The gracious winner

What a wonderful lesson the outcome of the Wimbledon men’s singles final gave us on Sunday. Not only was Murray graceful in defeat (the sign of a true professional), but how gracious Federer was too. The champion did not crow and had such empathy for Murray’s disappointment. In business, too often when two good candidates go for the top job internally, the organisation ends up losing the one who is not selected and sometimes even more staff. This is either because the successful one fails to recognise that their lack of humility alienates those who would have preferred the other candidate or because the losing candidate becomes negative and sets out to undermine the other. 

Senior Managers need to handle these situations with sensitivity, as the workforce will know what is going on and have their own allegiances. When announcing the result to each one, stress the importance of the team being united and ensure public announcements do not in any way detract from the abilities of the other. Give honest and constructive feedback so they both can improve their areas of weakness, this way hopefully you can keep both members of the team

With the Olympics only weeks away it is a good time to reflect how good sporting behaviour can teach business a lot.

How sickness absence excuses can be misinterpreted by an employer

In a recent poll we asked employers if they thought workplace absence would increase during the UK’s ‘Summer of Sport’ and whether they had a plan in place to deal with this. We can now reveal that 42% of respondents expected workplace absence to increase during the summer due to the Olympics and Euro 2012. Of these respondents, a further 47% said they didn’t have a plan to deal with unauthorised absences. British employers now need to get to grips with managing all those employees who come knocking on the door asking to leave early to watch the match.

In a previous blog post we criticised creating a policy for the sake of creating a policy. Employers should use existing policies and procedures for dealing with holiday requests, unauthorised absence and so on. It would be useful to have an IT/social media policy which would prohibit employees misusing the internet to live stream the games while they are meant to be working.

Employers should absolutely not accuse their employees of pulling a ‘sickie’ without reasonable evidence (seeing one of your ‘sick’ employees appear in TV coverage would be evidence enough!).

Here are our top 3 excuses from employees and what employers might interpret them as:

Employee: [Monday morning] I can’t come into work today as I have come down with food poisoning.

Employer: Probably too much alcohol rather than bad prawns!

Employee: [Friday] My child is unwell and there’s no one else to look after them

Employer: Looks like they want a head start to their weekend

Employee: I have to go to my Gran’s funeral

Employer: Again? How many grandmothers can one person have?

If you would like more information or would like further help, contact The HR Dept

No Olympics holiday policy required here

We appreciate the Olympics is a one off event, however all business owners should be planning ahead while remaining flexible and consistent in plans or procedures with regards to managing staff holiday or absence.

Time off and holidays should be booked in advance in accordance with existing holiday procedure/policy. We have heard a lot about advising business owners to create one off policies for the likes of the Olympics, but why create more paperwork and administration?! Our advice is to use the same rules that apply throughout the year when it comes to requesting holiday/leave. Unauthorised absence or ‘sickies’ should be treated in the exact same way as any unauthorised absence throughout the year.

If someone is volunteering during the Olympics, leave should be treated either as holiday entitlement or unpaid leave.

Though a special event, an employer has the right to refuse any request for holiday, but would have to grant it another time. Here is the reality: be fair, consistent and make sure people aren’t watching it on the internet at work if they are supposed to be working!

Keep calm and carry on really...

p.s. We are running a very quick poll to find out our reader’s thoughts on the impact of the Olympics. We’d really appreciate if you could take 30 to answer our poll here https://qtrial.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_5vvcfNPUU0HhDhi

Summer of sickies? Our quick poll

Extra bank holidays, the Olympics, school summer holidays and the enjoyment of the European Football Championships, it would appear it will be a busy summer this year! We have been giving lots of advice recently on how these events might impact on SME businesses across the UK, especially around managing holiday requests and the reinforcement of a business’ sickness absence policy.

We have set up a really short poll for you, just to see whether you think these events will have an impact on your business. We would appreciate 30 seconds of your time to answer the two questions set up via this link.

As a thank you, please follow these links for more help, guidance and advice from The HR Dept on how to manage this unusual but exciting British summer. Our major word of advice is like with most things: be prepared.

Guidance and advice on what employees are entitled to for bank holidays and for the Diamond Jubilee

Top tips on how to deal with unauthorised absence during the Olympics/EURO 2012

We would love to do something about the summer weather, but miracles are out of The HR Dept remit.

It’s a pod life

Have you ever dreamt that your employees were so committed to their work that they never went home at the end of the day? Well now it appears there is a solution with these newly designed, futuristic pods where employees can spend the night at work. We have recently come across a London based data centre employer who has installed 'sleeping pods' in their offices. The pods have been designed so that employees need not leave the office and can be on site 24/7. These futuristic pods come fully equipped with a handy mirror, magazine rack, a night light, plug sockets and a stereo system.

Photo: PodTime

Originally implemented to avoid long commutes during the Olympics, perhaps these sleeping pods could act as a safety net each time there is strike action/snow/world cup?

It's a number's game

We have compiled a weekly round-up of HR and business news in numbers: 

0.2% - UK growth contracted 0.2% in the last three months of 2011. What does 2012 hold for everyone?

£300 could be what businesses in a Scottish city are charged for their own parking spaces provided to employees. A reserved car parking space at work is often highly prized... Early bird catches the worm!

At the time of writing, it is 182 days, 10 hours, 56 minutes and 6 seconds until the British Olympic Games begin.  Basically, it is 6 months today that the hype of the Olympics will reach its peak. There could be an opportunity for your business to take advantage of the Olympics, but also be aware of employees wanting time off to attend /watch/volunteer at the games, so plan ahead.

£963,000 - The bonus paid to RBS chief Stephen Hester, who will be receiving the hefty sum as a bonus in shares. It has caused an outcry given the bailout provided to RBS and their ongoing cost cutting exercises.

2.69 million is the unfortunate number of rising UK unemployment. Without wearing rose coloured glasses, it is positive that the government has announced its’ Youth Contract to help and support employers in recruiting young people. This needs to get moving quickly.

£68 million is the substantial amount of compensation given to ex-Woolworths staff. An employment tribunal ruled that administrators had failed to follow redundancy procedures and awarded ex-workers a protected award for failing to consult.

£158 million - You will read more information about salary sacrifice schemes in our upcoming newsletter (which you can subscribe to here for free) but this week we find recruitment firm Reed could lose up to £158m in a ruling in a tribunal that it’s tax bills were incorrect when providing a salary sacrifice scheme to its’ temporary workers.

£1 trillion – British debt hits £1 trillion mark in December.

Difficult to comprehend really because written out it is - £1,000,000,000,000

Balancing the books is always a priority!

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…