The Bribery Act 2010 comes into force on the 1st July 2011 after being delayed from its original implementation date of March 2011.

Employers need to be more aware and understand how the law on bribery has changed and the impact that it will have on their business, particularly influencing practices on Corporate Hospitality.  The act sees the implementation of a unlimited fine for commercial businesses and a 7/10 year prison sentence and/or an unlimited fine for individuals.

So what is the Bribery Act?

Section 7 of the bribery act introduces a criminal offence for commercial businesses who have failed to prevent bribery by persons working for them or on behalf of them (the offense incorporates a person who is associated the commercial organisation who bribes another person with the intention of obtaining or retaining business or an advantage in the conduct of the business for the commercial organisation).  An associated person may be an employee, agent or a subsidiary.

The Act also introduces a new offence of bribing a foreign public official.

The Act does however provides a defence for businesses where they can show they have adequate procedures in place to prevent any person who is associated with the organisation commiting acts of bribery.  The Act does not prevent businesses from providing corporate hospitality.  The government have made it clear in the Act that it does not intent to prohibit genuine or reasonable hospitality, promotional or other business expenditure.  Provided that the hospitability is proportionate and is given to cement a working relationship or to demonstrate the organisations’s goods or services (connected with a legitimate business activity), it will not be prohibited.

There are  practical steps that a company must do in preparation for the Act, including reviewing key employment policies such as the Disciplinary and Whistleblowing policies.  Businesses will also need to ensure that they have adequate procedures in place to prevent bribery acts.

For more information and guidance on the Bribery Act download the full Act at http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/23/contents

A recent tribunal case now offers some practical advice to Employers when dealing with accrued holidays during sick leave.  The case is Khan v Martin McColl and the practical guidance that can be taken from the tribunal case is:

1. In order to bring a claim for accrued but unused holiday an employee has to have made a request to take holiday and that request has to be denied
2. Employers should consider paying an employee in lieu of unused holiday accrued in the last holiday year to deprive them of holiday pay claims for previous holiday years.

In practical terms an employee is not entitled to pay in lieu for accrued holiday during sickness if they have not requested that leave.

For more help and guidance on Pay in Lieu and Holiday Entitlements email info@hrva.co.uk

There is lots of guidance out there in the HR Etha now about managing stress in the workplace, but in practical terms how many companies take it seriously??? 

In these economic times it is more likely that more people will suffer with stress and depression… for a number of reasons, all of which interlink!  The situations that people may find themselves in are not just personal (with household budgets getting tighter and tighter, especially if a family member has been made redundant) but also,  for those employees who have found themselves as a survivor of the latest job cuts, the likelyhood is in some cases, they may well feel that they are being asked to do the job of 2 people when their own workload was heavy enough!! 

So, whether you agree or not I would advise, if you wish to manage employees productivity and have optimum efficiency, that you prevent, recognise the likelihood and manage stress in the workplace. 

HRVA has a guide for managing stress and it is available free of charge for the first 20 people that contact us.

You should have by now put in place your “Rules” for the World Cup….if you haven’t then here are some hints and tips of what to consider!

1. Make sure that you communicate to all your staff what you “rules” are for the tournament.
2. Be fair and consistant in terms of the annual leave you are allowing individuals to take.
3. If possible, and where applicable, show the games in the office – in my experience, this is a winwin situation - especially if you can extend the canteen arrangements or turn it into a “charity” event… everyone wins then! You continue to motivate your employees, they like you because you’ve allowed them to watch footie and the charity that gets all donations are a winner too!!
4. Remember to consider that not everyone is a football fan, so be respectful of those people who have no interest…maybe think of a way you could provide a benefit to them as you are to the football fans…

It is my experience that most employees who have had time off work for sickness return to work and continue working hard in their role but there are occasions when other interventions have to be put in place. 

A Return to Work plan is needed when an Employee has had sporadic absences, the aim of which is ensuring the individual returns to work with no more absences! Experience tells me that sometimes people can’t stick to the plan resulting in disciplinary action.  Consideration is also given to a Phased Return to Work where an individual has had more than 8 weeks absence.

NB: If you are have access to an Occupational Health service, I would recommend that you get their medical advice when dealing with any type of absence.

There are a few occasions when an individual is unlikely to return to their role meaning that the organisation has to look for suitable alternative roles in the organisation or as a last resort, dismissing the individual on the basis that they are not “Capable” of undertaking a role within the organisation.  Capability exits should be dealt with in a sympathetic manner and Employees should be offered as much support as possible during this process. As an Employer you should have a separate process for dealing with capability exits which will be similar to your Disciplinary Process.

 Remember – there are a number of legal requirements with regards to areas such as Disability Discrimination and special care should be taken when dealing with absence and pregnancy!

What is defined as Long Term Absence?  What should we be doing about it?  

These are just an example of questions I have been asked by managers in my years of working in HR and by their nature can be the hardest types of absence to deal with.  There are so many factors you have to take into account and my advice is to treat each case on its own merits but follow a fair procedure.

Firstly, I would define long term absences as absences that have been for more than 8 weeks and are either set to continue or will result in an employee having a longer return to work plan in place.  These types of absences would normally result in your having to conduct a home visit for you to discuss things like; general health and wellbeing, the prognosis of the GP, the employees progress and possibility of returning to work as well as reviewing support options, etc that the Company can offer to the Employee.  Obviously the introduction of the new “Fit Note” is a benefit to the organisation as the GP will be able to give more direction as to what the person can or can’t do when they return to work.  If you need information on the use of Fit Notes then please email at joanne.jinks@hrva.co.uk.

There are a number of outcomes from long term sickness absences, either the individual will return to work on a phased basis or for whatever reason they are unlikely to return the role they were recruited to do which could result in the individual exiting the company on Capability grounds.  

In part 5, and the final part of my Absence Management theme, I will discuss the “return to work plan” and the “capability exit”. 

Please share your experiences of managing absences by commenting on this blog.  Thanks.

Now that you decided upon the tools that you will use to monitor and measure the absence within your organisation, you can begin to review the types of absence in more detail.  In my experience, short term or sporadic absences are the ones that are harder to track and sometimes go under the radar but they are the ones that are more likely to follow a pattern and cost the most to cover!  Short term/sporadic absences are usually employees taking time off for different reasons with no underlying medical conditions and the ones where employees fail to provide adequate reasons for the absences (stomach bugs, colds, headaches, etc).  I am not suggesting that these are not real conditions or that employees are fabricating the reason for their absence, I think it is just important to ensure that you have identified trends so that you can move forward in a collaborative way with the individual to ensure that they attend work and are being cared for and supported. 

In these circumstances, it is always beneficial to give the individual the benefit of the doubt but I also advocate implementing an Attendance Improvement Plan.  Ensure that you set realistic targets for the individual (I would suggest that this is no more absences for a period of 1 month with a further review after the first month) and continue to monitor the situation in the normal way. 

 If you have absence issues in your organisation and want to know what steps you need to take then please contact me and I will provide you with a free 15 minute consultation.

Managing absence effectively is basically about ensuring that you have a clear policy in place that not only supports the business objectives and culture but is transparent to all employees and managers.  However, there are also elements of legislation that require organisations to provide its employees with ‘any term or condition that relates to incapacity for work due to sickness or injury’ including any provision for sick pay.  For example, the policy must inform an employee of their rights and obligations (e.g. an employee is required to inform their line manager by 9:00am that they are unable to attend work due to illness) and be supported by a procedure for managers that is easy to follow and not too time consuming.

An example of what a policy should include; details of contractual sick pay terms and its relationship with statutory sick pay; an outline the process employees must follow if taking time off sick – covering when and whom employees should notify if they are not able to attend work; include when (after how many days) employees need a self-certificate form or Fit Note is required and mention that the organisation reserves the right to require employees to attend an examination by a company doctor and (with the worker’s consent) to request a report from the employee’s doctor.

In my experience, the absence policy and procedure have been much of a muchness, the success of the policy is how its been implemented and excuted by HR and Managers.

The other thing to remember is that short term/sporadic absences are the hardest ones to catch and to deal with. 

If you have any absence issues you would like to have a chat about then use the Contact Me page and I can offer you a 1/2 hour free discussion about how best to deal with them!

Did you know that the average cost of absence per employee is £784 per annum? Multiply that by the number of employees you have and you will see the true effect absenteeism has on your bottom line!      Do you really know how many days your employees are missing?  Are you monitoring it?

Accurate measurement and monitoring are key elements of a robust absence management process and are the areas that most Companies neglect!  Why is it important? …  If you don’t know, you can’t take action!

There are a number of measures that you can use to assess the level of absenteeism in your organisation.  These are the Lost Time Rate, the Frequency Rate and the Bradford Factor.   Some Companies have tried to use the Bradford Factor, however I personally think that this method is more scientific than you really need.  I’m all for keeping it simple, don’t you agree!  All I want to know is how many days absence people have and for the reasons why. You can then begin to tackle it and help the individual spend more time at work, doing the job you are paying them to do.

Once you’ve decided on how you are going to measure the absence you need a robust and effective policy to compliment the procedure.  This is what I think is Step Two of effective absence management and is coming soon…

If you have any issues or questions on absence management that you need help with then please use the contact me page and get access to a free 1/2 hour advisory consultation.

Hello, Welcome to my new HR blog!

Over the coming months, I will share with you my experiences and advice on a range of Human Resource issues, in a simple and easy to understand way! 

I’ll be really interested to read whether you have different experiences or have found different ways to do things too!

This week I will begin by looking at Absence Management and how to manage this effectively within your organisation… If you can’t wait till the next time then please contact me for more information on Absence Management.