We all know HR can be a real minefield if you’re not sure of the correct process to follow when you suspect an employee is up to no good.
It isn’t clearly documented in legislation, but case law has given us a great framework that should be applied whenever a disciplinary matter rears its head.
Below we have outlined the main steps of a disciplinary process:
I think most people would agree it’s easier to avoid issues than confront them, but often that serves to prolong the inevitable – the tough conversation has to happen eventually. And the longer an issue goes on, the harder it is to address.
A toxic employee has to be called out, regardless of whether or not they’re talented. In fact, some would argue that more talented the employee, the more they should be held to account in exhibiting the right behaviours because they could be looked up to by others in the organisation who then copy what they see.
Regardless of how tricky the conversation may be, it has to happen.
Here’s some advice on how to get underway:
Effective leaders have to be brave enough to have tough conversations so they can deliver feedback effectively. As Brene Brown says, you have to get comfortable with discomfort!
Here’s some tips to help you:
Read More »For some businesses, restructuring will be an unfortunate effect of the COVID-19 crisis; a necessary evil.
But restructuring can be a challenging process to navigate, and it can have far wider implications than just the individuals who are immediately affected, so we recommend it really is a last resort.
However, if it is a path you need to go down, here are our 5 golden rules (particularly at this time!):
Read More »The traditional working week of Monday – Friday, 9am – 5pm is slowly becoming a thing of the past as more and more businesses embrace flexible working arrangements.
There are huge benefits to be gained from providing a work environment that allows employees to take ownership of when and how they are most productive. It is an acknowledgement that work is only one aspect of people’s lives and often there’s a need to accommodate family commitments, hobbies or study too.
The key to making sure flexible working arrangements work effectively is regular communication and agreeing quantifiable outcomes. The focus becomes on output, rather than input.
Employee engagement is often seen as one of the fanciful parts of HR – it can be a buzz word without a lot of substance behind it if you don’t really know the true value behind it.
Put simply, employee engagement is a measure of job satisfaction. It signifies the level of motivation an employee has for their job; employees who are highly engaged essentially try harder and therefore perform at a greater level than disengaged staff. So aiming to lift employee engagement is about tapping into the discretionary effort and fostering increased drive from employees.
It’d be great if we could all get along with everybody, but sadly, we can’t.
You can pick your friends, but you can’t always pick your colleagues, and for that reason, personality clashes in the workplace are inevitable. It’s not uncommon to have one or two people who just don’t seem to get on with the others.
We’ve been brought in to mediate our fair share of employee conflicts in the past couple of months, and while the meetings are slightly uncomfortable for everyone in attendance, they are essential to finding a resolution – you have to be prepared to have the tough conversations.
You can not ignore it.
Here are our pointers to managing conflict between two employees (or even between yourself and an employee):
Employment issues again hit the headlines in the last month with cases that had gone before the Employment 
Relations Authority (ERA). And again, the learning is the importance of PROCESS when considering terminating an employee.
In Queenstown, a carpenter was awarded $24,500 after being unjustifiably dismissed while in Fiji attending the funeral of a close relative. He was only told his employment had ended when he contacted his employer to see why he hadn’t been paid. It was then that he was told they’d run out of work for him.
A British Airways worker made the news last week after his employment was terminated because he had a ‘man bun’. He argued it was discrimination because females were allowed to wear their hair in that style, and yet because he was a male, he wasn’t.
While the jury is still out on who will win this one, it does raise a good point about company dress codes, and the right way to enforce them.
A company is absolutely entitled to have a dress code to reflect the type and status of the business, but it must be reasonable in the context of the company’s business – you can’t really prevent someone having a specific hair style for no justifiable reason.
Today’s teachers strike got me thinking. At face value, it looks like a group of employees who want a pay increase, have decided to boycott their jobs until they get one. According to mainstream media, the nurses did something similar last month.
In a non-unionised corporate world, striking would never fly.
I don’t know any business that would respond favourably to an employee refusing to do the job they’re employed to do, until they’re paid more money. In fact, this blatant refusal to work may lead to a disciplinary discussion.
But for essential public services that we all depend on, it’s an effective strategy for pay negotiations. Both nurses and teachers are at the mercy of a pay scale system that rewards longevity in the profession, rather than individual performance so their approach to pay negotiations has to reflect this. The professions are also largely unionised, which restricts their ability to discuss pay with their manager.
For those of us in paid employment in a non-unionised workforce, we have to approach pay negotiations differently.