HR Horror Stories
Did someone say the “H” word?
It is that time of year again, Halloween, when there’s a scary movie on the box, children are trick or treating and we at The HR Dept share a few HR horror stories to send a shiver down your spine.
The witching hour
As understanding grows about the impact of stress at work and the right to switch off, more employers are sensitive to contacting staff out of hours and expecting an immediate response – especially not at gone midnight!
However, one banking executive, upon being warned by a colleague that his employee was not being paid enough to receive such a call, had a simple if somewhat diabolical solution – we’ll call him to give a pay rise, then ask our question!
Horrible bosses
In this tale from the US, two car mechanics were being repeatedly bullied because of their sexuality (here, a protected characteristic). Horrifyingly, rather than support them, the shop manager said he would sack anyone who reported the matter to HR. Needless to say, a law suit ensued.
Expensive mistakes
While certainly a difficult time for women experiencing it, the menopause can also present a challenge for employers trying to balance the well-being of employees against productivity for the business. One UK insurance company who got this balance wrong was ordered to pay £64,000 in damages. The tribunal noted that they could have altered the performance criteria for the employee and considered offering a change of role.
Adding insult to injury
As if sexual harassment wasn’t bad enough on its own, one tech CEO complemented that by trying to force feed one of his female employees. It happened on one of the many hedonistic parties encouraged by the company culture. Thankfully, despite his position, the internal HR department did take robust action in this instance and he was forced to stand down, losing $110 million of stock options in the process!
While all extreme examples, they do show what can happen when good HR is not established in a business. At The HR Dept, we’ll protect you from people and productivity problems before they get out of hand and turn into your very own HR horror stories.
Development plans for staff
Development plans for staff go further than just offering training to get them up to speed with their jobs. They are a structured framework to move employees along their career path, improving their productivity and the level of responsibility they can take on for you.
It could be just what you need if you are struggling to get rough diamonds to shine, or stay with you; or you have a dearth of internal candidates on hand when promotion opportunities arise.
Offering staff development plans may also help you stand out in competitive recruitment markets, if candidates see that you will invest more in them and their aspirations than other employers.
A staff development plan will be tailored to each employee, looking at where they are now, and what they need to learn and experience in order to get to higher levels.
During the course of annual appraisals and one-to-one sessions, work with them to identify how their personal goals align with what you need as an employer, and agree on what CPD needs to take place to achieve this. Make sure this is a two-way process and the employee can give their feedback too.
There will of course be a cost to you in making this investment, but balance this against the opportunity cost of not making it. Research in America suggested that the US economy takes a half trillion dollar hit every year because of disengaged staff.
Some of the benefits of investing in employees in this way will be gradual, but you may really start to notice it when promotion opportunities come up and you need look no further than candidates from your existing team, saving you time and money on the task of making key hires.
Our experts can help you put a staff development programme in place; or if you already have one but are looking to source high quality eLearning courses, ask us about the range of professional, cost-effective courses that we offer.
Unhappy Birthday
Depending on your workplace culture, you might see the value of small gestures to make employees feel valued: things like an “employee of the month” award, the marking of staff birthdays or a monthly team lunch.
Relatively small outlays show that you care, develop camaraderie and foster loyalty.
We are all for this where appropriate, but it is essential that you carry out the gestures equally and fairly.
In one recently reported case, an employee lamented the fact that she was the only member of staff who did not receive cake and a card on her birthday. She even knew that it wasn’t a simple oversight as her boss had teased her about her age and birthday the day before.
If you don’t treat employees equally, at best you will create tension and discord. At worst, you could open yourself up to a discrimination claim if the treatment is perceived to be based on a protected characteristic.
Hair raising dress code
For many busy business owners, a dress code may be something of an afterthought.
Perhaps it was, too, for one larger firm which took issue with a newly hired receptionist who sported bright pink locks on her first day. Feeling strongly that it was not a suitable look for a front-of-house role, they came up with a compromise: a wig!
Her response was to wear a series of purposefully terrible wigs to draw attention to the issue, posting on social media.
To avoid such confrontational situations, think very carefully about where you draw the line in your business; covering everything from hair colour to tattoos and piercings, as well as clothes and footwear.
Be mindful of cultural or heritage considerations, where certain hair styles could be related to, for instance, racial identity and therefore fall within the scope of the Equality Act.
Make sure your policy is clearly explained in your company handbook, so that there can be no doubt in anyone’s mind, and no room to make a scene.
The right to request predictable working patterns
A new law – the Workers (Predictable Terms and Conditions) Act 2023 – has just received royal assent, and may affect you if you employ people on zero-hour contracts or other occasional/temporary bases. It is not expected to come into force, though, until late 2024.
When live, it gives such workers a right to request a predictable working pattern, once they have 26 weeks of qualifying service. As an employer, you will have to respond to a request within one month, but you do have six grounds on which to reject one.
These include: an additional cost burden, your ability to meet customer demand, the effect on recruitment, the effect on other areas of your business, a lack of work in the requested periods and any planned structural changes.
If you want help planning so that you are well prepared to deal with such requests when the new right is implemented, please get in touch.
Paternity test
We’ve all heard of employees throwing a sickie to get an extra day off work here and there – it may be the bane of your life as an employer (if so, talk to us and we’ll get it sorted). But one man apparently did the same thing – except for paternity leave. Four times in five years!
We are not even sure what you call that, but there must be some serious systematic errors in his workplace to allow that to slide.
Apparently, he took precautions – by featuring a different Google image of a newborn baby on his phone home screen every time he claimed a child.
As he was single and child free the whole time you would have thought the lack of bags under his eyes and grey hairs may have given it away.