A step too far ... ?

At its conference, the TUC voted unanimously for the law to be changed so that women should not be "compelled to wear high heels at work”.  A delegate at the conference suggested that Theresa May should now ditch her kitten heels and stylish shoes in support of this movement and to help the advancement of women in business.

Do you think the way that women dress is directly related to their performance?   Are women still treated as adornments and not taken seriously?  Is it intimidating for a man – or woman – to be faced with a woman who “power dresses”?

If women in business dressed like Boris Johnson and behaved in the same way would they be taken seriously?

Women have fought hard to achieve the status they have, is it now right that they should be asked to make a sacrifice in terms of their style of dress to further advance the cause of women?

Whilst it was clearly wrong of an employer to require a receptionist to wear high heels, surely we do not need to ask women who take a pride in their appearance and like wearing sassy footwear to ditch them for “sensible shoes”.

2016 Sporting Summer

Everyone has been enjoying a wonderful sporting Summer, with the European Football Championships, tennis at Wimbledon and now the Rio Olympic Games, but these sporting events present a potential headache for employers of increased employee absence due to fake sick days.

According to a recent survey conducted by Kronos Incorporated these events will have a significant impact on absence and associated productivity issues.  A sample of 2,020 men and women over the age of 16 across the UK gave their views on absence in general and faking illness.  A third of respondents admitted to “throwing a sickie” in the last 12 months.  Nearly three-quarters of respondents thought colleagues had faked sickness, potentially amounting to six false sick days a year.  65 per cent of respondents were not worried about the impact on their employer or the consequences to them for having lied.  Almost 20 per cent of respondents felt that flexibility, or more specifically the lack of it, contributed to their absence.

So what can employers do about this:

Ø       If you do not have an absence policy, you should implement one which is clear on how such issues will be treated. The policy should aim to strike a real balance between the employer and the employee. Communication to employees is key on your policy and how it is to be implemented.

Ø       Encourage open communication between employees and managers about planned absences – unplanned absences are far harder to manage and place an additional burden on employers and colleagues.

Ø       Consider flexibility on working times – allow earlier starts or finishes to cater for the 5.00pm kick off or later matches, but ensure you can monitor this flexibility for abuse.

Ø       Consider unpaid absence, but ensure this is capped and must be approved in advance.

Ø       Ensure your policies are enforced – any unauthorised absence which is identified should be treated fairly and, if necessary, as a disciplinary issue.

Ø       Don’t fight it – make an event of it.  Consider setting up a television where staff can watch main events or provide a few beers for key matches.  Again, ensure this is monitored for abuse.  You could improve staff morale and encourage greater employee engagement for far longer than the last race.

Auto-enrolment

Beware the cost of not complying with the Government’s auto enrolment requirements.  Swindon Town Football Club was fined £22,900 by The Pensions Regulator for “repeatedly failing to comply with its auto-enrolment duties”.  These included enrolling staff into a scheme from their staging date, paying contributions, writing to staff explaining how automatic enrolment affected them, and completing a declaration notice to indicate the company had complied with its duties.

Apart from the financial penalty, employers should consider the cost to their reputation of not complying with the regulations.  When it is increasingly difficult to find talented and skilled employees, or to retain these employees, failure to comply with the pensions legislation sends a very poor message of the employer’s commitment to its employees.

If you have not yet reached your staging date, start planning now to ensure you comply in full with the requirements.  If you have already passed your staging date, make sure that you have completed your obligations and have submitted your declaration notice to confirm your compliance.

The EU is far behind its EU counterparts on gender equality

According to a recent economic research report by Glassdoor, the UK is falling behind other European countries on workplace gender equality.  Out of 18 responding countries, the UK was ranked eleventh– behind the Scandinavian countries, France and Spain.

The UK ranked below average on eight out of the 12 key indicators reviewed – ranging from female to male ratio in the workforce, the difference of employment rates, the level of education, by level of job and the “cost of motherhood”.

Over the past decades more and more women have entered the European workforce, yet gender inequality persists, particularly at senior levels.  Across Europe under 40 per cent of managers are women.  The UK together with Sweden, Norway and Portugal performed best in this area at close to this percentage.

Women are most represented in professional and more technically demanding jobs, underlining the benefit of tertiary education for women.  Norwayhas the highest proportion of women on boards, as a result of a legislation-based quota system introduced in 2006.

The general finding of the report is that “Overall, the European countries in which overall gender inequality is least severe are Sweden, Norway and Finland, although all of these countries still have room for improvement in gender equality at work.  By contrast, Greece, Italy and Ireland lie on the other end of the spectrum, followed by Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland.”

Statutory Holiday Entitlement 2016

Due to the way that the Easter holidays fell in 2016 and how they will fall in 2017 means that employers whose holiday year is from 1 April to 31 March may not be providing their employees with the statutory entitlement of 28 days – 20 days holiday plus eight Bank Holidays for the current holiday year.

In 2016 the Easter Bank Holidays were 25 and 28 March, in 2017 they will be 3 and 6 April.  Unfortunately, employers cannot rely on the fact that employees benefitted in a previous holiday year because there were two Easters to take no action in this holiday year.

In order to avoid being in breach of statutory entitlements, employers whose holiday year is 1 April to 31 March will need to “top up” their employees’ entitlement by two days for one year only.  This can be done with a simple communication to employees, informing them that this is a "one-off" event and is not a promise for the future.

Junior female employees mentor bosses on how to behave

Leading consultancy firm Ernst & Young (“EY”) has grasped the nettle to tackle male chauvinism in the City by appointing junior employees to “reverse mentor” their bosses on how to behave in the 21st Century.

More than half of the firm’s intake is female, but this declines with seniority, where much of their talent and experience is lost.  The firm then decided to introduce reverse mentoring pairing the leadership team with “high potential” young women volunteers to counsel them.

Adrian Edwards, a managing partner at EY said “They helped us, as leaders, understand how our behaviour, actions and words were impacting on people.  This was a breakthrough.  It continues to be one of the most powerful learning experiences of my career to understand, from my mentor’s perspective, the impact of … accepted norms.”

Other firms have adopted reverse mentoring with younger employees and big companies are becoming increasingly aware of gender issues.

Sayeh Ghanbari, Mr Edwards’ mentor is now a director and in line for partnership at EY.  She said “It takes courage to assume your reverse roles in the power dynamic.”  Ms Ghanbari helped Mr Edwards reconsider terminology and to take more women to client meetings.  “There’s been an improvement” she said.  “People do not send emails between 7pm on Friday and 7am on Monday.”

National Living Wage

With effect from 1 April 2016 the new National Living Wage (“NLW”) will be introduced, which will increase the National Minimum Wage (“NMW”) for workers aged 25 and over to £7.20 an hour.  This should not be confused with the voluntary living wage calculated independently by the Living Wage Foundation, which is currently £8.25 an hour (£9.40 an hour in London). 

It is the Government’s intention that the NLW will increase to £9 an hour by 2020.  Increases in the NMW will take effect in April each year in future although it is not yet clear whether any increases in NMW will be applied in October this year.  It would, however, be prudent to assume that increases in the NMW bands will take place in October but will exclude the NLW.

If you have not already made arrangements for this adjustment, you should be reviewing the impact on your payroll now.  Employers operating a salary sacrifice arrangement should be aware that salary sacrifice cannot reduce a worker’s cash earnings below the NMW.  It is not clear whether this requirement will apply to the NLW, but again it would be prudent to assume that it does. 

Employers should also consider that other benefits are linked to pay, for example pension contributions, life cover, income protection and therefore the cost of these benefits will also increase.  Employers should, however, beware of any thoughts of consolidating certain allowances or supplements into basic pay so that the overall remuneration package remains the same but more of it counting towards the NMW/NLW.  An employee must not suffer any detriment as a result of qualifying for the NMW/NLW and any changes to benefits to satisfy the requirements could contravene this rule.

Zero hours contract workers are entitled to the NMW/NLW in the usual way.

Mandatory Gender Pay Reporting

The Government has just announced its requirements for employers with 250 or more employees to publish their gender pay records, with mandatory reporting from April 2017.  This followed a period of consultation with employers on issues such as frequency of reporting, threshold of employees and the cut off period for calculation. 

The gender pay gap is the difference between all men and women’s average salary and directly affects the types of job women apply for and the level of seniority they achieve. In the UK, this differential was 19.2 per cent last year.

The requirements are more rigorous than expected  and will include reporting on bonuses as well as basic pay.  This is intended to capture employers who use bonus payments to conceal the differential between salaries for men and women.  From 2018 the government will publish league tables intended to shame those employers who have failed to take appropriate corrective action.

The new legislation will also apply to public sector bodies in England – public sector bodies in Scotland and Wales are already subject to reporting requirements.

Affected employers should not underestimate the effect of this reporting on their brand and reputation and their ability to recruit and retain staff. Nicky Morgan, the Education secretary, says women should boycott companies that are failing to close the gender pay gap.

Employers should now be reviewing their pay scales and practices; understanding their workforce; and analysing the current arrangements to identify potential areas of risk. 

Travel time

In September 2015, the European Court of Justice ruled that time spent travelling to and from the first and last appointment for workers without a fixed office should be regarded as working time.  It does not affect those workers with a fixed place of work.  This ruling relates to the EU Working Time Directive and therefore also applies to the UK.

The ruling said: "The fact that the workers begin and finish the journeys at their homes stems directly from the decision of their employer to abolish the regional offices and not from the desire of the workers themselves.

"Requiring them to bear the burden of their employer's choice would be contrary to the objective of protecting the safety and health of workers pursued by the directive, which includes the necessity of guaranteeing workers a minimum rest period."

Employers should consider the effect on the pay of any peripatetic workers they may have.  Specifically, it may have an impact on the National Living Wage or the National Minimum Wage if they are not already paid for this time.   If these employees have opted out of the working time regulations, it should not have the effect of reducing working hours, but employers should ensure that mobile workers are able to take their entitlement of 11 hours’ rest between when they reach home from their last appointment to setting off for their first appointment next day.

Recruiting on Social Media

LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network, has recently announced that it now has more than 20 million members in the UK which means that nearly six out of ten of the UK’s workforce now use its platform.  More than two billion people actively use social media so why are nearly half of employers not using social media as their main source to recruit new staff, particularly young professionals?  

Many employers using social media to recruit have found a significant improvement in the quality of candidates compared with traditional recruitment methods.  Other advantages are:

• It’s free!
• You can reach a wider range of potential candidates on media such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn
• You can link applicants to an on-line application process
• It can strengthen your employer brand by marketing your business as an attractive employer, sharing your vision and values and work ethic to potential candidates
• You can engage with passive candidates who may not currently be looking for a new job and convert them to active jobseekers interested in working for you
• By using key word searches you can target your audience and reach them quicker than ever before

According to LinkedIn’s data insights, the top five most represented industries on their platform are IT & services, construction, hospital & healthcare, retail and financial services.