Employee engagement surveys are designed to measure and assess your employees' motivation and engagement. Employee wellbeing surveys invite employees to reflect on their physical and mental health and allow the company to consider the ways in which staff are supported. Once revealed through survey results, underlying issues, which managers may have been previously unaware of, can be addressed head-on. Surveys can be made anonymous to give employees confidence to answer truthfully, and even though individual results may not be revealed, trends in the overall workforce results can provide invaluable insight to influence corporate decision making for the benefit of staff.

Surveys can be conducted at any interval with brief monthly conducted surveys giving a regular check-in for employees that avoids problems being allowed to fester. 

How we can help with your staff survey:

• Surveys managed from start to finish
• Greater engagement when surveys are outsourced to a third party
• Anonymity for survey responders
• Collaborative approach to question setting
• Work with you to understand your aims exactly
• Surveys managed online including e-mails
• Detailed, graphical response reports
• Monitor response rates and encourage engagement 
• Make recommendations on actions to take following the survey
• Support with action implementation

Costs depends upon our level of involvement and the number of staff surveyed. Please contact us to discuss.

Get in touch to find out more.

Suicidal thoughts are much more common than people think. As MP Dean Russel put it, "If suicide was a virus, we would be on the hunt for a vaccine." However, huge stigma remains when talking about suicide. People might not view suicide as a workplace issue however employers have a legal duty of care to provide a safe working environment. The Hazards Campaign estimates that 650 work-related suicides happen every year in the UK. That equates to 10% of all suicides. As an employee, manager or HR professional, it can be an extremely difficult and emotional situation when a colleague discloses suicidal feelings. Our course is designed to build confidence in the team to have supportive conversations and to sensitively signpost to the appropriate services.

This is a 4-hour session to raise awareness of wellbeing and mental health, and for delegates to learn how to recognise and look after their own mental health. 

What you’ll learn:

• The case for understanding the link between suicide and the workplace
• Roles, responsibilities and Duty of Care: the employer and the Mental Health First Aider
• The four attitudes towards suicide
• Supportive conversations: having the confidence to listen and signpost a colleague
• Knowing when to escalate and de-escalate

Price:

1/2 day in-house training for up to 12 delegates - £999 (+ VAT)

Get in touch to find out more.

Mental Health Training has been part of our suite of training courses for over eight years now. We made the decision to offer it following the wider acceptance that employers should take greater responsibility for the wellbeing of their employees and should play a more pro-active role in the promotion of good Mental Health as part of this.

Currently, employers are not obliged to provide mental health training for employees, although it has become much more widespread recently and many businesses have taken it upon themselves to implement it; particularly since Covid. Businesses are becoming more alert to that fact that a mentally heathy workforce with good morale is significantly more productive with less days lost to absence.

Optional Mental Health training for employees may soon become a thing of the past however if Dean Russell, Conservative MP for Watford, sees his recently proposed bill made into UK law.

Mr Russell proposed the new law in the House of Commons last Wednesday as a Ten Minute Rule Bill last Wednesday. The purpose of the bill, Mr Russell said is to “…create parity between mental health and physical health in the workplace for first aid.” In other words, employers’ responsibilities regarding the mental health of their employees will become as legislatively enforceable as for their physical health.

During his Bill reading, Mr Russell cited the proliferation of modern technology, social media and an ‘always-on’ culture as reasons why we are experiencing an increase in cases of mental health. He remarked how the rapid changes in culture and society have not been matched by changes in us as human beings, which is creating stress and anxiety.

“If suicide was a virus,” said Mr Russell, “we would be on the hunt for a vaccine. If loneliness was a disease, would we not search for a cure?” He went on to quote several statistics:

• In 2021 in the UK, 6319 deaths were reported as suicide in 2021.
• 10 million more people will need mental health support since Covid.
• Stress depression and anxiety have become the cause of the most lost work days since the 1990s.
• Annually, 1 million workers lose 18.6 days per year to work related stress, depression or anxiety, equating to 17 million days lost in 2021/22.
• According to Deloitte, the cost of mental health to UK business is £56billion.

He went on to say, “Mental health on the business agenda is an investment not a burden. People do not wear bandages to show where they have anxiety and depression. Many learn to hide their pain in fear of damaging their careers.”

This is the second time that Dean Russell has bought the bill to the House and he vowed to continue highlighting it until it gains proper attention. The second reading is scheduled for 24th February.

The general feeling is that it is a case of when rather than if this bill will become law, and it represent the most significant revision of our workplace Health & Safety Laws for some time. Workplaces will have to have somebody trained as a Mental Health First Aider in addition to provisions for employees’ physical health. The Mental health Forst Aider’s role will not be to treat, but to support those with mental health issues and signpost them to the appropriate services.

Clearly, this will see a rise in the demand for Mental Health training and so businesses may want to get ahead of the curve and train their Mental Health First Aiders now whilst there is availability and prices are low. We have a number of courses already scheduled throughout the year.

In addition, we run Mental Health Awareness courses for staff in general and Mental Health for Managers to equip line managers and supervisors with the skills to recognise the potential or occurrence of mental health issues within their own teams.

Take a look at our updated Mental Health & Wellbeing page on our website for further information about the courses we run and other support we offer. As usual you can contact us on 01452 331331, or e-mail This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

You can see the Dean Russell’s Bill reading on the BBC at https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001j12r/ten-minute-rule-bill-mental-health-first-aid

Immediately following the Covid pandemic we saw a trend whereby many employees of a certain age elected to quit their jobs and remove themselves from the available workforce. The stresses of the pandemic, including the loss of loved ones, brought about a re-evaluation of life goals. Opportunities to retire early were eagerly taken.

More recently, the cost of living crisis has forced some of these early retirees to re-join the workforce, and compelled others to recognise that they will probably have to stay in work for longer than they may have originally planned. Despite this, the number of vacancies in the UK remains high. Indeed, just this morning, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt strongly hinted at financial incentives to encourage people to re-join the workforce.

In the meantime, we have noticed that employers have diluted their recruitment standards in order to fill posts.

One consequence of the current labour market is that the age range amongst workers in some organisations has broadened, and we can sometimes see as many as five generations in a single workplace.

Whilst we promote and applaud diversity in the workplace, managing a workforce that spans a wide age range and encompasses differing sets of principles and beliefs, can present a number of challenges. Attitudes towards authority, work ethic and privacy can become catalysts for friction. For example, something that was acceptable to say in the workplace 40 years ago that might have been considered simply as banter back then, would not be appropriate today and may indeed be considered offensive.

In recent years, terms such as Baby Boomers, Millennials and Generations X and Z have entered the lexicon. The media and some HR commentators have been quick to adopt these phrases as a way of pigeon-holing individuals into certain behavioural types, dependant solely on the years of their birth.

We are less keen to employ such labels.

They do not take into account people’s life choices; when they start a family for example. Nor do they account for education or affluence. Wealthier individuals are proven to have had better and earlier access to technology and therefor the Internet; one of the prime markers for identifying Generation Z. There is also no overlap. The generation labels are strictly aligned with specific years of birth, whereas in reality there are likely to be transitional periods.

Furthermore, using such generational terminology creates a pathway for derogatory and ultimately discriminatory terms. “Boomer” has become a word of disrespect, criticizing someone’s age and perceived lack of digital awareness.

Generational diversity then, deserves as much attention as race or gender diversity. Furthermore, in addition to awareness surrounding age discrimination, managers need to employ plain and comprehensive communications practices to ensure that all employees are receiving the same messages and instructions and that no group or individual feels isolated or treated differently.

Diversity of all kinds is good for businesses so it's important that employers embrace generational diversity whilst maintaining their employees’ dignity at work and safeguarding their wellbeing.

Ask us about our Dignity at Work training, as well as our Effective Communication workshop. Contact us on 01452 331331, or e-mail This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

There seems to be little let-up at the moment in the amount of industrial action taking place across the nation and across a raft of industries. While some of us may have occasionally been inconvenienced by the likes of Frech Air-Traffic Controllers upsetting our holiday plans, strikes on the current scale haven’t been seen for quite a few years in the UK. For many, this will be their first encounter with such industrial action, on both sides of the picket line.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said 13% of businesses reported some kind of impact from industrial action toward the end of 2022. Common issues include being unable to access goods or services which they needed, for example because of postal strikes.

Businesses are also being affected as their employees struggle to get to their place of work, either owing to transport strikes or because they are forced to stay at home on childcare duty because teachers have walked out. Whilst some business types, such as hospitality and manufacturing, have little room for manoeuvre, a little creativity from others may help to alleviate the impact of the strike action.

The debate over the pros and cons of working from home rages on, but when transport strikes mean your staff are denied the ability to get to work, allowing them to work from home, where that is a practical solution, is an obvious solution. Indeed, the advent of working from home and other flexible options since the Covid pandemic is probably lessening the impact that some strikes are having; reducing the value of strikes as a bargaining chip for unions.

Where staff are unable to make it into the workplace, and home working isn’t an option, reverting to holiday will probably be the default position for most. Unpaid leave could also be a consideration where not enough holiday allowance remains. We are usually forewarned when strike days are going to happen which makes planning ahead a little easier, although that may be of little comfort to employers who depend on a certain headcount being present in the workplace.

Initiating a car-sharing scheme could be something to consider to help employees get to work; with perhaps some flexibility in start-times built in to allow for busier than usual roads or deviations from the driver’s usual route to collect colleagues. For those affected by teacher’s strikes and therefore presented with childcare challenges, setting up an emergency creche is probably unrealistic. Flexibility with start and finish times however may be sufficient to enable staff time to drop off children with a family member or friend.

Industrial action by paramedics. Nurses and associated workers such as call handlers, is something that nobody want to be affected by. It’s certainly something that we are unlikely to plan for. Some extra precautions around the workplace however might be prudent.

If there was a firefighter’s strike, we might be inclined to prepare ready access to water and ensure fire extinguishers were serviced and in working condition. With emergency health workers walking out, maybe now is a good time to check that your first aid kits are fully stocked and that you know the location of the nearest defibrillator. Also ensure there is someone on hand who knows how to use it and when is appropriate to do so. Generally, make sure that you have sufficient numbers of First Aiders available for each shift.

At the moment, widespread public support for those workers electing to strike appears to remain intact. How long it continues however before people begin to lose their patience is anybody’s guess.

We’re here to support with all aspects of HR, Employment Law and employee wellbeing. Call us to discus on 01452 331331 or e-mail This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Holiday calculations for employees continues to be one of those subjects that’s a continual source of headaches for employers. It ought to be straightforward but there’s always something that causes a complication. In recent years it’s been changes bough on by an increase in flexible working arrangements; full-time staff switching to part-time working part-way through the holiday year for example.

To add to the confusion, this year, as last year, there will be an extra public holiday to account for Royal events. Strictly speaking, the wording in your employment contracts determines whether or not you are obliged to give the day off for the King’s coronation. But taking into account the fact probably no-one else in the country will be working in the country on that day, except hospitality venues, care and those directly involved in the event, do you really want to be the employer who insists that your staff come into work?

Holidays are a statutory right so employers have legal obligations and restrictions on how they apply them. There are a couple of ways that we can describe the statutory holiday entitlement in a contract of employment. Based on a full-time employee it could be either:

• 20 days holiday plus 8 days public/bank holiday
  Or
• 28 days (5.6 weeks) including public/bank holidays

Our preference is to use the latter option as more jobs these days, especially in hospitality and retail, include working on bank holidays and employees who are contracted to work them should be entitled to the equivalent time off in lieu. It also makes calculating part-time workers’ holiday much easier.

For part-time workers, the easiest way to determine holiday allowance is using a pro rata calculation based on the full time equivalent hours of an employee. For example, a part time worker, or someone who is reducing their hours from 5 days per week to 3 days, simply has their holiday adjusted by 40% or two fifths. So, someone who would normally be entitled to 28 days including bank holidays, would get 16.8 days which we would round up to 17 days.

For an employee who works part time hours but for five days per week, it’s even easier to calculate as they would still be awarded 28 days holiday. This is because for any day they take off they will only effectively be taking holiday for the time they would usually work. In other words, for someone who works 9.00am to 2.00pm Monday to Friday, any days holiday they take will effectively be for those hours; so one day’s holiday is still only 9.00am to 2.00pm.

It’s important to get the calculation right and we would usually default to the online .Gov holiday calculator when calculating holiday as, should there be any disagreements, it would be difficult to argue with what the Government has told you. However, the .Gov calculator doesn’t always have options for every scenario and so sometimes it still comes down to a manual calculation.

In addition to the rules surrounding statutory holiday allowances, here are some other points you should know:

• Employees who work irregular hours, including term time and zero hours are entitled to 28 days holiday provided they have an ongoing employment contract
• If an employee is on approved sickness absence during a bank holiday that forms part of their minimum holiday entitlement, the employer should allow them to take a day off in lieu
• If an employee is on approved sick absence during a booked holiday, then any days lost to sickness can be reclaimed as holiday. Our advice is that before allowing this to be reclaimed, seek evidence of sickness e.g. through a fit note or other medical documentation / evidence. Also ensure this is included in your policies and employee handbook.

Finally As a rule of thumb, when a holiday calculation produces a fraction of a day, you should always round up.

We have produced a new Holiday Fact Sheet which will shortly be available for download from our Toolkit section on the website. If however you prefer to talk things through, we’re available on the phone or by email on 01452 331331 orThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

You might think that work at the North Pole is for the festive period only, and whilst some of Santa’s staff are definitely seasonal, toys need to be manufactured all year long to keep up with demand; especially now that we have a global population of 8 billion. Consequently, Santa needs to ensure that the employment terms for both Reindeer and Elves are properly applied. He’ll need to ensure that they have the correct worker status and there is no discrimination towards either group if he wants to avoid ending up with an Employment Tribunal claim.

For the Elves, Santa will most probably have a core team of elves making toys to meet anticipated demand. As Christmas approaches, he’ll need to assess how many children have been naughty and how many have been nice and adjust production accordingly. This may mean that Santa will have to take on more Elves to meet demand.

Santa could take on extra Elves on either temporary/casual or fixed term contracts and could do this directly as an employer, or through an employment agency. Taking on self-employed workers could also be an option.

Agency Elves have access to certain benefits immediately, such as access to parking, the staff canteen or crèche facilities and will gain rights to full benefits after 12 weeks in the same role. If Santa opts to engage self-employed elves on a contracted basis, whilst there are no employee rights to worry about, he still needs to be conscious of Health & Safety, HMRC issues like IR35 and discrimination.

By employing Elves and adding them to his payroll, the employer status means Santa can dictate when his employees take their holiday; so he is within his rights to order all employees to take their holidays together or within a certain time frame such as in the summer when there will be little impact on toy production.

Issues over employee status could cause Santa a problem as it has with companies in the past such as Uber and Deliveroo. If self-employed elves make a claim that they should actually hold employed status because they are provided with uniform, and are restricted from making toys for other organisations, he may end up with a bill for back-dated holiday pay. This could prove very costly and mean that we all end up with just a lump of coal for Christmas next year.

This year, Santa has been hit with a slew of flexible working requests and a number of his Elves have asked to work part time. Because he already has an arrangement to bring in extra staff to meet demand, he hasn’t been able to justify refusing these flexible requests as a transient workforce already forms part of his business practices.

He has however, been able to reject the ‘Work From Home’ requests from the workshop Elves, as they obviously need to come into the workplace to use the workshop facilities and tools to do their jobs. Whilst the administrator Elves, such as the child spelling interpreters, could do their jobs at home, Santa has rejected their WFH requests on the basis that it is not fair on those workers whose jobs make it unfeasible to work from home.

Santa will need to keep an eye on proposed Government legislation this year as flexible working requests are likely to become an employee right from day one which means that any new Elves who are taken on might immediately request to work part-time.

With just one evening’s work per year, the reindeer should really have zero-hours contracts as this would allow them to seek other work from other employers when Santa has nothing for them. The problem with this however is that there is no mutuality of contract, meaning the reindeer are not obliged to accept any work that is offered.

This could leave Santa in a pickle if the reindeer choose not to accept the one night’s work per year on Christmas eve that he offers and instead decide to stick to their off-season jobs of posing for photographs and being fattened up to provide dinner for hungry Icelandics.

Taking the reindeer on as self-employed workers gives rise to the same issues as the zero-hours contract option whereby they don’t have to accept the work. Santa’s can either contract the Reindeer to just one day per year or offer them a very generous 364 days holiday per year.

Prior to starting their shift, as they are effectively delivery crew, Santa might think it’s a good idea to run a drug and alcohol test on the reindeer. We recommend that he tests all reindeer to make sure that he can’t be accused of discrimination or victimisation and ensures that they reindeer are aware of his zero tolerance policy on this.

Finally, Santa needs to make sure he is compliant with his employer responsibilities regarding pay. The National Living and Minimum Wages are due to increase again from April 2023. He also needs to factor in his auto-enrolment pension contributions and there may be Elves and reindeer who opted out of auto enrolment first time round that need to be opted back in.

We’re sure that Santa complies with all of his responsibilities and that Christmas will go without a hitch. It’s a festive reminder however that HR and Employment Law are constantly changing and no employer is immune.

Have a very Merry Christmas and an excellent New Year. If you would like to discuss your HR and Employment Law requirements with us in 2023, please call us on 01452 331331 or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

The Government is pressing ahead with proposals to make the right for employees to request flexible working the default from day one of employment. This week, entrepreneur, James Dyson, blasted the Government plans as “economically illiterate and staggeringly self-defeating”. Are minsters over-reaching on this one, and implementing legislation in what is fundamentally a business matter that employers should be allowed to work out for themselves.

Under current legislation, employees must have worked for an employer for at least 26 weeks before they can submit a flexible working request and can only submit one such request in any 12-month period. Under the proposed legislation, there would be no qualifying period and two submissions would be allowed every 12 months.

Furthermore, employers would be required to consult with their employees, fully exploring all options before rejecting a request and do so within two months instead of the current three. The new law would also remove the requirement for employees to explain to their employer how a flexible working request might work – the onus instead falling upon the employer to come up with the solution.

The proposed legislation comes on the back of a government consultation which gathered 1,611 responses. 1,342 (83%) of the responses were from individuals with just 114 from businesses of various sizes; the remainder coming from consultancies, academics, and campaign groups. Despite this significant imbalance, the Government feels justified to plough ahead with implementing the legislation which could come into effect as early as next October.

Cynics might conclude that this is the action of a weak Government, keen to garner support from the electorate. Indeed, data released last month suggests Britain’s economy lost £127.9bn in 2022 as a result of low employee productivity and absence. The proposed legislation has its supporters however, with many citing improved employee morale and wellbeing, leading to improvements in productivity.

The explosion in flexible working, and in particular, working from home, has crept up on us somewhat, as a side effect of Covid. Had we not experienced the pandemic, it’s unlikely that that such significant changes to our working practices would ever have been on the radar for most of us. We would still be continuing our 9 to 5 lives working from the office. So, such a rapid drive to impose flexibility on employers does appear questionable when so many businesses are still experimenting and trying to work out exactly what the best solution is for them.

The government has at least refrained from making the legislation a ‘right to have’ and it remains only a ‘right to request’. This is still enough however to create huge distractions for businesses who may find themselves overwhelmed with flexible working requests. Even one or two requests could create administrative challenges for many, and that’s before the logistical challenges are addressed, of implementing any successful requests.

Flexibility in work covers a range of options for employees including working hours, changes to the place of work, job sharing, shift work and flexitime. All are aspects that workers can ask to be amended under a flexible working request and they must be given due consideration, even as the law stands now.

If and when the day-one right comes into effect, to avoid having a new recruit start a job and immediately ask to reduce their hours to a three day week, employers will need to be much sharper with recruitment advertising and job descriptions. Ambiguity must be avoided. Recruiters will need to pre-emptively consider why a job cannot be done flexibly and make sure this is communicated at the outset so that potential applicants can de-select themselves if flexibility is something they require.

Equally of course, options for flexibility can be advertised to make a position more attractive and appeal to a wider audience. We sometimes see this already when recruiters include part-time or job-sharing potential in their advertisements.

The new legislation may have the effect of polarising job roles to those that can be done flexibly and those that cannot. With campaigners pushing strongly for a culture of more widely accepted flexible working in the UK however, employers might want to start thinking about what their stance and approach to flexibility will be.

In the meantime, make sure your job descriptions and contracts of employment are carefully worded, clear and unambiguous.

For help and support with implementing flexible working arrangements and with changes to contracts, call us on 01452 331331 or e-mail This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

As Christmas approaches, employers are likely to be asked for time off by some of their employees so they can go and watch their child or grandchild perform in the school play. Like most other requests for time-off, employers are not under any obligation to grant it; but are they really going to deny it?

Employers do have to allow staff to take reasonable time off for emergencies involving dependants. We normally associate dependants with children but it could also mean an elderly or disabled relative for whom the employee was a carer or held responsibility for welfare. Any time taken off in emergency circumstances does not have to be paid.

A Nativity or seasonal play isn’t an emergency so doesn’t fall under these rules. However it may seem harsh and uncaring not to allow the time off; particularly when, by virtue of the fact that it is a Nativity play, it would be held during the season of goodwill.

Options for how the time-off is treated will likely be either as holiday, unpaid leave or granted as discretionary paid leave. Whichever policy is chosen, we strongly recommend that employers apply it consistently across the workforce. This will help prevent claims of favouritism or potentially discrimination.

Unlike emergencies, events such as school plays and sports days are known about in advance and so can be planned for. With this in mind, an employer may decide that staff must take holiday time for such events; or perhaps a half-day if the employer allow it.

As school plays probably result in just a few hours absence it might be unreasonable to break holiday down to hours to accommodate them and so discretionary paid leave might be an easier solution; as well the employer showing themselves in a good light. Alternatively, the employee could be asked to make the hours back at another time.

Depending upon the profile of the workforce, a business might have just one or two employees that request time off for school play duties. As the impact on the business is likely to be negligible, the absence may be simply overlooked. However, it may disgruntle other employees if this time off is paid and no equivalent time off is offered.

Also, as employees’ children are likely to be of differing ages, decisions need to be consistent from year to year so that a group of parents isn’t disadvantaged because of a sudden rule change.

For some businesses, particularly retail and leisure, the festive season is the busiest time of year and can often be a period where no leave is allowed at all for anybody. Again, so long as this is consistent then parents were probably aware when they took the job.

With more employees working from home, the temptation for them might be to simply slip away for an hour or two and hope their absence isn’t noticed. We suggest that employers remind staff that even if they are working from home they should be formally requesting time off for any absence. Even if it is ultimately granted as discretionary leave, it not for the employee to simply assume that it is acceptable; otherwise the line will become irrevocably blurred.

Ultimately, consistency is key. So to re-iterate, whichever policy is opted for when it comes to ad-hoc or discretionary leave, is should be kept consistent across the workforce to maintain morale and harmony. Employers mustn’t be drawn into favouring any particular reason for requesting leave.

Your leave policy should be made available to your staff in the staff handbook. If that’s something you would like some help or support with this then just call us on 01452 331331 or email us at at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Holding on to the talent that you have is as much a challenge as recruiting new team members. Cathy O'Donoghue examines some strategies that might help you plug any talent leaks.