Share this:

Is freelancing the way to bypass HR?

What is driving the rapid increase in taking on freelancers?  How easy is it to get it right?  Check out our article and let us know what you think.

Are you confusing your VA with your Valentine?

Many women dream of the perfect Valentine who will send flowers (the right ones, of course).   Finding the perfect person who will give us what we want without having to ask is a perfect fantasy.

If you are running your business on the basis that the people you pay will just ‘get’ what you want, and give it to you it’s going to be a stormy romance.

Are you feeling the love?

As soon as you start paying other people to do things for you – you run into the problem that you don’t always get what you thought you were getting.  Many a businesswoman has sat down at midnight to redo the work she paid someone else to do.

You can’t let your customers down, so when things go wrong – when people let you down – it is you that picks up the slack.
In the short term this is OK, but if it becomes a pattern, you will exhaust yourself and your business and limit your opportunities to grow. And it will ultimately make you ill.

The people you pay are not spending hours trying to guess what you want (or they shouldn’t be!).  You need to let them know: –

• what you want
• how you want it
• when you want it
• how to delight you with it

If you don’t teach them how to delight the boss, it won’t just be your Valentine left wondering if you prefer roses to daises or milk chocolate to plain.

Real romance?

The real thrill of being the boss is not in the ups and downs of unexpected failures, or in the late night working to pull it all together, but in finding ways to let the people around you know how to get on with the right job in the right way at the right time.

Get that bit right and you can afford all the champagne you want!

Oh, and in case anybody’s reading this who wants to be my Valentine that’s:

• Belgian chocolate
• Packaged beautifully
• At breakfast time
• ………..Well that really is one to keep you guessing.

Happy Valentine’s Day..

Beyond HR compliance – giving yourself the space to grow – YouTube

See on Scoop.it – Employment law in a mad world

Talking to members of the Professional Development Bureau about how we should not let compliance rule our relationships with the people we pay and why the bo…

Annabel Kaye‘s insight:

There’s a lot more to employing people than mere compliance!

See on www.youtube.com

Which Are The Right Contract Options?

See on Scoop.it – Employment law in a mad world

Which Are The Right Contract Options? – Facilitated by Annabel Kaye, Director of Irenicon Ltd, Annabel keeps it clear, demystifies the jargon and keeps the focus on getting the best business res…

Annabel Kaye‘s insight:

Should be using zero hours contracts, freelancers, part timers, What kind of contract works best for you?  Join our free conversation (by phone) on 23 January 2pm (UK time) register for dial in details.

See on koffeeklatch.co.uk

Dickensian: Zero-hours contracts

See on Scoop.it – Employment law in a mad world

I’ve just had two astonishing conversations with two young people. This wasn’t related to wild nights out or any inappropriate behaviour, but their employment conditions. Both are working on zero-h…

Annabel Kaye‘s insight:

There are consequences to zero hours contracts – do you use them?  Are you on one or using them?

See on dorothydalton.com

Who is under-performing in your business?

See on Scoop.it – Employment law in a mad world

So many bosses are exhausted by under performing staff or managers. It doesn’t have to be that way.

Annabel Kaye‘s insight:

Who is under-performing in your business? Is it your staff, your managers or you? #performance

See on irenicon.co.uk

Who is to blame? Shoesmith an exception?

The tax payer is about to pick up a mighty bill as the sorry saga of Sharon Shoesmith has ground its way through the courts.

Sharon Shoesmith’s story is just an extreme version of what goes on every day.

To summarise:

• Under resourced/overstretched team
• Impossible goals
• Something goes wrong
• Something must be done
• Someone must go
• Unfair Dismissal

This endless cycle (in small and large organisations) creates an outcry that unfair dismissal should be  abolished or eliminated  – another Something Must be Done.   Shortening the cycle by removing one step is an attractive option but it does not really deal with the fundamental problem.    So often we see organisations remove an individual for underperformance without making any changes to how the business/department is organised, managed, resourced, or run.

Guess what?

A few months or years later we are having the same conversation again about a new person!  ‘Lessons have been learned’ often translated into ‘heads have rolled’ and that’s the end of that.  The real cost to individuals, businesses and in this case the tax payer is very high.

Recruitment errors are not the same as supervision errors

We all recognise that sometime the wrong person is recruited and the only way to solve the problem is to get another person.   But there are some fabulous opportunities to improve our own managerial processes and to learn from when things go wrong.  One of the things we might decide to learn is that sometimes our goals are over ambitious in terms of our resources and we have to be realistic about what real people can achieve.

Frustration isn’t a plan

Reaching for excellence is a fabulous thing, but if you are frustrated by your team’s inability to reach it, then frustration can set in.   So many of us just repeat what we did before (saying it LOUDER) and are surprised that we get the same results (only LOUDER). Then we snap and we want to get rid of the person we feel is to blame.

It’s human.  It’s understandable.   It doesn’t really get anyone to where they want to be.  And it will trigger unfair dismissals.

There is a better way

It is possible to improve performance, but it takes time and thought and effort by the Boss.  Sometimes we are so overwhelmed by struggling with what is going wrong that we can’t even imagine finding the time and energy to create a better way to work.   The whole problem can seem too big to tackle.  The Boss ends up working till 3am to meet deadlines or redo sub standard work .

We see it all the time.  With a bit of support, a bit of clarity and the right arrangements between boss and staff we can all avoid a mini-Shoesmith.

We just need to have the conversations and do the thinking.  Employment law is just one of many reasons why you might not want to sack the person who seems to be to blame without going through any real process.  There are better  (and cheaper) ways to end your frustration than spending a large amount of your (or tax payer’s) money on unfair dismissal awards and legal fees.

When the music stops…

The Government has published its response to the TUPE consultation.  They intend to change the TUPE regulations with effect from January 2014.  No draft regulations have yet been published.  This leaves a lot of sales teams and HR teams with a dilemma.

What will the TUPE regulations be when the work we are gaining today comes up for rebid?

There are transfers that were TUPE transfers under the current regulations which will not necessarily be TUPE transfers under the new ones.  The clear intention is to reduce the scope of service provision changes that fall within TUPE.  The new regulations are not yet written, and when they come into force it will take several years to get case law on what they actually mean.

The extended uncertainty period

I always think of this as the extended uncertainty period – a sort of Heisenberg’s law of legal change.  That is nothing new for HR. 

Make a plan for uncertainty

We need a plan that integrates with the rest of the business.

Selling/pitching

Is your sales team going to pitch/cost on the basis that:

• TUPE does not apply to new incoming service contracts
• TUPE may apply
• TUPE will apply

The costs of each of these options are different, and so is the price to the customer (who may want the lowest possible price).  Are you going to be working on the basis of ‘costs plus’ where the customer pays if you have to pay off staff?  Who pays when the music stops?  Can you afford it to be you?

Losing/changing

If you are losing contracts that came in as TUPE contracts, are you going to treat this as:

• TUPE does not apply (and make appropriate redundancy payments where necessary)
• TUPE may apply and deal with it on a case by case basis (and schedule the time to decide)
• TUPE will apply and try to persuade the successor organisation to agree

What are your plans for consulting with employees affected by these (non)TUPE transfers?

We will all be writing learned articles once the regulations are published – but there are live contracts due change service provider during the extended uncertainty period.

There are real people with jobs and mortgages to pay who are going to be asking – what happens to me?

Our job is to provide an answer, which means starting to plan for those changes and the uncertainty period.

Review existing contracts

Knowing how the land lies is always useful if you don’t know which way things are going to move.  It means you are not trying to process a vast amount of data when the final facts become clear.

Service provision

Now is a good time to review your contracts with clients or potential clients.  What do they say about:

• who pays for what (indemnities and charges)
• and who does what at that point
• where the contractual obligations are tied into to specific TUPE regulations, and where they are free standing

What effect do they have?  Do your contracts with clients need changing or updating?

Employment contracts

What do your contracts, policies and agreements say?

• Do you have a TUPE policy?  Will it need updating?
• Do you have FAQs, or other TUPE related documents, to review
• Do your contracts of employment give you the flexibility you need

Freelancers and sub-contractors

Calling someone self-employed, or paying them on invoice, doesn’t mean they are not an employee.  Do the sub contractors and freelancers you use pass the right tests for being in a business themselves?  If not, you could find some of them are really employees and covered by the TUPE regulations (more on that in my next blog).

• Do you have written agreements with your freelancers and sub contractors?
• Do they reflect the reality of the arrangement, or are they out of date?
• Does the reality show that you are controlling them?

With the changes due to come into effect in early January 2014, some HR people are going to have a miserable Christmas sorting out end of year TUPE transfers – let’s hope it won’t be you and you will be fully prepared.

Click here to join our free Conversation on TUPE and the service sector.

Annabel Kaye is Managing Director of Irenicon Ltd, a specialist employment law consultancy.
Tel: 08452 303050                  Fax: 08452 303060
www.irenicon.co.uk
www.koffeeklatch.co.uk
www.balancingthebump.com
You can follow Annabel on Twitter

Using freelancers?

Using freelancers is not risk free

Are people working for you and submitting invoices (rather than being paid under PAYE)?

Getting people to invoice you, or giving them contracts that say they are self employed, does not mean they are.

HMRC and employment tribunals look at how the relationship is set up and managed – not just at the label you put on it.

Get the label wrong and you can be in for a nasty surprise.

• HMRC can come to you and ask for the PAYE you should have been deducting (with penalties too).
• Employment tribunals can decide you unfairly dismissed someone you didn’t even know you were employing!

Freelancers can be an appropriate part of your business model but they are not a ‘get out of jail free card’ when it comes to employment rights either.

We think of the people we pay as either employees or self employed.   But in the world of HMRC and Employment Tribunals there are three types:

• Employees
• Workers
• Businesses

Some of the freelancers you pay will genuinely be categorised as businesses,  but not all.    The others will be workers, with a whole set of ‘employment’ rights to go with them.

If you are paying people by invoice you need to know how this really works so that you can make sure you don’t get any unexpected bills from the Revenue (or an Employment Tribunal) in a few years time.

Don’t think this doesn’t happen, it happens all the time.   Just as you start to get through those critical first few years and make a profit, you get a PAYE inspection and a bill for back tax.  You can’t go back and charge all those clients more (as your labour costs were too low) and that’s your expansion capital, that longed for holiday, gone.  Or worse, that’s the business gone!

For more information on which rights freelance workers have  (and which rights you don’t) click here.  Join us for a free KoffeeKlatch conversation on Managing Freelance Workers.

Explore how to predict what label will be applied and how to contract freelancers in an appropriate way – 10th October (2pm for an hour).  For more information click here.

Tweet out if you are joining us #KKfreelance.

To purchase a copy of our extensive guidance notes and freelance contracts click here.

To receive a fortnightly update when new dates are posted for all our free KoffeeKlatch conversations click here.

Is your zero hours contract really a zero thought contract?

Vote in our poll – do you use zero hours’ contracts?

Today’s myth buster is around the idea that people on zero hours contracts have no rights. Nothing could be further from the truth.

1. Zero hours contracts mean no commitment.  Employment tribunals look at the real relationship and arrangements – not just the paperwork. If you regularly book someone you may find your contract is no longer zero hours. The employment appeal tribunal have already ruled on this (Pulse v Carwatch)
2. No holiday pay? Despite the headline news you don’t have to be an employee to qualify for holiday pay – even self employed workers qualify for holiday pay if they are obliged to do the work in person. The employment appeal tribunal have already ruled on this (Lyons v Mitie Security Ltd)
3. Zero holiday pay? You don’t calculate zero hours workers’ holiday on the basis of nil hours per week, but on by averaging the previous 12 worked week’s pay.
4. Zero rights? All workers in the UK have some rights including equality/discrimination and health and safety rights. The number of hours you work doesn’t change that.

If we could abolish all of employment law today there would still be real reasons for employers to consider whether zero hours contracts are appropriate to the organisation.

1. Continuous service provision is hard to handle against random and casual workers if they are the core of your workforce – they can all say no to working today!
2. Workers who have no normal hours can’t save or spend much and this is bad for the economy in general (they can’t get credit!)
3. Annual hours contracts are more appropriate if you need flexibility
4. Term time only contracts can work where parents can take the school holidays off

For the growing small business there is a place for zero hours contracts – as a temporary way of employing people where you don’t know what the work is needed. For a large business this is a temporary a way of handling rapid expansion.

But to ask people to be available to you as and when, without paying them, and expecting them to provide great service to your customers is not going to work for a number of businesses – regardless of the law.

Many bosses will find themselves on the wrong end of holiday pay claims, and unfair dismissal claims that the zero hours contracts won’t avoid. Unless you really know what you are doing zero hours is a trap!

Deciding on the appropriate contractual framework for employing people in a growing business is a skill. Get it right and you have got your costings right and all the flexibility you need. Get it wrong and you end up owing things like holiday pay you didn’t budget for – and you can have a less committed workforce than the one you want.

We speak to businesses about how to decide on the appropriate structures to get what you want (and we write great contracts too).  Talk to us call 08452 303050 (local rate calls) or use our contact form..

Name(required)

Email(required)

Website

Comment(required)

Phone

Submit

Δ

Related articles:

1m workers on zero hours contracts

Cable to investigate?

One way street?