This week, we’ve all been entertained by the story of a 12 year old boy who wore a skirt to school in protest at not being allowed to wear shorts.  It turns out that the school’s dress code policy had a loophole which meant that the boy could wear a skirt without contravening the school rules. 

The story was picked up in the Cambridge Evening News initially but has now spread to Twitter and beyond, with people like Phillip Schofield tweeting their support for the protest.  With the interest the story has generated, the school have had to promise a review of their dress code policy next term. 

Many businesses also have dress code policies and although they aren’t usually quite so controversial, this story tells us two things.  The first is that some flexibility isn’t a bad thing (what harm does it do if the boys wear shorts in the summer months, as long as they’re not scruffy/denim/baggy/etc?).  It’s usually during the summer too that office-based employees complain about stringent dress code policies because they can be considered restrictive given the heat. 

Wedding season is well and truly upon us.  You may think that the Royal Wedding has caused enough disruption but spare a thought for those employers who are unlucky enough to have a member of staff getting married some time in the near future.

Of course, this is a subject dear to my heart.  As our wedding day approaches and I juggle my ever-expanding wedding to do list with making sure that the actual work is getting done, I have even more sympathy for those employers with soon-to-be-married employees!

Worst case scenario

Earlier this year, a Court of Appeal held that a volunteer working for a charity could not pursue a claim under the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 because she did not have a contract and didn’t qualify as an employee.  Although the case was in relation to disability discrimination, the principles apply to all other areas of discrimination.

Time for charities with volunteers to breathe a sigh of relief.  Or is it?  Charities who have volunteers must ensure that they are getting the relationship right, both in terms of the legal description and the practicalities of how volunteers work. 

Key points to get right are as follows:

If you discovered that an employee had sent an offensive email to another employee, what would you do?  Would it make a difference if it was sent from his or her home computer?

Just this morning I read about a case* where the employee did exactly that.  He sent an email containing racist and sexist material to his colleague who promptly forwarded it on and it then made it to the company’s computer systems.  His employers dismissed him and although he took an unfair dismissal claim, the dismissal was upheld.

The employer made a decision during the process of firing the employee which later proved to be key to supporting their case.  They dismissed him due to gross misconduct for having carried out an act which might damage the company’s reputation and for having breached their equal opportunities policy.  Crucially, they did not make reference to their policies covering use of internet and email.  The difference?  Internet usage policies by definition usually only apply to company property. Since the employee used his own computer, dismissing him for a breach of the internet use policy would have been dodgy at best.  At worst it would have been a successful unfair dismissal claim with the associated costs.

Recently, I met someone who had just been promoted to a managerial role.  He was expressing his frustration at being stuck being a desk all day.  In his words, he was “sending emails all day, doing nothing and achieving nothing”.

Although I smiled in sympathy, I had mixed feelings about his comment.  I’ve had desk jobs for most of my adult life and actually, I like sending emails all day!  In fact, I may just have a bit of an email addiction issue but that’s another story.  So, on one hand, I was a bit indignant at this dismissal of a desk job as “doing nothing and achieving nothing”. 

However, this comment also really made me think about how unprepared he was for his change in role.  He might be a perfect employee, a great people manager and really good at what he does but does that mean that he’s cut out for a desk job?  Some people prefer to take a more hands on, practical approach and who’s to say that they’re wrong?

I spent some time recently talking to my good friend Maxine Welford of maxxy.co.uk.  Maxine has a very successful telemarketing business and she's absolutely fantastic at what she does.  We were discussing the difficulties of recruiting the right people and that, quite apart from the financial cost, there are other implications of getting it wrong.  Maxine has written a blog post about it which I'm delighted to share with you. 

"I have learnt a lesson recently and wanted to share this with you.  Maybe it will help others to avoid the mistake I made.

You may have heard the terms “positive action” and “positive discrimination” bandied around recently in relation to recruitment.  Do you know what they mean and which method you CAN use without getting into trouble?  

In April this year, a change brought about by the Equality Act could very well affect the way you recruit new staff.   The change in the law means that “positive action” will be allowed.  “Positive action” means that you can choose to hire a candidate from an unrepresented group, provided they are as qualified for the role as other applicants.

I read this story in the Cambridge Evening News this morning.   Oh dear.  And we wonder why HR and Personnel departments get themselves a bad name? 

If a People Policy: Relationships at Work (be it draft or otherwise) sounds like a spoof, unfortunately it’s not.  The fact that it was rejected by council members says something for them but what about the Head of HR who put it forward in the first place?

If you’ve been for an interview recently and had post-interview feedback, consider yourself lucky.  It’s not right and it’s certainly not fair but it’s the way it is these days.  Fewer and fewer companies take the time and effort to give feedback to unsuccessful candidates.

Quite often, the feedback is usually to do with your skills and experience not being the best fit for the role.  Or often you’ll be told that there were other candidates more suited to the role than you. 

Some of you will know that Jason and I were meant to be at home in Ireland right about now.  In fact, we were supposed to fly on Monday but our flight was cancelled and the next available seats aren’t until Boxing Day.  Christmas plans thwarted.  I was bitterly disappointed as you can imagine but I’ve been forced to see past the disappointment because of the generosity and kindness of others.  No sooner did the news filter through to friends and family but we started receiving offers of drinks and Christmas dinners.  Genuine offers from people who would have made the turkey stretch that little bit further to make sure we weren’t on our own and feeling miserable on Christmas Day. 

It never ceases to amaze me that people can be so kind and generous and I think it’s a sad reflection on society that the majority of stories we hear are about man’s inhumanity to man.  Working in HR, some of the saddest cases we deal with are to do with bullying and the desperation and unhappiness of the person being bullied always saddens me immensely.  It’s one of the reasons why I encourage bosses never to tolerate such behaviour and to ensure that they themselves are above reproach as far as their own behaviour is concerned.