Time thief

A recent Croner poll suggests that 10% of working adults use social media at least once an hour during the working day. K3 managed services report that 64% of workers spend at least an hour a day on social media. By its very nature, social media draws the user in and brings others into the ‘conversation’. Social networks can be difficult to ignore – and a strong magnet for people looking for a reason to procrastinate!

Do you know how long your staff are using social media for in your time? What are the implications on your business? Some considerations may be:

• Is there a negative impact on productivity?
• Are core duties being ignored or neglected?
• Is there a negative emotional impact of a ‘post’ or tweet?
• Addictive behaviour – regularly checking accounts
• Is there a Health & Safety implication where your worker is online instead of taking a proper break?
• Is there a reduction in face to face personal or telephone contact as communication is done via social media, to the detriment of personal relationships?

Speak no evil …

Taken just as ‘time theft’, these implications may raise performance management issues which are further complicated if you have remote workers. However once you consider the content of some of the comments put on social media a whole new set of implications can unfold. The implementation of a good social media policy can help guide workers and protect the business.

Take, for example, a common enough type of post or tweet, where an employee moans about a bad day at work. Someone then naturally asks why, and your employee responds in less than glowing terms about their manager. This could then lead others to chip in with even more derogatory statements about the manager. This is now getting personal. It may be that the individual who started the trail clearly says in their profile who they work for, they may be linked to other work colleagues, their privacy settings may not be good. The manager being commented on may see the posts, a potential or existing client may see the posts. All of a sudden instead of a harmless verbal vent, these comments are publicly accessible to a wide audience. Implications now arise such as defamation, negligent misstatements, and reputational damage, not to mention bullying & harassment potential.

Case Law is building up around this and the boundaries around work & play and privacy are being blurred. What is clear is that the existence and implementation of a good Social Media Policy is of key importance.

If you would like some help putting yours together, give us a call – we’re always happy to help!

You can’t quite put your finger on it, but you suspect there’s something just not right about them for this role.

It may be that this person is just not the right ‘cultural fit’ for your department or organisation.  This can be a tricky one to justify or quantify, but hiring someone who doesn’t fit in with the culture of the current team can mean for an unhappy hire, team disharmony and a higher turnover.

What is ‘cultural fit’?

Ultimately, recruiting an individual to fit in with the cultural revolves very much around values. Values are what’s important; culture is how those values manifest on a day to day basis. If your values as an employer don’t mesh with your team’s, then there is going to be a clash.

Why do we want someone who ‘fits’ with us?

To put it simply, it means easier, smoother communication and management. They are more likely to respond in the way that we need them to, naturally. If you are a luxury brand, for example, your brand values are going to involve quality and style. You need to be staffed by people who think luxury is worth paying for. Someone who values thrift above all is likely to be unhappy in the office and not the most authentic ambassador of the brand.   

How do we spot the right ‘fit’?

First of all, start with you and your brand. What is important to you about how people are? Is it really important that your staff have a high regard for ethics or honesty? Do you need creativity and innovation? Or, as in our example earlier, do you need people who value luxury over price? What are your value deal-breakers?

Then come up with some interview questions that help you gauge your interviewee’s attitudes in those areas – for example, ‘What is your favourite luxury brand, and why?’ ‘What is the most creative solution you came up with to solve a day to day problem?’ Don’t just stop there though – interviews are about more than just words. Look for evidence of their values in their CV and their hobbies. You might even be able to see something in their body language or their choice of dress.

On a final note, don’t be too strict when judging and recruiting for values. If everyone is identical, you risk missing out on alternative points of view, new ideas and new ways of looking at the world. Opportunities and dangers can be missed by hiring a workforce that is too alike, so do allow for variations in personality. A strong culture can tolerate individuality!

If you need help working out what you value or who is the right recruit, talk to us, as we love helping you find the right fit!

This summary will cover the following:

• Statutory pay increases
• Parental leave changes
• Compulsory collective consultation for redundancy
• Other issues

Statutory payments

Statutory Redundancy Pay

From 1^st February 2013 a week’s pay, for the purposes of Statutory Redundancy Pay, was capped at £450 (from £430).

Statutory Maternity Pay, Statutory Adoption Pay & Statutory Paternity Pay

Statutory Maternity Pay, Statutory Adoption Pay (after the first 6 weeks)  & Statutory Paternity Pay all increase to £136.78 per week from 7^th April 2013 (from £135.45)

Statutory Sick Pay

Statutory sick pay increases to £86.70 a week from 6^th April 2013 (from £85.85) 

Employment issues you need to be aware of NOW

Parental leave

Since 8^th March 2013, employees have been entitled to 18 weeks parental leave (up from the previous 13 weeks) for each child. This parental leave must be taken in the first 5 years of a child’s life or, in the case of adoption, within 5 years of the adoption or by the child’s 18^th birthday. Parental leave is unpaid unless the employer chooses to pay and a maximum of 4 weeks may normally be taken in a year (per child).

Collective Consultation for Redundancy

From 6^th April 3013, where an employer proposes making 100 or more people redundant from one location within a 90 day period, they must conduct collective consultation for a minimum of 45 days (down from the previous requirement of 90 days).

Other issues that may be of interest to you

The proposals over the introduction of employee-shareholder contracts was overturned in the House of Lords in March so these will not be a feature of employment practice in the near future.

It is still planned to introduce that claimants pay an upfront fee for bringing employment tribunal claim.  It is anticipated that this will be introduced this July and a claimant will be required to pay to issue the claim and then again for a hearing.  There will probably be a scale of charges. Apart from asking the users of the system to contribute to the cost of the tribunal system the aim is to encourage people to look for alternatives, such as mediation, before going to the employment tribunal

That said, even if your workplace is quite relaxed and formality is not a requirement, there are other very good reasons for having a dress code:

Safety. If you’re running a construction site and you don’t have a policy requiring the use of hard hats, protective eyewear, gloves and steel capped boots, for example, then you’re going to be in breach of your duty of care. Likewise, the NHS, for example, require nursing and care staff to be bare below the elbow and restrict the wearing of rings for hygiene reasons.

Cultivating the right image. Ultimately, after safety it should be your business requirements that dictate your dress code. What do your clients need to see, hear and feel? Your customers probably don’t want to see their pension advisor in flip flops; but neither are they likely to want their creative designer in a black suit. They might not want to see a pub, bar or shop manager in a uniform – but they will appreciate recognising the service staff quickly and easily. When you’re deciding a dress code, consider the image you want to convey to your customers, and how you can use it as another tool in your kit when giving them the optimum experience with your company.

Team unity and culture. The way we dress is, after all, an outer reflection and expression of our inner creativity, attitudes and values. In an organisation it is also a very tangible visual representation of the attitudes and culture of the company. If you’re trying to nurture an open, creative environment but insist upon a uniform of grey serge, that disconnect is going to be apparent to everyone (and will undermine your efforts to build a great working environment)! So any dress code you implement should take into account your office culture and positively reflect it.

Before implementing any dress code, we strongly advise taking a good look at it to see if there can be any perceived or actual disadvantage to any of your individual employees on account of their sex, religious beliefs or disability that can’t otherwise be justified by safety or specific circumstance. For example, it is not discrimination to require industrial workers to wear steel capped boots when office staff don’t have to; similarly, it is acceptable to impose a higher degree of formality for customer-facing staff. However, if you ban all headwear to stop that guy in Marketing from coming in in his favourite baseball cap, your Sikh employees – justifiably – aren’t going to be terribly happy!

If you’re unsure about whether your current or proposed dress code may be in breach of sex, religious or disability discrimination laws, we’d be happy to take a look – better to be safe than on the sorry end of a potentially unlimited damages payout!

If you were recruiting someone to build a space station, you would most definitely want to ensure you chose the person who could do the job, wouldn’t you, rather than the more clueless but charming candidate who happens to be able to spin a good yarn. So, how do you make sure you hire the person who is best suited to the job, rather than the person who interviews the best?

Here are our top tips for hiring that star employee:

1. Get the interview right

As the interviewer, it’s your job to help the interviewee show themselves in the best light. You are, after all, trying to find out what they can do, not trip them up. Give the interviewee the best possible chance to shine by:

Smiling. A job interview is not an interrogation, so being friendly and open will help to set the right tone from the start.

Preparing well. We know you’re busy, and we know it’s time consuming, but planning a systematic interview process is really worthwhile and will save you time and stress in the long run when you’ve chosen the right person! Be sure to have a clearly defined person specification with your essential and desirable criteria. Prepare interview questions that properly address the criteria you are looking for – and take notes!

Using great questions. The best indicator of future behaviour is past behaviour, so ask about how they have handled key situations in the past.

Stretching rather than stressing them. It is fair enough to ask challenging questions – but be aware of that line when you cross over into stressing your candidates out unnecessarily!

Probing without getting personal. Questions can probe into candidates’ skills, expertise and experience, but do avoid asking too many, too personal questions. At best it will feel like to them like an uncomfortable invasion of personal space, at worst you could be breaking the law.

Listening. Let the candidate do most of the talking, and give them plenty of thinking space. Some people need a few moments to deliver a well-thought response, so hold fire on prompting them for a few extra moments.

2. Think about including a test

Selecting a candidate based upon interview performance alone may not give you the right answer.  There are, of course, plenty of jobs where spoken and interpersonal skills are incredibly important, but many jobs require a much broader range of skills. Have a think about the skills really needed for the position you’re filling and consider carrying out a test.  For example, you could ask a software engineer to do a short piece of coding, a chef to prepare some food, or a sales person to do a mock sales presentation.  This sort of approach can give a much better insight into a person’s ability to do the job than just a standard interview.

3. Consider including a psychometric test

Psychometric testing can be particularly useful if you want to assess candidates for managerial or senior appointments or candidates for appointments where there is a special requirement for the post – such as strong relationship building skills. These types of test are especially good at helping you assess how candidates are likely to behave, for example, towards a manager, towards their peers, and towards their subordinates. They will often provide a profile which should be discussed with the candidate to check validity, as they are self-perception questionnaires. Candidates also benefit from being given feedback on the profile. At People Puzzles we believe in them so much, they are a key decider in our choice of Consultant.

A note of caution though: they should be used very carefully, and should be overseen by properly trained assessors.

4. Always do a thorough reference check and ask for qualification certificates

This should go without saying – but it’s overlooked far more often than we’d like to believe!

We know coming up with good questions and interviewing isn’t always that easy, so if you need a helping hand, get in touch and we’ll walk you through the process to find some fantastic new team members.

A half-day training course tailored for small businesses

The Introduction to HR Basics Course is ideally suited to anyone responsible for the HR oversight or administration in a small business.  It will help you to understand the current essential employment law requirements, what records you need to keep and why, and how you can provide good administrative HR support to your Company.

The course will cover:                                                      

• An overview of the employment lifecycle
• Recruitment, selection and induction procedures
• Record keeping
• Performance management
• Dismissal and termination
• Absence management and the Disability Discrimination Act
• The Equalities Act
• An overview of the Family Friendly policies
• Other employment issues, including Health and Safety and Reward

Course details

14^th May 2013
9.30 – 1.00
Ashcroft Room, The National Theatre, Southbank, SE1 9EX
£275 per person

To book, email Helen

Last year, I was given a red rose by a colleague at one of our client’s, who explained that in Italy it is traditional for men to take flowers into the office for all the women (or so he told me!).   

Of course, being HR Consultants, our first concern is that we’ve identified a little sexual harassment in the work place (which means disciplinaries, warnings and general hassle tinged with terror!). Or, if the feeling is reciprocated, we might be witnessing the birth of a little office romance – which means bad news too, right? Office romance might be entertaining in the movies, but in real life it means nepotism, inappropriate sharing of confidential information, and terrible pay rise decisions, doesn’t it? Ultimately, it can seem to you, no good can come of Valentine’s Day flirting!

The thing is, most of us are actually quite likely to find a partner at work (not a link to a dating website, I promise!). After all, we do spend significantly more time at the office than we do at the pub (or at least, we hope you do!), socialising or meeting new people through any other means. Furthermore, any attempt by management to set rules or regulations concerning who your employees may or may not date is unlikely to be well received!

As managers, our main concern needs to be around whether there is any real risk to the business. Alarm bells should ring for you particularly if the relationship is between two people of vastly different levels of seniority – and especially if one is a line manager to another. In this situation there is a much higher risk of sharing of confidential information, favouritism, abuse of power, and – if the relationship ends badly – the potential departure of a good employee.

Where we have a strong culture of communication, we can encourage our staff to be up front about these things so we don’t all need to get muddled about love.

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!

Is it just for the pay packet? Are you one of the employers with the job they want? Or (and we hope we’re being facetious here!) were you the only one who would take them?

Or could it be that you have a reputation for being a great employer, and your workplace a place people want to be?

The last reason is one of the best ones, isn’t it? It means your employees are loyal to you, rather than the Wielder of the Greatest Cheque. It makes for a more productive, happier, dedicated workplace, with a lower turnover. The great thing is that it doesn’t have to be expensive – it just takes a little thought and creativity!

Here are a few ideas you could implement to start you on the road to being the most attractive place to work in town:

1. There’s more to life than work

You know that your employees are more than just the work they do – but finding a way to show them you get that will do wonders for their attitude to their work. Your greatest employees will be great because of what they do and who they are outside. Investigate ways of supporting your employees’ outside interests and desires, such as unpaid leave to do a course they want to do, or providing more flexibility for family time will have a low cost to you but will be valued greatly by the people who benefit from it.

2. Romance your employees

Google is famously a great company to work for, partly because they have a generous approach to perks such as offering free haircuts onsite, a free canteen, onsite medical staff and onsite laundry facilities. While you may not be able to (and don’t really have to!) go Google-sized with your perks, even a small business can take this approach. Buying all employees a small birthday gift, or arranging for a therapist to come in on a Friday afternoon so everyone can have a free massage, for example, won’t break the bank but will make employees feel valued.

3. Make your company a fun place to work

Your employees spend most of their waking lives at your office, so making it a comfortable and fun place to be will win you loads of brownie points. Little things can help to achieve this, too: for example, you could pop an Xbox in the break area, buy the staff cakes or biscuits every Friday, or encourage a more relaxed dress code for staff not seeing clients.  Why do your meeting rooms have to look like meeting rooms? We know of several organisations that have a professional boardroom for when they entertain clients, but have beanbags and soft chairs in internal staff meeting rooms. All sorts of simple ideas can make your business a fun place to work.

4. Find a way to listen to your employees’ ideas

Have you ever seen the show, “Undercover Boss”? If you haven’t, the basic premise is that the top dog (or someone close the top) of a big, household name goes undercover for a week, working with the employees at the coalface. Invariably the boss learns a few hard truths about the reality of the company, and we are given to believe that what the boss learns while undercover will spark a revolution in the way the company is managed.

You don’t need to go this far, but we do strongly encourage you to listen to all of your employees as much as you can. The people on the ground will usually have a very clear idea of what is working well and what isn’t – but it can be difficult for them to convey this to you. Simply saying you have “an open door policy” is not usually enough to trounce their fear of being the one to raise problems, or to break down any prevailing belief that they won’t be listened to anyway.

But if you can ensure staff have a way of voicing problems and issues, and enable them to see improvement as a result, it will help build morale and loyalty, create happier customers and will boost your business too!

Whatever approach you choose to take, the bottom line is that the more people feel valued and enjoy coming to work, the more likely they are to be loyal and do a great job for you. If you’d like a sounding board, or some help thinking through great ideas to make your office a fantastic place to work, get in touch!

We hope the answer is “none of them” – but given a recent survey that says 80% of people are unhappy in their jobs, the statistics are against you!

This blog on the most common career regrets did the rounds of our office, and we spent a lot of time chatting about them. Although the writer does round off his blog by saying that regret can be a helpful motivator (and it’s true!), we can’t help but think that if you can learn from other people’s regrets and mistakes, you should.

Forewarned, after all, is fore-armed, and if there’s a good chance that your employees are nursing or cultivating these same regrets, you can do your bit to prevent or minimise them.

Regret #1: I shouldn’t have taken this job for the money

Let us be clear that we are not suggesting that the answer to this one is to lower your employees’ salaries!

Instead, try and establish as much as you can at the interview stage the candidate’s real reason for wanting the job. Ask them how they got into the industry; why they choose to do the job they do; and, most importantly, ask them why they want to work with you rather than any other company.

This is important for you too – an employee who is with you because they want to be with you will be more dedicated and productive than an employee who is with you solely because you were the highest bidder.

Regret #2: I wish I had quit earlier

The author states that in his interviews, the people who quit their jobs to pursue their own interests almost invariably regretted not doing so sooner. One sales executive he spoke to said, “Those years could have been spent working on problems that mattered to me.”

What can you do to ensure that your employees are working on things that matter to them while they’re with you? Regular, ongoing, open conversations with your employees about their career goals and the opportunities available at your company are essential. Don’t wait for the annual review when the employee feels under pressure to justify their performance and presence to you.

Regret #3: I wish I had the confidence to start my own business

If you hire great people, and they really want to start their own business, there’s not a great deal you can do about it. However, often what people in this position crave is not necessarily the business itself, but what comes with running a business: the joy of creating something their own, the fresh challenges that a business presents, and control over their own working lives.

If you suspect your employees may be in this boat, can you give them greater responsibility? Can you give them a project over which they will have full ownership?

Regret #4: I wish I had used my time at school more productively

In the main, university graduates value their degrees and their time at university for reasons beyond job prospects. University education doesn’t train you for a job – it develops you as a person, helping you become the adult you are. It comes as no surprise then that people often look back at those years and wish they could have made even more of them.

Can you provide your employees with more opportunities for further development? Can you offer flexible working for those who wish to return to study on a part-time basis?

Regret #5: I wish I had acted on my career hunches

Not everything in life is logical. Sometimes we need to take a chance that might not necessarily make a lot of sense to the outsider to achieve great things.

Furthermore, so many workplaces now actively quash creativity and intuition by instilling fear of the negative outcome. Ever had a boss give you permission to take a chance with one hand, but with the other slap you with, “but if it goes wrong, it’s on you”? By discouraging risk in this way, creativity and hunches just aren’t worth the hassle.

If you can cultivate a working environment that encourages creative impulses and acting on intuition, not only are you more likely to have happier employees, but your business might benefit too!

Every growing business has a fantastic opportunity to build this kind of culture. If that is you, why don’t you chat to us about your ideas and where you want your business to go?

On Wednesday 21^st November  I joined a number of other business people to support Farnham Heath End Comprehensive School with their Business Back to School day.

Year 10 students (aged 14 & 15) had prepared for the day by finding a role to apply for, then completing mock application letters and application forms, as well as drawing up a CV.  On the day the students arrived, at school dressed and prepared to attend a 30 minute interview with one of the business people, followed by a 10 minute debrief with that business person on their paperwork & interview. 

With approximately 200 students participating in the event it took some arranging, but the result was a very informative, valuable and enjoyable day for all involved. Whilst nerves ran high in some, the students undoubtedly all got something positive out of the exercise, whether that be tips on their CV, the importance of a strong covering letter, feedback on their appearance or confidence in talking to a ‘strange’ adult about their abilities and how they wanted to use them in business.

The business people all had an opportunity to network at lunch and break times and all those I spoke with were impressed with the high standard of application and presentation of at least one if not more of those they interviewed. So high was the standard in some cases that  the business people would have happily offered apprentices or trainees roles had they existed.

Clearly the business people that attended, myself included, wanted to support what we see as a valuable opportunity for young people, however it is also equally invaluable for businesses too. It helps us keep in touch with what is happening in education, and be realistic as to what we can expect from school leavers, it also helps us influence those young people who are beginning to think about their working futures.  It was refreshing to do something different for the day but also challenging. I interviewed for a fashion designer, a pet photographer and 2 nursery nurses, others had a toxicologist, games designer, primary school teachers, pharmacists and midwife. Some students were keen to talk, others much less so – but all had something to offer. Delivering meaningful constructive feedback to a 14 or 15 year old again comes with responsibility.  This combination of requirements certainly challenged and refreshed my questioning, interviewing and feedback skills.

I sincerely hope this event continues to be held & supported at Farnham Heath End School and also that local business continue to support this another similar activities.