021: HR and return to work - with Sarah McKee-Harris

On today's episode, we’re chatting to HR and recruitment specialist Sarah McKee-Harris of Kingswood Group. Sarah specialises in the financial services and insurance industry in and outside of London. Sharing her insight into returning to work after the pandemic and the HR requirements that most businesses are facing today – we chat about what we can expect from HR professionals and how this might change the way in which HR functions operate within insurance based businesses. LEARNING OBJECTIVES: We can expect that ‘people issues’ will arise from employees returning to work from both a physicality and mental health perspective and employers should be conscious on both aspects. As the government reassesses the furlough scheme and what that looks like in upcoming months, many businesses will need to reassess their workforce plan to support both the business and potential demand as businesses start to come back. It’s important for employers to operate a transparent and fair approach when communicating with employees about returning to work. Discrimination rules still apply. Employers should be considering the information and guidelines issued around health and safety and if they’re unsure on how to implement them – they should be seeking professional advice from a qualified health and safety consultant. Virtual meetings are popular amongst businesses now and can be a practical way forward to ‘ease in’ face to face meetings. If you’re not communicating effectively with your employees on the changes which are happening, changes won’t happen. Whenever you’re making decisions and changes, make sure you document and evidence where you got the guidance to make that change or decision. BEST MOMENTS: ‘’…it's really about assessing who to bring back and how to bring them back if they are furloughed. Also, we'll see introducing at the end of this month, part time furlough so that just gives people a bit more flexibility. Really, the difficulty for businesses is assessing what they need and when they need it.‘’ ‘’It is about doing the right thing in the right way. And I think the important thing is to be talking to an HR professional if you don't have one internally, you know, maybe seek external advice. I mean, there are obviously government guidelines online that you can go to, but they can be quite broad. And every business is different. Every business leader is different.’’ ‘’Make sure you're working with health and safety and HR, so that the physical bits done and then make sure your contractual obligations are there as well - and that your employees understand the policy.’’ ‘’It is a minefield, especially for business owners who want to do the right thing for their employees and also make sure that they're doing the right thing for themselves to protect their business. But with the amount of legislation and the number of new procedures and policies that’s being released regularly - it's impossible for somebody to keep on top of that.’’ ‘’…where there has been a lot of change going on and a lot of different communication coming out from the government, using restrictions, tightening restriction here, changing it there, you're acting on goodwill, of the information you've been given at that time. So if anything does happen in the future, and something tries to come back and bite you on the backside, you've got proof of why you did it.’’ ‘’…there already is a real shift from looking at people's outputs, rather than where they are, what they're doing - it's looking at what they're actually delivering. Not so much of when they're doing it, it's what's coming out at the end of it. There is going to be a shift around looking at the people's jobs, the content of those roles and the outputs.‘’ RESOURCES: Kingswood Group website: https://kingswoodgroup.org/about-us/ Latest HR info and guides: www.cipd.co.ukGovt health & safety guides: www.hse.gov.ukMental health app: https://app.tlero.com/ ABOUT THE HOST Sarah Myerscough is the Sales