On the agenda of the breakfast seminar on June 9 is the likely impact of the Agency Workers Regulations, coming into force in October.

Hegarty LLP Solicitor’s partner and employment law expert Martin Bloom will be covering in detail the points in the Regulations which businesses need to be aware of and providing tips on how internal processes can be altered to ensure all requirements are met.

Delegates will have the opportunity to ask questions during the event.

“We have been working closely with our industry body the REC for more than two years to ensure we are perfectly placed to advise our clients on preparing for the introduction of the regulations,” said Anne Corder. “There is only a small window left for businesses to ensure compliancy and we are hoping the seminar will give people the push they need to put those final measures in place.”

For more information about the seminar please contact ACR on info@annecorder.co.uk or telephone 01733 319888.

PETERBOROUGH-based BGL Group has launched a brand new monthly prize draw open to each of its 2150 employees across the UK.

The company’s first ten winners were announced last month, and were thrilled to take home prizes ranging from luxury weekend breaks to shopping and holiday vouchers. Each month also sees one lucky winner secure a ‘star prize’, with 40 options to choose from. Star prizes include a weekend’s shopping trip to New York, a family holiday to Lapland, centre court Wimbledon tickets, a Bang and Olufsen stereo or even your cleaning and ironing done for a whole year!

The new draw was introduced to give a new level of spontaneity and fun to working at the BGL Group.

Cheryl Clifford, board director, said: “BGL Group can be a demanding, dynamic and fast-paced place to work, and it’s important that our people feel that this is balanced with a sense of how much they are valued by the organisation. We wanted to introduce something new that would reach as many people as possible, thank them for their hard work and introduce a sense of fun, surprise and spontaneity. The initiative has generated great excitement and appeals to employees at every level and office location across the group.”

The prize draw is open to all employees across the group and winners are selected at random by an automated selection tool. People that have been with the group for five years or more receive two entries per month into the draw, while those with ten years’ service or more gain a total of four entries.

The latest recruitment push is part of a national growth drive, which will see the company employ an additional 240 staff across its contact centre sites in Coventry, Sunderland and Peterborough. The full time roles available at Fusion Peterborough include sales and service advisers, retention advisers and team leaders.

Fusion offers contact centre support to customers of home, motor and commercial insurance products for leading brands including Budget, Post Office, M&S Money, HSBC, RAC and Auto Trader.

Jason Turner (above), associate director – contact centre operations, said, “We are delighted to be able to offer new jobs at a time when the local recruitment market is stalling. Our contact centre agents are highly skilled and have in depth knowledge of insurance products offered by leading household brands.

“We pride ourselves on being able to attract the best possible candidates and offer great career development opportunities. We also work hard to give our employees exceptional benefits. In the last year we have developed an industry-leading wellbeing programme, featuring at desk massages and subsidised on-site osteopathy consultation.”

Fusion runs various recognised learning and development courses across its UK sites. New recruits to Fusion Peterborough will have the opportunity to undertake NVQ, ILM and Chartered Insurance Institute qualifications, to bolster their individual career ambitions. Across the Fusion sites more than 160 people have either just finished or are currently studying these courses.

The news follows the recent announcement from Fusion’s parent company, the BGL Group, stating that the group has achieved its 13^th consecutive year of profit growth. The BGL Group has been based in Peterborough for almost 20 years and now has four sites across the city, including its headquarters. Many of today’s senior employees at BGL began their careers in the Group’s contact centres.

For more information on opportunities at Fusion and to apply online, please visit www.bglgroup.co.uk.

Many bosses across the region took a lenient view on staff who couldn’t make it into the office last winter, after what was billed as the worst snow for 50 years left schools and roads closed and bus and train services severely disrupted.

Now businesses waking up to more snow this winter may find they rue their past generosity as staff use precedents to claim paid leave in extreme weather, according to employment law experts.

Peter Mooney, of business compliance specialist ELAS, said, “The law is very simple when it comes to the weather: if you don’t turn up to work and you’re not ill, you have no right to be paid.

“Earlier this year, however, most employers took a more balanced view and said that providing staff had made a genuine attempt to make it into work, and could not work from home, they were allowed the time off on full pay.

“Unfortunately, in doing so, they have set themselves a precedent which they will need to follow unless they amend their contracts to incorporate a new and more stringent bad weather policy.”

With January and February – which usually bring the worst winter weather in the UK – still to come, Peterborough could be facing months more disruption.

Despite having no legal right to pay if they cannot make it in, staff who can prove they tried everything possible to do so and can highlight a lenient approach in the past, could bring a case through the courts for unlawful deduction of wages.

If so, the legal costs alone could outweigh the benefits of withholding pay, Mr Mooney warned.

He added: “This might sound like a minor concern when people are facing severe personal difficulties because of the weather, but days without work means businesses without money to pay staff, suppliers and so on.

“Of course, the smaller the business, the more acute the problem is. Given the current economic climate as well, difficulties like this can be the difference between making ends meet and laying people off.

“We know the cold snap in January and February cost the UK billions and it is possible that a second winter of snow and disruption could be worse.

“It is only November and our phones have been ringing red hot with calls from businesses worried about not only dealing with the current snow, but also the fact that a second harsh winter could push them over the edge.”

Monday November 29 has been dubbed Manic Monday by online retailers expecting Brits to spend a staggering £537million over the internet in just 24 hours. And there’s a chance that you could be paying them while they do it.

Businesses everywhere are footing the cost of the trend to shop online through poor productivity as workers go gift-hunting from their desks, according to Peter Mooney, an employment law expert with compliance advisors, ELAS. He warns that between now and Christmas, that lost time will amount to a bill of £2.5billion for UK Plc.

Mr Mooney said, “Every year, more people are going online for Christmas presents, and even those who don’t will end up spending hours window shopping on the internet.

“So while internet retailers might expect to be manic, for those employers whose staff are doing the shopping from the desk, the run up to Christmas could be anything but. In fact, we expect British businesses to lose around £275million in lost productivity today, and around £2.5billion in total between now and Christmas.”

ELAS expects full-time workers to spend an average of 30 minutes a day shopping from their desks in the run up to Christmas. Working on an average hourly wage of £12.97, that could amount to a total of £2.475billion in lost time during the next 18 working days to December 22.

“If this was restricted to people’s lunch hours, then most employers would have no complaint,” explained Mr Mooney.

“But it’s not. In fact, even those who leave the office and shop on the High Street during their lunch hours are spending valuable time looking for ideas or comparing prices from their desks when they should be working.

“No boss wants to shoot a hole through goodwill and office morale by playing Scrooge in the office, but this time adds up and, in reality, costs money.”

To combat the problem, employers should remind staff of their responsibilities – and what better time to do that than the busiest day of the year for online shopping, suggested Mr Mooney.

“A simple internet policy outlining what is acceptable personal use during work time, together with what action staff can expect for breaching that, circulated on Manic Monday should be enough for most staff to toe the line.

“Without that, not only could bosses lose a lot of work time to bargain hunting, they could come unstuck legally for taking excessive action when they do deal with it.”

Despite the prime minister’s announcement that April 29, 2011, will be a public holiday, businesses will be under no obligation to give workers an extra day off unless a new law is passed.

Employment law experts say small business are already checking their contracts to see whether they will be forced to pass the holiday onto staff or not.

Peter Mooney, of business compliance specialist ELAS, said, “As it stands, all employees are entitled to a minimum of 28 days holiday a year – which for most people is usually split into 20 days annual leave plus eight bank holidays.

“Next year, there will be nine public holidays, but no change to the number of days off people are allowed – meaning that the extra public holiday will come out of workers’ annual leave entitlement.”

As with the last time an additional public holiday was created – on New Year’s Eve 1999 – no new law has been passed forcing employers to honour the holiday, meaning few workers will be legally entitled to take the day off.

Without a change in the law employers will be forced to decide whether to give staff the holiday as a gesture of goodwill – and stand to lose a day’s work as a result; or run the risk of damaging morale by either opening as usual or taking the day out of workers’ holiday entitlement.

Mr Mooney added: “David Cameron has obviously got the positive headlines by announcing the extra day off but until he passes a temporary order, nothing has changed.

“Staff might be celebrating now – and might even get the day off on April 29 if the business closes for the day – but their excitement will be shortlived if they realise it has been taken out of their holiday entitlement.

“It’s exactly the same with the extra bank holiday to mark the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in 2012 – it may make for great headlines at the time, but for employers it’s a headache, and for staff, a possible let down.

“Businesses who aren’t sure need to check their employment contracts to see whether staff are entitled to public holidays on top of an annual allowance, or whether bank holidays already come out of an overall entitlement.”

ELAS looks after the employment law and business compliance needs of more than 2,000 small and medium sized businesses. For further advice, or to arrange an appointment with one of its consultants, call 0161 785 2000.

The end of summer holidays, the long run in to Christmas and the brief respite from financial worries following pay day all go towards making Wednesday October 6, 2010 the day when workers are least likely to be distracted from their jobs and get things done.

Peter Mooney, head of consultancy at employment law experts ELAS, said: “Our research shows that there’s a gap between the summer holidays ending in September and the long run in to Christmas starting in late October when staff are far less likely to either ring in sick or be distracted at their desk.

“During that gap – which we think lasts just over a month before the October half term – the first Wednesday after pay day is the most productive because people aren’t worrying about money, recovering from one weekend or planning for the next.

“While we wouldn’t suggest bosses try to take advantage by piling on the work, we do think they can expect to see more work out of their staff today than any other day of the year.”

ELAS, which provides compliance advice to several thousand small and medium-sized firms across the UK, began looking for the productivity “sweet spot” after noticing a lull in calls to its employment law helpline between mid-September and the last week in October, especially relating to dealing with absenteeism.

It then compared this lull with figures for calls relating to poor performance – often related to staff time-wasting at their desks – and saw the same pattern in autumn.

Mr Mooney explained: “For both problems, only the month before October half term seemed to be quiet, with staff across the board genuinely working hard.”

After supplementing the analysis of their call patterns by interviewing a range of clients in more detail, ELAS developed a list of factors which they believe routinely affect productivity.

These include:

• Excessive absenteeism during January – March
• Isolated peaks in absenteeism around major sporting events – usually during late spring/early summer
• Poor productivity in early summer as staff plan and arrange their holidays
• School holidays – when other staff have to juggle both their own work and that of colleagues
• Poor productivity in the run up to Christmas as staff plan and buy Christmas presents online, and plan and recover from Christmas parties, etc.

“When we really started to drill down, we realised that people got less productive as the month went on, presumably as they start worrying about making ends meet in the run up to pay day,” Mr Mooney added.

“It goes without saying that Mondays and Fridays are never going to be people’s favourites and, in the end, all the evidence pointed towards the first Wednesday in October as the best in the year for getting things done.”

Bosses can still expect to get a fair day’s graft from staff for most of this month as staff either continue to pay off their summer holidays or start saving up for Christmas.

But as of the last week in October, work begins to play second fiddle to Christmas shopping and preparations for the party season, ELAS said.

Based on this research, ELAS is advising its clients they have two options: either to capitalise on the fact that staff are working harder because they have suffered in silence during Sickie Season; or to go easy on staff now but take steps to clamp down on other predictable trends in productivity.

“The worst thing any employer can do is to be inconsistent,” said Mr Mooney. “If you take advantage of staff being at their best, then you will damage morale very quickly by cracking down on them when they take the foot off the gas around Christmas.

“It may seem more difficult at first, but it is far safer legally to set a fair standard at the outset and apply that consistently throughout the year.”

As well as offering employment law advice, ELAS also provides intelligent software solutions such as EmployerSafe, which can help employers identify sickies from real illness, then guide them through addressing problems safely and fairly.

• Overall, local base salaries have increased two per cent from last year.
• Secretarial and admin staff have received the greatest increase on average – five per cent.
• When considering specific roles, call centre advisers were the biggest winners with an average increase of 10.3 per cent.
• 37 per cent of organisations report that they differentiate holiday entitlement by seniority and level – significantly more than last year’s survey when only six per cent reported a differentiation.
• Consistent with last year’s findings, those working in jobs coming under the store, warehouse and production classification continue to be the worst affected.
• 71 per cent of organisations offer private medical insurance. Of these, 41 per cent offer it to all of their staff.

As the e-learning market becomes saturated with mobile applications, businesses need to provide employees with more focused learning opportunities to see greater benefits.

Jon Toothill, client services director at Lightbox Education, said, “With regards to technology supporting learning, it is important to consider what people actually want to learn. At the moment there seems to be an app for everything, but how many get used and how much of the e-learning collateral out there is on subjects that people actually want to learn. This is what should drive us.”

Michael Wilkinson, director at i-education, added, “It’s about empowering people to make the best choices about how to access learning, how to capture learning and how to connect with other people to explore that further.

“It is about providing the right tools, whether it is using a mobile device, taking a video, audio diary or even a photograph.”

One business successfully empowering employees to study a variety of courses at different difficulty levels is Learndirect.

Talking at the round table, Gavin Hubbard, market strategist at Learndirect, said, “There is no stigma attached to e-learning now. You can be sitting in a training room in an organisation and someone might be doing an entry level 3 basic skills or numeracy course and next to them can be someone doing a level 3 NVQ. With e-learning it does not matter what course anyone around you is studying for, as this information can be kept private.”

Ultimately, it was agreed that the technology must support the learning and not vice versa. Unlike in the past when it was the technology that excited people, businesses must adopt a pedagogue approach to continue to reverse this.

The round table discussions are held in association with UKFast with the aim of uniting business leaders to share advice and provide a wealth of ideas for other developing companies. The panel was completed by Tony Lowe, managing director at Webducate, and Dan Sodergren of Great Marketing Works.

For more information about UKFast, visit the website: www.ukfast.co.uk

A new study by employment law specialists ELAS revealed that the average British worker spends as much as 8hrs 24mins at their office computer researching and booking their next holiday.

As well as spending extra time researching flights and hotels separately, extra tasks include printing off boarding cards, online check-in and booking extras such as transfers, car hire or travel insurance.

Peter Mooney, head of consultancy at ELAS, said those small tasks soon add up.

He said: “Most employers don’t mind turning a blind eye to workers using the internet for personal use as long as it doesn’t get in the way of their work.

“But eight and a half hours is the equivalent of an extra day of holiday for every member of staff.

“Aside from the sheer loss of productivity, employers need to be careful about setting precedents which could lead them open to charges of unfair treatment of staff as and when they say enough is enough.”

The cost to UK Plc of 243 hours of lost time – 8hrs 24mins for every one of Briton’s 28.98million workers – is a staggering £3.023billion.

Had those workers booked package holidays, and so spent a third of the time researching, the cost would have fallen to a still considerable £1.043billion.

ELAS surveyed 1,000 consumers from across the UK on how much time they spent at their desk researching their holiday.

The greatest time was spent choosing and booking hotels, which took the average holidaymaker almost 2½ hours.

A little over two hours was spent choosing destination, 1½hrs was spent selecting flights, while 57 mins was spent researching and booking extras.

A further 68mins was spent on “admin tasks” such as online check-in, printing off boarding cards, printing directions or booking excursions.