Key Tips!

Managing the Important and the Urgent

1. Understand how you spend your working time now. By keeping a diary, log how much of your working time is

• planned and unplanned
• interrupted, and by whom and what
• spent on routine activities

2. Identify

• what can be delegated, and how you plan to oversee that delegation
• the most productive periods of your normal working day
• problem areas: the ones you create by the way you operate, and the ones you can’t control

3. Be clear about your objectives and priorities and focus each day on what has to be achieved
4. Build non-work activities into your life: time out for other responsibilities, work-life balance and leisure to give your respite and distance from the work schedule
   

Partnerships, In-sourcing, Out-sourcing: Managing Service Performance

• Make sure the service is accurately and clearly scoped – boundaries are understood
  
  
• Identify business-critical service levels in terms of number and importance: they must not impede the business!
  
  
• Make sure critical service levels can be observed and measured
  
  
• Identify Key Performance Indicators that are necessary for the client to run the business
  
  
• Retain client in-house capability to managed the relationship
  
  
• Hold regular review meetings between provider and client
  
  
• Make sure communications and governance arrangements are clear, simple and effective; quality decision-making and relationship management, including dispute resolution are essential
  
  
• Include in the agreement sanctions for poor delivery by the provider
  
  
• Put in place arrangements for audit and compliance with any regulatory or accountability framework
  
  
• Plan an exit strategy to anticipate effectively a smooth transition back to an in-house provision, or a change of provider, when the service agreement comes to an end

Facilitating, not instructing!

Managers increasingly need to facilitate discussions within teams that goes outside the “command and control” model of management or training.

Characteristics of an effective team

• All team members understand and share the same objectives
• There is good communication across the whole team
• The team displays supportive behaviour between its members
• There is real trust between members
• The trust enables constructive criticism across the team
• The team members share the workload and cooperate with one another
• The roles within the team are balanced out
• Decisions reached within the team are carried by consensus
• The leadership of the team is effective in helping them all to move towards their goals and keep them motivated

How to make reasonable adjustments for disability

Under the 1995 Act, an employer discriminates against a disabled employee if unjustifiably, for a reason relating to his or her disability, the disabled employee is treated less favourably than other employees. Discrimination also occurs when an employer fails to comply with its duty to make reasonable adjustments in relation to the disabled employee,

On receipt of a medical report, the employer should consider the doctor's recommendations, take a view on whether the employee's long-term incapacity may amount to a disability and then set up a meeting with the employee to discuss what reasonable adjustments might be made to working conditions and/or premises to accommodate him or her. These might include:

• reallocating duties;
• transferring the employee to fill an existing vacancy;
• altering work or training hours;
• assigning a different place of work or training;
• allowing absence for treatment/rehabilitation or assessment;
• arranging training or mentoring (whether for the disabled person or any other person);
• acquiring/modifying equipment;
• adjusting premises;
• modifying procedures for testing or assessments;
• providing a reader or interpreter;
• providing supervision or other support.

Business sale, outsourcing, merger, acquisition: A TUPE checklist

1. Inform the 'appropriate representatives' long enough before the relevant transfer to enable them to take an active part in the subsequent consultations.

• that the relevant transfer is to take place
• when, approximately, it is to take place
• the reasons for the transfer
• of the legal, economic and social implications of the transfer for all affected employees
• of the measures that the employer envisages will, in connection with the transfer, be taken in relation to those employees or, that it is envisaged that no measures will be so taken,
• if the employer is the transferor, of the measures that the transferee is likely to take in relation to those of the transferor's employees whose contracts of employment are to be transferred to the transferee.

2. If there is no trade union representation or an insufficient number of representatives to represent the interests of all affected employees, afford affected employees an opportunity to elect one or more of their number to represent their interests in employer consultations.
3. Make appropriate facilities available for the conduct of such elections; and ensure that the ballot is conducted in secret and that votes are accurately counted.
4. Consider any representations by those representatives and give reasons for the rejection of any of those representations.
5. Inform employees that they may object to being employed by the new owner of the business (or part of that business), but that they will ordinarily be denied any right to pursue a complaint of unfair dismissal should they refuse to transfer.
6. Check the contracts of employment (and related policy documents, including staff and works handbooks, collective agreements, etc) of employees affected by a relevant transfer and make them available to the prospective purchaser (the transferee) as soon as the relevant transfer takes place.
7. Discuss with the transferee the prospects of any variation in contracts of employment associated with the transfer and make sure that the sole or principal reason for the variation is an economic, technical or organisational reason entailing changes in the workforce, or a reason unconnected with the transfer.
8. Consult the workforce representatives on any proposed variations that are agreed.
9. Check that the transferee is making appropriate pension provision for transferred employees if the transferor operates an employer-contributed pension scheme for them.
10. A transferor must provide the transferee with specified employee liability information no later than 14 days before the transfer. This includes:

• the identity and age of the employee;
• the written employment particulars required to be given to the employee under the Employment Rights Act 1996, section 1;
• information on any disciplinary procedure taken in relation to the employee or grievance procedure taken by the employee within the previous two years;
• information on any court or tribunal case, claim or action brought by the employee against the transferor within the previous two years, or any claim that the transferor has reasonable grounds to believe that the employee may bring against the new employer; and
• information about any collective agreement that will have effect after the transfer in relation to the employee.