Tag Archives: communications
Managing business when others go on strike
Most firms employ some staff with school-age children. The latest news that schools and colleges could be closed next week due to strike action is not very helpful, particularly for small firms. So, how can you manage when some of your staff will be forced to look after their school age children (through no fault of their own) instead of coming to work? A little forward planning will help so that you are prepared if the strikes do go ahead.
The announcement was made last week that the National Union of Teachers, Association of Teachers and Lecturers and the Universities and Colleges Union were to join the strike which has been called for 30 June in protest at the new pension proposals suggested for the public sector. The fact that private sectors workers have already been through this pain and are no longer able to join final salary schemes is a different story! This article discusses how small firms can manage their businesses when staff need to look after children at short notice.
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Sharon Shoesmith: guilt and unfair dismissal are two different things.
The papers are awash with articles about Sharon Shoesmith and Haringey Council. Ed Balls was Children’s Secretary in December 2008 when he publically called for Ms Shoesmith to be dismissed. Haringey Council obliged.
Sharon Shoesmith took her case to an employment tribunal claiming unfair dismissal. The Tribunal decided that she had not been unfairly dismissed. She appealed and three Appeal Court judges ruled that she was indeed unfairly dismissed. Since Friday the papers have been full of comments from all sides. According to an article on the BBC news website [1] David Cameron (Prime Minister) is uncomfortable with this decision and has stated that he believes elected ministers should be able to make decisions about their own departments. I totally agree with this statement. ALL managers should be able to make decisions about their own teams, BUT they must act within the law.
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Employee Engagement is Good For Business
Employee Engagement is a term that is thrown around, but what does it mean? Put simply, employee engagement occurs when an employee feels proud about the firm in which they work, they feel fully involved and they feel empowered to make decisions. It appears simple to understand that a motivated employee is a more productive employee. However not all firms engage their staff? Why is that?
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On Business Restructuring
Business restructuring is the catch-all phrase used to describe the series of actions that a firm might take to re-organise its affairs following some management decision to change the course of the business. There are three views often discussed: from the legal perspective, from the finance perspective and from the human resources perspective. Taken alone, they all tend to adopt a hard approach. The lawyers talk of new legal arrangements for the firm and like the accountants they assume the firm is in difficulty. Both assume that if drastic restructuring action is not taken urgently then third perspective action will be inevitable – redundancy following liquidation, merger or buy-out. In every case it’s a boom time for the professional services firms.
But business restructuring is not about the stuff of films. It’s about the normal adjustment that a firm makes to optimise its approach to the market. Continue reading →
On culture, safety and corporate manslaughter
You’re an SME – why should you worry about corporate manslaughter? You’re not in a dangerous business so as directors, why should you be concerned?
The answer is simple. You are not immune from the act just because you a small firm. And every firm has risks. Often because they are least safety-aware, the ‘least dangerous’ firms are the ones where catastrophe strikes.
The Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 was introduced to set the way for firms to be found guilty of corporate manslaughter in cases of gross breach of duty of care and or following serious management failure.
First Conviction
HRZone.co.uk (the online HR community discussion forum) reported on Monday 21st February that a four person firm has been fined £385,000 and the company has been convicted of corporate manslaughter. This SME in a traditionally safe profession is the first firm in the UK to be convicted. Continue reading →
On the Differences in Approach Between Coaching and Consulting
TimelessTime are consultants. But we often end up competing with business coaches and are often asked how we differ. Indeed sometimes we use coaching techniques ourselves. This brief blog sets out the difference between the two disciplines. Continue reading →
On Duty of Care
Some cases where an employer has a duty of care to protect employees are clear cut. In activities like manual handling and working at heights it’s rather obvious that management must provide the appropriate training, tools and procedures. But in a host of other cases, we only hear about there being a duty of care when the case hits the headlines. How does the SME principal determine when to act and what to do to discharge this duty of care? And more especially how does he or she determine when to act without constant reference to a lawyer?
This short blog develops a simple model firstly to suggest when to act and secondly to understand the action needed.
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On Keeping HR Records in an SME
No-one likes keeping records on staff. It’s a burden on the SME principal and yet it is one of the foundations of HR management. Indeed it’s one of the foundations of excellence in HR. Without records, there’s no data on which to manage staff in the firm. So what data do we need? And how much of it do we need to keep?
This blog answers some of these issues, giving a framework for setting up an HR records system and then preparing it for evolution into a larger records management system as the firm grows.
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On Daybooks
TimelessTime consultants have represented many firms at tribunal. We’ve supported principals and managers in cases when the firm was in the right but the plaintiff employee got the upper hand simply because of procedural errors on the part of managers in the firm.
There’s often one simple cause – principals and managers don’t write things down. They don’t document the various discussions with employees. They don’t prepare for meetings and document what they hope to achieve, then don’t document what they actually said and what was actually done.
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On Job Descriptions
Job descriptions have three clear purposes in the firm: to guide recruitment (in concert with a Person Profile), give guidance to the principal on the relative value of that job against another, to guide the job holder should that ever be needed. Since there are such clear-cut purposes, it will come as no surprise that there is a very specific way of writing a Job Description such that these needs are satisfied.
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