Transcript
Debrah Spurway
Hey, Chris.
Speaker 2
Are we doing all? Right.
Speaker
Very good. Hello.
Hopefully, hopefully the microphone on Mic end lasts forever, but thankfully everyone. Who’s here? Will? Be here to listen to you guys. Thing is crossed. The recording of this is going to be live for everyone later on, so if you missed, if you missed this, you need to leave. Then obviously you can come back and watch the. The replay later, Charlotte Sherratt Deborah, introduce yourselves to the world. Who are you? Where do you work? Tell.
Speaker 2
Us what your superpowers are?
Debrah Spurway
Superpowers. Well, I’m Deborah Spurway and we are part of a an organisation called the HR department and we provide HR and employment law advice to small to medium sized employers. And I suppose our superstar, this is trying to keep employers out of trouble and preventing people problems. Christy gone quiet again.
Chris Simmance
And that’s a good thing to do. I I think I’ve worked with you guys for for for a good while now and and we’ve worked together in the as part of the OG Centre for quite a while to as as partners as well. You’ve you guys work with a few of the agencies that we that that we look. After across the. Country and what’s your? What’s your role in the in the in the organisation, Charlotte Sherratt
Speaker 4
So I work. In up in the Midlands, I’ve been here for nearly. Four years and before that, I worked.
Speaker
For a very large.
Speaker 4
Supermarket chain doing HR for them so I have a bit of a corporate background.
Speaker 2
Do you do you would.
Chris Simmance
You would you rather be be focusing on the Aldi’s? Or the agencies.
Speaker 4
Definitely the smallers. It’s much nicer working with their SME’s than working. For a big corporate, yeah. They’re a bit more faceless and nameless.
Chris Simmance
Very true, very true. So as with every single webinar, any questions, please do pop them in the comments. We’re live on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube and Twitter. So if we miss you on the main feed, we’ll hopefully catch you elsewhere.
Debrah Spurway
You keep cutting apples.
Speaker 2
No. Yep. Don’t worry about that. We’ll keep going. So tell us all about the types of paperwork, guys. What?
Chris Simmance
What does everyone need in order to keep both the employer and the and the employee kind of safe, happy, comfortable and? Sort of derisked.
Debrah Spurway
I’m I’m going to kick off here on the basis of keeping us all happy is is probably the really good way of saying it on the basis that employers get very unhappy when their employment documentation isn’t fit for purpose and then they find themselves having to jump through hoops that they didn’t know would even be a hindrance to them. So the first thing that we need. It’s our employment contract and our employment contract details, statutory rights, it details express clauses, sorry, statutory clauses and express clauses, and these things are very important because we we must make sure we’ve got. An agreement between the employer and the employee that actually is fit for purpose on which, more importantly, the employer can make decisions. Then there’s more paperwork now due to the GDPR that came in in May 2018. Gosh, that’s dragging back my mind. Now our employees must.
Chris Simmance
Horrible climate, horrible time for agencies, I’m sure. It’s awful for you guys.
Debrah Spurway
Yeah, we must have data protection policy and more importantly, we must have a privacy notice. For our employees. Now this is important because it’s all about how we store data and how we use personal data, so we must inform our employees who may be made aware of their personal data. So this you know, it’s difficult to pay. An employee has good payroll if we don’t know their name and. Yes. So having having a data privacy notice is important so that we can share data with other people. So if we were giving one to our clients, it would say I’m going to be sharing your data with our outsourced. Our provider, OK. You must have right to work cheques, evidence, so nobody really wants to spend £20,000 per employee when the border force come trundling into the office and say this person doesn’t have the right to work in the country and therefore you’re gonna get a big fine slapped on you and that’s £20,000. Person so you must be able to provide evidence that the person has got the right to work in the country. This is detailed in their employment contracts and should that status change if people are on visas, et cetera, then obviously people’s employment would need to be brought to an end. I think an interesting one there because we do get quite a lot of visas that lasts for a particular time is. Make that employment contract a fixed term because it will automatically come to an end when the person’s right to work in the country has come to an end.
Speaker
Sorry to.
Chris Simmance
Interrupt on that. So with digital agencies, quite a lot of people work remotely. They work across a huge area, so some agencies have got staff in completely.
Debrah Spurway
Yeah, you went quiet. I didn’t hear your question.
Chris Simmance
Far-flung regions of the world. How find employment law works across different jurisdictions? Do you need the? Would the agency in the UK need to make sure that that that kind of right to work was applying in the UK if the person still lived in America or something like that?
Debrah Spurway
No, it wouldn’t be a a right to work in the UK if they were based in America. And this is where people now we live in this new world of, you know, we can work anywhere. People get a bit confused and and think that they’re employing somebody in the UK, but they’re actually going back to live in Spain. They still want them to work for them. So what the what the employer needs to think about. Is more what is. What are the? What are the things important in the jurisdiction of Spain? And that will be about the. You know the local taxes and everything else that. They have to pay.
Chris Simmance
- Well, thank you.
Debrah Spurway
So not not about.
Chris Simmance
The question that came up with an agency, the. Other day actually so.
Speaker 2
I thought I’d throw it in my phone.
Debrah Spurway
I think right to work in. Any country is probably some reason, but you know we wouldn’t be able to give you the details of those, but I’m sure that we all know you used to have to get a green card to go and work. And live in America. So I guess it’s the same sort of thing. In in many countries. What else do we need? We do need to have a disciplinary and grievance policy. This is both helpful to the employer on the basis that again they may need to make decisions based on the employment, the platform of employment documentation that we’ve got. Storing data is really important and I’m flagging this one up because many employers are experiencing employees making. Data subject access requests. And that means that anything that an employee’s name or initials is in nicknames they can, they can request that, and that will come from the information. Commissioners process to to actually achieve all of that. So storing data is really important and what one top tip is never write anything down that you wouldn’t want to be heard or read in a. Tribunal. I remember a client once saying in the subject bar. How do you sack an employee? Well, that in the tribunal. If it’s if exposed, could say that you’d already predetermined the outcome of. The statutory process that may need to take place, so just a word of warning to everybody. Even your whatsapps even your text messages, if your business owners and you run it through your impersonal phones, it could be that the employee might request access to your personal phones that might have their names in it. So think a little bit about that. We have one recently where two business owners. It was deep, the solicitor deemed that they had been running their business through their personal phone, so it was intrinsically linked and they had to provide all the messages relating to. That employee on that.
Speaker 2
How how does?
Chris Simmance
That work, conversely, if an employee uses their phones to do work related things, I don’t know freelance work or something like.
Debrah Spurway
Frightens me. To death at the. Fact that people use their own telephones. I mean freelance. There’s a whole different story because we wouldn’t be providing them, but it’s about employees. So whatever an employee is doing on their personal phone, you know the employer needs to think about security. You know what information they’re passing backwards and forwards as part of using their, you know, bring your own device to work. Some people have those sort of policies, but they make them quite rigid around it. So. I an employer can’t go to an employee and say I wanna see what you’ve put on your phone because they’re not. They’re not a data controller or a data processor for the purpose of the business.
Speaker 2
Yeah, I I was. I was coming at.
Speaker
And I’m.
Chris Simmance
It more.
Debrah Spurway
Not accusing PR expert.
Chris Simmance
Yeah, I I don’t. I still don’t think there is one. And I was coming at it from the perspective that if you’re. Doing something nefarious as an employee and that would be something that could break your contract with the employer could could the employers solicitor ask for the data and the phone of the employee because it seems like they can for the employer.
Debrah Spurway
No, it’s it’s it. It really is about the employer being the the the data controller of information about them personally, but unfortunately not. You’d have to have the text forwarded on from somebody else that felt the person wasn’t doing well, and then you might have a bit of evidence that you could use to say. That they were breaching the contract.
Chris Simmance
Well, that makes. Fair enough. And another curiosity quelled for me.
Debrah Spurway
We generally recommend the social media policy, and this came about way before GDPR, on the basis that a lot of problems that happen in the workplace and a lot of things we come up against. Is grievances that relate one employee to another because of things that they put on their social media that might link to the employee or they’ve done silly things? A query yesterday is is. Is one of my colleagues asking how can we stop employees of a business that actually does a lot of work with high profile. Celebrities from taking photos of them and then posting them on their social media. You know if if you know if you work in particular industry types, it’s important that you have control as a business on somebody else using what could be deemed confidential information about your business, what you’re doing and they’re posting it on their own social media. So often I would recommend to people. It’s quite a good policy to have, IE it will say in it and you can’t just post what you like about the company in some sort of words.
Chris Simmance
And if you. Work with a partner like yourselves. Is that are those kind of? Things that you can help and. Then they can be nuanced by the business individually. Is that something that that you, I’m I’m guessing else is very clearly.
Debrah Spurway
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And and that’s why Charlotte Sherrattotte and I chatted. Through yesterday, you. Know what? What are the real? The minimum platform of employment documentation you. I mean, you could go into rafts of policies. I mean, we we as a an A country we haven’t just had a pandemic and Brexit we’ve got new social movements, we’ve got mental health and well-being, we’ve got menopause sitting up there. There are so many employment bills being discussed at the moment, you know, employers don’t know what to to do. First, because they go, gosh. I’ve done that. Ohh I haven’t. Done that, and do I need to do? It so it’s about having enough employment documentation to be able to make those decisions and act upon them, rather than perhaps working in the NHS and just having rooms and rooms of policies that aren’t particularly required if you’re sensible.
Chris Simmance
So, Charlotte Sherrattotte, if you’ve got all of these documents, so let’s say you do one now, then another another month and another. Another month. Is it better to just do them all in one go because there’s stuff here that you’re mentioning that I’ve not thought of ever. And I’m sure I didn’t have that policy when we were running the agency may well have done, but probably didn’t. It might well be a newish thing or something. Like that? How? Do you stop it becoming less impactful since you’re having to keep? Adding more.
Speaker
So I would really say.
Speaker 4
So with employment contracts and a little known fact because they snuck in during literally during the pandemic is you should employ if you’ve got anyone work for, your employee should have a contract on or before their. First day so. It used to be you had like a month to get get round to getting it done. Nowadays you need to get that contract needs to be day one or before. With the other. Stuff that Deb mentioned earlier. Ideally you’d want it ready for when people are working for you because you know you want to set up your stall of. You know, this is if things go wrong. This is what we are going to do if things go wrong. You this is what you know you can expect from us added to the employment contract always makes employees feel more part of an organisation if they kind of. Know where they stand. You’d be surprised. Number of people who don’t feel secure in their because they don’t have a contract. You’re like, oh, but I’ve known him for ages. It’s fine, but actually you having that black and white really does make people feel better. The same stuff like, you know, getting the privacy notice, getting the data protection stuff that’s kind of. You’d want ideally want that done early on, because. You need to. Have that information for the employees, but things other things. For example, I know don’t mention like a mental health policy. Those are things do not panic if you don’t have them. Day one. They’re definitely stuff that you can roll out kind of as your business grows or as you know, you take on more people or you know, if you’re a one man band. Do not be worried if you don’t have your own. Mental health policy. You know nobody. If you went to a tribunal, there’s two of you working there. No one’s gonna expect you to have a rigid mental health policy, for example, but there are definitely stuff that in HR department that we do day in, day out for our client. You know quite. Longer call and say we kind of want to do something. What? What can we do? And then we would always do something really bespoke. So like we talked about the social media policy, you know, if you’re gonna be working with celebrities, it’s gonna you’re gonna want it far more rigid than. If you’re a factory making parts for. A car. You know, you’re very unlikely. These celebrities in in that that situation that Facebook and Twitter, Instagram. They get. You know, Snapchat get a lot of people into a. Lot of trouble.
Speaker 2
And and I guess when you work with.
Chris Simmance
An agency or needs. Small business, it’s it’s kind of where you guys come in a bit like when I ask. That superpower, it’s a pretty. Big superpower to be able to kind of diagnose what you need more free, more readily than that’s maybe something else because. Maybe you’re a tiny agency of five staff, but four of them are in different parts of the country and you’re working really sensitive data. You need something very much more focused than three people working together in a small office just down the road, and they’re all, you know, friends or married or something.
Speaker 4
Yeah, definitely. And this is where we always recommend straight off the bat, it’s having that disciplinary grievance policy. It’s one of those that’s be like car insurance. You kind of you need. It, but you don’t want to use it. UM, because actually, if if something does go wrong even with friends family, you know, relations if things go wrong, it’s nice to have something black and white you can stand behind and say this is the process we’re going to follow and. We’re gonna do things properly.
Chris Simmance
Yeah, and and and we. Did a webinar. To go with the the insurance firm risk box. And what they were talking about was employer liability insurance, press and indemnity insurance and things like that. And part and parcel of getting the employer liability insurance. Obviously, you’re not gonna have a very good insurance policy if you haven’t got any employment contracts that are up to date and things like that. So these two? Things go quite readily hand in hand. That’s it’s in.
Speaker 4
Yeah. And actually that’s a a nice thing to to point out with the insurances and stuff is you. You’ve got to kind of without scaring everybody listening in and watching is that, you know, you’ve got a risk whenever you are interacting with the public and kind of putting out job adverts and and starting to look at employing people that anyone can make a claim at tribunal based on protected. Characteristic. So you know, we’re seeing it more and more as you know, the climate changes.
Chris Simmance
I’m gonna put my hand. Up and say can. You tell people, including me. What?
Speaker 4
Yeah. So there are nine areas and they cover anything from gender, from sex discrimination, from disability. There’s a whole raft of things where. Full full list but basically. You know, race, all those sorts of things come as a a particular characteristic. If somebody feels that they are being discriminated against and treated, you know less favourably than others because of when those characteristics, they can still go to tribunal even if you didn’t employ. Them so you know if they feel that you know your job adverts for is is for. You know the example I always use is is for a barman. You know if you have a a, a pub or a bar, you’re looking for a bar person ideally rather than a bar man, because that would exclude people of non binary that would exclude females and you know it’s becoming more. More common for people to try and take stuff tribunal. Even if you didn’t interview them. So it’s just a when you’re getting all your paperwork it in check. It’s just a thing to have in the back. Of your mind is. You know, treat everybody favourably if you’re not sure, ask the question. We had a client recently who turned down somebody for a job because they the the. Girl was in a wheelchair. And all of their toilet facilities and break rooms upstairs. But what they didn’t do was ask her if she was, you know, used the wheelchair full time or if she was able to get out of the wheelchair. They said no to her for the job. Turns out she only needed it, you know, during the day to kind of go A to B. But actually she had limited mobility and could have used the stairs to use. The toilets. But they’ve made that assumption without even asking her the question. So that’s one that, you know, you may well see in tribunal because we. You made a silly a guess and it did not pay.
Chris Simmance
I mean the. Assumption being the mother of all mess up, she. Said. And So what? What?
Speaker 4
Yeah, it’s just. Yeah, when you’re doing the paperwork, it’s just another thing to to consider, really. Just to keep you safe.
Speaker 2
What? What?
Chris Simmance
What other things do we need if? We were to look at like the whole shopping list, Deborah, I know that we’ve probably got about halfway through your shopping list. Before we went off. On a on a tenant list there.
Speaker
No, I think.
Debrah Spurway
You’ve you’ve pretty much got it. So just in summary, an employment contract, a privacy notice, a data protection policy, disciplinary and grievance policy, you must do your right to work cheques. And we recommend a a social media policy. That’s that’s a good platform of documentation for a small employer that will give you the ability to make decisions and use documentation under which processes can be followed. So you think that’s your compliance level really that’s that’s your compliance level, that’s a, that’s a very good entry point. And then go on to think, you know, do I want to give benefits, do I want to have? Some additional policies. So. So that’s really your compliance level?
Chris Simmance
Question question that I think a lot of agency people will probably ask at some some point either in their head or out loud, hopefully out loud to someone who’s a professional and most agencies start as a one man band or by themselves. In most cases, when you hire. Your first member of staff usually. You just download a boilerplate contract and. Away you go. Eventually you have several staff, but all of them have a version of a different contract and eventually you go. I need to be. Professional. I need to speak to someone.
Speaker 2
How do you normally.
Chris Simmance
Tackle that kind of four people on four different. Versions of more. Or less the same. Contract but. Not the right one.
Debrah Spurway
I mean, we do a lot of free reviews of employment contracts for clients to see what what they’ve actually got and is it still fit for purpose? I think the most important thing is don’t reinvent the wheel when it’s there. Charlotte Sherrattotte was talking about new legislation that just slipped in in April 2020 when we all have bigger. Fish to fry with the pandemic and that was the large called the good work plan. The largest piece of employment legislation that had taken place for many, many years. So two years down the line, when we’re reviewing reviewing employment contracts for clients, there were certain clauses that had to be added into contract types. So they’re updating those however. They didn’t need to have them in the contract clauses for the existing employees, but they needed to be aware of, you know, what’s coming up for new employees. So if you’re doing a review of three or four different contract types, I mean, I’ve done this when you know I’ve worked for the clients in you know, Smithfield market and they’ve come. You know, the bit 50 years old? Some of these contracts. But really, what you’re trying to do is is make sure it’s got the minimum amount it needs. Generally, when people want to change a contract, it’s because they either want to change some terms that they wanna look at how they redo their hours. You know, people may be asking their contracts as you work in London War. Five days a week, 9:00 to 5:30. But actually, now you work two days a week at home. So it’s, you know, those those sort of things can be dealt with through a contract amendment letter instead of creating a whole, a whole new one for employees, because then you have to go into consultation so that you know Jack John. Bill and Amy’s contracts all look the same when actually it might not be required.
Speaker 2
OK, so I.
Chris Simmance
Think that that probably lays some concerns that I think a lot of agencies will. Have, but it does sound like a review is a sensible thing to do anyway, because there’s probably some gremlins in there from a downloaded boilerplate contract that happens to have US jurisdiction or information or something like that because you googled it.
Speaker
Looking from.
Speaker 4
There’s no harm in, you know we, you know, if you’re you get a nice shiny new contract template of of issuing new contracts, people. You just gotta make sure we’re not changing their terms. So if somebody did used to have 25 days of holiday, make sure you haven’t suddenly just given them 20 by mistake, but having everybody on the same. Type of content or same style of contract. It doesn’t hurt.
Speaker 2
Yeah. So we’ve talked about.
Chris Simmance
What we need, we know we need lots of contracts and various different things in contracts and stuff like that. I’m guessing some of this. Some of these policies can be wrapped into like a handbook or something like that or.
Speaker
Yeah, I.
Debrah Spurway
Mean people can.
Chris Simmance
Or can they be referenced to a hamlet?
Debrah Spurway
They they can. You know, we’re moving forward in the world of technology here, so most people are, you know, keep them on a a drive that people can access. Some people have HR information systems so that employees can book their holidays, reference their sick nurse, keep all their pay details. And and employees can keep other things on such platforms, such as appraisal notes 1 to 1 notes, et cetera. So I think it’s more, sorry.
Speaker 2
Sorry. No, no, I I’m. I was just I.
Chris Simmance
I I I. Was thinking you. Know you’ve got all these contracts in place. You’ve got all the things, the paperwork bit, but there’s there’s stuff which we all know a bit, a bit like the assumption around the wheelchair thing that you’ve got an obligation to do or not to do certain things. So as. An employer what? What are those like? Some of the key? Kind of obligations that you need to be aware of that might not be just in the black and white of a contract.
Debrah Spurway
I suppose this looks at. You know your obligation. Charlotte Sherrattotte already said. You gotta have your informal contract by day one. Now you know we have the auto enrolment pension, you know the pension pots got smaller, the government forced us as employers to pay into our employers. Employees pension, they have the right to opt out of it, but they must be reminded every three years that they cannot be. In so, pensions are really important when you’d be surprised how many small businesses are still out there and they haven’t sourced out their pensions. We’re not pensions experts, but we do work with some experts who’ve managed to stop a number of fines. Pays paid is very important. You know that you have a big obligation about that. And how you’re recording it in real time information and you must be abiding with the national minimum wage. This changes April the 6th every year and we must be aware of what those rates are changing. Particularly if we, you know, say to somebody, I need you. To work more hours. But I’m just, you know, paying the same amount of money. They could be deemed that they’re working more hours and they’re actually then. Getting less than the national minimum wage for the hours. That they’re working now. In reality, people get paid a salary. And they tend to work. They tend to work the number of hours it takes to do the job in many types of industry. Types, but I think the the important thing there is to be absolutely certain that you you meet the national minimum wage, especially if you’re just starting an agency and you know money’s tight. But we wanna take that next step and we, you know, we wanna bring somebody on. Family leaves very important big obligation. I mean, we’ve got all sorts now we’ve got. Well, we used to be. Go on maternity leave and we got adoption leave now. We got shared parental leave so they can share it between the you know, the the child’s parents. Then we’ve got paternity leave then we’ve got. So there there is a huge amount, but if we stopped anybody from taking that or or took any decisions against that person to their detriment because they asked for it, it’s a big obligation. We must provide the family leave. What else is important to us? We have to work in a safe working environment so could be some health and safety. Involved in. That because a, you know, a contract of employment will say you are responsible for your own health and safety and we are responsible for your health and safety. But we’re also the also the other important thing about safety and you get this a lot now when people alleged to bullying or harassment in the workplace. And that is about people use the words. I don’t feel safe here anymore. That’s where employers sometimes find the person might choose to resign and claim a constructive unfair dismissal. So I always say this to clients. Have you got a grumble or have you got a grievance? So all all of those you know, if people are muttering words to you and you really don’t know where to go, you know, pick up the phone and ask an expert what you should be thinking about. And my best piece of advice I ever learned from a top employment law solicitor. Was the words employment law is a game, and he who has the best audit trail will win. So we document things and that’s not an obligation, but it will be very helpful to any employer when perhaps relationships breakdown performance isn’t good or conduct is.
Chris Simmance
I was going to say in, in, in digital agencies, there’s an awful lot of ambiguity in the delivery of some of the services and what there is no black and white in exactly the perfect way to deliver things. And sometimes that can break down relationships and equally a lot of agency owner founders are not great. Leaders and poor. You know there’s. Management of people problems around those sorts. And and I think to your to your advice there, I think having really good quality processes with people around looking after them, making sure. They got the. Right contracts as the basics, but keeping an eye out for all of their their their, their status, their their. Your obligations to them and managing things like 1 to ones properly and consistently done and things like that, an audit trail. Just in case makes a hell to to do.
Speaker 4
Yeah. Well, I don’t always have, especially if you’ve got a lot of people. Working remotely. Is, you know if you’ve had to have a difficult conversation with them or you’ve had a conversation, you’ve given them very. You know, rigid instructions. Just follow it up with an e-mail. As per our conversation, type it out, it’s an audit trail. Like Deborah said, you know the whoever’s got the strongest audit trail wins. And you know, having this stuff in writing, especially if you have lots of conversations or lots of quick phone calls or text messages, just a summary via e-mail, cause it dates stamps itself. You know you can’t argue with it if it’s in. Black and. White, so really have a switch if you’re not working in the same room as the other person and you’re giving them instructions, they’re. Not following them. You know, as per our conversation, we talked about XYZ. Please can. You make sure you. Know action by this date. Really simple. Really straightforward. There’s no arguing.
Chris Simmance
Yeah. And I and this brings on. To question that I’ve just seen from Twitter rather than through the feed here and just popped it up on the bottom of the screen there. It all appears to be employee focused. They get their own way. Is that right? So obviously audit trail you might get not get your they might not get their own way. You got a really good audit trail but. It does seem that the obligations are on the employer to do a lot, and it seems like you have to capitulate a lot as a as a boss. Is that what would you what do you think about that? You.
Debrah Spurway
I think that’s that would just bring me back to saying you have your platform of documentation. It’s very hard to turn, you know, somebody who’s very creative at times into being a people manager because you know, we’re we’re trying to run, we’re trying to run our own. Business this is what we do. Well, and that’s where you’re talking about, you know, we’ve got creatives and some people might end up squabbling because they want it, you know, delivered in a certain. Way, but we it really is about. So the good practise is inducting our employees, let’s talk a bit about the culture of our business.
Chris Simmance
And they do.
Debrah Spurway
Let’s let’s talk. Let’s do our 1:00 to ones. Let’s be supportive. Let’s show that we’ve done those things because then. Basically, we we’re trying to help those employees. You know, move forward in the business.
Speaker 4
He’s right. There are some statutory obligations that. You as when. You employ people you will need to follow, but there are without sound, very callous. There are Ways and Means. If somebody’s not right for your business, there are ways of managing ways of dealing with them, as long as you’re sticking within the legal parameters, they’re you know you’re not complete. Your hands aren’t completely tied. But you need to do things the correct way.
Chris Simmance
It’s almost like you knew what was. Coming Charlotte Sherrattotte, because what are? Active true rights that we all need to know. And we talked about things like holiday and. Things like that. But I’m if it were that simple, then we this one webinar would be enough for everyone. And there’s a whole reason why you guys do such a. Good job and exists. As a as. An organisation so. What kind of statutory rights to employers have employees have and are there any wiggle around any of those things? And not in. A wiggle to get out of them, but any kind of grey areas in some of those.
Speaker 4
So the the the ones you’re gonna come across the most if you employ one person or 50 people or 500 people is sick pay and holidays. So everyone has a right from day one to to statutory sick pay that’s in common. The exact figure at the moment, which shows how. Much of a professional. I am but it’s around £100. Weak. So you know you’re not. I realise to a small business it’s a lot of money, but again it’s been put in place. You know, unions have fought long and hard because, you know back. Not even that long ago, some employees would have got absolutely nothing. So although it feels sometimes like a a big hit, especially if you feel like. The person is. Maybe not being as genuine about being off sick, you know, you do have have to pay them, unfortunately. And you don’t believe that they’re off sick, genuinely. What you don’t want is to have to fight a tribunal proving that they had a cold or not. And you should have been paying them the other one that’s going to be a bit tricky maybe for this webinar today is is holidays and what? You know, part time people get and what people who work term times get that. You know, there’s a whole, you know, please talk to a professional about working out holidays. If they’re just getting the basics, there is a great calculator on the government website that does go in. You know, if you’ve just got basic holiday questions that will steer you in the right direction. That, in essence, everyone who’s an employee is entitled to holiday, whether that’s a proportion of it or a full amount of it. I don’t want to go into too much into the nitty gritty holiday cause we could do a whole webinar on. How you work it out, but. In a sense, yeah, I mean, this is this is what it is. It’s gonna be two hours and we talk about holiday. But in essence, if you’re paying them, they’re on payroll. They’re an employee. They will be entitled to holidays for some sort. That is a statutory rights you need to give them rest time away from the business. Whether they’re going abroad or not. It’s it’s not your concern. It’s time away from the business. Those are. Two big ones that you’re going to get. Day in, day out with your employees. Other rights come into play, so the things like that Deborah mentioned, like pensions, their right to have their contract and employment to be able to see their terms and conditions, their right to raise, things like a grievance. You know, we, you know, there’s a lot of stuff that keeps coming through the woodwork now, things like whistle blowing, where people are raising. Concerns. So, you know, if somebody’s raising an issue to you, you’ve got an obligation to listen to them.
Chris Simmance
Yeah, that’s. I mean, that’s totally. But knowing how agencies work, there’s an awful lot of times where it can feel like it’s it’s a very small thing in or a very small match fire. In the in. The grand scheme of all the other fires that that you’re putting. Out throughout the day. So would it be a reasonable thing to you? Know if you if you. Everyone’s got a lot going on and there’s obviously a reason to to to take note of all of these things when people are concerned, it’s really important to make sure they’re. Treated well how? How how would you log it? How would what would you advise if I’m super busy and I know I’ve got to log something which is a which could be an audit trail thing in the future, but it seems less important than the three other things that are on the other pile.
Speaker 4
So I would always. Use the e-mail system again because again, nice audit trail. Acknowledge that somebody has raised something and then say. I really want to talk to you about this. I want to give it the proper time. Please, can we meet? On next date. Don’t leave stuff too long, but you know it. It’s not unreasonable if somebody emails me now for me to say. Can we talk about a Monday? Tuesday? Because I’ve got more time to give to you.
Speaker
Yeah. So with that in mind, sorry.
Speaker 4
What I will the guys? No. What all I was going to. Say is you. Know we always hope that stuff will go away and kind of quiet down and it it never does. It goes away and it grows arms and legs and it becomes a horrible monster to deal with. So. It’s fine to say I haven’t got time right this second to deal with it, but I’d always advise if it’s important enough that somebody has raised it to you. Give it a little bit of time, you know, even if it’s at the end of the day, even if it’s in the weeks time, because you’re when you’re employing people, they want to be seen, heard and recognised, it’s really important. It may not feel big to you, but if somebody’s raised it, it will probably feel big to them.
Speaker
And I.
Chris Simmance
And I guess the the. Thing that you thought you said. You mentioned e-mail. As part of an ordered trail, quite quite a few times because it’s obviously really important. But agencies love slack, and they love teams, and it’s not the right place to log these. Things is it.
Speaker 4
It’s a great way to communicate, but it’s again kind of going back to that first slide that we talked about. If you get a data subject access request, your teams or slack messages can also be looked at so. From if you’re putting anything negative in there, just be careful, but I always like an e-mail because it’s a nice clear line of communication it time stamps it for you, you can easily find it. You can easily store it if you want. Like I said, if you’re working remotely and you’re not in the same. Building as people, it’s great to like, acknowledge stuff on teams or slack and say, you know, we can have that conversation. But if you wanna properly document it, I would just follow up with hey, I’ve made us a, you know, here’s a teams invite. We’ll have this meeting on Monday and we’ll talk about it properly. And there’s no harm in that. And I’m lazy so it’s much easier for me to to send an e-mail and then outlook will look after it forever for me, as opposed to me being all of that.
Chris Simmance
It’s it’s a safe pair of hats.
Speaker 4
Yeah. Yeah, I’m very unlikely to lose all of my emails, whereas finding one team’s message in a raft of other teams messages because it hasn’t got the best search function is always gonna paint a pain in.
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4
The bum, so.
Chris Simmance
Absolutely and to to.
Speaker 2
Sort of wrap things up a little.
Chris Simmance
Bit so I know we could be here. For hours because there is a lot and and from experience of speaking with agencies and with your your good selves, I know that there’s. A huge amount to this. It’s not just as easy as a 40 minutes conversation, but Deborah, what would you say would be besides picking up the phone and working with you guys? What would be your one piece of advice for every agency leader watching this? Between now and. Whenever YouTube stops existing, what would you? What would you advise them to do? Right.
Debrah Spurway
Get the compliance level right so you know we insure our cars, we insure our houses, our contents, these things are important to us. So if we’re not meeting the compliance level for being an employer, we need to think about that quite, quite quickly.
Chris Simmance
Awesome. And I I totally. Agree, it makes a hell of a lot of sense the the the interesting thing is and maybe you guys do something. Like this in lots of software companies when you’re signing up and when you’re going through a process, you’ve got the the checklist of all the. Bits you’ve done as. You’re going through. It feels like there should be something for employers where it’s like you’ve got the contract sorted, you’ve got the this you’ve got like a an onboarding. Like, I don’t know what I don’t know. And there’s so many different places you guys know just as well as we do navigating the government website. Is, is, is. A rabbit Warren. A different place to go.
Speaker
So it would.
Chris Simmance
Be cool. If there was like. A a a checklist system. That would help doors businesses. Maybe that’s something we should talk about.
Debrah Spurway
Yeah, that’s a good idea. That’s a good idea.
Speaker 2
And what about that?
Speaker 4
It’s always that we can do and make this vote because there isn’t. Unfortunately, there isn’t an easy one-size-fits-all because everyone’s business is going to be different. You know, if you’re an agency employing one new person. Gonna be the amount of due diligence you need to do is gonna be vastly different to if you’re a school. Employing 50 teachers, for example. Also, I’m afraid there isn’t a a nice quick easy form that I can give to you, but it’s definitely what we make for bespoke for our clients because they are going to have different needs and wants.
Chris Simmance
And that that makes it hella lot more. Of a good tie. In to to booking a call in with you guys. Well, what would your one piece of advice be to take away? What what? What should everyone do right now? Once they’ve done what they?
Speaker 4
Mine would be just to communicate with your people. So many problems come from either thinking you’ve been clear and you haven’t, or doing something and not telling your employees. Before you know, there’s not not every business decision, but you know if it’s gonna involve them, it’s gonna be important to them just talking to them. The amount of conversations. Have where I go. Oh, have you talked to that person? They go. No, not yet, mate. Maybe talk to your people then? You know, so many things could be fixed with a good bit of clear communication.
Chris Simmance
And there’s a lot of head in the sand activity that goes on when these are things that are very important. But also they’re things you don’t understand very well. So my last bit of advice from tying both those two things together is if you don’t understand it, seek to learn it, but don’t seek to it. Be an expert and speak to experts to to to help you and you shouldn’t be trying to be an expert because that’s probably gonna get. You in more trouble? It’s worth, and so it makes a hell of a lot of sense to get your compliance levels up and also speak to your team like human beings and deal with the problems that come in the the ways that you’re obliged. To but as. Human beings, the ways that you should. Probably treat each other as well.
Speaker 4
Yeah, your employees will be far more in most cases, far more understanding if you’ve come at it from a a human compassionate point of view and then done the compliant legal bit behind it. Whereas if you, you know, you try and just make the best of. But without involving them, they’re normally not as understanding. Because then they Google. Their legal rights and start demanding those.
Chris Simmance
Deborah. Charlotte Sherrattotte, thank you so much for coming on to today. I.
Speaker
Know, I know you’re already.
Chris Simmance
I’m I’m I’m I’m. Glad you’re saving the lives of so many agency owners already, but. Everyone who’s watching this.
Debrah Spurway
Saving their bank balance. What we’ll do.
Chris Simmance
Thank you very much for joining. Us today, thank.
Speaker 4
OK, cool. Thank you. Bye.