Change Your Mindset: Are You Ready?
Leading up to the General Election on 4th July this year, much was made of Labour’s so-called “100 day plan” forming part of their manifesto to kickstart economic growth. They pledged to introduce legislation within 100 days to implement ‘Labour’s Plan to Make Work Pay: Delivering a New Deal for Working People’. There has been much speculation about the detail, but some parts of the Plan are relatively straightforward. Introducing day one basic rights to protection from unfair dismissal will bring Performance Management into sharp focus. Employers will need to be fair and transparent in dealing with employees who are not meeting their standards, so a robust Performance Management process - including recruitment, onboarding and probation - will be key.
In the first of a series of articles, Martin Nicholson asks if you’re ready for the changes that the new legislation will bring.
The Headlines
So, Labour announced that within 100 days they would introduce a raft of changes to employment law. This means that by mid-October we should see the draft bill and the majority of proposed changes. Of course the legislation isn’t published yet, and it will require consultation with unions and employers, but in summary employers should start to plan the way they:
manage new employees under 2-years’ service;
provide benefits and family-friendly rights to people from day one;
work with trade unions;
manage flexible working contracts and consider flexible working requests;
treat all staff as employees and not two different levels (merging of worker and employee category);
start to plan how we can enable staff with the right to switch off.
I appreciate the concern this will cause for a lot of employers as many rely on probations or less than 2-years’ service. The truth is there are some benefits forced on an organisation by having day one employment rights. Here is my take:
Presently, a lot of organisations rely on the 2-years’ service grace period to dismiss an employee if things aren’t working out. The new legislation will put a stop to that, giving workers rights from day one. Managing someone’s performance from day one is good practice. You’ve gone to considerable effort to find that person, they have bought into the dream and they want to work with you. Making organisations and their managers focus on setting people up for success is surely a positive thing for us all. Good established businesses do this as a matter of course. I accept that for those businesses that don’t have this culture, the prospect could be seen as daunting. Managers will need to work harder and have some earlier tough conversations, telling people how they can improve and support them to do it. The probation period will need to be consistent (probably in line with ACAS guidelines) and applied fairly by each manager.
Look at the upside once that change has successfully been achieved.
Managers accountable for their teams’ performance, and focussing on each of their team and the development path they are on.
Ensuring that people start to work successfully in their roles from day one, and contribute to an organisation’s performance.
That learnt skill of tackling performance (and behaviour) issues and managing it would also spread across the entire workforce.
So although the new legislation may require additional work and be a pain to implement, let’s see how we can make it work for the benefit of the organisation and everyone employed in it.
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Martin Nicholson is the Managing Consultant at ProAction HR, providing Human Resources Services to SME businesses in Southampton, Winchester and throughout Hampshire and the adjoining counties.
Co-founder of the Winchester-based HR company, Martin and his team support clients across Hampshire and neighbouring counties, providing HR advice, HR consultancy, and HR services. They cover a broad range of HR solutions, from one-off responsive HR support to a full Human Resources service, along with Learning & Development, Training and Change Management.
“Helping organisations to thrive on the value & uniqueness of their people.”
