Dear Subscriber,

With the focus heavily on potential public sector cuts in the run up to the General Election, relatively little attention has been given to the effect of the economic downturn on the third sector. However, the sector is a major employer in the North of England and culturally places a lot of emphasis on its’ HR. Perceptions may be that charities and other third sector organisations generally pay lower than average wages for their HR staff, but our in-depth salary survey results show that generally the packages on offer are comparable to private industries.

To highlight this, this month we are focusing on average wages across the HR spectrum for professionals in the third sector :

• HR Administrator £14,500
• HR Assistant £15,300
• HR Officer £20,750
• HR Advisor £25,100
• Senior HR Advisor £28,300
• HR Manager £38,000
• HR Director £60,100

This month will be one of the last chances to request a free copy of our Winter Salary Survey. If you have not already received a copy, please e-mail Gareth. We are pleased to be working again with Newcastle University in producing the North of England’s most accurate and thorough HR Salary Survey. A Masters student from the HRM course is working closely with us an analysing live salary data and we should have our Spring/Summer edition of the survey ready within the next few months.

To receive a free e-copy, please e-mail our Senior Consultant Gareth Harrison at recruitment@exclusivehr.com or call 0191 2155 400/0113 2430 900.

What do I need to know about Fit Notes replacing Sick Notes from April 2010?

From 6 April 2010, GP’s will be able to issue a Statement of Fitness for Work, or ‘Fit Note’ for those individuals who are on sick leave for over 7 days.

This will be introduced under the Social Security (Medical Evidence) and Statutory Sick Pay (Medical Evidence) Amendment Regulations 2010.

The Fit Note offers the options of ‘unfit for work’ or ‘maybe fit for work taking account of the following advice’. This latter option is intended to facilitate communication between the GP and the individual in order to discuss potential courses of action that may be taken. This will result in a classification in one of the following tick boxes:-

• Phased return to work
• Flexible working
• Amended duties
• Workplace adaptions

There will also be a ‘comments’ box for occasions when a GP thinks an alternative option should be considered.

Another important feature of the changes in April is that the maximum sign-off for sick employees has been reduced from 6 months to 3 months. Also, Doctors will not have the ability to recommend an option for ‘occupational health assessment’, which would have been feared to be the ‘default’ position or would have actually deferred a decision from the GP.

More detailed guides can be found at the Department for Work and Pensions; www.dwp.gov.uk/docs/fitnote-employer-guide.pdf or at ACAS; www.acas.org.uk/fitnote

From an employee perspective, returning to work as early as is feasible can help alleviate isolation, stress, depression and anxiety. Similarly, from an organisational viewpoint, discussion on how to assist with an early return to work can help with workload, costs incurred for temporary cover and ultimately, performance and organisational success.

Though this new initiative will clearly assist in a platform for early discussion in an employee’s absence period, employers may be fearful that the GP seeing their employee may not have enough knowledge of a the individual workplace in order to make an informed recommendation. The GP suggestion could end up being costly, particularly to SME’s or simply not feasible from an employer’s perspective. Also, if an organisation does not react to suggested medical advice on workplace adjustments which would result in a return to work, will they then run the risk of more disability discrimination claims?

Time will tell but if you have a specific issue that you would like to discuss in more detail, please contact Rachel Hegarty or one of our HR Consultancy Services team on 0191 2155400/0113 2430 900 or email consultancy@exclusivehr.com

We are excited this month to welcome Heather Monro and Phil Dicks to our Leadership and Management Development team.

Phil brings with him 30 years experience of personal and organisational development, team building and managing change from both the public and private sectors. Most recently he has worked with a number of professional sports teams and World Class athletes to help them to be the best they can be.

Heather (pictured) was formerly one of these athletes, achieving world medals in orienteering before retiring and embarking on a career applying the principles of success in elite sport to other arenas. She has 5 years managerial experience in the public sector and a background in education.

World Class athletes are experts at planning to reach targets, prioritising and optimising the use of time and resources, focussing on set tasks, working effectively in teams, analysing performance and refining practice in order to be the very best. The tools and principles they employ are simple yet effective and can be applied in any setting.

Bringing their experience from performance management and achievement at the highest level in the sporting world Phil and Heather are able to offer personnel development workshops and coaching to raise performance standards.

As a taster of what lessons sport has to offer; here’s an inspirational example; a story of a former Olympic Swimmer from the United States.

In 1972 a little known American swimmer, John Naber, watched his teammate, Mark Spitz win 7 gold medals at the Munich Olympics. John’s role at the Games had been as training partner for Spitz. He vowed that at the next game he would be there not as a disposable team member but in his own right and not only that, but he would win gold in his favourite event the 100m Backstroke.

John went home and did his homework; calculating from the basis of times in Munich that he would need to swim 55.5 seconds to win the gold. His personal best at the time was 59.5 seconds. A 4 second improvement needed. 4 seconds over a 1 minute event. That’s HUGE and certainly would seem an insurmountable task. Many, at this point would give up the dream and decide it was impossible.

John, however, did some maths;

4 seconds over 4 years, is a 1 second improvement a year.

He trained 10 months a year, so that’s 1/10 second a month and there are 30 days in a month, so that’s 1/300 second a day.

Most days he did 4 hours in the pool, so that’s actually only a 1/1200 second improvement for every hour of training.

A blink of a human eye takes 5/1200 second, so in fact all John had to do was improve by 1/5 of the blink of an eye with every hour of training to achieve his Olympic dream.

Suddenly, what seemed like an impossible goal, an insurmountable task actually seemed very doable!

John set to work and 4 years later he won not 1 but 4 gold medals at the 1976 Olympics and set a new World Record of 55.49 seconds in the 100m backstroke!

By applying the simple principle of breaking big tasks down into smaller chunks, this Olympic swimmer was able to focus on the work he needed to do on a daily basis to achieve the insurmountable!

Could your business benefit from World Class thinking? Please call 0191 2155 400/ 0113 2430 900 or email leadership@exclusivehr.com to find out more.

The recent furore over British Airways cabin crew, which looks likely to culminate in a damaging strike this Easter, is a lesson in how not to do it. What’s interesting about this case, however, is that neither side seems to have won the battle for the hearts and minds of the British public. This is unfamiliar territory for the newspaper industry, which has been left slightly nonplussed by the lack of bandwagons on which to jump, but what is the reason for this lack of public sentiment?

In essence, this is a dispute that reflects the age we’re living in and the new realities of 2010. The natural instinct of the British to sympathise with the little guy is being tempered by our subconscious agreement that companies like BA must change in order to survive, combined with the natural human fear of being stranded in a foreign airport over Easter.

The Unite union did itself and its members no favours by botching the industrial ballot over Christmas, which gave BA management the opportunity to take them to court and block strike action. The subsequent ballot for the forthcoming strike may have been done properly, but it leaves the public with a sense that the whole thing is a stitch-up. More recently, Unite created further uncertainty and public anger by refusing to reveal exact dates for the planned strikes.

British Airways then scored what appeared to be another own goal with the revelation that it has been training ground crews to act as a flight stewards, using a six-week fast track course to give them the minimum safety training and skills needed to work onboard a plane. This could have been a PR disaster, and the press certainly treated it as such, but ironically BA's share price went up as investors calculated that the initiative would lessen the financial impact of the strike.

Amid all this jockeying, it's easy to forget what caused the disagreement between BA and Unite in the first place. British Airways made a loss of £50m in the final quarter of 2009 and it needs to adapt if it is to survive. The changes that are being disputed involve a cut in the number of flight crew on transatlantic flights from 15 to 14 and a two-year pay freeze, as well as revised pay and conditions for new recruits. Where BA went wrong was in its failure to consult the union before announcing the changes.

Ultimately, everyone will suffer from this dispute, which is only the latest in a series of PR disasters to hit BA. Passengers don't like uncertainty, which means they'll look elsewhere, deepening BA's financial woes and leading to further staff cuts in the longer term. How many people have already booked with other airlines in the face of such uncertainty we will never know, but it's likely to be in the hundreds of thousands.

So what can we learn from this as employers? Whether you have union representation or not, it's better to consult than to present a fait accompli. When asked, most BA employees agreed that something had to give, but they objected to the fact that they were being told rather than asked. You need to make your staff feel that they have a stake in the business, be it moral or financial, if you want them to make sacrifices on your behalf.

If you're planning any changes in your business, especially those involving rationalisation or job losses, you need to include communications in your planning from the very beginning. By co-ordinating internal comms with external PR and staying on-message, you can ensure that you maintain control of the situation. If there's one thing we can learn from BA, it's the value of planning and conveying the right message in order to win the argument.

To speak with Rob Lawson our Employee Communications Manager on any internal communication issues - please call 0191 2155 400 or email communication@exclusivehr.com.