Tag Archives: management

Staff Accuse B&Q of Using the National Living Wage as an ‘Excuse’ to Cut Pay and Benefits

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Employers are being warned to avoid kneejerk moves when introducing measures to offset increased wage costs.

A petition drafted by a B&Q manager, accusing the DIY retailer of slashing employee benefits in an effort to offset the costs of the national living wage (NLW), has so far attracted more than 120,000 signatures. As an employer you could face a similar negative reaction if you attempt to alter terms and conditions as a result of the law to increase salaries for your lowest paid staff. The £7.20 an hour wage came into force on Friday 1 April.

As part of the change, the B&Q employees say that the retailer has suggested time-and-a-half pay for working Sundays and double time for working bank holidays; a restructuring of allowances for employees working in parts of the UK where the cost of living is higher; and the removal of a summer and winter bonus, which equates to 6% of annual salary.

The petition says that B&Q staff are required to accept the new terms and conditions of employment, or face losing their job.

“Big businesses like B&Q are using the NLW as an excuse to cut overall pay and rewards for the people who need it the most,” the petition reads.

B&Q denies that the changes to terms and conditions are as a result of the NLW, stating that a review of its pay and reward framework was launched “long before” the new wage was announced.

A B&Q spokesman said: “Our aim is to reward all of our people fairly so that employees who are doing the same job receive the same pay. That isn’t the case at the moment, as some have been benefitting from allowances for a long time when others have not, and that can’t continue.”

A survey from the Federation of Small Business found that 54% of SMEs believe they have been negatively impacted by the 50p an hour increase in pay, and will put off hiring new staff as a result. 41% will cut staff hours, while 26% plan to erode pay differentials by freezing or cutting the wages of higher paid staff.

According to analysis by the FT, employers are actively are actively considering increasing the number of self-employed individuals or apprentices – all of whom are exempt from the NLW – in their staffing mix.

But Esther Smith, employment partner at UK law firm TLT, warned that this could leave employers open to discrimination claims.

“Employers may, consciously or unconsciously, look to employ younger people to avoid the higher wage costs.  Also, if they operate zero hours’ contracts, they may elect to offer less work to those people over 25,” she said. “Both of these actions would expose the employer to age discrimination claims.”

Before you make any major decisions which could affect your business and your employees, get in touch by contacting us on 0118 940 3032 or emailing sueferguson@optionshr.co.uk.

Is Your Business Ready for Ramadan?

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For many Muslims, Ramadan is a period of religious observance, which includes fasting from sunrise to sunset. To help make sure your business is ready, here is a checklist for employers that will help you support any of your employees who observe religious festivals.

  1. Have a policy on religious observance

Your managers should familiarise themselves with your employer’s policy on religious observance during working hours. Making allowances for observance to employees of one religion, but refusing to provide equivalent benefits to employees of a different one, will amount to direct religious discrimination.

Having a policy on religious observance during working hours should have a positive impact on your employees. An absence of such a policy, together with a failure to be supportive towards employees whose religious beliefs require them to observe certain practices, could lead to accusations of religious discrimination.

  1. Show tolerance on reduced productivity levels

It is likely that the productivity of an employee who is fasting will be affected, particularly towards the latter part of the working day. You and your managers should be aware of this and not unduly penalise or criticise an employee whose productivity has suffered because he or she is fasting during a period of religious observance.

  1. Find a way to accommodate annual leave requests

You may experience high demand for holiday requests for a certain period from employees observing religious festivals. The end of Ramadan is marked by the Islamic holiday of Eid, which also signals an end to the fasting period. As an employer, you may, as a result, receive a large number of requests to take holiday towards the end of Ramadan.

It may be impractical for you to grant all of the requests. However, you should be supportive towards employees who observe religions other than Christianity, particularly because the majority of Christian holidays are provided for in the UK as bank holidays.

  1. Consider the effects of training events, conferences and offsite meetings

You may find that some of your employees who are in a period of religious observance are reluctant to attend training events, conferences or offsite meetings.

During Ramadan, Muslims are obliged to abstain from all food and drink between dawn and sunset. This means that you should consider carefully an employee’s request to be excused from attending work conferences, offsite locations, training and similar events during Ramadan because a failure to do so might amount to direct and indirect religious discrimination.

Your managers should arrange to meet with the employee concerned to explore fully his or her reservations about attending an event and determine whether or not a compromise can be reached. For example, the presence of food and drink at the event might be one of the concerns for the employee.

The Islamic holy month of Ramadan begins on Monday 6 June 2016 and it ends 30 days later on Tuesday 5 July 2016.

If you need help developing a policy for religious observance or holidays for your business, please contact us and we can provide one for you. Call 0118 940 3032 or email sueferguson@optionshr.co.uk.

This information was provided by Xperthr.

Poor Performance – Can You Prove It?

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Sometimes as a manager you need to deliver bad news or negative feedback to a member of your staff. You might need to pick them up on an issue of performance that you’re not happy with, or where they are not meeting your standards.

This is not a comfortable thing to do. You need to be quite assertive about it, to be taken seriously, so that your member of staff doesn’t just argue with you! To help you discuss the issue in the right way, you need evidence of the poor performance. You have to be able to show your team member what they’ve been doing wrong or below standard. Just telling them that they’re not doing what you want them to do, won’t have any impact, if you can’t prove it.

You need to collect the evidence, so your team member can really understand what they’ve done wrong and how you want them to change. It’s not about collecting evidence just to use against someone – you really need it in order to get the message across and to make a difference.

Is one of your team repeatedly late coming into work? If so, you need a recording system that shows them when they came it late and how often it happens. If your staff clock in and out every day, you have your system. If not, you need to look for another way of recording the time.

Does a member of your staff keep making errors in their work? How many times have they made a mistake and what was the result of it? Again, you need to create a way of recording the error rate and the consequences.

Do some of your clients repeatedly complain about one of your employees? If so, you need to keep all the emails or letters of complaint that you receive. When a customer complains over the phone, ask them if they would mind emailing you the details for your records, so that you improve the situation for them.

When you can show proof of poor performance, it is much easier to discuss the issue with the particular member of staff and, between you, work out what needs to be done in order to improve their performance.

We discussed the importance of collecting evidence at one of my interactive workshops. Click here to watch the short video and find out more.

Dealing with Bullying or Harassment at Work

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Recently we looked at the case of one of my clients who had learnt about sexual harassment happening within their company. Click here to see that blog again, or if you missed it. Fortunately that case was successfully resolved, but if ever you need to go to the next stage with such a case, here is how you should deal with it.

Following investigatory meetings, which you must carry out, and assuming that you decide that there is a case to be answered, a formal disciplinary interview should be set up with the person accused of bullying or harassment. This should be done in writing, with your employee being given a full written account of the evidence gathered against them, including the evidence reported by any witnesses. Whether or not it will be appropriate to state the names of any witnesses will depend on the circumstances.

At the same time, the employee should be given notice to attend the interview and informed of their right to be accompanied by a colleague or trade union official. It is essential to provide the accused employee with all the relevant facts at this stage, so that they have a proper opportunity to defend themselves when the interview takes place.

Ask and Listen

At the interview, you should ask open questions, i.e. those beginning with “what”, “which”, “why”, “how”, “where”, “when” and “who”, in order to get the employee’s side of the story. You should listen carefully to what they have to say, and take on board their explanations and any mitigating factors.

The purpose of the interview will be to establish whether or not there are proper grounds for taking disciplinary action against the employee and, if there are, what level of disciplinary action would be appropriate. This will depend on whether or not, following the interview, you have reasonable grounds for forming a genuine belief that incidents of harassment or bullying did in fact occur.

There is no need for you to have absolute proof of the employee’s ‘guilt’ in order to proceed with disciplinary action or dismissal, as long as you have, following a thorough investigation, formed a genuine and reasonable belief that incidents of bullying or harassment took place.

Deal with it Promptly

Depending on the seriousness of the behaviour, disciplinary action may range from a verbal warning to summary dismissal. In cases of mild harassment, for example a single incident that was based on a misunderstanding, or a series of minor incidents where an employee genuinely did not realise that there were causing offence, a sincere apology, together with an undertaking not to repeat the offending behaviour, may be appropriate.

If the outcome is a formal warning or dismissal, the employee should be granted the right of appeal against that decision, to someone who was not involved in either the investigation or the decision to impose the disciplinary sanction. If a warning is given, it should make it very clear that any further incidents of bullying or harassment of any kind will be viewed very seriously and will lead to further formal disciplinary action.

Both the employee who raised the complaint and the employee accused of bullying or harassment should be given written feedback on the outcome and any actions agreed once the proceedings have been concluded. Full confidential records should be kept of all complaints, all interviews conducted and the outcome of the proceedings.

The main aim of any formal action will be to make sure that the harassment or bullying stops immediately and does not recur. This means that you should treat any report of harassment or bullying seriously and deal with it immediately.

I hope that you never have to deal with a situation like this in your business. However, if you are worried about harassment or bullying – either a case that needs to be dealt with, or how to prevent it from happening – please contact me straight away by calling 0118 940 3032 or by clicking here to email me.

Learning to Manage Your Team

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Recently one of my clients asked me to help one of the managers in her business, who wasn’t that confident in his role. Rather than sending the manager on an off the shelf ‘learn to manage’ course, my client asked what I thought would work best. After a brief conversation with my client, to find out about her concerns, I then spoke to the manager. As a result, we decided that some 1-2-1 management coaching sessions with the manager would be ideal.

One of the manager’s main issues was that he needed to learn how to deal with long serving members of staff. There had been a number of incidences when he might ask them to do something, for them to tell him that it wasn’t part of their job. Both the members of staff have been with the company for some time and like the way things always used to be. They weren’t keen on change – something many of us struggle with.

Rather than come down heavy handed on his staff, the manager and I agreed, during one of our sessions, that he needed to learn how to push back and challenge his team members. To help him do this more effectively we used the Quest personality profiling system, to show up in which areas he is stronger and weaker. This showed us the skills that we needed to work on. It’s not possible to turn all your weaknesses into strengths; you need to understand which are the most important ones that you can develop.

We also looked at the manager’s best communication style and how that relates to the communication styles of his team members. We discussed the importance of not treating everyone the same. Instead, look at how they like to be managed and find a middle ground.

I will carry on working with my client’s manager, over the coming months, to coach him in his job and help him to overcome other obstacles that will come his way, as his confidence builds.

If you would like to arrange 1-2-1 Coaching for your members of staff, do get in touch. We can discuss the issues and work out the best way forward, for you and for them. Call us on 0118 940 3032 or click here to email me.

Take Seven Steps to Improve Employee Performance – Part Two

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Improving the performance of employees is something that all employers should be thinking about on a regular basis. But what happens when someone isn’t performing as well as they could be? What do you do when one person’s performance starts to affect the rest of the team?

There is a simple seven stage process that we recommend you use in these situations. Recently we wrote about the first three steps to look at – holding informal conversations, offering support and carrying out a performance review meeting. Click here to read about them again, or if you missed them.

Here are the next two steps of the process to follow.

Step 4: Make a Decision

Once you’ve carried out the performance review meeting with your employee, you need to make an informed decision about the action you need to take, in order to improve their performance. Take your time in reviewing the situation and don’t be too hasty to make your decision. Consider all the facts and the situation.

It could be that you need to provide your employee with a clearer job description and expectations for what you want them to achieve. They might need training in order to be able to carry out their job to the standard you expect. In the worst cases, you might need to give them a warning about their performance and explain how you want the situation to improve.

Step 5: Inform Your Employee of Your Decision

Make it completely clear what decision you have made, following the meeting with your employee. Telling them face to face is usually the best way to do this, as it allows further discussion. You should also put your decision in writing, so that there is a record of your decision on file, should any issues arise later.

At this stage, it is also vital that you agree the next steps with your employee. What actions do you want them to take and by when? Explain the goals you want them to achieve, or tell them about the training you need them to undertake. Again, make sure everything is in writing.

There are two more steps that you need to follow, in order to fully tackle performance issues. We’ll cover them in a future blog. If you can’t wait until then and you have employee issues that you need to deal with now, don’t leave them to escalate. Contact us on 0118 940 3032 or email sueferguson@optionshr.co.uk for some help and advice.

How Do You Investigate Staff Issues?

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If one of your employees raises a grievance at work, against one of their colleagues, you need to carry out an investigation into the situation, before you make any decisions. How do you go about doing this?

The first thing to consider is that the person against whom the grievance has been raised cannot carry out the investigation. Look for an impartial party to do it, who should decide what information they need in order to fully understand the situation. They should then interview the person who has raised the grievance, before speaking to the other party and anyone else involved. They should produce written evidence and be prepared to look for evidence both supporting the employee and against them.

All people involved should be asked not to discuss the allegation, or look for corroborating evidence or verification of what the employee and other staff are saying. They should also keep an open mind, as what they uncover may not be what anyone expects. For example, someone may be unhappy at work because of a family bereavement they haven’t told anyone about.

The next stage is to respond to the person who raised the grievance, with your decision based on the evidence. It may be appropriate to bring the two people together to discuss the evidence so that they can discuss the situation and plan how to resolve the situation. You must always respond to a formal grievance in writing, with your decision based on your investigation and offer the right of appeal.

The point of carrying out an investigation is so that you do not blunder into a grievance situation, without first finding out what is really going on. If you don’t have your own policy to follow, then use the guidelines published by Acas. As with most employment matters, following a clear process will keep you safe, if an aggrieved member of staff doesn’t like the way in which their grievance has been handled!

Communication is the Most Powerful HR Tool

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Communicating on a regular basis with your employees is one of the most powerful HR tools available to you. Talking to your staff can help prevent small issues from turning into more complex, potentially expensive ones, such as grievances or disciplinary problems. Finding out what your employees are thinking can even help you encourage them to work harder for your business.

How do you do this?

One of my clients called me in to help them sort out some problems recently. The management had noticed that their staff were complaining about not being told what was going on in the business. There was actually nothing happening for them to worry about, but because the management didn’t tell them anything, they started to think that the management was hiding something. A regular open forum was held at their quarterly staff meetings, giving employees the chance to speak up and ask questions; but no one ever did. So the managers assumed that everyone was happy.

To find out more, I arranged a meeting with a cross section of the staff, to ask them how they really felt about the communication in the business and how it could improve. One thing they told me was that no one liked asking questions in the open forum. No had had the courage to stand up in front the whole business to speak out!

Next I had a meeting with the directors of the business, to report back what I had found out. There was another staff meeting coming up, so instead of expecting employees to voice their concerns at the open forum, we came up with an alternative. Before the staff meeting, we would split the employees into a number of smaller groups, each with one of the directors. They would ask their group how they would like to be communicated with. One person from each group would then bring forward the ideas from their group to present to the whole business. This allowed people who were brave enough to stand up in front of the colleagues the opportunity to do so.

At the very next staff meeting, a whole range of issues where brought up in front of the whole business in this way. It gave the employees a real chance to tell the management what they thought. There was an opportunity to really discuss, openly, what was going on in the business (and what wasn’t going on!) Concerns were aired and fears where allayed. The end result was a very happy staff – and happy management too.

This is just one example of how communication can be used to improve a business. This solution worked for this business – what is important is that you work with your staff to find out what will be the most appropriate for them.

When you have regular and open lines of communication with your employees, you can help to prevent negative issues from arising and build a happy, engaged and productive team for your business.

Getting to Grips with Grievance

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I’ve been working with one of my clients to look at how their employees feel they’re being treated by their managers. Unfortunately, in one case, it has resulted in a member of staff being signed off sick due to stress. They have been asked to come back to work, but they don’t want to return and have to work for the same manager. In this particular small business, there is no one else for whom they could work.

It is a sad story and it is one that can be avoided.

If you think that one of your employees is unhappy, it really is best to deal with it early. Find out as soon as you can what the problem is. Look at using regular appraisals or ‘job chats’ to keep in touch with your employees, so that no small issues are ignored. The small ones can be the ones that escalate into much larger, more complex issues, if they’re not dealt with while they’re still small.

If you find out that someone is unhappy about working under you, find someone else to deal with the situation. An employee with a problem is more likely to speak to someone more impartial than the person with whom they have the actual grievance.

To find out more about how to prevent problems occurring, have a look at this blog about how to make appraisals really easy; for tips on improving performance, watch some of our videos here.

For more advice on how to deal with grievances and discipline at work, have a look at this Acas guide.

Changes to Employment Law – Can You Keep Up?

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Changes to Employment Law – Can You Keep Up?

Twice a year, in April and October, changes are made to UK employment law. There’s a lot that you need to know, so to help you keep abreast of the changes, I’m running one of my very popular workshops to discuss and simplify the changes. It will be held on 1 May 2014 and Hennerton Golf Club, Wargrave, Berkshire. Click here to book your place.

Here’s a summary of some of the proposed changes to due to take place this spring:

  • Power of Employment Tribunal to impose Financial Penalties on employers. The Employment Tribunal will have the power to order an employer who has lost a case to pay a financial penalty, to the Secretary of State, of between £100 and £5,000. The penalty will be imposed where the employer has breached any of the worker’s rights. Tribunal Financial Penalties apply from 6 April 2014.
  • Early conciliation to come into force. Before lodging a claim to the Tribunal, all claimants will need to notify Acas first, where conciliation will be offered. If conciliation is unsuccessful within the set period the claimant can proceed to lodge a tribunal claim. This comes into force on 6 May 2014.
  • Statutory maternity, paternity and adoption pay increase. The rate of statutory maternity, paternity and adoption rate will increase to £138.18.

In addition, there is this change, to be brought in by the end of 2014:

Managing sickness absence. A health and work assessment and advisory service is to be introduced, offering fee occupational health assistance for employees, employers and GPs. The service can provide an occupational health assessment after four weeks of sickness absence.

To keep your business fully updated, why not book your place on our workshop? The cost is just £10 +VAT, so to reserve your seat, just click here to book online.