HR’s New Year Resolutions

It’s the time of year for making resolutions and changes in your life, and this state of mind can be brought into the workplace. It is the perfect time give your handbooks and policies a refresh and check all your employee data is up to date.

It’s easy to get swept up in the day to day activities of work, but it’s important to take a step back and ensure everything HR related is up to date. Not only will this ensure that you are keeping up to date with changes to legislation and so remaining compliant, but it also helps tasks to run as smoothly as possible.

Handbooks and Policies

With so much other things going on this year, it’s easy to forget the changes that have taken place in relation to employment legislations not related to Covid-19, however you do need to ensure that you have everything up to date to make sure that you are compliant. These changes that happened in 2020 include:

· Increases to national minimum and living wages, and statutory rates

· Written statement of terms of conditions – this is now a day 1 right for all employees and workers (including casual and zero-hour workers)

· New right to statutory parental bereavement leave and pay – parents who have suffered the loss of a child are now entitled to take two weeks leave at a statutory minimum rate. You may choose to enhance this for your employees, but you need to ensure that you meet this minimum.

Employee Data

It’s easy for an employee to forget to notify you if some of their personal details change at the best of times, let alone in a pandemic. However, during the year, they may still have moved house, changed contact details or had a change in situation relating to an emergency contact, and without this up to date information, you may find tasks hard if they are needed in the future. Therefore, it is worth checking in with your employees just to make sure you have up to date details. This doesn’t have to be a long process, just a quick email or something similar, to all employees reminding them to update you of any changes should be enough to prompt them. When dealing with any employee data it is also important to remember to follow GDPR. If you need any support with GDPR, then please contact kelly@almc.co.uk and we can see how we can help.

We appreciate that this can be daunting process especially when it comes to updating handbooks and policies, and it might not be at the top of your priority list right now, but that’s where we can help. If you just want a bit of guidance, or if you would a full review of your handbook and policies then please do get in touch, either by email on catherine@almc.co.uk or phone 0117 970 2755 and we can help.