Snow meant 1 in 10 workers off today

That is the conclusion of an estimate of teh insurer, RSA after a study invovling 250,000 employees> See report here: http://tinyurl.com/39n447p

What is your company doing to put staff contingency plans in place as the bad weather continues?

Employers at risk with no Christmas party policy

Two-thirds of employers have no policy in place about standards of acceptable behaviour at the office Christmas party and last year 7 percent of employers reported problems arising through conduct at the office party. See full report here:
http://tinyurl.com/3y7yra2

27 staff compulsorily retired at Longleat over 65

Reports say that 27 staff aged over 65 years at the popular tourist attraction Longleat have been compulsorily retired all within a two-week period.

The dismissals take effect less than a year before the default retirement age of 65 will be phased out .

Although the TUC has expressed concern adn suggested that Longleat may be "one of the first" to pre-empt the removal of the default retirement age in this way, I suspect that other employers haev already similarly taken advantage of the present legal position to exit staff who are over 65.

Link to report on BBC site: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-11839091

Key points in the Equality Act

The new Act intends to harmonize, simplify and clarify discrimination law.

A new and helpful concept is that of "protected characteristics". These are: age; disability; gender reassignment; marriage and civil partnership; pregnancy and maternity; race; religion or belief; sex; sexual orientation. This has not really extended the scope of discrimination law.

By and large the Act applies the same characteristics of direct and indirect discrimination as in the previous law.

Direct discrimination is defined as follows:

"A person (A) discriminates against another (B) if, because of a protected characteristic, A treats B less favourably than A treats or would treat others."

Note that this definition means that the less favourable treatment does not have to be on the grounds of the claimant's protected characteristic. What matters is what is going on in the mind of the discriminator. This reflects the case of Coleman v Attridge Law where the claimant alleged that she was being treated less favourably becasue of her son's disability. This has widened the concept of direct discrimination to include discrimination by association. It also includes discrimination by perception. So an employer may discriminate where he treats someone less favourably because he thinks (wrongly) that they are gay.

Pregnancy and maternity are protected acts. The Act provides:

"A person (A) discriminates against a woman if, in the protected period in relation to a pregnancy of hers, A treats her unfavourably — (a) because of the pregnancy, or (b) because of illness suffered by her as a result of it", or if A "treats her unfavourably because she is on compulsory maternity leave", or " because she is exercising or seeking to exercise, or has exercised or sought to exercise, the right to ordinary or additional maternity leave".

There is also now a notion of "combined discrimination". This will cover where there is discrimination because of a number of protected charactersitics (but not marriage or civil partnership or pregnancy or maternity). E.g. the cases where older female newsreaders claim the discrimination they have suffered is based on the fact that they are older and female.

Claimants may still want to bring their single strand claims as well as their combined claims.

More on the new Act in my next blog.

Making paper tanks

So at the same conference at MAGNA in 2009 I described in my last blog, Geoff Liberman taught the entrie audience of 700 or more to jive. He did this by getting us all on our feet and showing us the moves slowly, step by step, finally having us all jive at full speed to Bill Hayley and the Comets playing "Rock Around The Clock".

There was an important lesson behind this exercise. I'll tell what it is after I have related another story about something that happened today at my home.

My 9 year old daughter has been able to make origami tanks for a few months now since she watched a video on the topic at school. Today she showed me step by step how to make them. I practised the technique and can now make them easily.

Thank you, Brooke for teaching me.

The lesson? Instead of telling people how to do something, show them. When I heard that from Geoff, I decided to think about how that applies in work situations.

I thought, "Next time I am mentoring a trainee on how to use a compromsie agreement, I'll show them how I amend some of the clauses I am faced with. I'll get them involved with as many meetings with clients and networking contacts as I can, so that I can show them how to run a good meeting, how to build rapport, how to use NLP techniques to make that rapport even stronger."

My daughter's teachings today reminded me of it again. She was giving me the same lesson (without realising it) as a man who has made many millions of pounds as a succesful bsuniessman and who was engaged to present pearls of wisdom to 700 BNI delegates at the annual conference at MAGNA, Sheffield.

How will you use this information? If a friend had told me these stories I'd be thinking, "What can I look out for when dealing with my staff that will enable me to show them how to do something, rather than tell them?"

Learn to show instead of to tell.

Food of the right kind

It was Geoff Liberman at the BNI Annual Conference at MAGNA last year who asked the 700 strong set of delegates: "Where is the most valuable piece of real estate in the world?".

Arms shot up into the air. Geoff patiently went around the volunteers. Answers ranged from Hollywood Boulevard, to Dubai. Gradually, all the suggestions were exhausted and we all sat there completely puzzled. Then Geoff took hold of his ears with both hands and said: "It's this bit right here between your ears."

Geoff went on to explain. 'With this part of the body", he said as he indicated from neck donwards, "you can earn $40,000, perhaps even $50,000 or $60,000 if you look after it and feed it with the right nutrition. But with this bit", he pointed to the head, "you can earn millions if you feed it with the right stuff."

The message was clear. Read lots of great books and feed your mind with good knowledge.

What it did for me was intensify my desire to read. I took up his recommendation to read "Rhinoceros Success" (on sale at the conference) and profited from its teachings.

This was a fabulous part of his presentation and made a point that will stay with me for a long long time. Ever since then I find myself asking poeple I meet what is the best book they have read on a particular topic and I have gone on to read wonderful material without having to search for it. Examples are "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu and "Resistance is Useless" by Geoff Burch.

Take Mr Liberman's advice. Read for at least 30 minutes every day and watch what happens for you.

Bonus schemes - how to save thousands of pounds

If you want to be sure that an employee who has worked during the relevant performance period, is not entitled to a bonus if he has left employment by the payment date, take steps to include an express terms in the employment contract to make that position clear. It can cost you dearly if you fail to do this, as illustrated by the recent case of Rutherford v Seymour Pierce Ltd .

Seymour Pierce Ltd (SPL) operated a bonus scheme where 40% of the commission earned by employees was paid into a bonus pool. Half of the anticipated pool was paid out at the end of the third quarter. The rest was paid out after the fourth quarter.Mr Rutherford was dismissed during the last quarter and he claimed for the balance of the bonus payment for the last quarter. There was no express term saying that a participant had to be in employment on the day of payment.

SPL argued it was an implied term of the contract that to be entitled to the payment, the employee had to be employed by and/or under notice of termination of their employment as at the date of payment of any award.

SPL lost in the High Court which refused to imply such a term. It simply was not necessary to imply such a term for the contract to operate satisfactorily. The Court put itself in SPL’s shoes and decided that if SPL had exercised its discretion reasonably, Mr Rutherford would have been entitled to the bonus.

Mr Rutherford was awarded £70,000, which was between the upper and lower limits of the available bonus entitlement.

What do we learn from this case?
Make sure you have clear wording in the employment contract or bonus scheme to deal with this situation.

Link to case

40 percent of workers will watch World Cup in working hours

According to a report commissioned by PricewaterhouseCoopers, 53% of employed males and 21% of employed females will watch the World Cup football matches scheduled during office hours. Over 1,000 workers took part in the survey.

5% indicated that they intend to view the games without permission form their employer or call in sick. The report comments that 9% will use annual leave and 11% will make use of flexible working policies to take time off.

There are just three months to go now until the event so employers should be making plans to cover the absences if they want to prevent disruption to productivity and services.

The games will not find favour with everyone and those less interested in football may be perfectly willing to pick up some overtime pay.

Alan Lewis, employment Partner at Manchester firm George Davies Solicitors LLP says, “if the results shown in this report reflect reality, businesses would be well advised to take a good look again now at their staffing requirements for the summer period and make sure that requests for leave or for flexible working by employees are made in line with their company policies, whilst balancing the need to keep staff motivated in this challenging economic environment.”

When an employer may say “Get yer hair cut”....

A recent Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) ruling has clarified the law relating to sex discrimination and dress codes at work and will make it harder for employees to claim successfully for discrimination.

In a case brought by a trainee police constable, the EAT ruled that the Metropolitan Police were not guilty of unlawful discrimination just because the detailed dress code rules for men and women were different. What mattered was whether the dress codes for both sexes were broadly similar in their intended effect and whether the sanctions for breach were the same.

The employee alleged that he was discriminated against because of his shoulder length hair. When he reported at the police training centre at Hendon, he was told that he must have it cut or face disciplinary action. His argument was his hair was slicked back and tied in a bun at the back of his head and that a woman in the same situation would not have been ordered to have her hair cut.

But the EAT held that the dress code had to be looked at as a whole, that if the code required a conventional standard of appearance and neatness, such a requirement was not discriminatory in itself, and that a difference in treatment does not necessarily amount to more favourable treatment of one sex compared with the other.

Said employment law expert Alan Lewis of Manchester-based firm George Davies Solicitors LLP: “This ruling in Dantsie v Met Police is important because it makes it clear that, although dress codes for men and women at work must be equal, they may be different. The important thing is that the same standard of general appearance must apply - for example, a requirement for conventional smartness - also the treatment of anyone who breaches the rules must be the same.

“But beyond that, individual aspects of the code can be applied differently to men and women; so for example a requirement for employees of a merchant bank to dress with conventional smartness could mean that a man wouldn’t be allowed to wear a smart dress to work.”

NOTE: This is not legal advice; it is intended to provide information of general interest about current legal issues.

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