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

Just recently I’ve been reflecting on what I’ve learnt since running my own business with my other half, future husband and all-round top bloke Jason.  My conclusion is that I’ve learnt quite a bit and I thought I’d share some of that with you.

On being my own boss:

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?

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.

Of course you knew that last Friday (24^th) was National Work From Home Day.  Huge numbers of people worked from home in sheer joyous celebration of being set free from the daily commute, the office politics and their packed lunch.  Or did they?

The day itself was supposed to encourage employers to consider more flexible working practices by allowing their employees to work from home more often.  It’s clear that there can be a number of benefits to having at least some employees working from home on a regular basis.  Think about the effect this would have on parking spaces around your office, the number of desks and PCs and phones you would need, and even the amount of office space itself. 

Seriously, why keep a dog and bark yourself? Would you pay someone to give their advice and then completely ignore it?

That’s exactly what the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce did. They employed someone, weren’t happy with his performance and made him redundant. Against all advice from their HR department, they created more than one draft of the person specification for this person’s replacement using the word “younger”. As in we are seeking a “younger entrepreneurial profile”.

Honestly, there’s just no helping some people. I’m sure they wondered why they were taken to Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) for age discrimination. In fact, they tried to cover it up saying that actually, they didn’t mean younger. Of course they didn’t. What they really meant to say was less senior and therefore less expensive. Yeah right.

If you haven’t seen the new A-team film yet, I recommend it. As a child of the 80’s (okay, okay late 70’s) I remember the original series very well and thoroughly loved every episode. The new film got me thinking though, about leadership and how important it is. Yes, the old cliché is true about there being no I in team. But if you take the team leader out of the equation, what are you left with?

Liam Neeson as Col. John ‘Hannibal’ Smith has some valuable leadership lessons to teach anyone who sets themselves up to be a team leader. I’ll try not to be too much of a plot-spoiler!

He establishes his authority. Right at the beginning of the film, BA doesn’t believe Hannibal would shoot him. Wrong.

Employers are toughening up on tardiness it seems. This is according to a survey by CareerBuilder UK. The reason given for the extra attention to arrival times at work is the current difficult economic climate. I never thought I’d say this but hurrah for the recession! Anything that causes employers to sit up and pay attention to employees who consistently flout the rules can only be a good thing.

New research from Which? Legal Service indicates that only 3 in 10 employees received an employment contract before starting the job. 9% of people didn’t get a contract until they’d been in the post for six months or more. A large number of those who did receive their contracts either skimmed through them or didn’t bother reading them at all.

Just last week I was explaining to a customer how to deal with a complicated disciplinary situation with one of his staff. “That’s not easy” he commented. “I thought your business was all about making HR easy?”. Actually, it’s not. Our business is all about keeping HR simple which is not the same thing. We don’t claim to make HR easy because that’s not a promise we would always be able to keep. We promise to keep it simple and straightforward, but that doesn’t mean it’s always going to be easy. In fact, we’ve found that some of the simplest things are the most difficult to implement.