For dismissals on or after this date a week’s pay, currently capped at £400 increases to a maximum of £430.  This could be a significant increase on the cost of making long term employees redundant and your previously prepared figures will need to be revisited.

So – last working day before the Christmas break and we have just received a bottle of sherry (yes – our policies on alcohol and prevention of bribery do permit us to accept this!) and a Christmas card from Mr SC. It said:
Thanks for all your help on this one. I spoke to RRNR and straightaway he agreed to Dasher coming back to work. Seems they had been great friends, having started in the transport team together a few centuries ago. Problem had only really occurred since Dasher’s promotion, when he got a bit too big for his hooves. All well now – Dasher is now back in line and the crew are all happy and looking forward to the big event tomorrow night – followed by a long period of annual leave.

Ho! Ho! Ho! and a very Merry Christmas one and all!

Good news! We have today heard that Miss White has made a full recovery from her unfortunate accident with a poisoned apple. (Now also recorded in the accident book, following the hasty implementation of an updated health and safety policy by her employers). We encouraged Miss White to think seriously about raising a grievance and perhaps bringing a constructive dismissal claim, but it has not been necessary to do so because she has entered into mutually agreed terms of severance with her employers. Although not admitting liability, but recognising her long and loyal service, the Company has made a generous payment and given Miss White a glowing reference. Obviously we cannot give away any more detail because she has signed a Compromise Agreement containing a confidentiality clause, but we can confirm that all has ended happily ever after for Miss White, as she has found a new job at the local castle, in her old role as a Princess.

Got an email from Mr SC this morning. He has completed the disciplinaries for Donner, Blitzen and Dasher. Donner and Blitzen did escape with only a final written warning, but he felt he had no option but to dismiss Dasher because he was the transport team supervisor and it seemed that he had been using his extra authority to threaten Donner and Blitzen. 

However, Dasher had then appealed the decision – full of remorse for what had started out as no more than a bit of fun and admitting that the ‘power’ had gone to his antlers. He begged Mr SC to reconsider and offered to accept demotion and apologise to RRNR personally. We advised Mr SC to check with RRNR how he would feel about continuing to work with Dasher, before making any decision. We also checked Mr SC’s disciplinary procedure and confirmed that demotion was included amongst the possible penalties, so he can issue a final written warning with demotion if he wishes to.

“Christmas time – mistletoe and wine..”  , the perfect recipe for a new office romance – or the breaking up of an old one. Office relationships can bring an array of problems for employers and there was a time when they seemed keen to ban them altogether through strict rules in their contracts and handbooks. Nowadays, a more flexible approach tends to be the best policy, and a policy is the key word here. So put this on your ‘New Year To Do List’:

When drafting your policy, identify the areas where a work place relationship might be damaging for your business and focus on measures to limit the potential negatives. Employees will be less inclined to hide their relationship if they know the news will be positively received and no one is at risk of losing their job as a result.  It may be that preventing partners working in the same team or department is a sensible step to take and avoiding situations where one partner is a direct supervisor or manager of the other is generally justified. And look at what happens if one partner leaves. Your concern will naturally be that this poses a security and confidentiality threat, not to mention the possibility of competition, so revisit your post termination restrictions now and make sure they can be enforced if necessary. Don’t leave it until after the horse (or donkey) has bolted.

Ok – into the last week before Xmas now, but one of our company clients has a tricky problem. They employ a young man (we’ll call him Joseph) as a carpenter. His wife is expecting a baby sometime around the 25th of the month. She has just started her maternity leave. Joseph is enquiring about paternity leave, but our clients think there is some question mark over whether he is the biological father of the child and don’t know whether they should grant it or not.

We advised that this actually didn’t matter. Joseph will be eligible for paternity leave as long as he and Mary are either married or he is her partner and provided he has been employed for at least 26 weeks at end of the 15th week before the expected week of confinement.

Heard some very sad news about Miss White, whom we saw last week. It seems that the day after we saw her, the Company started receiving visits from a very persistent salesperson, who was able to take advantage of the rather vulnerable Miss White being left alone in the office day after day. She sold Miss White first a corset lace, which she accidently tied so tightly that poor Miss White fainted, and then the next day a hair comb which must have been contaminated with some sort of bacteria, as it caused Miss White to pass out. Luckily on each occasion the team returned to the office in time to save poor Miss White, but not on the most recent occasion when Miss White seems to have suffered food poisoning from, would you believe, an apple? The last we heard she was lying in a glass case up on the hill with her distraught work colleagues taking it in turns to look after her.

This throws up serious workplace health and safety issues. Why didn’t the mining company carry out a risk assessment and identify the fact Miss White was vulnerable being left all day in the office on her own? And once the first incident had taken place surely you would have expected the foreman to take appropriate action to protect Miss White from a similar occurrence? But no, all he did was get a few local bluebirds and a couple of deer to drop by the office to check up on her – clearly inadequate steps to protect her welfare. We hope Miss White makes a full recovery but if she doesn’t, we fear some serious repercussions for the company.

Mr SC telephoned to let us know that RRNR’s grievance meeting had just taken place and the grievance upheld in its entirety.  RRNR was apparently overjoyed, his nose beaming brighter than ever at the news. He is keen to get back to work as soon as possible, feeling a little bad that he had let his employer down for the first time in many centuries, but his sick note does not expire for another 2 weeks.

We advised Mr SC that RRNR needs to go back to his doctor to obtain a certificate confirming his fitness to return to work before he can come back. We suggested that Mr SC also check that RRNR can get straight back into full time work or whether he should be on a phased return, given the reason for his ill-health was work related stress.

Mr SC wanted to know what steps he should take with regard to Donner, Blitzen and Dasher.  He had come to the conclusion that whilst a lot of the jeering and name calling had come from Donner and Blitzen, they had been encouraged to do this by Dasher who seemed to have some sort of hold over them and was generally regarded as a bit of a bully.  We advised Mr SC to call all the employees to disciplinary hearings based on the evidence that he had acquired in the grievance investigation.  Ideally, the hearing should be conducted by a different Manager but as there is no one else in the organisation, we acknowledged that Mr SC will have to do it himself. We urged him to keep an open mind and advised that whilst he couldn’t prejudge the outcome of the disciplinary and in particular needed to hear the employees’ responses to the allegations, it did sound as though perhaps Donner and Blitzen could escape with no more than a final written warning whilst Dasher perhaps was facing dismissal for gross misconduct.

If they had had computers in 1AD, do you think the three wise men would have relied on a star to get them to Bethlehem? No of course not, they would have arranged it all via facebook and fitted their camels with a sat nav!As the party season kicks off, where else do you throw out invitations and share after party photos, but on Facebook and other social networking sites? All very well but are your employees doing this in your time when you are trying to keep up with the pre – Christmas rush?  And what exactly are they putting up there – not the highly embarrassing images of various parts of your anatomy produced on the photocopier late last night after the office party, we hope!

Time, if you haven’t already done so, to get your social networking policy set up.  Even if you are too late to implement it for this Christmas, it will be a job done before the New Year and could save you a lot of time, trouble and embarrassment in the months to come.

Had a meeting yesterday with Mr SC regarding RRNR’s grievance.  He has now obtained statements from the whole transport team. Interestingly, two employees, Dancer and Prancer, have witnessed the bullying on more than one occasion and had wanted to speak out but were afraid to do so for fear of repercussions. We advised Mr SC that once things had quietened down after the Christmas rush, we really ought to be looking again at his bullying and harassment policy and he should think about introducing a whistleblowing policy.

In their statements, Dancer and Prancer named the main culprits as Donner and Blitzen, egged on by newly promoted supervisor, Dasher.  Mr SC wondered if he should suspend the culprits or just sack them. We advised that whilst he could suspend the alleged culprits on full pay pending the outcome of a full disciplinary investigation, he would be faced with unfair dismissal claims if he simply sacked them. With this in mind, we asked about their length of service and explained that although it is likely that the qualifying period for bringing a claim will go back up to two years next year, at the moment it is still only one year. It turns out that these employees have a couple of hundred years’ service apiece, so actually there’s no question that they have the right to bring a claim.

Mr SC said he would think about what to do but in the meantime he was anxious to get RRNR back to work, as of all his transport operatives he is by far the most popular with customers. The grievance meeting is set for next week and he has notified RRNR. We reminded Mr SC that RRNR has the right to be accompanied at the meeting by a trade union official or a fellow employee and to see the statements ahead of the meeting.