Editors Blog

Did anyone else enjoy the ludicrous union comments last week in the case of council workers sacked for spending too much time surfing online?

Nine workers at Neath Port Talbot Council in South Wales left their jobs after it was discovered that they were spending up to two hours a day on internet auction site eBay.

Union officials from Unison had the cheek to blame the council for its employees' actions, claiming it "had put temptation in their way" by allowing access to external sites.

I interviewed the departing Acas chair Rita Donaghy earlier this week. She is stepping down after seven years in the job and a long career in employment relations.

She was sorting through papers and clearing her desk as I arrived, ready for her replacement Ed Sweeney to take over from next week.

Speak to senior human resources or employment experts and none of them will have a bad word to say about Rita, and after meeting her I can see why.

We've just heard the annual blast of the Confederation of British Industry(CBI) trumpet against the level of the national minimum wage. At £5.52 per hour the bosses' organisation reckons it's way too high. Perhaps in Fat Cat Heaven - aka China - where workers do as they told for tuppence an hour it might be but not in the UK where a cup of coffee can cost £3. The truth is that it's directors pay which is surging ahead.

It’s interesting how much of the news coverage of the ITV phone-in scandal has focused less on the £8m robbery of voting viewers and more on the fact that no-one has been sacked as a result.

ITV chairman Michael Grade, while acknowledging the “grisly” findings of the Deloitte report, said in interviews that he wasn’t planning to ask anyone to resign over the shambles. His intention was to get to the bottom of what happened. Instilling a culture of fear – or carrying out a witch hunt - was not the best way of achieving that, he said. (He subsequently admitted that disciplinary conversations were ongoing, and that perhaps his predecessor should have resigned at the time).

But that does not mean ITV will be able to draw a line under this.

The introduction of auto-enrolment and personal accounts into the UK pensions system in 2012 is being heralded as the panacea to prevent inertia which hinders the current system.

Under the proposals, employees will contribute 4% of their pay into the scheme, with employers paying in 3% and the government contributing 1%.

Great news, but spare a thought for small employers.

The minister for pensions reform, Mike O’Brien, has said there are nine million people who currently worked for an employer who had not made any contribution to their pension.

He has said time and again that personal accounts will complement rather than replace existing pension provision, and target low-to-moderate earners who did not have access to a company scheme.

High up on this list are smaller employers, some of whom might not be as pleased with personal accounts as the pension fraternity, and who will suddenly find themself 3% per employee out of pocket.

And the winner for this year's award for biting the hand that feeds is... workers at Leicestershire County Council who were offered a fully paid afternoon off to do their Christmas shopping.

Instead, staff were angered by cabinet member, Kevin Feltham's, suggestions that it would 'prevent staff from skiving off' to do their festive season shopping anyway.

The result was an apology from the council and day time television for Mr Feltham, who got the sack for his trouble.

November 7 is both Ban Bullying at Work Day and National Stress Awareness Day. What can HR do to make it memorable? Give everyone the day off perhaps?

With such a crowded special days' calendar it was perhaps inevitable that there would be a clash. And it has to be bullying and stress. Surely both are such serious issues they deserve their own day?

Nowhere is the challenge of managing a multicultural workforce greater than in the professional football industry, especially the Premier League which features workers from toute le monde.

Personnel Today readers no doubt thought the case of National Grid worker John Beasley - who was denied the chance to prove unfair dismissal when he e-mailed his claim one minute and 28 seconds past the midnight deadline - was amusing.

But top barrister Daniel Barnett has now alerted us to an even closer shave.

A law student representing the claimant, D Miller, hit the 'submit' button on the Employment Tribunal Service (ETS) website at one second before midnight on the last day for presentation of an ET1 claim. It arrived on the ETS server at eight seconds past midnight.

The British Broadcasting Corporation has come up with a master plan to get back into favour with the public and her majesty the Queen.

Employees at the Beeb are being sent on a course to learn how to regain the public’s trust.

It follows a number of recent foul-ups by the broacaster leading to a formal apology to Queen Elizabeth II and a £50,000 fine after the results of a competition in children's program Blue Peter were found to have been faked.

According to The Sun newspaper, staff including director-general, Mark Thompson, will attend Safeguarding Trust workshops next week.

According to the tabloid, Thompson told staff in an email: “We are launching workshops across the BBC which will focus on the issue of audience trust.

“The problems over the summer were unrepresentative of the majority of our output. Nevertheless, they were serious and highlighted there is an urgent debate to be had about standards.”

New research reveals that almost a third of UK workers claim never to be thanked for their personal contribution at work.

Excuse me for being hard, but I have never expect to be thanked for doing my job. It’s why we get paid, and that is reward enough for me.

And the research also finds that two in 10 respondents say they are thanked more than once a week. What?
Sure it's nice to get a ‘thank you’ for doing something extraordinary for your employer once in a blue moon, but to get praised each time I saw a days work through would have me questioning me senior authorities belief in me.

According to writer on leadership Simon Western we are entering a new age of corporate leadership in the developed world, one he calls Eco-leadership. No doubt you're thinking that that would include the late Anita Roddick or M&S boss Stuart Rose.

If I tell you that includes Al Gore well maybe you'd go with that. But Bill Gates and McDonald's? What's the boy Western on - too many organically-sourced smoothies?

Make Me A Better Manager, together with the employee opinion database of its owner, ETS, has produced a list of the worst management mistakes that companies can make.

Here are the 10 worst...

So, five million sucker Brits work overtime and do not get paid for it eh?

That’s according to data from the National Statistics Labour Force Survey and Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings which revealed that the average amount of unpaid overtime is now seven hours and six minutes a week.

The number of employees working unpaid overtime increased by 103,000 in 2007, bringing the total to nearly five million, according to a new analysis of official statistics by the TUC.

Based on these figures, employees who work unpaid overtime would receive an extra £4,955 a year if they were paid for those extra hours.

News of the clampdown on unnecessary tribunals could not have come soon enough.

The number of employment tribunal cases rose from 115,039 in 2005-06 to 132,577 last year. And with the exception of race discrimination, all areas had an upward trend.

The dispute procedures have to take their share of the blame and have given HR much to complain about with widespread criticism of their complexity.

Last month we highlighted how crucial it was that the government delivers the greater powers it has been promising to Acas and makes sure the new statutory code of practice is simple and effective enough to put a stop to the pain that has already been caused by the nightmarish procedures that currently exist.

Valentine's Day is one of those annual events that gives certain companies and PR agencies an opportunity to unleash a barrage of highly tenuous press releases relating to employment law.

The same thing happens at Christmas, Easter, April Fools' Day - in fact any time where there might be a chance to release some questionable survey results, desperately seeking out some publicity.

The Personnel Today inbox has this week been inundated with such releases in the run up to 14 February, each one as infuriating as the last.

Legal 'experts' are warning staff not to send online Valentine's Day card as it could result in sexual harassment claims after being interpreted as unwanted attention.

With the UK’s debt crisis becoming an all too familiar story, HR professionals – just like consumers – might be forgiven for turning a blind eye to a problem the UK has faced for some time.

But the signs of strain are now beginning to spill over into the workplace – as money sickness syndrome takes its toll – and it’s high time HR professionals paid the issue some serious attention.

As one Personnel Today reader recently pointed out, employee debt can have “dire consequences” on productivity, yet “employers seem to be slow in addressing this issue”.

Labour MP Tom Watson has come up with a few guidelines on his blog on what to include in a code for Civil Service bloggers.

It follows the disappearance of the popular Civil Serf blog over the weekend which had led to a number of stories based on the blogger's critical comments about the inner-workings of Whitehall.

The author, who claimed to be a 33-year-old female fast-stream civil servant, particularly had it in for former work and pensions secretary Peter Hain.

Watson has come up with a dozen suggestions for any potential code, including: write as yourself, be nice, keep secrets and the slightly more intimidating 'stop it if we say so'.

Now the Civil Serf URL has been registered by Simon Dickson at something called Puffbox with his take on the story.

It raises a number of interesting questions about what procedures organisations should put in place to protect themselves against blogging employees and the damage it can do to your employer brand.

Look out for exclusive Personnel Today research, in association with law firm Charles Russell, on the topic in the coming weeks.

Local government HR directors working in London could be forgiven for quaking in their shoes with the news that controversial no-win no-fee lawyer Stefan Cross is heading southwards.

The MJ reports that the Newcastle-based solicitor has started advertising in the capital for equal pay cases to take on.

Cross has become somewhat of a hate figure among trade unionists in the local government sector because of his appetite to take on these kinds of claims and his pursuit of workers, mainly women, in signing up to his firm.

Having just taken over as editor of Personnel Today sister title Employers Law, and also being responsible for the legal pages of Personnel Today itself, I'm drowning not waving in the murky creature infested pool that is employment law.

But it always help to have a familiar face when contemplating a new landscape. And I think I've found one: that fictional hero of 1980s' corporate greed and devil take the hindmost managerial skills Gordon Gekko is back.

And he's back in droves. And possibly in a lift near you, at least if you work in the City.

Finally, the eagerly awaited review of extending flexible working rights, by Sainsbury's HR director Imelda Walsh, is out in the open. And it certainly
makes a nice change that HR is in the spotlight for leading a government review rather than simply responding.

By now, you will have digested the fact that the right is set to be extended to staff with children up to the age of 16. And the outcome seems to be one that most parties and the HR community support.

But while HR legal eagles know only too well that the right is only to 'request' fl exible working, you may still have a job to do educating your workforce that it's not an automatic privilege to work flexibly.

Likewise, you'll have your work cut out ensuring that the line managers and colleagues involved are flexible in their approach to getting the balance right. As always, translating laudable intentions into practice will be easier said than done.

Is your HR team concerned at the prospect of being inundated with requests to work flexibly? Do you feel that there will be pressure to accept or reject more requests to work in different ways?

August is usually the height of the silly season  when the media is forced to search for ridiculous stories as little of serious note is happening. You know the sort of thing: crop circles indicate alien invasion soon; deck chair shortage hits Scunthorpe; HR killjoys ban three quarter length shorts (good) and so on.

But, I fear. this year the kick off has been brought forward to May with a lawyer warning of "unprecedented" unrest in the nation's offices, a Wally saying without equality "learners can't learn", and the launch of a Strictly Come Dancing package for the corporate market.

The two issues that seem to be preoccupying HR professionals at the moment are agency workers' rights and flexible working. Yes, it's the old red tape story. For a couple of decades employment regulations have kept HR in gainful employment and given the profession a useful lever to make line managers take them seriously. But cynics could say the red tape mind set reflects an us and them attitude: us being the management and the others being those pesky employees threatening to cost the organisation more money and take you to the cleaners at an employment tribunal.

On the other hand, you could turn this on its head and, instead of seeing temporary staffing and flexible working as a threat, try to see  them as strategic opportunities. This week a report by the CBI and the TUC called Talent not Tokenism showed how some firms are using flexible resourcing to their advantage. Hospitality company Botanic Inns provides employees with flexible working options and enhanced maternity and paternity pay resulting in lower staff turnover.  Even small firms (Beacon Foods, Oakwood Builders and Joinery, and mouse mat manufacturer Listawood) are taking into account the need for flexibility to look after children. 

Unfortunately the sad truth is that some HR manager's focus on the red tape reveals that they see the workforce as a liability? In other words it's the complete opposite of the HR cliche "People are our most valuable resort."

So the Royal Mail has turned itself around. Four years ago, almost 12,000 of its employees were absent at any one time. Since 2004, the group has reduced its absence rates from 7% to 4%, saving it an estimated £227m.

The government now wants the worst offending sectors for absenteeism to replicate the Royal Mail's absence management model, believing that the UK economy could save £1.45bn a year through reduced salary and temporary worker costs, and increased productivity.

But does one model fit all organisations? Would what worked for the Royal Mail really reap the same rewards in the NHS or central government?

Possibly not. For one, the Royal Mail spent £46m on health and wellbeing activities to improve attendance and in the past it has offered employees the chance to enter a draw to win a car or holiday vouchers if their attendance record was 100%.

Not all organisations have access to such a budget or the willingness from their top ranks to invest such a sum in proactively looking after staff.

It's also a question of creating the right culture. However much your organisation spends, unless line managers take charge of managing absence and create an environment where staff want to come to work - as the Royal Mail has also clearly achieved - then absence will continue to be an issue.

I'm with Ben Willmott at the CIPD on this one: "As long as incentives for absence are part of a whole package... they can create a buzz around the importance of managing absenteeism," he said recently.

After all, if the only reason your staff are coming in is on the offchance they might win a car, you need to take a serious look at your work culture.

How altruistic are those HR professionals working in the not-for-profit and voluntary sector? By the very nature of the organisations they are employed by, and the work they do on a daily basis, you would assume altruism would be second nature.

The call by two leading figures in the third sector for HR professionals working for larger charities to help smaller organisations with employment law and employee relations issues is to be welcomed.

These smaller charities obviously need help - the number of grievance case in the sector far outweighs those in the public and private sectors. And a lack of cash often means that in-house HR expertise is at a premium.

A new website that allows employees to rank their workplace was launched this week.

Work Rewired is designed to give a heads up for prospective employees interested at working in certain companies, using feedback and written reviews

Anonymous entries are permitted, which may allow for the website to be abused.

Speculation is rife among the national press this morning on how much ground Gordon Brown conceded to the trade unions at Labour's National Policy Forum in Warwick over the weekend.

With no official announcements from either the government or unions, it is up to the political and industrial correspondents to fill in the rest of us as to what was agreed. Unions have been pushing hard for more workplace rights and saw the weekend as a chance to really back Brown into a corner.

Depending on what paper you read, the new rights seem to be:

• Extending unpaid parental leave to those with children aged under 16 (currently aged six)
• Adult threshold for minimum wage lowered from 22 to 21. Adult rate is currently £5.52
• More public sector apprenticeships
• Proposals to make maternity and paternity leave more flexible
• Measures to end "bogus self employment" in the construction industry

Being an employment journalist is not always easy - but it is often remarkably so.

Stories you would struggle to invent just keep on coming. After the government race watchdog was itself accused of racial discrimination against its staff, and employees of a trade union voted to strike, came the news that staff at conciliation service Acas were voting over industrial action.

News that employees at BP are to lose their option of working a nine-day fortnight is an embarassment to the company and the government.

The policy allows staff at various BP offices in the UK to take every other Friday off if they work a set number of hours every fortnight. The oil giant is thought to be axing the benefit as part of a cost cutting drive, alongside plans to cut thousands of jobs worldwide.

BP has been held up as a shining example of flexible working. In 2003 it was named by the government as one of 50 model employers in its approach to work-life balance. The revelation that it is now ditching the approach is a blow to its reputation.

If it wanted to introduce a standardised policy across all its UK operations, why not level up instead of level down? The damage this decision will inflict to both staff morale and employer brand will be hard to measure precisely, but it definitely goes against the grain of most forward-thinking employers.

News that the Football Association (FA) has hired new employment law advisers would not usually register that strongly on Personnel Today's news radar.

But with FA chief executive Brian Barwick having just been given the push, the threat of more jobs to be axed and England's 2010 World Cup qualifying campaign about to kick-off, the timing of the annoucement is intriguing.

Law firm Mace & Jones has been handed a contract to act as employment law advisers until 31 May 2010 - two weeks before the World Cup in South Africa gets underway. This should be perfect timing for them to negotiate a payoff for current head coach Fabio Capello following England's anticipated dismal failure to get to the finals.

Capello signed a £6.5m-a-year deal in Janaury that takes him up to July 2012. The smart money is on him not lasting anywhere near as long as that. If the FA want to get rid of him, like they did with ex-coach Steve McClaren, then it's going to cost them.

Unless, that is, Capello plays away from home with a female FA employee, a la Sven Goran Eriksson, then the legal eagles at Mace & Jones will really be earning their crust.

The seeming over-confidence and intense demands of Generation Y (dubbed Gen Why?) is, to say the least, proving to be a challenge for employers.

There's a growing perception that this generation believes it can have it all and is not embarrassed to ask for it. Put simply, they want to get the job done on their own terms and, unphased by hierarchies, have a strong tendency to challenge managers. There's no doubt that this is resulting in a clash of values.

So it's time to really gen up on Gen Y and help managers understand the generational differences and not get frustrated by them.