having 1 problematic member of staff can be a major management headache – especially if that individual starts quoting apparent “rights” at you.  While it’s often quoted that you should base your management approach on the 95% of staff who work well rather than the 5% who are a problem, it can be difficult to remember this when your time is being taken up by one troublesome person.

So here are some tips to tackle these situations

  • Don’t let things fester – tackle a problem when it first appears. The longer you allow unacceptable behaviour to continue, the more the individual will assume it is ok. This applies whether it’s performance, attitude, time-keeping or any other work area
  • If someone quotes “rights” at you – check it out before responding. Unless they are employment experts, the chances are that they are no more knowledgeable than you, and are twisting something to their own advantage.  Remember that many employment rights are the right to request something without being disadvantaged (e.g. flexible working), not an absolute right in themselves.
  • The law does allow you to dismiss someone provided you have a fair reason (which covers 5 very broad categories) and have followed a fair process (which essentially means giving the individual the chance to give their side of the story before making your decision).

And if you do part company, analyse why things went wrong

  • Did you recruit the person because they were a “friend” of an existing employee, or because you needed someone quickly and the individual “looked ok”. Recruitment shortcuts are one of the commonest causes of problematic employees
  • Did you spend time with them when they started work, ensuring they knew what was expected of them and they understood how your business operated. The time you’d spend doing this will be significantly less than the time you’ll spend managing them when things go wrong

Successful entrepreneurs have things go wrong and learn from their failure. But when it comes to employment too many use one failure as an excuse for not trying again. Remember that one bad apple shouldn’t – and doesn’t have to – impact on the long term success of your business. (As those 70s business gurus The Osmonds put it here)

 

 

Everybody’s HR nowadays

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Originally posted February 2014

“What do you do?” asked my new contact at a networking event

“I provide HR support for smaller companies” I replied

“Don’t envy you that” he said “I can’t be doing with all that people stuff”

“So what’s your role?” I asked

“I’m the Operations Manager for a company that makes and installs widgets. We’re growing, just won a big new contract and taking on a dozen new staff”

I’ve had that conversation (or variations of it) dozens of times over the years. It always intrigues me that “HR” is seen as something distinct and separate from the day to day running of a business. I’ve even heard HR described as a Black Art.

Fundamentally, the “Human Resources” of a business are the people who work within it. If you’re a manager, you are interacting with those people daily. For your direct team, you are talking to them about their work objectives and how well they are (or aren’t) doing. You may want to discuss whether they need extra training. Sometimes you may find that you don’t like or get on with colleagues and that is affecting how you work together. On occasions you might recognise yourself that you aren’t performing as well as you can and need some development. In short, you’re a people manager and you achieve your results through the people you work with. Put it another way – you’re doing HR!

So what do “HR” people do? Why do businesses even employ us? Once you strip away all the jargon ultimately it’s because we provide specialist skills and/or knowledge that the business needs. That could be technical stuff around employment law; it could be dealing with the mechanics of paying people correctly; it might be looking at how the business should be organised to achieve its objectives; or issues that are wider than just an individual manager or department (such as pay levels, recruitment strategy etc). And occasionally it does involve supporting managers in situations where they have less experience or which occur infrequently (such as dismissals).

HR – it’s what you do – and I support you with.