Frequently Asked Questions

Have you thought about reviewing your remuneration package to include performance incentives?

Dealing with poor performance can help – around 60% of employers don’t and this costs them a fortune! Is performance measured at all?

Do you know how to motivate your team? The more motivated your employees are, the more likely their performance at work will improve. Improved performance generally means improved profits.

A basic principle I have worked with and seen the benefit of for many years is:

happy, motivated, productive employees
 happy customers
  good reputation
   more business (new or repeat)
    profits

Contact now and Maia HR Solutions will help you find which profit enhancing measures are possible for your business success.

The cost of replacing an employee can be £5K for a £20K pa role – when you are recruiting do you know how to increase your chances of getting the right person? Do you know how to engage with your best performers to reduce your employee turnover?

Simply put, some businesses need to shed excess employees and “redundancy” is a word becoming more prevalent. Do you know how carry out this process in a fair way, respecting all those concerned, ensuring that you are left with your best performers to take the business forward, at the same time reducing the risk of you ending up in a costly tribunal situation?

Asking your employees how the business can be more efficient is a good way to understand where cost savings could be made – they are the people who are working with the systems and suppliers day in day out. There numerous ways you could do this, have you ever asked?

You could employ Maia HR Solutions and it won’t cost you a penny! If your business is construction related, it may be possible to employ Maia HR Solutions on a cost neutral basis whilst at the same time receiving enhanced benefits for your site workers.

Contact now and Maia HR Solutions will help you find out which cost saving measures are hidden within your business.

Your employees are ambassadors for your business, how they interact with your customers is likely to directly relate to your chance of repeat business. Can the level of repeat business you are getting be higher?

Are you clear regarding what your customers expect from you? Are these expectations clearly translated into the behaviours you expect from your employees? Do your employees know what these are and do you provide the appropriate training and development where needed?

If your customers require a PQQ or submission document as part of the tendering process, what stories are you going to tell to ensure they know your team have the knowledge, skills and competence to successfully deliver their contract?

If work is awarded on price alone, are you sure that work is carried out in the most efficient way, thereby keeping overheads and cost of sales as low as possible?

Which HR activities are you going to invest in to turn your employees into ambassadors?

Contact now and Maia HR Solutions will help you discover which areas will have the most impact for your business.

A popular place to start is having a HR Review. After completing the online questionnaire, your report is a useful way to clearly understand where your business may not be legally compliant as an employer. It also provides lots of helpful information on which HR activities can enable you to have more business success through the people you employ.

Most retained services packages from Maia HR Solutions include a comprehensive HR Review of your business. If you are not yet a client, we are currently offering the HR Review at a discounted price of only £199+VAT.

Contact now to complete a Maia HR Review, or see sample pages from the HR Review report before you decide to purchase.

We know it is difficult to find the time to attend events that keep you up to date with what is either going on in the industry or new products or services that may be good for your business.

Maia HR Solutions attend various network groups to keep abreast of what’s new so that any important information can be passed on to our clients. Like we have said before, it’s like having your own HR Manager at a faction of the cost of employment.

Contact now to find out how this could save you time and help your business.

It is frustrating, and a waste of time and money when employees leave an organisation soon after joining. A few reasons could include:

• Was this only ever going to be a short term thing for them until something better came along and you didn’t spot it during recruitment?
• Was the job they were sold during the recruitment stage completely different from what they discovered when they started?
• Did you recruit someone who is a strong team player into a role that has very little interaction with any other employee?

Contact now and Maia HR Solutions will help you ensure you are recruiting the right person for the job.

With the average rate of absenteeism in the workplace at 8 days per person, not managing this can develop into a culture of tolerance that allows absenteeism in the workplace to become acceptable.

Short term absences can be more difficult to manage than an employee out on long term sick leave.

The key is to have a comprehensive sickness absence policy which sets out clear rules regarding absences from work and can include introducing return to work interviews. This lets employees know in no uncertain terms that their absence has been noted, albeit a short absence from the workplace, and also provides the employer with an opportunity to find out information about the employee’s absence which might be relevant in the overall employment relationship context. Consistency in the application of a policy across the organisation is critical.

If an employee has established a continued pattern of short term absences over a protracted period then consideration may have to be given to instigating the company’s disciplinary or capability procedure which could lead to termination of the employee’s contract of employment. In this regard, an employer will have to prove the following -

• That there has been a pattern over a protracted period.
• That it is reasonable to conclude the situation will not improve.
• That the continuation of the level of absenteeism was unacceptable and was causing prejudice to the employer.
• That the employer took reasonable steps to ascertain the true medical situation with regard to the employee.
• The employer further informed him/herself of all relevant information relating to the employee.
• That the absenteeism level was excessive compared to other employees in the organisation.
• That the employee received warnings about the absenteeism and that these warnings were successive and progressive.
• That the employer afforded the employee a reasonable time to improve and that the employee was given an opportunity to be represented and heard prior to any decision being taken to terminate their employment.

Contact now and Maia HR Solutions will advise you on sickness absence policy that enables you to get people back to work as soon as possible. Good news for your business and your employees.

Every business has the right to manage its employment affairs. The key to staying out of court where dismissals are concerned is the word “fair”. Is the decision to dismiss a fair one? If the dismissal is based upon any form of discrimination, or is obviously unfair, then you are putting the business at risk.

There are five statutory reasons for an employer to consider dismissing an employee. These are because:

• of the capability or lack of qualifications of the employee for performing work of the kind which he or she was employed to do
• of the employee's conduct
• the employee's job was redundant
• of retirement of the employee at age 65, or the organisation's normal retirement age
• continued employment would have meant that the employer or employee would have been breaking the law.

If the reason is not one of these five reasons, but there was “some other substantial reason” that justified the dismissal of the employee, then it can still be a fair dismissal.

You should have a disciplinary procedure in place that sets out the process to be followed and gives examples of the type of behaviour which may instigate the process and the types of sanctions which may be applied.

Contact now and Maia HR Solutions will help you manage the performance of your employees, reduce the risk of an employment tribunal claim and improve your business performance.