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A major change in legislation was announced yesterday with the Supreme Court ruling that Employment Tribunal fees were unlawful. The result being that employees will no longer be required to pay a fee to take their claim to an employment tribunal, leading to an obligation for the government to repay an estimated £32m to claimants who were unlawfully charged.
A common situation employers are put in is when an employee is off sick and requests the sick leave to be taken as annual leave. The main reason employees request this is from a financial perspective as generally, holiday pay will equate to more than Statutory Sick Pay or alternatively if the employee is still under the self-cert period they will not yet be entitled to SSP so will not be receiving any form of payment as with most organisations sick leave is unpaid until a sick note has been provided.
With the recent tragedy at Grenfell Towers in London and the evacuation of many other buildings in England that are posing the same risk, we are wanting to bring Fire Safety to the attention of businesses so hopefully you will be one step ahead of any incidents that may occur.
What is Work-Life Balance?
Work-Life balance can be defined as dividing your time between work and family or leisure activities. It is not realistic or rewarding trying to arrange your time so that you spend an equal number of hours working as you do relaxing and so work-life balance does not necessarily mean an equal balance.
Retaining the best employees is critical to the long term success of any business. Benefits of retaining the best talent include; product sales, customer satisfaction and high levels of organisational knowledge. Ultimately, retaining the best employees saves money from the bottom line on recruitment, selection and training. There are a number of ways an organisation can ensure they retain the best employees;
Tips for Team Building
In any workplace, the entire workforce help to contribute to the overall success of the organisation. There are a number of benefits an employer can reap from having a strong team such as increased efficiency, a culture of creativity and innovation can be created, positive working relationships enable employees to build on their skills and abilities from each other, trust is built upon and increased, conflicts are less likely to occur and if they do arise they can be resolved quicker and it encourages employees to work harder and take responsibility for their contribution to achieving goals and objectives.
Training is an important part of an individual employees’ development which consequently is a key factor in an organisation’s development and success. Training employees has a number of benefits; however, many organisations consider training and development a time-consuming, costly process which they do not have time for. The benefits, however, outweigh the costs and training employees is a worthwhile investment.
Within Small – Medium sized Enterprises employee relations can be harmonious or exploitive, or anything in between, or even change continuously depending on the various challenges SME’s react to. Positive employee relations are directly linked to higher levels of employee engagement and equally relate to productivity levels, enabling the business to increase its potential to achieve enhanced business outcomes.
Handling Difficult Conversations
Difficult conversations are a fact of life in any workplace, whether they involve a manager delivering difficult feedback, communicating change or discussing behavioural issues, or more everyday problems such as disagreeing with a superior, responding to bad behaviour or dealing with those coming into work late.
The purpose of an appraisal is to increase an employee’s performance and efficiency.
They are also intended to increase motivation, ensure that the workforce is kept updated
with the latest developmentsand inform them of the skills they will need to develop in order
to address change positively, and to ensure each employee is continuously striving to help
the business achieve its goals and objectives.
