Don't let your employees crack!

How satisfied are you with your job? The annual World of Work survey was published this week, finding a whopping 62% of UK workers are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with their employers, as workloads increase with no extra reward being received

Employers are still facing the plight of hard and very uncertain economic times. With increased workloads, employees are feeling disengaged and unmotivated due to longer working hours and pay freezes.

Let’s put our violins down for a minute and be proactive: there are many ways that an employer can boost morale amongst employees and recognise a job well done without the need for a cash injection.

Here are our top tips:
·        Know your employees as individuals. Take an interest in their lives: families, pets
·        Say thank you, and mean it!
·        Public recognition: if an employee gets positive feedback from a customer, announce it so the whole team can hear.
·        Have an awards ceremony! Most improved performer, star sales person, best suggestion etc. Make sure prizes are relevant to the employee. It is no good giving free car parking to a non driver. The prizes don’t have to be high value and you can make them fun!

Bear in mind HMRC tax on benefits in kind. Trivial gifts such as a bottle of wine, bunch of flowers or chocolate would be regarded as trivial but all cash payments should be declared on P11d’s.

Most important tip: don’t let your employees crack!

Office Olympics!

With all the hype around the Olympics we have found some interesting office Olympics antics… 

(HS Dept please cover eyes and ears)

Here we having Office Rowing:

And here we have Office Hurdling! We hope there wasn't too much injury!

Let’s be honest, it made us laugh but not something we would encourage in any workplace…

Working Mum's Balance of Career and Family

HR Magazine published an interesting article this morning discussing the work/life balance that working mothers face. Famed Hollywood actress Sarah Jessica Parker is returning to the big screen this weekend with her new film ‘I Don’t Know How She Does It’. Based on a novel written over a decade ago, it follows the difficulties a working mother faces with balancing her career and her family. Unfortunately, it turns out that Kate (Parker) cannot ‘have it all’. Women have been balancing their careers and motherhood more and more in recent decades and the questions begs: “is it possible to successfully combine career and family?” 

In today's modern times, we think yes. With the increase in family friendly employment legislation steadily over the last decade working parents are now able to request:

• More flexible working arrangements
• Better pay and benefits when on maternity or paternity leave. 

If all businesses were like a Hollywood movie, it would mean that it is all resolved happily in the end. However advice to business owners, there have been many high profile cases surrounding a business’s failure to deal with flexible working requests by members of eligible staff for example Commotion Ltd v Rutty 2006


Don’t count on Hollywood to give any answers – Get in touch with The HR Dept!

‘I love your new bob!’ ‘I love yours too!’

Employers have a right to establish a dress code for employees for many reasons – image, health and safety etc. When considering a dress code you might think that hard hats would be appropriate for factory workers, and suited and booted in an office. But when a Japanese company recently ordered 2,700 staff to get the same haircut, our eyes widened and mouths dropped.

A Japanese construction firm has requested that men go to the barbers and ask for a ‘short back-and sides do (slightly longer on top) while the women adopt a ‘cute bob’ with a longer fringe that can be swept to one side.
While you gather yourself, it is worth mentioning that the company maintains that these identical hairstyles will reduce power consumption, a key environmental issue in Japan.

It appears this isn’t the first case of environmental friendly hair loss with a Japanese City back in 2010 seeking to ban beards at work.

Beards in the British workplace have even reached the Employment Appeal Tribunal with the famous case Mohsin Mohmed, a former customer service assistant at Euston Station, who claimed religious discrimination when he was dismissed for refusing to trim his beard to a fist's length - four inches. The appeal tribunal found that he and Virgin had agreed that he trim his beard to this length and that his treatment was no different from a non-Muslim employee. The case was dismissed, but does highlight the point about producing a fair dress code for both men and women and different religious backgrounds. As always, advice would be to use common sense.

Tweeting in the workplace: Do you have clear guidelines set?

Recent research by ACAS (Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service) found just over half of all workers (55%) now use social media sites at work, either on computers or mobile phones, costing British firms billions of pounds a year in lost productivity.

The problem is created when employees are spending time on personal profiles and pages when they should be working. What is of deeper concern however is when employees use social media platforms to speak negatively of their place of work or worse, their boss. Another study conducted showed almost 40% of British employees criticize their ‘workplace’ on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. In addition, one in five admitted slandering their bosses on them.

There have been some high profile cases of employees being dismissed for bringing the company into disrepute because of comments either about work or colleagues on these social media platforms and The HR Dept is certainly dealing with more cases where employers have discovered tweets or messages which have caused issues within the workplace. The key of course, is communicating to all staff what your IT and Social Media policy is!

The HR Dept has written an IT/Social Media policy for employers containing guidelines on how to manage employees in this complicated area. If interested, contact your local HR Dept for more information.

www.hrdept.co.uk