HR Consultant Reading
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JUNE 2024
EDITION

BI-MONTHLY ORBIT

Carers Leave

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The Carer’s Leave Act 2023 provides employment rights for people who juggle unpaid caring responsibilities with paid employment. Pre-pandemic nearly 5 million people juggled paid work alongside unpaid. That’s about 15% of the UK’s population. In 2020, the number of people in paid work who were also providing unpaid care increased to over 7 million.

The stress and strain of juggling paid work alongside unpaid care has led to hundreds of thousands of employees leaving the labour market entirely. That’s 600 people a day leaving work to care. Balancing work and care can be a real struggle – with carers saying they are tired, stressed and struggling to manage their own physical and mental health.

The Carer’s Leave Act 2023 came into force on 6 April 2024, providing carers in employment with a statutory right to take five days of unpaid leave from work each year to fulfil their caring responsibilities.

Think about your employees. Can you see someone juggling care and work?

Guest Speaker

Our Guest Writer - Phoebe Gibbons - 3DOM

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23% of working aged adults are disabled, but disabled people are twice as likely to be unemployed compared to their able-bodied peers. Disabled people often face barriers to accessing the workplace, some of which are down to physical environments, but most of which are not as visible as people think.

There is a need for greater awareness of disability inclusion. Often, organisations and businesses do not deliberately exclude disabled people, but there can be a lack of understanding as to how they can be truly inclusive.

One quote often said is ‘I worry about saying the wrong thing when it comes to disability’. If organisations and businesses spend time considering what this statement means to them and whether they feel this is representative of their teams, it is also an opportunity to think about what can be done to start to shift the narrative as well as considering who they are missing out on if their workplaces are not inclusive of disabled people. Creating the opportunity to have conversations and share experiences is a great way to be able to raise awareness and consider what, if any, changes could be made, as well as sharing great work already taking place in the organisation.

3DOM and Inclusion can start to support businesses and organisations on their journey to becoming truly inclusive. We offer a range of disability awareness training packages, all of which have real, lived experience at their heart, to help start conversations, raise awareness and enable both individuals and organisations to start to reflect on actions that they can take so that they can continue working towards truly inclusive workplaces for disabled people as well as society more generally.

If you would like to find out more, please visit https://3inc.co.uk or please do get in touch via hello@3inc.co.uk

Employee Benefits Package

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We are regularly asked to benchmark salaries, as a result of someone leaving for a higher paid job. Confirming or not that a role is worth more than you’re paying is not information you can use effectively in isolation. Pay is only one part of an employee’s benefit package.

We get calls from employees saying they made a mistake and are actually worse off at their new job – that’s because they only considered the pay being higher and not the value of the benefits package. Employee benefits are non-cash provisions within a benefit package, although these may have costs for the employer. Examples would be paid holidays, pensions or company cars.

There are moral reasons for offering enhanced benefits in terms of wanting to care for your employee’s wellbeing. And by the way, it’s proven to enhance employee commitment. There are many business reasons with the main ones being that they attract and motivate employees to achieve your business goals. The number one benefit you can offer is pensions. These are standard now but if you only pay the 3% statutory employer contribution you’re missing an easy way to enhance it by paying a higher employer percentage. Matching your employee’s contribution up to a threshold you can afford helps the employees to be invested.

Time off
Offering the statutory 20 days+ bank holidays means you’re offering the basement level of benefit. 25 or more days plus bank holidays is more expected. Other leave like maternity, paternity, parental, bereavement and more are all leaves that employees will be scrutinising when weighing up your offering. Healthcare and risk benefits help provide for the welfare and productivity of employees.

Benefit examples are the Employee Assistance Programme, eye care vouchers, life insurance, sick pay and free vaccinations. Why not start by not doing the statutory minimum? You can make and forecast incremental change to get to where you want to be. Today employers need to be creative with their benefits to ensure you meet the needs of your employees but also to continually look for new innovative options to ensure the package stays ahead of the norm. So next time don’t just think salary benchmark thing package and get the real picture. We can help.

Snip it!
Did you know that employers paying company sick pay (above statutory) can mitigate the cost with an affordable group income protection insurance? Ask us if you’d like to know more.