TIM - a product suite that addresses Training, Investigations and Mediation

Training

Every organisation has a ‘Duty of Care’ to its employees. It is your line manager’s responsibility to fulfil this duty of care for all of their direct reports. It covers recruitment, inductions, performance management, capability and conduct and is a fundamental and essential tool to the key aspects of successful line management.

Too often a newly appointed ‘First Line Manager’ will have received little or no training in the ‘people management’ aspect of his/her new managerial role. Many new managers are not even aware that they have a level of responsibility under Duty of Care for staff on their teams. One manager was dismayed when a Tribunal Chairman awarded a financial penalty of £7,000 against him personally for failing in this key area. His ignorance of the law had cost him £7,000 of his own money!

Investigations

Over the last 5 years we have worked extensively and successfully in both the Private the Public sectors, mainly with County Councils and the NHS. We have designed a 20-step Investigation formula that enables us to get to the very heart of a dispute and provide you with a complete dispute resolution remedy, acceptable to both employees and employers. As part of the TIM product suite we are able to train HR teams and line managers to conduct their own in-house first stage investigation.

Mediation

The 3-step dispute resolution laid down in The Employment Act 2002 is highly complex and confrontational. By April 2009 the Act will be replaced with a less confrontational set of statutory procedures which employers will be required to follow. The soon to be announced new employment laws will feature a mandatory requirement on employers to work with external help-lines and mediators as part of a complete dispute resolution approach.

ACAS generally gets involved in proposing mediation after a Tribunal has been alerted and at the tail end of confrontational, internal, phased meetings. We believe that it is important to ‘nip it in the bud’ and address potentially contentious issues at a much earlier stage – to avoid unnecessary disruption in the workplace. Mediation can provide a fast, economic return to productivity and the status quo with staff who may have been employed for a long period of time, and who currently could be lost to the organisation.

We’ll be telling you more about TIM over the coming months and how you can build a happy, loyal workforce.

How Can We Help You?

We received this testimonial from the past Pharmacy Director of a leading NHS Trust in London where we carried out two pieces of Investigation work last year. Mike Cross wrote:

“I just wanted to thank you for the two pieces of work that you carried out for me as head of this department.

As a line manager it is difficult to deal with people who have borderline performance, make notes about everything that happens to them and are disruptive behind the scenes. They take a long time to come to the top of the list and when they do the situation is complex. Of course it is always better to prevent such situations progressing but I suspect that most managers with a large number of staff and years experience will recognise the scenario.

I now recognise what a fantastic resource your company provides when such matters occur. In both cases, which had different outcomes, your approach was to work and focus towards a satisfactory outcome rather than producing a report of what was happening and walking away.

Thanks Mike, it was our pleasure!

So, having read this first edition of Rapport if you would like us to help you regarding workplace issues - please just call us on 01793 338888 and ask for David Pratt.