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I previously looked at moving forward following redundancy, but I also wanted to address the financial impact of redundancy for employees as money worries and fear of not getting another job can have a significant impact on your health, both mental and physical.
Again, I would stress that taking control of the things you are able to control will be helpful in keeping you focused and not wasting your energy on those things you have no control over.
Unfortunately redundancy has become an all to common word and it has affected so many people in the current climate. I have personal experience of what this feels like and I am happy to admit it had an affect on my emotional wellbeing.
It is a fact when a person loses their job there is a whole host of emotions they may go through. Firstly, how the company handled the redundancy will impact how an individual reacts and how quickly they are able to accept the situation, remain positive and move on. Research has shown that the emotional impact of a redundancy can reflect the stages of grief people experience with a major loss such as a bereavement. These stages are; denial, anger, bargaining, depression and eventually acceptance. Helping individuals to move through the stages to acceptance in a redundancy situation requires an additional stage which is exploration (Blau & Devaro), which is situated after depression and prior to acceptance. Some individuals may find it difficult to move on from the depression stage and may need professional help and that is okay – it is okay to ask for help.
Are you an employer forced to make redundancies? Do you want to offer support to your affected employees?
If this is you, I may be able to offer that support – I am running a free workshop on the 11th September from 10.00 to 12.00 called Dust Off and Start Again – prepare for your dream role.
The government have extended the Furlough scheme to October and has added flexibility so that employees can get back to work with continued support for businesses who cannot yet offer full-time work. This is great news and some would say perhaps it should have been offered sooner. Below is the latest guidelines from the government about this new Flexible Furlough. I would flag here that 10th June is the latest date an employee can be furloughed for the 1st time.
A number of clients have shown concern over the issue of holiday whilst their employees are furloughed and the rules around this. The CIPD have issued their latest guidance which I thought was worth sharing with you.
Enforcement of leave for furloughed staff
Previously, it has been understood that organisations can require a worker to take annual leave whilst on furlough, provided that the worker is paid in full for the time. Whilst the updated guidance does not change this, it does provide further clarity. It states that if an organisation wants to do this, they should ‘consider whether any restrictions the worker is under, such as the need to socially distance or self-isolate, would prevent the worker from resting, relaxing and enjoying leisure time, which is the fundamental purpose of holiday.’ This could potentially throw up roadblocks for furloughed staff being made to take leave, however it does remain to be seen how this would be enforced going forward.
It is challenging times for both employers and employees at the moment – not something new but it is good to acknowledge this! I have received so much information, tips and advice from various sources and I thought it might be useful to share some of this with you in a drip feed fashion rather than information overload.
Over the last decade or so, there has been a massive swing towards thinking money = motivation. In many businesses, the feeling is, if you pay people more, or give an incentive of a bonus, then you will see an improvement in performance. And while in some situations incentive-based bonuses can work, they very rarely lead to long-term employee motivation and increased productivity. Instead, you get a burst of improvement, and then it all slips back down to where it was before. Equally, whilst money might be a factor in helping people choose jobs, it rarely serves to motivate them to perform better in their current one. This leaves managers pulling their hair out, unsure about how to motivate their employees to perform better. But the secret, known only to the great leaders and managers, is all in understanding what motivates the human mind. But what does that mean?
The Taylor Report is considered essential reading for Companies, small and big who have a workforces. While the review covered a few different topics, most of it was surrounding the recent controversies and ambiguities that have come up as part of the ‘gig’ economy. Rather than being about music, the gig economy is an environment where temporary positions and zero-hour contracts are common. This is something that didn’t really exist a few decades ago, but now has become almost the norm in many industries. Recent examples include companies like Deliveroo, Uber, Hermes and Yodel, many of who are facing difficulties in terms of their workforce, the status of their workforce and the way they are treated by employers. The Taylor Report focussed in on these issues and made some suggestions of what could be changed to improve the lives of workers.
I know what you’re thinking. Oh no – not another GDPR blog! But we’re almost in single digit countdown now, which means a lot of business owners have been running around for months now trying to work out what GDPR means and how they should handle it. But for some business owners, GDPR is still a complete mystery. So today, we’re going to go through some of the key principles of GDPR, and what you as an SME should be doing right now to prepare for it.
Having recently worked with a client who although had a three month probation for new employees, did not have procedures in place which lead to probation reviews being missed and employees passing their probation by default. This is a problem I have seen happen in both small and larger companies.
So is it worth putting in the effort to get a probation procedure that works in place and what benefits will it bring to small businesses?
