Category Archives: Work Related Posts

Posts on work topics that aren’t specifically HR related – they may be on economics, world events or something in the news at the time!

Shared Parental Leave – Don’t Make a Drama out of a Non-Crisis

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It seems that everyone in the HR and Employment Law world in the UK is getting into a bit of a tizz about Shared Parental Leave, which comes into force after Easter. “Does anyone understand Shared Parental Leave?” asked a CIPD blog recently, while employment lawyers are busy falling over themselves to offer seminars on the subject, so that employers can avoid “the baby trap” as one described it. Anyone would think that the entire structure of British industry was about to collapse because some fathers may want to take some time off with their newborns.

The concept of Shared Parental Leave is so simple that Employment Minister Jo Swinson could describe it in a tweet “It’s maternity leave shared between two people”. It is also true to say that the regulations themselves are complicated, partially because they use introduce clumsy new phrases like “continuous leave” and “discontinuous leave” and partially because they attempt to cover every single possible scenario. If followed to the letter, they also introduce some overly formal and bureaucratic procedures.

Confusing and bureaucratic regulations are nothing new in HR and employment law. We work within them all the time – and many organisations, especially smaller ones, bypass the letter of the law to get to solutions that work for both the employer and the individual employee (a fact the government recognised when it got rid of most of the bureaucratic rules around Flexible Working requests).

So why the fuss about this one? Setting aside the cynical view that employment lawyers make money from running seminars on new legislation, the resistance comes from the fact that too many people (including a lot in HR) don’t want to change or recognise the fact that the world of work is changing. Many employers are perfectly happy to take the benefits to them of flexibility (zero hour contracts, contracting services to the self-employed, a tacit acceptance of the fact that employees will work late unpaid and continue to respond to emails in the evening) but aren’t willing to accept the same when staff would like it. Couple this with the “HR says No” attitude still too prevalent among many in the profession and the thought of Shared Parental Leave becomes a doomsday scenario.

I’m not naïve, and I’m sure there will be some teething problems with Shared Parental Leave. But – as with every HR problem – constructive dialogue between the parties will usually sort out the situation, while a blind adherence to procedures and process won’t. It also seems likely that demand for Shared Parental Leave will be small at first, giving people a chance to get used to the new system.

One final thought. Around 20 years ago, the Disability Discrimination Act came into force. Then there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth about all the changes that companies would “have” to make and how it would force them to take disabled people they didn’t want to really employ. The high heavens didn’t fall then, and I don’t expect they will do now.

Straw and Rifkind show the problem of managing staff with “second jobs”

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There’s been much schadenfreude in the exposure of two former high ranking government ministers, Sir Malcolm Rifkind and Jack Straw, touting themselves for business and offering to sell their “influence” to a fictitious Chinese company. (In the interests of political neutrality one is from the Conservatives, one from Labour).  It’s provoked a debate about whether MPs should be banned from holding second jobs.

MPs aren’t employees. But the same issue of whether an employee can hold a second job is one I am often asked. So what is the situation?

Firstly, you can’t impose a blanket ban on individuals doing work when they aren’t working for you. Individuals have a right to spend their time outside work in whatever way they wish, which includes earning money. However, you do have a right to ensure that they are not doing anything which could damage your business –so you can legitimately prevent them from working for a competitor, or other organisation which might want access to your commercial information (a supplier or customer for example). As with all these things, should matters be challenged by the employee, you’d need to show that there was some clear impact on your business.

You can also prevent an employee from doing other work if it would stop them from working for you. So if someone wants to do an evening job starting at 6 but isn’t due to finish their shift with you till 7, then you can of course also prevent them from doing this.

The third key area is Health and Safety, particularly (and ironically given how much some employers seem to hate them) via the Working Time Regulations. These lay down the rules about the maximum 48 hour working week, rest breaks and time between shifts. If a member of staff works 35 hours a week for you (9 to 5 Mon-Fri say) and then wants to do 20 hours a week in a bar (say a four hour shift Wednesday/Thursday/Friday/Saturday/Sunday) you could try to prevent them from doing so on the grounds that they are working 55 hour weeks possibly without sufficient rest between shifts. Again, if you can show a clear safety risk (they operate machinery for example) it’s easier to do this.

With the advent of flexible working, zero hours contracts (where all parties have pledged to outlaw exclusivity clauses that prevent people from working for someone else), increased numbers of part-time roles and the growing number of “in-work poor” mean that for many employers, their staff may well have more than one job. Managing such situations may become increasingly common.

Sacking someone? It’s just like making Risotto

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Watching one of Nigella Lawson’s cookery programmes (yes I do, what of it?) I was struck by one of her comments that when it comes to cooking, “people confuse time-consuming with difficult”.

It seems to me that this is the same mistake that a lot of businesses apply to HR – and sadly it’s an illusion that many in HR like to perpetuate.

Take dismissing someone for example. “It’s hard to do” say some small business organisations and government ministers. “It should be made easier”

Actually, it isn’t hard to do. If you have an employee who can’t do the job, regularly breaks rules, is no longer able to work for you, undertakes tasks you no longer require, or with whom your working relationship has fundamentally broken down, then you can dismiss them. The time consuming but not difficult bit is that you have to follow a fair process before you make your decision. That means allowing the individual to put forward any mitigation at a hearing, letting them attend with a colleague or union rep and, if you do dismiss, allowing them an appeal.

Even the infamous TUPE regulations, which cause so many sleepless nights for employment lawyers and HR people, are – in 90% of cases – simply a tick box exercise: Have you consulted employees at the correct time? Have you supplied employee information at the correct time? Have you informed them of any changes that may be made post transfer? Are there any disputes about whether a particular person should transfer? Are there any benefits that can’t be replicated – and what are you doing about them?

Perhaps it’s the current expectation that everything will happen instantly (although businesses moaned about employment issues long before the advent of on-demand services). Or the assumption that what we don’t understand must be “complicated” (like rocket science, which is one of the simplest concepts there is).

Making a risotto involves stirring stock into rice for around half an hour. You could bung it all in a microwave for 5 minutes but if you did you’d end up with an inedible mess. Complying with employment rules is like making risotto – it’s not difficult but you need time to get the right result.

Be Careful What You Wish For

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One of the big fears for the owners and managers of small businesses is that at some point an employee will take them to an Employment Tribunal. Even if they win the case, the time, cost and stress to the owner is high. And even if the employee’s claim is apparently trivial or patently false, the thought of having your employment practices crawled over by a judge is understandably unpleasant. Matters aren’t helped by tabloid tales of companies being hit for huge compensation awards.

So the introduction of tribunal fees in 2013, which has seen a fall in tribunal claims of between 60-70%, has to be good news for small companies. Now at last businesses can get on with running effectively without fear of a discontented ex-employee making a claim against them.

Except…the pendulum may have swung too far. Most small businesses I encounter (and in my line of work that’s a lot) want to be “good” employers, they want to do things legally and properly and aren’t looking to make life as unpleasant as possible for the staff they employ. If they do something “wrong” it’s usually a genuine mistake rather than a deliberate attempt to defraud their employees.

The problem though is that when individuals can’t enforce their rights, it leaves the door open for the unscrupulous employer to ignore the law, safe in the knowledge that no-one will do anything about it. Honest, law abiding businesses that want to do things correctly are the ones that suffer, as this sad tale from the newspapers this weekend shows. The fact that the business owner is a Tory MP adds a little irony but the key point is that here is a responsible person trying to do the best for his business and employees, but is undercut by those operating at the margins – or even outside – the law.

Think about it this way. If you own a car, you pay your car insurance (no doubt moaning, as I do, about the cost of it). You do because it’s the law to have insurance. Yet if there’s no method of enforcement, why should you bother? Hundreds of thousands are estimated to be driving without insurance, taking the chance that they won’t get caught. And if they are – usually if they are involved in an accident – it’s the honest driver who bears the cost through increased premiums. If the premium becomes unaffordable you either give up your car or you drive uninsured too.

I’m not arguing that tribunal fees should be abolished completely (there’s no reason why the taxpayer should bear all the cost when they don’t in any other area of the law), but that the system needs to be rebalanced – for the benefit of decent employers as well as employees.

Talking to Ourselves

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As should be clear from my previous posts (like this), I’m not only a fan of social media and the benefits it can bring, but believe it has informed and improved my own HR practice. And there’s a great group of HR professionals – specifically but not exclusively on Twitter – who are not only challenging and stimulating thinking but in many cases successfully implementing these new ideas. (They’re a fun bunch of people too!)

But (and you knew there was a ‘but’ coming, didn’t you?) there is an element of preaching to the converted. I don’t need to convince them that there’s a better way to do HR, nor they me. Where we are still not engaging effectively enough is with the CEOs and Finance Directors, let alone the people who fund and invest in companies. There are too few entrepreneurs like Daniel Tenner or voluntary sector leaders like Pamela Ball who “get” the importance of doing good people stuff.

That’s why I was disappointed at the negative reaction on social media to the report published today by the CIPD and various partners on Valuing Your Talent (and I was guilty of some of the initial negativity). Yes, it does include the appalling phrase “Human Capital Metrics” – which I hope disappears without trace in the immediate future – but it was a chance to influence the broader debate and push people issues to the forefront of business.

And its proposals were hardly radical – the key recommendations were that companies should:

  • Quantify their labour and turnover costs
  • Analyse their recruitment costs
  • Analyse their training and development investment
  • Measure Employee Engagement

The first three are what HR departments should be doing anyway and while the fourth is contentious (in that no-one can agree what “employee engagement” is and if/how you can measure it) it’s not illogical. In fact it reflects more on our broader business management in the UK if this isn’t be done currently.

There’s a time for numbers and there’s a time when they aren’t appropriate in HR. Dismissing metrics out of hand isn’t a way forward.

My main point though is that the HR professionals who understand the need to do good stuff need to be out there engaging with the wider business community – on social media and elsewhere. The debates we have about how to make things better should be with the likes of TV’s Dragons, the MDs of bigger companies and other business leaders, not just among ourselves.