If you are one of the successful ones who has hired a Kickstart employee – congratulations!

They will, like every other employee, need a full employment contract on their first day of employment.

But their employment contract will be different to a “normal” or even zero hours employee.

When putting together a contract for a Kickstart scheme employee you need to do the following:

• Fixed term should be no less than 6 months
• Hours should be no less than 25 hours per week
• They should be paid at least the minimum wage for their age
• You should include details of the training you plan to give the individual; this should include the following
  • Support with CV and interview preparation, and how to look for long term work
  • Training to develop their skills, such as teamwork, organisation and communications as part of their role
  • And so on…

Please give us a call  to ask us about your Kickstart contract when you start interviewing candidates, so that we have enough time to sort it out before their first day of employment.

What can I do if my employee is posting unsuitable content on social media?

There are usually two aspects to posts on social media. One is them talking about confidential Club matters that they shouldn’t be, and the other is showing that they really aren’t sick when they said they were!

What if you think they are not actually sick?

Managing sickness absence is rarely a straightforward task and dealing with someone that you suspect is not genuinely ill has always been at the trickier end of the scale.

The situation is not helped by the fact that employees who are off work on sickness absence don’t have to hole themselves up in their home and not go outside. While it is frustrating, it is important to move with caution and not make any knee-jerk decisions regarding how you will deal with the issue upon their return to work.

If an employee tells you that they cannot come into work because they have broken their ankle, and then you see them on Facebook dancing on both feet without crutches in a night club, you will probably be right in doubting the truth of their sickness.

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One of my friends got a new job the other day.

She’s been unemployed since being made redundant last summer and jumped at the chance to do some casual work that used her admin skills.

As you’d expect, I had my HR hat on, asking about her contract, sick pay and holiday and all that jazz.

Her response?

“Oh no, I don’t get any of that stuff because I’m a zero hours worker”.

I pointed out that however wonderful her new employer was, they were also operating illegally and not paying her what she was owed.

I offered to read the contract to check what else they had got wrong.

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I like to keep an eye on the competition.

So, when one of our golf club clients mentioned a firm of employment solicitors that “really knew their onions”, I was understandably curious.

A Google search later, and I felt a lot happier, thanks to their 3.8-star rating on Google My Business.

You might be thinking 3.8 isn’t too bad – it’s better than nothing after all.

But when you’re a professional adviser, slightly better than rank average isn’t exactly stellar.

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In a normal year, we’re hard at work advising our clients.

In the last 12 months, our busyness has been off the scale.

Thanks to the pandemic, more employers than ever have needed our help to ensure they do the right things, operate in the right way, and stay out of employment tribunals.

Unfortunately, not all employers have been so conscientious, and the latest stats drum that point home.

Between October and December 2020, Employment Tribunal claims rose 25% for single claims, and by 82% for multiple claims, when compared to the same quarter in 2019.

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At the best of times, dealing with corporate monstrosities is pretty challenging.

Since Covid, it’s become an utter nightmare, with more barriers and irrelevant questions in every single interaction.

Take Thames Water as an example – they called me yesterday to book a date to install a water meter.

The guy on the other end of the phone sounded bored out of his brain, and clearly reading from a script, launched straight into the all too familiar Covid questions:

• Is anyone self-isolating?
• Is anyone in the vulnerable categories?
• Has anyone in your household tested positive for Covid recently?
• Does anyone have Covid symptoms?

So far, so standard.

I replied “no” to all of them, and then he explained that the earliest date that an engineer could come would be May 21.

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