Tag Archives: keep us legal
Demystifying Mixed Contract Redundancies
Many small firms employ workers on temporary or short term contracts to cover maternity absence or to cope with seasonal demand. And many employ part timers to cope with peaks in the business day or week. Both are ideal ways of managing costs and supporting full-time permanent staff. Both are ideal ways of staffing the firm to match the local market for goods and services. In addition, some also make use of agency workers for quick fix to sudden absence. But what happens when a downturn suggests that some staff need to be made redundant? Who goes and how does the employer decide? Continue reading →
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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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 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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Why does everyone hate HR?
The great value in reading widely is that you hear different opinions and these can change your own view for the better. From time to time though, it is just as refreshing to hear one’s own view reinforced. That was the case on reading Margaret Heffernan’s article “Why does everyone hate HR” published recently on the BNET site. The original article is at http://www.bnet.com/blog/business-strategy.
Margaret comments that “Every leader knows that people are a firm’s most precious asset. Every leader should know that investing in people is more efficient than investing in technology. And seven percent of CEOs say they don’t have the talent they need to execute their strategy effectively.” She asks why it is that despite such awareness HR is seen as the least important discipline. Margaret writes for the multi-national firm CEO reader but her message is easily translated to the SME.
