By Angie Newland @ Angels Admin Support
Whilst supporting small businesses in the Financial Services Sector, I wanted to share with you some of the comments that I have heard in response to HR related questions:
Q - Do you have contracts for Employees?
A - “No, my employees don’t have contracts we don’t need them, I’ve known them for years so it’s not a problem, they wouldn’t take me to court we would sort it out.”
Q - Does your Employee have a contract?
A - “No, we have a verbal agreement.”
Q - Will “insert employee name” require some training on Data protection, vulnerable customers, staff conduct etc
A - “I don’t think they need that training unless we need to do it to tick a box for compliance reasons.”
Q – Do you have job descriptions in place for staff?
A - “No, they don’t have job descriptions, do they have to have them?”
It amazes me that firms do not see the link with HR to Consumer Duty, Culture, Complaints, Staff and Senior Manager Conduct, from a Regulatory and risk perspective.
I have seen a particularly nasty Grievance case recently with an IFA that I did some work with, which all stemmed from there not being a job description and employment contract in place, something so simple to implement that seemed unimportant to the firm ended up causing them thousands of pounds, hours of their time, and reputational risk to the business.
So, what happened?
It turned into a long and in-depth case that started when the employee, who was working remotely was discovered to have not been completing his work for what transpires to be a 2-year period. The reason given for this was that working for the firm was not proving to be good for their mental health, and they then also made claims that the firm were not compliant with KYC, the FCA, and other FCA Regulatory requirements.
The employee asked for a job description and employment contract to be put in place, but once these documents were provided, they did not agree with the job description saying that they did a lot more within the firm than was stated on the job description and refused to sign their contract as a result. The employee then went off sick and sent the employer a grievance complaint. The grievance resulted in the employer having to get an external HR Investigator and the case is ongoing and due to go to an employee tribunal in the near future.
I will stop at this point, as there are a lot of additional factors and problems that arose on this particular case, (which if you are interested in having the training/case study session on then please feel free to get in touch), but the point of stopping here is that it is evident that if there had been a clear job description, and employment contract in place at the beginning, as by law there should have been, that there would have been protection on both sides, and a clear understanding of what was expected from both the employer and employee. I am not saying that this would have solved all of the issues, but it is clearly a “risk” to firms to not have this.
To put this into some kind of perspective for you, I would ask this, can you really afford a grievance claim against your firm? Would you want to put yourself in the spotlight of the FCA with a claim like this against you?
The firm in question has already spent in excess of £22,000 up to this point and faces further costs when going to tribunal. Plus, If the firm lose their case, they could face a further £89,000 in costs/compensation to the employee.
I wonder, how important do you think HR is now??
If you would like to see how we at Angels Admin Support can assist you with HR or you are interested in having the training/case study session related to this blog, then please do get in touch, we would love to hear from you.