Abbey HR Recruitment for all senior & executive roles across the uk                                      0844 736 2886

TEAM TALK
Recruitment & HR matters 
News from the MD              SPRING 2010
March already and spring is here. The year began and carried on with snow and ice making commuting difficult to say the least. On a plus note, we overcame these difficulties by really embracing another way of working, which you can read about further on. It has meant that despite the weather all candidates were still interviewed prior to shortlisting, which is one of the features that Cork Griffiths prides itself on. 
Business has been brisk and we are seeing a lot of movement in the recruitment market. Clients are recruiting and the feel from the candidates is they can now afford to be more choosy. 
We feel it has been a very good start to the year and we hope you do too.
 
Best regards.
 
Paul Griffiths FCIPD
 
 
 
 
Vacancy Page
To make things easier for our clients and candidates to navigate around the vacancies we have redsigned our jobs pages. We hope you find them simple and easy to use. If you have any suggestions please don't hesitate to let us know. Vacancies......
 
 
HR SEMINAR. HR SURGERY 
 
Abbey HR 

Employment Law and Health and Safety support

 
 

I would like to take this opportunity to introduce a specialist company which could help your business. The company is Abbey HR, employment and health and safety experts. We currently use them to support our organisation and have found them to be excellent. 

 

Abbey offer employment law support which is commercial and geared to your business - not textbook answers but advice which fits within the real world in which we operate. 

  • Do you have a staff handbook? If so, when was it last updated? 
  • Do all your employees have contracts of employment? 
  • Has an employee taken you to Employment Tribunal in the past 3 years? 

These are a few questions you need to ask yourself and a simple solution to solving them was found at a FREE SEMINAR on Wednesday 24 February. At the seminar, Abbey's HR consultants outlined the current employment law provisions and how you can stay one step ahead of these. After the session, there was an opportunity to meet the consultants and discuss specific HR or employment issues.

 
HR Q & A's. 

Q.

An employee has an 8 year old child who is disabled and she has asked if she can have 3 days away form work at the end of the month. Is she able to have this time away? I know that she has had a lot of time away over the last couple of years. 

A. 

Under the Parental leave regulations there is a provision for unpaid leave.

Where a parent has a disabled child the leave entitlement is more generous that is normally the case. The regulations provide that the parent may have up to 18 weeks leave over an 18 year period. Obviously it is important to keep a record of such leave, the employee is required to provide you with 21 days notice of when they want to take leave. Normally the leave has to be taken in week blocks but in the case of a parent of a disabled parent they are able to take it in periods of days. There is however, a maximum period of four weeks leave in a year. 

 

Q. 

An employee we are considering disciplining for misconduct has said that we must have rules and procedures in place. Is this correct? 

A. 

There is nothing in law that requires this. There is a requirement to have information relating to whom a grievance or complaint about a disciplinary process must be made. There is no obligation to have written rules or procedures. However, it is extremely beneficial to have such documents because it much improves and employer's prospects if a matter comes before a Tribunal. The ACAS code's introduction recommends that rules and procedures should be set down, be specific and clear.

So there is no legal principle that requires a detailed written set of rules and procedures but the existence of them is to be encouraged.

We are introducing a regular HR Q & A, however, i
f you would like further information or, if you would like to attend an informal one to one HR surgery to explore any sensitive HR issues in a confidential setting we have set aside two dates - Wednesday 14th April at Nantwich, or Thursday 15th at Wilmslow. Please telephone 0844 736 2886 to book in or email Sarah Ashworth   
 

We look forward to working with you.

 
 
Outsourcing Payroll Services
 
For small businesses, processing payroll can be a complicated and time-consuming task. Amongst other things, payroll functions can include anything from determining employee wages and taxes, to updating holiday and sick pay. Outsourcing payroll eliminates the need to hire payroll staff, and you'll free up time to work on other aspects of your business. 
Other advantages include:  
Convenience.   You can simply telephone us, give us the hours, deductions, and salary amounts of your employees, and then we'll process the pay. We provide management reports, calculate employee and employer tax, and prepare all the forms on a weekly, monthly or yearly basis
Compliance.     Payroll involves a complicated variety of tax and legal obligations. Let us stay up-to-date with new tax laws related to employee payroll
To get a quote simply give us a call. If you can give us employee numbers, and how often you pay your employees we'll give you a quote. It's as simple as that.
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Tweet 
In January of this year we introduced Twitter on our website. It means each day we try to put a snippet of information about what we are doing behind the scenes to keep the business of Cork Griffiths running efficiently and effectively. If you would like to follow us at twitter or tweet us, then click here
 
 
SKYPE
 
As a result of getting snowed in Paul Griffiths (MD) has embraced SKYPE. This facility has meant he can continue to personally interview candidates and discuss details - face to face.  You can SKYPE Paul at mellorgriff
 
    SKYPE is easy to set up all you need is a means to video - i.e inbuilt camera or external webcam,and a SKYPE account. This takes very little set up time and is FREE