Welcome to this Brexit Blog.
In January this year, I thought we might be bit further forward by now in terms of understanding the lay of the land, but no such luck. You, I and all employers are still floundering not knowing which way to go.
We don’t know about resourcing and how many years the free market for labour will continue and what labour restrictions and opportunities will eventually take the place of the free market. We don’t know which, if any employment laws will be removed or amended. In fact we don’t know much. But let’s look at what we do know in relation to all things HR, as any action is better than inaction, surely?
At Jaluch we support around 350 clients around the UK. Our clients cover pretty much all sectors and all sizes of business from the tiny businesses with less than 10 staff to a fair number of global corporates, and everything in between. We also have a number of clients that have a base in the UK, but that are not British owned. As a result, we have an insight into a wide number of organisations and, as in other years, this year is providing us with a number of patterns of behaviour.
The critical incidents that have impacted in the first half of this year include:
- Positive economic forecasts and achievement in the early part of the year resulting in good employee relations, relatively happy staff, good business growth and significant investment in training and development. This latter always has a good impact on staff morale and business growth.
- Various high profile companies including Uber losing court cases around the (non) employment of their workers. This will have far reaching consequences for organisations that have sought to resource their businesses through self employment in order to minimise staffing costs and staffing responsibility.
- Review after review that suggests that within 10-12 years 50% of our workforce will be self employed
- The general election causing serious political and social unrest in the UK resulting in a downward spiral of confidence and happiness in many workplaces since mid May.
- A Supreme Court decision in July that the employment tribunal fees introduced in 2013 are unlawful. As the fees led to an 80% reduction typically in claims brought against employers, removal of the fees will undoubtedly lead to a scary surge in employment claims.
And the reality of what we are seeing at Jaluch now as a result of these issues?
- Since mid May, we have been supporting lots of clients that are making redundancies or planning redundancies later in the year.
- Since mid May, we have also supported clients with more grievances and workplace conflict issues than ever before in my 20 years experience of running an HR Business. And I really don’t say that lightly!
- A younger generation of workers that are struggling to knuckle down, take on the boring jobs with a smile on your face and then put in the hours it takes to climb a ladder. ‘We were all born equal’ is not a helpful phrase when arguing with your boss as a 25 year old!
In respect of redundancies, only one of our clients is closing down its UK operation, but many others seem to be trimming and being more cost conscious than we have seen in the past few years. The optimism and continued positivity that we saw earlier this year has disappeared. The general election shenanigans put paid to that and what an enormous cost political unrest may well be to the millions of workers in the UK.
But the damage has been done and now HR Departments need to consider the way forward. I will leave you to plan and consider any redundancies, I think we all ought to wait and watch a few months more to see where the government guides us in terms of employment status, but in the meantime, here are a few of my ideas in respect of workplace unrest:
Grievances and complaints
If people are unhappy they can take it out on their family, take it out on their friends, take it out on themselves or take it out on someone in their workplace. In my experience, political unrest often leads to unrest in the workplace. So, with responsibility for HR, what you need to do is:
- Be aware of this and ensure your line managers are also on the look out for those who are unsettled and unhappy.
- Identify grievances and complaints at an early stage as this will enable you to manage those promptly and efficiently. Don’t think that just talking someone out of their irritation or anger is sufficient, more often that not you will need to use the formal grievance procedure to resolve issues.
- Put more, rather than less, time into team building and ensuring good staff morale and employee relations. This will not be money wasted, but may well be some of the bets money you spend this year if as a result you keep your staff motivated and on track to deliver what you need to deliver.
- Don’t be so busy as to neglect those who are not complaining. If you focus 80-90% of your energies on the 10% who complain, then don’t be surprised if in a year’s time those who kept their heads down and behaved themselves will also be either complaining or leaving you.
I predict tough and challenging times ahead, so keep on your toes and don’t do anything now that might impact your ability to be in business in the long term.
Thoughts, comments, ideas, please do give your feedback.
Interested in what I do, why not ask me about…
- Docs Wizard – template HR documents for an annual subscription from docswizard.co.uk
- Bags of Learning – training kits to reduce your training spend but still deliver great training for your line managers – available from jaluch.co.uk
- Jaluch HR and training services – support available with staff surveys, training staff representatives, redundancy consultation meetings, grievance investigations etc contact us at jaluch.co.uk
- Global Fountain – online training materials sold on a not for profit basis to support people around the world set up their own small enterprise.