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On Health Screening and Other Employee Surveillance
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Management has the right to manage. But it has to behave reasonably and have good reason for its actions. This paper addresses the general question often asked: can management implement routine screening, testing or other surveillance of employees, their goods, information and health. It goes on to show how management should go about its introduction in cases where screening or surveillance is appropriate.
This paper shows then that management can't simply start screening or surveillance. It must follow a process to prove that it is behaving reasonably to protect the business and stakeholders. That process has two aims: the first to show that the action is both necessary and proportionate and second to build trust in the staff who will be the subject of the action.
This paper goes on to take one of the common topics for surveillance, health screening, and uses that as example of how management should proceed.
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Correctly Managing Disciplinary Action
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There have been several high profile cases recently where employees who were disciplined won huge sums at Employment Tribunals. Frequently Employment Tribunals find against firms and decide that the employee was unfairly dismissed (when they walked out after management disciplinary action). And one of the principal reasons for such judgement is that the firm is found to not have followed its disciplinary procedures.
This paper takes the reader though this process. It starts with a discussion about the legal framework, then takes the reader though approaches to disciplinaries, discussing process, strategy and how to run the various meetings. It ends with a key section on managing the aftermath of disciplinary action.
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Achieving Competitive Advantage Through People
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Competitive advantage is the state where a firm enjoys lower costs that its competitors or enjoys some product or service differentiation such that it sells more than its competitors. Competitive advantage comes either from people or processes. This paper focuses on competitive advantage through people.
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Objectives and Appraisal:
two links in the continuum of strategy |
Intuitively we know that it’s worthwhile telling our staff how we think they are getting on. Intuitively too, we believe that we should all be tasked through objectives so that we strive for excellence. We know too that appraisal and objectives are linked – without the former, the latter would not be achieved. But what’s that link and how does it affect the staff and managers in an SME as they go about their business day to day? How do they both link to the firm’s strategy? And what place do they have in achieving excellence in human resource management?
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| Knowledge Management |
Intuitively we know that knowledge in the firm is good. We also know intuitively that knowledge has to be managed. This white paper looks at knowledge and builds a knowledge framework. The second part of the paper looks at how the firm can manage its knowledge and develop competence from it.
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| Culture Matters |
This paper analyses culture. It first discusses culture as a concept. It looks at what part culture plays in our working life and how it affects the firm. It researches current thinking on culture. And finally it looks at how one might measure and where necessary change culture in a firm. The aim is to provide practicing managers with a tool: something theoretically sound and something practical.
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Redundancy
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John Harvey-Jones, the business guru and former head of ICI, in his book Making it Happen: Reflections on Leadership, said that he never regarded a dismissal as the employee’s fault but rather that of ICI’s management. Since he was the top guy, he regarded every instance when he had to let staff go as his fault. Whilst it never does to beat one’s self up over every business decision, it is a good starting point. If management consider that it’s their fault that people have to be made redundant, it means that there is the necessary level of humility in place, and it is likely therefore that the motivation is there to treat staff fairly. Fair treatment and due process are the tenets needed to secure a simple, sound redundancy and one over which there can be little if any cause for a staff member to take an employment tribunal case.
Redundancy is a difficult time for management and staff alike. Management must decide what to do for the good of the business. There is confusion, disappointment and anger; and the uncertainty goes on for many weeks. Management and remaining staff must get over it. Business must go on for the sake of those left in the firm after the event. This paper is a discourse on getting redundancy right so that it can be done as smoothly and as painlessly as possible and so that the business can go on with minimal disruption.
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| The Recruitment Game |
Recruitment is a game. In this game a firm tries to hire someone to do a job. On the other side is a person who wants to find an employer who will exchange money for labour in order to achieve their life’s ambitions or just simply to make ends meet and feed their families. The firm aims to exploit the person and the person aims to get as much as possible in return.
In recruitment there is a meeting of two minds, the future employer and would-be employee. They aim to form a contract to meet both parties’ needs. The game is about taking whatever action is needed on both sides to inform sufficiently to make decisions and finally sign a contract for the future. Both parties are selling, one to the other. Both parties are testing one another and both parties are sceptical and wishing to be convinced.
With that background, this paper looks at the game from beginning to end. It starts with job and person specifications. It looks at where possible candidates can be found. And it discusses the process of selection. It ends with how to make an offer. In this much therefore it is a complete coverage of the topic. Whilst it has been written with the hiring manager in mind, it will also be useful for candidates trying to understand what goes on in the game.
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Strategic HR People Culture and Bottom line
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Strategy guides firms in the long term. Whether they know it or not, all firms have strategies, though it is better to actively manage strategy rather than leave it to chance. There is no prescriptive methodology for developing a business strategy.
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| Gaining Control of HR and Effecting Change |
This paper proposes a set of tools that permits a newly appointed HR Director or HR Manager to gain control. To do this the paper considers HR as a process to which process control methods can be applied. If further identifies that in the first six weeks the HR manager can be expecting to be working tactically but that at the end of this period, management will expect that the incumbent to be more strategic in outlook.
This paper is part theoretical, discussing how the HR function should work, and part practical, suggesting a toolkit that has been developed by TimelessTime over several years.
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| HR Maturity Ladder |
All small companies and many medium sized organisations tend to work without HR professionals but they still engage, train, promote, pay and generally manage their staff. This means that whilst perhaps not achieving all of the benefits to be had from excellence in HR, they are succeeding to some extent to have HR contribute to profits or results.
This White Paper discusses a practical way a senior manager can assess where on the HR Maturity Ladder his or her organisation currently is and then decide where he or she would like it to be in the future.
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| Business Continuity Management |
Staff are key to any business. Whilst they are the biggest asset, they also potentially represent the greatest risk to business continuity. By developing a plan that centres on the key risks it is possible to be prepared for circumstances which may disrupt the business.
This paper explains the steps required to develop a robust human resources business continuity plan, which will link with the overall organisation-wide BCP.
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| The Art of War |
Some 2000 years ago Sun Tzu wrote about armies in conflict. His writings are still extremely pertinent today and provide powerful insight into the management of current day organisations.
Adopting his philosophy, this paper reviews the importance of achieving excellence in human resources management within an organisation.
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These White Papers are discussion documents on vogue people management issues. They discuss the current thinking behind the issues and develop argument for particular courses of action that senior managers might take within organisations. They put forward practical suggestions for improvement of HR practice. They are argued opinions but are supported by research material that is referenced in each paper. 
