Our Christmas Gift to you – your very own HR expert for just £99 a month!

· by Emma Browning
We are so confident of the service and support that our clients receive from our HR Oxygen Retainer service, that we are giving you the first three months of our HR Oxygen retained HR support for just £99 per month if you sign up in December/January. After the last few years of turmoil, we have seen a growing trend from our clients wanting an HR Retainer Service, which is why, in 2020, in response to the Pandemic, we introduced our retainer service; HR Oxygen. What is a retainer? A retainer…

Top 5 HR Questions from 2022

· by Emma Browning
Here’s our round up of the most frequently answered questions from our clients in 2022 and our responses. 1.Can unused statutory annual holiday be carried forward to the next holiday year? Workers are entitled to 5.6 weeks’ statutory holiday each year = 28 days; 20 days holiday and 8 days of Bank Holidays. The 28 days of statutory entitlement cannot be carried forward into the next holiday year in normal circumstances, although the Government has amended reg.13 of the Working Time Regulations 1998 to allow workers to carry over up…

How Stay Interviews could help you keep hold of your best employees

· by Emma Browning
I want to talk about the importance of listening to your employees. In HR, we conduct exit interviews when people leave the business to find out the real reasons for people leaving, as this may help us to identify and resolve any key issues in the business. But, in my opinion, the exit interview is often too late! In the current economy, we know how tough it is to find good people, therefore you need to know that your employees are here to stay, so I would like to introduce…

Top 5 HR Questions for November

· by Emma Browning
1.Is an employee who has exhausted their sick pay entitled to notice pay if dismissed on grounds of ill health? Where an employee has exhausted their sick pay, whether they are entitled to payment during their notice period is a complicated question. It depends on the amount of contractual notice compared to statutory minimum notice. An employee who is going to be dismissed on the grounds of ill health is always entitled to receive notice, and the notice you have to give, will be the greater figure of the contractual…

Could this approach solve your recruitment problems?

· by Emma Browning
With the ‘Great Resignation’ raging on, employers are going to have to get more creative in looking for talent! One solution is looking at retired workers – although new ONS data shows they’re leaving the workforce faster than ever. So, what do you, as an employer, need to do to attract older people, with their wisdom and experience, out of early retirement or retirement and back into your employment? The UK is experiencing an early retirement boom, with a whopping three in five people aged over 50 choosing to leave…

Do you dread having appraisals or reviews with your team?

· by Emma Browning
Call them what you want to, many managers dread “appraisal season!” Do you want to look forward to having reviews with your team? Whether you call them reviews/appraisals/PDR’s, many managers dread having to sit with each of their team to have the dreaded “appraisal” meeting, and that’s often because they forget that this meeting should just be about having a good conversation! Many managers are under a great deal of pressure and don’t have the time to prepare for these meetings or may not be confident in giving their team…

Why reviews with your team don’t have to be a chore (or a bore!)

· by Emma Browning
The frequent check-in. It sounds so simple, doesn’t it? So why is it so difficult to achieve and how can you make it a reality? In this month’s blog we look at what the businesses who have got it right, are doing.   The businesses seeing the most success from their review process tend to adopt four key approaches; 1.They build from scratch One of the most common mistakes we see, is a business introducing an appraisal or review process without employee or management input or buy in to a new…

Top 5 HR Questions for October

· by Emma Browning
Here’s the Top 5 HR questions you have asked us this month and our answers.  1.With the cost-of-living crisis – should we be giving people a salary increase? Many clients have contacted us with this question in the last month, and there really is no right or wrong answer to this question, it really depends on whether your business can afford to or not! If you have the cashflow to do so, you may want to consider a “one off” payment as a lump sum, or an uplift in salary…

Do I need to get an employee or a contractor to sign a Non–Disclosure Agreement (NDA)?

· by Emma Browning
Even if your company doesn’t have top-secret information, like code for a killer new social network or the recipe for Coca-Cola, you have other types of valuable information that need to remain confidential or private. It could be your customer list, your financial records, or ideas for a new marketing campaign. So how can you protect that information? Many people think that a NDA is the answer! What is a NDA? A NDA is basically a contract that binds someone to keep a secret. Its main purpose is to create…

What do I need to do as a business, if an employee is being sexually harassed by one of our customers?

· by Emma Browning
Firstly, take this seriously! Don’t brush it off because it’s a customer or a supplier, you need to investigate this matter thoroughly and make sure that your employee is ok. Such a sensitive matter needs to be handled with care and sensitivity and you should seek HR advice to help you manage this matter in the right way. The government has published its response to a consultation on workplace sexual harassment, confirming a new duty for employers to prevent sexual and customer or third-party harassment. This is likely to include…