Here are some of the key challenges that we think businesses will be facing this year and our thoughts on what employers can do to address them….

How is wellbeing shaping up?

Wellbeing became a top priority in lockdown as employers realised their responsibilities to employees who were balancing working from home with the stresses of the pandemic.

Now it’s important not to lose focus, as there are new pressures to cope with such as the financial impact of the cost of living crisis, increased workloads due to redundancies or problems with recruiting. This will all take a toll on mental health.

Employers who support financial wellbeing can make a much-valued difference to their workforce, helping to ease stress and anxiety, and it doesn’t matter if you have a limited budget. Here are some ideas:

• One way to help is introduce financial wellbeing workshops which give employees the chance to speak to someone for independent financial advice. This might cover cost of living, understanding tax relief, child benefit rules, benefits available, debt management and more.

• You could also encourage the use of Employee Assistance Programmes so that employees can use this to access support if they need it – whether that’s financial advice or counselling around work-related stress.

What benefits are you offering?

It’s an incredibly difficult time to recruit – the landscape is described as a “candidate’s market” and there’s much talk of the “great resignation” as people seek an improved work/life balance and want to feel valued following their experiences in the pandemic. Therefore, when it comes to retaining existing employees and recruiting new people, a competitive salary won’t be enough on its own.

Candidates will ask questions about:

• work/life balance,
• perks and benefits, and
• that all-important company culture and how it will work for them.

How to respond to pay rise requests?

Average pay rises are failing to keep up with the cost of living. As an employer, you may wish to increase your employees’ earnings to match price rises, but that’s not viable for every business.

In this case you need to think about what will recruit, retain and engage staff instead of salary.

The following all help towards retaining and engaging employees:

• Company culture,
• Focus on wellbeing
• Opportunity for career progression
• One off ‘cost of living’ bonus

How to respond to the rise in flexible working requests?

The debate around whether people work best from home, or the office will rage on, but you should be prepared for the number of informal and formal requests for flexible working to continue to rise.

This may present a challenge – not just in ensuring requests are treated consistently and fairly, but also when it comes to managing hybrid teams. You will need to work hard to ensure your people work well together, and that company culture can be maintained as people work in varied ways and from different locations.

You may want to introduce an employee engagement survey to understand how well hybrid arrangements are working.

Do your employees need more training?

Skills gaps : Where recruitment is currently a challenge as businesses are restructuring and cutting costs, this has led to a general skills shortage. As a result, training is likely to be a priority this year. If ready-made candidates are hard to find, apprenticeships, training schemes and retraining have an even more important role. Bite-sized training courses can help to fill skills gaps.

Management training : there is also evidence of an increase in grievances, informal complaints, and disciplinary issues, which can be linked to the inexperience of some line managers and their lack of skills in dealing with issues well, and early, before they escalate. Line managers are pivotal in delivering to a business’s ambitions and reinforcing its culture – so it’s vital to give them the training and support they need.

Any assistance do email nicola.goodridge@goodhr.co.uk or call +44 7917 878384

There are normally eight bank holidays a year in England and Wales, nine in Scotland, and 10 in Northern Ireland. The Working Time Regulations 1998 do not differentiate between bank holidays and other days and do not prevent employers from including them in the 28-day minimum annual leave entitlement.

1. King’s coronation: additional bank holiday declared

The government has confirmed that there will be an additional bank holiday on Monday 8 May 2023 to celebrate King Charles’ coronation, which takes place two days earlier. However, an employer’s workforce does not automatically have the right to take the day off work.

To some extent the contract of employment determines the right to the day off. Where the contract entitles employees to take leave on “all bank and public holidays”, the employer will be required to grant the extra day as leave.

However, if the contract entitles the employee to a certain number of days ‘plus eight bank holidays’ or ‘the usual bank holidays’ the employer is not contractually obliged to grant the extra day as leave. However, it may choose to do so as a goodwill gesture to employees, particularly given the historical significance of the event.

2. No automatic right to time off on bank holidays

There is no statutory right for employees to take bank holidays off work. Any right to time off depends on the terms of the employee’s contract of employment.

If an employee does not have the contractual right to time off on public holidays but refuses to attend work, the employer can treat this as a disciplinary issue.

If the contract provides that the employee is entitled to take bank holidays as annual leave, the employer cannot insist that the employee works. What it could do is ask them to work the bank holiday in return for a day in lieu to be taken at another time or increase the payment for the day as an incentive.

3. No statutory right to extra pay for working on bank holidays

There is no statutory right to extra pay, for example time and a half or double time, when an employee works on a bank holiday. Any right to extra pay depends on the terms of the employee’s contract of employment which should stipulate the rate of pay for working on a public holiday. If the contract is silent then there is no right to a higher rate than normal for working on a bank holiday. The only exception being if employees have been paid an enhanced rate for working bank holidays in the past, it may be that it has become a contractual entitlement.

4. Part-time employees need special bank holiday arrangements

Because most bank holidays fall on a Monday or Friday, part-time employees who do not work on these days could be entitled to proportionately fewer days off compared with full-time employees, depending on shift patterns and annual leave arrangements within the organisation.

Employers must ensure that all employees have at least the statutory minimum annual leave entitlement and that part-time employees are not treated less favourably than full-time employees. To avoid a complaint of less favourable treatment, part-time employees must be provided with a pro-rated bank holiday entitlement on top of their pro-rated holiday entitlement.

5. Look out for “20 days’ holiday, plus bank holidays” in contracts

Where the holiday year runs from 1 April to 31 March and the Easter weekend straddles March and April, this style of wording in contracts of employment can mean employees receiving more or fewer bank holidays than are required. The next time this will be an issue for contracts that use such wording will be in 2024, when Good Friday is 29 March and Easter Monday is 1 April. This means that the 2023/24 holiday year would have 10 public holidays and 2024/25 would only have seven.

ACTION: Ensure the extra bank holiday is included in your employees’ entitlement for 2023 at the start of the year!

For any advice email nicola.goodridge@goodhr.co.uk or call +44 7917 878384