Yet Michael Heseltine (no mean achiever as either a businessman or politician) was also an avid bird-watcher throughout that time and President Ronald Regan, I believe, always found time for an afternoon nap. So  hours are not the whole story;

and clearly Marks and Spencer don’t think so: http://bbc.in/12tOX1R

Indeed measuring contribution by time is a crude measure for those who whose  job doesn’t demand continuous attention. Working smarter, not harder (or longer) is a well established desire for most of us.

Innovation and inspiration often comes not from application to the task but from application to other activities from which a link is then made.

Thoughts for employers:

• Give part-time work and job-shares serious consideration
• Utilise modern technology to enable people to work together without being there at the same time.
• Include performance related pay as a component in remuneration; a concept to be implemented with care but in which Employer Solutions has substantial experience
•  Foster “Employee development” a concept used by Ford to engender responsibility, ownership and aspiration in its workforce. Employer Solutions can help with ideas
• Explore alternative employment status; for example paying by project completed
• Save NI costs by keeping hours low, so pay is below the lower earnings limit
• Insist full timers take a proper lunch break. The “lunch hour” has largely disappeared but continuous working may be counter productive (and contravene the law!)
• Review any “long hours culture”, some people can work long hours and be effective but it should not be assumed to be true for all

Statutory employment law is not the problem. The real problem is the body of case law that has built up in British and European courts. This makes simple principles immeasurably complicated. Holidays, for example, should be easy for any employer to sort out. They are not. Civil servants and courts have colluded to make some situations so complicated (or vague) that only the courts themselves can sort them out.

The business body, which represents 35,000 company directors, has asked for a Bill including the ‘pro-employer’ rule to be highlighted in the Queen’s Speech today.

Further rule changes the IOD would like to see outlined by her majesty include a three-month notice period for employees who do not want to return from maternity leave and a no strike law for strategically important workforces to clamp down on militant trade unions.

Entering an unnecessary battle with the Trade Unions may well be counter productive giving them every cause to be militant.

The IOD also argued that ‘gold plated’ EU directives need to be reassessed and their ensuing bureaucracy stripped back dramatically.

‘Compensated no fault dismissal’ was first proposed by businessman Adrian Beecroft in 2011 in his report for the government which prompted a widespread outcry from unions.

It is tempting to think it would “work”, and it might. More likely, I think, is that we will just have further complications in the system. Important changes, such as deposits and a more proactive approach to awarding costs, have been made recently. Practical Lawyer magazine suggests that tribunals are likely to move away from a general “no costs” presumption towards the county court system of “loser pays”. Such changes should be given time to bed down.

Many of his ideas, including no-fault dismissal, also dubbed ‘fire at will’, have since been dropped by the government and strongly criticised by Business Secretary Vince Cable.

However, commenting on the IOD’s call for employment law reforms, the body’s director general Simon Walker, said: “This is probably the government’s last chance in this parliament to announce new legislation to boost businesses and the economy. Nearly half of businesses think that regulation is holding them back.

So more than half of businesses don’t think Regulation holds them back. According to some sources only America has a less regulated employment regime than the UK. Other countries do not seem to be being held back by regulations.

Ministers should seize this opportunity to tackle the issue head on.”

In my view there are much more important fish to fry. For example the UK economy would benefit immeasurably for making quality business management education and training more widely available.

Malcolm Martin

“Employees returning to work after recovering from cancer are facing rising levels of discrimination, with one in-10 feeling so harassed they are thinking of leaving their job entirely”; reports CIPD.

“Ciarán Devane, chief executive at Macmillan Cancer Support, said the findings clearly revealed employers needed a better ‘understanding of cancer and how the effects of treatment may impact on people returning to work’”.

Paul, see the example in the  article quoted, would most probably have been successful in pursuing his claim for unfair dismissal if he had had legal expenses support (from an add-on to household insurance for example). One chemist working for British Sugar  (in Warrington as I recollect), “won” a substantial six figure sum as compensation for disability discrimination. It is an area where there are no top limits to the compensation that can be awarded. So Paul’s experience should give employers no room at all for complacency. With cancer the employee is protected from the moment of diagnosis.

The answer, for employers, is a fair procedure fairly executed. You don’t have to have a specific one set up in advance but you do need to follow a number of careful steps. Such a procedure may take some time (and money) but is far less expensive  than any serious Tribunal claim is ever likely to be. Furthermore, the outcome from following a good procedure could easily be, and should be, a “win” for both parties.

If you have employees with cancer you make like to talk to us before they talk to their advisers.

Contacts are crucial in any business environment and social media is starting to provide an invaluable source of contacts. Background knowledge from Twitter, LinkedIn or facebook can warm a cold call or create a hot lead.

So even if the social media account is in the name of the employee you  should be able to claim ownership of it when they leave, should you not? After all, your employee will have spent many hours of your time building up connections, followers and friends. Much of the inherent value of your company rests on those contacts. But then the employee will not want to leave those contacts behind as many will, after all, be personal relationships.

It is tempting in the new, open, sharing culture that the internet represents, to ignore the implications of who owns social media contacts. But as experience in the US is showing, fudging the question of ownership can be costly.

If you want your employees to use social media accounts on behalf of your company, then set out clearly in policies or, preferably, in contracts, who will own those accounts. Make sure too that you have administrative rights to accounts. You need to have agreed with your employee (s) what you own before they think of leaving.

Consider also the content of those sites; while you might own the site, ask yourself how easily can the content be copied or even transferred to an employee’s site? You need to define company confidential information, intellectual property and brand ownership carefully.

Jane’s new video, to which we have contributed, will provide a valuable tool for employers. They will be able to use it to inform employees of the need for responsible use of social media:

Nothing damages your contribution from an employee as much as paying them to be at home when they should be at work. Even if you don’t pay them there are costs associated with their absence in lost productivity, cover at premium rates and disruption. Last year employees on average took nearly 7 days off sick. While much of this will have been due to genuine illness some, undoubtedly was not. Implementing return to work interviews typically saves 20% of absence and this 20% is often the most disruptive type of absence – unpredictable intermittent absence.

So why are “return to work interviews” so rarely a feature of employment practices in SMEs?

• It is an uncomfortable process. It will be even more so if only carried out where there are “suspicions”

• It is also uncomfortable if it is not properly planned. Like every planned interview it needs a structure – nothing complex but one that respects employer and employee’s rights.

• Worse still is the discomfort felt if you believe the employee is not genuine about their reasons for absence. Knowing how to transfer that discomfort to the employee, without being disrespectful in the process, takes practice.

Surrounding the whole issue of longer term absence is the question about if and when you can ask for a doctor’s report – and what to do if permission is refused.

Despite the employer being vulnerable to employees misleading them, the responsibility for the absence can rest with the employer. Bullying, poor training, or role ambiguity can all cause the employee stress, which is an increasingly frequent reason for absence. A sympathetic and genuine return to work interview can uncover issues that the employer did not know existed.

We cover all this on our interactive training workshops that include invaluable practice of the tricky process of the return to work interview.

This is against a background of an increasing merging of personal and work as employees are available on smartphones and such phones increasingly being allowed to access company servers, or at least company email.

An internal social network also breaks down any “silo culture” (where employees in different departments rarely talk to each other) and it spreads knowledge around a business. When Tata Consultancy Services in India set up an online question and answer forum they found time and again invaluable contributions from employees working outside their strict job descriptions.

Open-ness often concerns senior managers and business owners – they fear commercial information leaking out of the organisation. But this can happen anyway using good old-fashioned paper. However, unlike paper smuggled out of the business, social media leaves an “audit trail”.

In a recent survey of UK employees a third said they dreaded coming into work because of a bad team environment and a further third believed a tense atmosphere had an impact on their ability to do their job properly.

Half of those surveyed said that the biggest office timewaster was ‘sloppy work’ from their team colleagues that needed re-doing

Managing others is therefore a crucial skill. While it is not “rocket science”, it requires practical training of the type not normally found in the tutor led environment of management qualifications.

For example, knowing how to “have a word” without bullying on the one hand or being ignored on the other is a crucial skill.

Good management goes beyond this and all managers can benefit from a personal development plan which will not only enable them to motivate employees but assist the manager’s motivation and confidence too.

The outcome will show on the bottom line.