HR News November 2011

Welcome to the November issue of HR News. Here we look at the impact of social media in the workplace and the rise of disciplinary cases arising from this. We also discuss the challenges of managing mature employees whilst keeping younger employees engaged and motivated. With the auto-enrolment pension scheme coming into play next year we will touch on how HR and Payroll will need to work closer together and lastly the issue of Christmas holidays! Who has what time off?

The Social Media Issue

Organisations are facing a growing problem with regards to staff using social media during working hours. With organisations reporting increased disciplinary issues from the use of sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Nearly a third of employers have disciplined staff for inappropriate behaviour on social media sites, according to a report suggesting employers are "failing to keep up" with online developments.
It is a difficult dilemma for organisations, as the web is often needed to research material relevant to their job. Thus implementing a total 'ban' on the use of the Internet is proving challenging.

Employers said the main reasons they encourage workers to log onto these sites in office hours were to boost brand awareness (80 per cent), marketing (60 per cent), and recruitment (42 per cent), while employee engagement (37 per cent) and team working (28 per cent) were also cited.

But it said that employers are failing to protect themselves from risks posed by work-related social media use, and 21 per cent had taken disciplinary action against employees for information posted on a social media site about co-workers, and 31 per cent had disciplined staff for comments posted about their organisation.

Employers said they are exposed to risk because confidential information may be posted on social media sites. Surprisingly, only a quarter of organisations have a dedicated social media policy; while less than half (43 per cent) had relevant rules included in HR or IT policies.

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The Baby Boomers

For most companies, the largest proportion of staff in their organisation falls in the 47 to 65 year old age bracket. These are the baby boomers and many of them are due to retire.

With the removal of the Default Retirement Age though, many will not be retiring for some time yet. On the other hand some of those who were on final salary pension schemes, and were lucky enough to be paid off, have already retired early. But still there is a higher proportion of employees in this age group sitting in many workplaces, in comparison to the younger generation.

One of the big challenges facing organisations is that this very same group of workers may want to stay at work for quite some time yet. The impact of the global financial crash is still working its way through most national economies and through most personal economic circumstances, thus many baby boomers will continue to work for longer. They are fitter than previous generations and they have no option economically but to carry on working. Where this happens--and it's happening quite regularly-- pathways for younger workers are being blocked and the potential loss of talent will be a worry for HR.

So how can HR Department and manager's deal with this situation? One way is by sharing information with both the older workers and younger workers, to get them to understand what structural aspects the company will need to manage and adopt in the coming years. This will ensure that they all have a role to play whether young or old. By highlighting the needs of the business and the challenges ahead this should promote better working relationships between the generations.

HR and management should also look to work with mature employees to reshape the roles that they have, in order to accommodate up and coming younger staff within the team and allow them more intellectual stretch and responsibility.

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Pension Auto-Enrolment

The Pension Auto-Enrolment system is due to be introduced next year with payroll and human resources departments having to work more closely together. From 2012, employers will be required by law to enrol all eligible employees into a pension and make minimum contributions into the scheme.

The process of enrolling employees into an occupational pension scheme will divide between the two business arms, with teams needing to work closer together in order to deliver the best solution for both the employees and the organisation.

The pension scheme is designed to ensure more people create a nest egg for later life, but employees are able to opt out if they so choose.Changes will be introduced gradually, starting from 2012 with large employers, followed by medium-sized and then small employers.

All workers, provided they have not yet reached State Pension age, earn more than £7,475 a year and are not already in a suitable pension scheme will be subject to auto-enrolment.

It is envisaged that each organisation will be affected in a different way, but there will be significant cost implications in terms of extra pension contributions, system upgrades and time, and professional fees.
 

Happy Holidays!

With Christmas fast approaching everyone is thinking about booking some time off. But chances are all your staff will probably want the same time off! So how do you manage who has what time off?

The best start is to work from the premise that no one has the right to paid holiday without agreement from the line manager. Even if they go to the lengths of exercising the right in the Working Time Regulations to dictate a particular holiday date, you also have a right under the same Regulations to override this. Therefore, in practical terms, any holiday, which is to be taken, must have your consent!

Think employment relations. Of course, you can do without the new mother or the fervent Christian over those days, but only if someone else who would also like to be off at the same time is required to work instead. Is it a proportionate response to require that person to lose his or her Christmas holiday as a result? The answer to this is, fairly clearly, no. At most you could ask, but even that seems likely to generate a considerable degree of ill-will towards the "favoured" employee. Who says that his or her religious or childcare preferences are more important than the other employees' wish to travel, to see their family, or just to put their feet up after a hard year? To insist just makes matters worse. It ill behoves an employer to make decisions based on its own value judgements as to the respective importance or precedence of one person's personal circumstances over another. The scope for discrimination claims is obvious.

The legal angle to keep an eye on is indirect discrimination - where the requirement to work over Christmas and New Year would have a detrimental impact on, for example, any new mothers or staunch Christians in your workforce and you cannot justify that requirement. "Justification" requires you to show that making that individual work over that period is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.

Finally the most equitable approach is to make decisions based on who worked the time last year. Some people may be positively glad to work over the festive season, allowing more days off in the summer. If they do not apply for annual leave, there is no problem. However, where two or more do apply, and not all requests can be accepted, basing your decision on who worked last year should meet the least challenge and in most organisations does seem to work.

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