I’ve been asked to explain the position on commission only arrangements with sales people so here goes.  I don’t want my comments to be misinterpreted so let me just say that this post is in no way intended to put people off employing sales staff but it does explain the main options involved. 

It’s a common catch 22 scenario.  You need to grow your business but you can’t do it all.  You know that you could grow the business quicker if you had a dedicated salesperson but there’s only one snag.  You can’t actually afford to pay them a salary.  So, a commission only arrangement sounds very attractive indeed – they are rewarded for their results and you don’t have to pay them anything if they don’t deliver.  Brilliant.

There’s just one problem.  It’s not legal to have an employee and only pay them commission, unless you guarantee that the commission equals or exceeds the National Minimum Wage.  Otherwise you will be in breach of NMW regulations.  So in other words, you can call it commission but it needs to be guaranteed commission so in effect, it’s a salary.

Leading on from the last post about employer brand, it’s all very well being aware that you have a reputation with both existing and prospective employees but how do you really know how good that reputation is?   

Ask them

The simple (but not necessarily easy) answer is to ask them.  After every recruitment campaign, ask the applicants for their feedback.  Ask them how they feel about your company, how they were treated and if they’d consider re-applying in the future. 

We’re hearing lots of talk about the employer brand but what exactly is it?

Your employer brand is a game of two halves.

On one hand, it’s the reputation you have as an employer.  It’s how you are perceived by the people who work for you and it’s what they say about you when they’re asked where they work and what it’s like to work there.  Or as Chris Heron of Plugin Recruiter says “it’s what your people say about you when you’ve left the room”.

I watched the tv programme Show Me Your Money on Channel 4 one evening.  It was a documentary about the pay strategy (or lack of it!) of Pimlico Plumbers in London.  The company was established in 1979 and over the years, the attitude to pay and reward has been haphazard to say the least!  In the words of the MD, if someone looked like a good worker, they’d pay him or her more.  If he or she looked like a lazy b*stard, they got paid less.  Hmm, a fair system in other words – not. 

The end result was a complete mess.  The MD’s solution was to ask everyone to reveal their salaries to each other.  Having done that, those who were paid more than their colleagues would then voluntarily give up some of their salaries to help them out.  Or so the theory went. 

I’m not sure if Charlie the MD had really thought this strategy through or if it was a case of “wing it and see what happens – it’ll still make good telly”.  In essence, he and the company had created a problem for their employees and yet he looked to the employees themselves to fix it.  Genius. 

When does recruiting start?  When you put out a job advert?  When you phone your preferred recruitment agency and ask them for CVs?  Maybe it’s when you start mentally preparing yourself for an onslaught of mostly unsuitable applications. 

Needless to say that I don’t think that’s when recruitment should start.  For me, it starts when you even contemplate the possibility of bringing a new person into your business, whether it’s as a new role or to replace an existing one.  That’s the point at which you should start asking questions and planning for the future.  Without the planning stage, you run a much higher risk of recruiting the wrong person or getting half way through and discovering that you didn’t need to recruit after all, resulting in wasted time, effort and most importantly, money. 

A friend of mine recently shared her recruitment experience as a candidate which demonstrates perfectly what happens when an organisation starts recruiting without any apparent planning.  The lady in question went for an interview for the post and clearly blew them away as a job offer was swiftly issued.  She had some follow up questions and took the opportunity of emailing them to the person who’d issued the job offer.  As a result, the offer was immediately withdrawn with no real explanation. 

School holidays are coming.  It’s the time when teenagers start thinking about getting part time jobs, or perhaps when their parents start “encouraging” them to get summer jobs. The teenager gets valuable work experience and can show on their CV that they’ve been working during the holidays, ideally in a field or area they’d like to work in in the future. 

However, employers need to exercise care before agreeing to take on someone under the age of 16, even if they think they’re doing it as a favour to the person or to their parents.  There are some key considerations to be aware of.

 Under 13s

The general idea of an exit interview is to understand the reasons why someone has decided to leave the company, and for the company to gain feedback on what they may or may not be able to do differently in the future.  However, it’s often the case that an employee doesn’t see any value in the process and either doesn’t participate or does so reluctantly. 

So how does an organisation hold a meaningful exit interview without everyone involved feeling that it’s a waste of time?

Encourage honesty

We work with our clients to help them recruit and often act as the point of contact for people who are interested in applying.  Not only does that give us the opportunity to ensure that the customer’s employer brand is well looked after by keeping in touch with the applicants, answering their queries, acknowledging receipt of their applications etc, but it also means that we are usually the first ones to read the CVs. 

Having received a CV this morning with the candidate’s photo on, I posed the question on Twitter as to how people feel about CVs with photos.  The responses ranged from “off-putting” to “should be mandatory”, both of which are rather extreme. 

From experience of having seen a number of CVs over the years, I’d say that the ones with photos are much less frequent than ones without. 

As HR professionals, diversity should be our watchword. We are taught to abhor discriminatory attitudes, take umbrage at the slightest hint of prejudice and fight for the rights of disadvantaged employees and candidates. We are scrutinised at every turn for unfair practices or unreasonable behaviour.

Interesting then that the latest statistics via XpertHR tell us that the HR profession in 2011/12 is three-quarters female. How diverse, non-discriminatory and fair can that be? Just how have we got into the position where we’re writing diversity policies but not for us?

These questions formed a fascinating conversation on Twitter recently when I happened to remark to Michael Carty, Benchmarking Editor of XpertHR that these statistics were borne out by my own experiences. I attend a number of events where HR professionals gather and always notice the distinct lack of men in the room. At a recent CIPD event, male attendees formed less than 10% of the numbers attending. This seems to be the experience of many others in the profession.

AWOL.  Absent without leave. It happens more often than you’d think.  Your employee goes on holiday and “forgets” to come back to work.  Your employee on maternity leave or sick leave doesn’t communicate with you regarding their return to work.  You’re left trying to figure out what’s going on and what to do next. 

In these circumstances, it could be seen as reasonable for you to consider that the employee has effectively resigned and to act accordingly.  However, Employment Tribunals tend not to agree.  You cannot assume that an employee has resigned and must instead go through the proper disciplinary process.

Not turning up for work and not having a good reason for being absent generally constitutes a breach of contract.  You are perfectly entitled to dismiss an employee on that basis, having first followed the correct procedure.  Before moving to disciplinary proceedings, you must have made a number of attempts, via all available means, to contact the employee.  Having received no response, you must then write to the employee inviting them to attend a disciplinary hearing, ensuring that you send the letter recorded delivery to verify whether or not it has been received.