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Helen Giles a HR specialist with particular focus on the charity sector, has raised some provocative issues regarding the employment tribunal process in a Times Opinion piece 4th January and again when interviewed on the Radio 4 Today programme 5th January. She writes:
“A major concern that perhaps hasn’t come out strongly enough is that the government is embarking on some major initiatives in an endeavour to stimulate the economy, reform the welfare benefits system and get long-term unemployed people back into work, and to achieve social improvement by involving community groups and charities in setting up and running social enterprises, locally run/free schools and so on. But the degree of employment regulation/employment law that has been introduced and the way that this law is administered by the Employment Tribunals system as it stands poses a major obstacle to achievement of these aims because of the costs and risks involved for employers in employing people generally, and particularly if they make the mistake of employing the wrong people, which is a very hard mistake to avoid all of the time.
In a nutshell, the issues are:
- The Employment Tribunals framework was set up in the 1960s as a simple and cheap means of jurisdiction in employment disputes. It has evolved into a complex system of legalised extortion, extremely costly to both employer and state (another unnecessarily heavy drain on public funds at a time when savings have to be found).
- The Coalition Government clearly has some inkling that there is a problem whereas the previous administration refused point blank to accept any need for a review, claiming that any reform of the system would lead to workers oppressed by hard-hearted employers being deterred from seeking remedy. Noises have been made about increasing the qualifying period necessary to claim unfair dismissal from one to two years’ continuous service. But this misses the point that many of the most vexatious, costly and troublesome cases are taken under one or other of the heads of discrimination, for which no length of service is needed – age, sexual orientation and religious and philosophical belief were added to sex, race and disability. 38,310 discrimination claims were lodged last year. It’s free to lodge the claims but employers have to pay legal fees from the moment they receive notification of the claim.
- The elaborate pantomimes that the law forces employers to play out when trying to deal with an employee’s poor performance or conduct for fear of a claim being made is severely restricting efficiency both in public and private services.
- Every year the volume of ET cases filed goes up exponentially – over a quarter of a million cases accepted in 2009-10, an increase of 56% over the previous year - so that the system itself can’t cope and in busier parts of the country it took 18 months for cases to be heard. Only 13% of these were successful in court. Two thirds of claims are settled out of court, sometimes because the employer has done something wrong or procedurally unwise but more often because the costs of fighting, irrespective of the weakness of the employee’s case, are prohibitive. The HR Director of a Housing Association recently told me that for the cost of fighting a case, which they won, they could have built three new family homes.
- No-win no-fee lawyers are shamelessly inciting people to submit claims on flimsy grounds because they know they can bully a settlement out of the employer on the eve of a case being heard, however weak the employee’s case. They know employers and their insurers (if insured) would rather pay out £25,000 for the employee to go away rather than £50,000 or more to fight the case in court, even if they are almost certain to win the case.
- I recently ran a Business Link seminar for small business people on how best to protect themselves against the perils involved in employing people. One participant told me that many of his small business-owning friends employ illegal immigrants cash in hand because although the penalty if caught is an unlimited fine and two years in jail, they see this as less risky than having workers on the payroll who are likely to exploit their limitless rights.
- It is going to be tremendously difficult for the Government to achieve some of its key policy objectives unless it undertakes a wholesale reform. The long-term unemployed about to be reintroduced to work constitute a massive risk for employers liable to have claims made against them when they try and part company with those who don’t work out. And the Government wants charities to play a large part in bringing about the ‘Big Society’, but charities always have to have some paid staff and the smaller ones are groaning under the burden, expense and risk involved in complying with an employment law system that has become so far skewed in favour of the employee, largely because there is absolutely no financial disincentive to pursue weak and opportunistic claims. Moreover, it is just very difficult to run an efficient workplace when employment law encourages people to present themselves as victims of bullying and discrimination whenever the employer justifiably tries to tackle their poor performance or behaviour.
- I have practical ideas of how reform can take place, for example every claim should be subject to a desktop assessment in precisely the same way as insurance lawyers have to certify the employer’s case as having more than 50 per cent prospect of success before they will underwrite it. Where the employee’s case is deemed as having less than 50 per cent prospect of success they should be advised that they will have to pay the employer’s costs if they insist on pursuing it. There are many others, including lawyers, who have all manner of practical suggestions. The general principle is that claimants must be made to bear costs if they lose cases.
- I have many true life astounding tales of the nonsense that gets entertained by the ET system, and the real costs to the organisations involved.
- Employment regulation more broadly is set up to undermine organisational efficiency. For example the TUPE (Transfer of Undertakings Protection of Employment) Regulations means that a service (say a social care service) often fails because the staff are so bad, yet when the service is re-tendered all the bad staff have to go with it, and the rest of employment law makes it really difficult to get rid of them. Or the regulation which states that when redundancies are being made, a woman on maternity leave has the automatic first right to any job that remains. This means s a poorer performing employee has to be kept in preference to a high performer just because the former has had a child. Or the ridiculous procedural lengths that have to be gone to before dismissing an underperforming employee – typically it takes a year or more to go through all the hoops before dismissing someone, so that employers often pay poor performers massive sums to go away – sometimes 100% of salary whereas in a typical performance related pay scheme the most someone can hope to earn as a bonus for exceptionally good performance is 10% of salary.”
Helen continues
“Statistical evidence, such as it is, can be found in the most recent Employment Tribunal Stats. There is no measurement in these or any other stats that I know about of the amount of time that is wasted by employers on dealing with workplace grievances leading up to claims, nor of the amount and sums of settlement paid to stop people lodging a claim in the first place. This information would need to be collected through interviews of a cross section of size and types of organisations in all sectors. Bigger businesses fare best because they can afford to pay people to go away rather than entering into the months’ of effort and toil involved in ‘fairly’ dealing with an underperformer, non attendee or bad behaviour. And see, for example, the Telegraph article from 3rd January about the £600,000 that the BBC forked out in the last year to settle claims, having had 33 of them.”
Finally, a resounding endorsement of her opinions comes in the form of a letter in today’s (5th January)Times from an ET judge of 22 years’ standing, who gives yet another level of analysis on how the system is not working as it is intended.
“What started as system of quick informal justice for workers at a time when there was no real protection from arbitrary dismissal has mushroomed into a bureaucratic and hideously complex quagmire of procedural and legalistic niceties, based partly on an enormous increase in statute law”
Helen Giles is Managing Director of Real People part of the Charity, Broadway Homelessness and Support. Real People’s award winning HR team delivers a comprehensive HR consultancy service.
www.broadwaysrealpeople.com
We just had a call from a women whose husband had been informed that he had an interview for an Admin job with RBS.
Using our name (360) he was informed that to help his interview he could obtain a full job description for £2.00 payable by credit card. Despite his wife’s concerns he, obviously being unemployed and keen to get a job, gave over his credit card details. Luckily his bank phoned him to query why £200 was going to be debited to his account and the transaction was stopped.
These fraudsters were using our company name. Under no circumstances would we charge candidates for job information or for arranging interviews.
Be warned!
A newly published research report from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC)
states that the cost of replacing a competent employee equates to around a year of that individual’s yearly salary. They say that this is an estimation of the costs associated with lost productivity, lost skill and the cost of replacing and training new staff.
The report predicts that UK businesses are losing around £42 billion each year due to lost talent and that the UK trails other economies in terms of staff retention levels (UK 10.4%, US 7%, Germany and France 5%)
Richard Phelps, Human Resources Services Partner PwC comments: “With many companies eager to maintain or grow staff levels as the economy starts to recover, it is crucial they consider the full costs of losing staff through resignation. The need is particularly pressing given that many employees who sat tight during the downturn may now be looking for new opportunities elsewhere”
Investment now on positive employee engagement and promoting your employer brand will clearly have an impact on your longer term retention levels with the potential to achieve significant savings. Here at 360 Degrees Advertising we are working with a number of clients on developing their Employer Brand and Employee Engagement strategies.
New agreement means a Midlands office for 360
I am very pleased to announce that agreement has been reached to acquire the business of specialist education advertising and marketing agency – AdsFab, from its shareholders – the University of Warwick and the University Advertising Consortium. 360′s existing education business 360 Education will join with AdsFab’s business to form 360Adsfab, to become the leading advertising and marketing agency for the education sector, providing a range of services covering recruitment advertising, course marketing, student acquisition, employer engagement and brand development. Clients of the new Agency include, Imperial College London, University of Warwick, Durham University, Essex University and University of Hertfordshire among others.
Located at the University of Warwick Science Park, 360Adsfab will also provide a Midlands office for 360 Degrees Advertising, adding to our existing London and Thames Gateway locations. Clients seeking a Midlands resource now have the option of a local service provision, under the Direction of Agency Director Mike Pickering and his team.
The new Midlands office underlines 360′s commitment, in these challenging economic conditions, to deliver insightful, creative and cost effective advertising, marketing and communications solutions.
Our new Midland office address is: 360 Degrees Advertising, Agent Court, Sir William Lyon Road, Coventry CV4 7EZ. Tel: 0247 6573888
Roger Juniper, Chairman
Apparently there is a direct correlation between the length of women’s skirts and the economy; the shorter the skirt the better the economy. Isn’t it time to be proactive and take the economy into our own hands – perhaps we can influence change by wearing shorter skirts? Obviously, in the interests of equality, men should wear shorts (although the effect on the economy hasn’t been proven where men are concerned).
Here at 360 Degrees Advertising the idea has been put forward and is awaiting approval!
If you have any other recession busting ideas that are printable let us know.
Anon
There is no doubt that today’s job market is a tough place to be and gaining employment is nothing short of a hard task. However for an employer, it should not just be about choosing the right candidate from the interviewing process. To secure the best worker for a company, it is essential to keep your workers happy!
I have a friend that has just graduated from a top ten-rated university with a 2:1 honours. She has a lot of work experience behind her and evidence of travel and other interests/qualifications on her CV. After two gruelling interviews with a digital recruitment consultancy firm in West London, she secured herself the role of Account Manager.
Although she was ecstatic to have gained employment in our current climate, my friend was very concerned with the number of hours the job entailed and the one and a half hour commute she would have to endure, across London twice daily. As the time drew towards her start date, she convinced herself that this was not the job for her; she had never wanted to work in recruitment or in fact, work for more than eight hours per day
Starting at this agency two weeks ago changed her pessimistic attitude. Being warmly greeted by the thirty other staff members on her first day and receiving helpful and friendly emails from a select few, put her straight at ease.
Although her employers certainly want top results, there is not hard-line pressure; in fact there is a camaraderie that one may not expect to find in a generally competitive business. Boundaries are set for certain achievements and they are realistic, with help always being at hand.
There is an active and lively social life; next week there will be a sports day in which the management will provide food and drink for all staff. Fancy dress regulations will apply, instilling an element or fun and comedy. This is a place where the motto is; that people really matter and being happy at work creates better results.
My friend now really wants to succeed in her new role, not just for herself but also for the whole team, who have made her feel so welcome. This atmosphere has secured her service, when otherwise she may have chosen to stay in bed, something she enjoyed very much in her days as a student!
Tanya
 Quite a lot has changed in 50 years It was once the man who brought home the bacon and the woman that cooked it. However times are changing. In a survey conducted by the Daily Mail, it was found that thirty percent of women earned more than their husbands.
It should be no real surprise. It has been found that more women go to university than men, get better results from school and graduate with better degrees. In theory, many are more qualified for the job. Of course, the fact that less women are taking time out of work to bring up children also contributes to the increasing number earning more than their husbands.
Subsequently men have to do more around the house; househusbands now run one in ten households. This not only challenges the gender assumption that men provide for the family but also observes a swapping of roles; women are not only providing for the family and men are completing chores and looking after children.
However men are still earning more than women when both are in full-time work, typically earning 20% more before tax. What does the future hold? Perhaps by 2020 we will see women holding doors open for men and more offering to buy the drinks at the bar!
Grazia magazine found that almost half of full-time mothers disliked not earning their own money and with over one third of marriages ending in divorce it is no real surprise. In today’s society, where a marriage is not life binding, it makes sense for women to assert their independence. Society has arguably provoked women to use their abilities to get out into the work place, where in fact they are able to do better than many of their male counterparts.
Many men don’t feel comfortable with not being the main provider, the typically masculine role. Woman’s having assumed this status has been recorded as leading to breakdown in marriage. This, along with some women giving up the idea of having children, is creating a serious change in society.
It is calling for more fluidity between women and men within their relationships but it is also affecting the work place. More women are making it to previously male dominated roles. Although employers may have originally employed a man over a future mother, with so many women acting as working mothers this philosophy has begun to change.
Tanya
Yesterday I spent a great day in the sun at the Farnborough Air Show, as a guest of Flight Global – the online partner of Flight International. Virtually all the editorial team, both UK and international, had been relocated to Farnborough for the duration of the show. I didn’t count the number of terminals but I guess around forty were set-up from which apart from continuing to produce material for the magazine and website, they were producing a daily news bulletin for the show. Impressive.
We use Flight International and Flight Global for our client – The Civil Aviation Authority. Flight provides a highly targeted solution when recruiting aviation and associated professionals on an international basis and underlines the continued importance of trade publications as part of the media mix, particularly when partnered with an internet product.
As an “aviation nut” I also enjoyed the opportunity to view the latest in products and technology. Whilst seeing the Airbus A380 and the brand new Boeing 787 Dreamliner going through their paces was impressive, what really struck home was the huge increase in the number of unmanned vehicles on display and the plans for unmanned combat aircraft. Will this lead to unmanned commercial aircraft? Technologically possible, but not for me thanks. I’ll keep to the human being upfront. It may not be statistically safer but if the computer gets a clitch…!!!!!!
Last week, David Cameron revealed the government’s decision to cut public sector jobs in an attempt to bring the country out of its current £952 million debt. By 2014, this debt has been calculated to rise to a whooping £1.4 trillion, a serious problem that is going to reap serious consequences.
The solution is to be a raise in tax and a cutting of government spending, including the axing of up to 350,000 public sector jobs. These jobs have always been renowned for their security and for many working in the public sector; the full impact of the recession will not have been felt until now. Is any job ever safe and what should be our concerns when looking for a suitable career?
This axing of jobs has been met with surprise and outrage by many but why? Looking back throughout history it is evident that social change has often affected jobs; creating them, dissolving them and changing them. In trying to solve this country’s debt problem, changes are again going to have to be made.
Due to social change the textiles industry, for example, lost its importance within British industry and had dissolved within two decades. In 1850, this industry had made up 60% of Britain’s exports. In 1959, The Cotton industry Act was introduced in an attempt to help modernize and amalgamate the industry. In fact, it resulted in thousands of job losses and by the 1980’s had signified the extinction of the textile industry in the North West.
 Miners Strike, London 1984 Under Margaret Thatcher, both the Mining and the Steel industry suffered many job losses. After 1984, British mines were gradually closed and British steel merged with Dutch steel in 1988. Thatcher believed, ‘no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first’. Privatising industries in the eighties meant that many people became unemployed and although some of these industries have since been nationalised, it is fair to say that in a life time, most will experience the effects of a recession.
History then leads us to question whether we should be training ourselves for just one career or whether we should be trying to obtain many qualifications, to secure ourselves against redundancy. With the Internet becoming more prevalent in society today, it is quite plausible that many more jobs will be lost as society adapts to social change and to technology’s more efficient and speedy service.
Graduates today are having a real problem. Many employers expect evidence of an individual’s commitment to working for a certain industry and work experience is often vital. For example, students that obtain a law degree, studying for a vocational course for a minimum of three years can leave university and have no guarantee of employment, even with respective work experience. In such a competitive society, it is not effective to be suitable for different industries; it is imperative to be focused and trained for one career path. However, from studying history we can see that this is becoming increasingly dangerous in an atmosphere where even the public sector is experiencing a cut in jobs.
Tanya
The Newport Housing Trust (NHT) create housing and lifestyle solutions for the over 60’s. They approached us in June 2009 following a recommendation from another of our housing clients, needing a new corporate identity.
With an ambitious corporate strategy, NHT had plans to expand and develop their business and felt their brand needed to reflect this standpoint.
NHT threw their doors open to us and we spent a few days with key stakeholders, including a variety of staff from all parts and levels of the company as well as valuable insights and opinions from NHT residents.
We conducted interviews and focus groups followed by a tour of the housing stock. We were invited into a home of a rather keen resident who showed around their property. All of this helped us build a clear picture of who NHT were and where they wanted to be.
The next stage was to throw everything we had learned around to build our own strategy to support NHT’s goals. This began with visual and word mood boards which became the starting points for very rough – and I mean very rough – logo designs. So rather than show you lots of scribbles that resemble a psychiatrists exercise, here are a few we did later.
 Early logo designs Designing a corporate ID is a journey of exploration. Not only is it important to develop something that best represents the company, you also need to ensure it works in one colour, through a fax machine, at teeny-weeny sizes and is loved by the Chairperson’s other half. So we kept going…
 These designs formed part of our first presentation back to NHT.  This rainbow design was becoming a clear favourite. All the above were created because of what people had said or said they wanted for the company. And with a company that listened to the residents, we held presentations back to the residents who had kindly taken part in the focus groups.
Now things were becoming interesting. We had a clear favourite but it had to be agreed by the board as well as Resident groups. We had to refine the design and show how it would look across a range of stationery and other print materials.
 Final Logo  Tenants Handbook Cover Once we had a logo and design style signed off, it was essential we put in place a set of guidelines to help NHT produce internal communications that were consistent and a true reflection of the brand values. These were concise and helped give clarity to a new brand that now sits firmly at home within NHT.
 Section of Guidelines
 Section of Guidelines  Section of Guidelines As with any new brand, questions will arise and we at 360 are always available to help and advise NHT employees as to how to adopt the guidelines in practical situations.
Mark
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