The Modern Employer

January is nearly over…the New Year’s resolutions are well and truly broken, and we’ve (finally) finished that last bit of Christmas cake. As the nights get longer and the twinkly lights of the festive season become a distant memory, the Employment Team at Leathes Prior is focusing on the upcoming year and is on hand to suggest new resolutions for you to adopt and (hopefully) stick to for (at least) the rest of 2017.

It is well known that, sometimes, employees can be, frankly, a bit of a headache. We’ve all been to seminars about the pitfalls of the employment relationship and how to solve any issues that might arise. That said, employees are often also a business’ greatest asset – after all, they do most of the work and are often the first or main point of contact with clients and customers. With that in mind, our resolution this year, and one which we encourage you to join, is to focus on being a Modern Employer. That means (to us) focusing on how to recruit, retain, and reward employees. It is a focus on treating employees properly, managing them properly, and rewarding them properly, in the hope that those pesky issues, which we are all so well versed in dealing with, do not arise. So, instead of us helping you prevent an employee from joining a competitor when they resign, they will not want to resign in the first place. Instead of us helping you manage issues that arise from an employee who is off on long term sick with stress, you never reach the point where that person feels the need to sign themselves off.

Of course there will still be situations where you need to take firm action to manage employees, and as you know, the team here are always on hand to deal decisively with any problems that do arise. However, in an increasingly difficult market, a focus on being a Modern Employer should help to:

• Recruit quality employees;
• Retain quality employees;
• Increase your business’ productivity and efficiency;
• Distinguish your business from your competitors; and
• Make your business more attractive to clients and customers.

After all, many work-seekers and companies judge a business on how it treats its people. Already this year there has been a worldwide call on key figures to act responsibly and to ensure equal treatment. If you can set your business apart as one that treats its employees with respect, it may just mean that you edge the recruitment of an exceptional candidate, or win business from a new client or customer (and should give you less HR headaches to deal with!).

Over the course of the next year our Employment Team will be running a number of seminars on ‘The Modern Employer’, and will be focusing its email updates on that theme. Keep your eyes peeled for our first article in the next couple of weeks, and an invite to our first seminar on this topic - we’re excited to see you there!