Dan Hunter's Posts - RecruitingBlogs2024-03-28T20:15:07ZDan Hunterhttps://recruitingblogs.com/profile/DanHunterhttps://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1526935525?profile=RESIZE_48X48&width=48&height=48&crop=1%3A1https://recruitingblogs.com/profiles/blog/feed?user=i5niuogk6ovb&xn_auth=noFrom Brussels with Lovetag:recruitingblogs.com,2012-06-28:502551:BlogPost:15751972012-06-28T16:17:56.000ZDan Hunterhttps://recruitingblogs.com/profile/DanHunter
<p>Some of you may have this latest gem in the news, I've linked the Guardians article but it has been everywhere the past few days <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2009/sep/15/holiday-sickness">http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2009/sep/15/holiday-sickness</a> so there are many other sources.</p>
<p>This is relating to a ruling in the European Court that allows employees to claim back holiday if they are ill. So if you take 2 weeks holiday and are ‘ill’ for 2 days your employer has to…</p>
<p>Some of you may have this latest gem in the news, I've linked the Guardians article but it has been everywhere the past few days <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2009/sep/15/holiday-sickness">http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2009/sep/15/holiday-sickness</a> so there are many other sources.</p>
<p>This is relating to a ruling in the European Court that allows employees to claim back holiday if they are ill. So if you take 2 weeks holiday and are ‘ill’ for 2 days your employer has to credit them back, on full pay of course because SSP doesn’t kick in until 4 days consecutive sickness. Various bodies have weighed in on this from the CIPD (Chartered Institute of Personal Development) saying this policy is “divorced from the real world”, to Unison (the biggest public sector union) saying “if employees are ill, then they obviously not enjoying their holiday”.</p>
<p>So the CIPD think it’s the end of the world and Unison think it’s nothing to get all worked up about. Call me old fashioned but if you’re ill during your holiday isn't that just bad luck? </p>
<p>There is also nothing specifying when employees should notify their employer of this illness or what proof is required. To quote a Partner at Law Firm Eversheds "The danger of abuse is clear – an employee could increase his or her holiday entitlement by ensuring that in most years they alleged they were sick while on holiday”. I think this is the main point really because from what I see the vast majority of people have a sense of decency, honour and fair play but how long is this going to remain in place one 1 bad apple starts ‘playing the system’?</p>
<p>If everyone has 25 days holiday entitlement yet Bob from Accounts and Jenny from Sales are taking 30 days because they were ‘ill’ for 5 days. How long is the office environment going to remain harmonious? My guess is not very long!</p>
<p>As far as I can see this is going to affect small to medium businesses, the back bone of UK tax contributions and employment, because they rely on smaller pools of staff and greater team cohesion. They can’t afford to offer more holiday, or the admin that comes with policing a new system.</p>
<p>In times of economic uncertainty in Europe shouldn’t we be removing obstacles to trade and good business practice rather than adding to them?</p>Hard to fill, or just hard to find?tag:recruitingblogs.com,2012-06-19:502551:BlogPost:15716802012-06-19T11:30:00.000ZDan Hunterhttps://recruitingblogs.com/profile/DanHunter
<p style="text-align: left;">A recent article on the BBC website <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18400556">http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18400556</a> got me<br></br> thinking. The article was about Employers being cautious with regards to hiring in 2012. This article<br></br> was based on work carried out by the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) and KPMG,<br></br> they asked 2100 employers and 400 recruitment companies what their employment outlook was.<br></br> To cut a long…</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">A recent article on the BBC website <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18400556">http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18400556</a> got me<br/> thinking. The article was about Employers being cautious with regards to hiring in 2012. This article<br/> was based on work carried out by the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) and KPMG,<br/> they asked 2100 employers and 400 recruitment companies what their employment outlook was.<br/> To cut a long story short, the article was saying that employers were being cautious about hiring and<br/> that data suggested there was a slowdown in the UK. Manpower, the general barometer of the<br/> recruitment industry in the UK said only 1% of employers were thinking of hiring. Cripes!</p>
<p style="text-align: left;"><br/> I’m not sure I completely agree with these figures, well certainly not within our sector which is IT,<br/> Engineering and Sales. A good number of employers we speak to are hiring, they have open<br/> positions with a real desire to fill them. The problem is finding qualified candidates, especially those<br/> top tier candidates. At face value you’d think in the middle of a recession like this it’d be easy to find<br/> good people, think again! This was the same as the recession of 2001 – 2003 which hit the IT sector<br/> very hard. We had the awful events of the 9/11 terror attacks and the bust of the Dot Com bubble,<br/> both at the same time. But good candidates were hard to find and employers were struggling to fill<br/> critical roles.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;"><br/> What I'm saying is that general economic conditions are important to the wider business world, but<br/> good people are always going to be hard to find, recession or not. In almost all recessions top<br/> performers remain employed; it’s the less business critical people that are made redundant. That’s<br/> not to say they aren’t good at their jobs, it just that companies can make do without them while the<br/> storm rages. If you think about it, it makes complete sense, in hard times are you going to lay off<br/> your best people?</p>
<p style="text-align: left;"><br/> My feelings on the BBC article are that employers are nervy about the wider economic outlook, euro<br/> zone problems, Greece needing a bailout, Spain now needing a bail out. So naturally people are<br/> bracing themselves for a 2nd round of woe. When employers are asked if they’re thinking about<br/> hiring the knee jerk reaction is ‘no’ or ‘wait and see’, but if the right candidates comes along I think<br/> that would rapidly turn into ‘yes’.</p>