People problems
LPM’s people guru, Polly Jeanneret, discusses porn on WhatsApp and nightmares about government policy changes
Q How much do I have to monitor staff WhatsApp groups? I don’t want to close them down as they are useful for staff to share experiences and ideas, but I am worried content might get out of hand and I simply don’t have the resource to watch over it.
A One can begin to believe that, for all its usefulness in collaboration, communication and connectivity (yada yada), social media is more trouble than it’s worth. Within hours (or so it felt) of WhatsApp, Slack and Yammer being heralded as the best new gadgets for staff engagement, encouraging fluid thinking and real-time responsiveness, organisations were finding themselves having to defend bullying and harassment claims from content on these platforms. By way of vivid example: men sharing porn on these networking sites within a British Transport Police WhatsApp group were the focus of a Tribunal claim last year. But social media in the workplace is here to stay – like death and taxes, it is unavoidable. Better get that code of conduct up and running to stop things ‘getting out of hand’ as you put it; monitoring could be targeted, with spot checks. Then all you have got to worry about are mere trivial side issues such as the level of security of WhatsApp for businesssensitive information, and to what extent social media-based groups are breaching current data protection rules and practice: nothing to see here, let’s move on.
Q I had a nightmare that the government is changing the rules on self-employed contractors to make it harder for companies to take them on in this way. Was this a premonition?
A I’m glad I’m not the only one kept awake by the vagaries of government policy and new employment law. I’m also afraid to say that you did have a premonition. Our friends at HMRC are consulting on increasing compliance of IR35, the rules of which mean that if your staff are taken on through a personal service company when they’re really employees then they’ll be taxed as employees. The way HMRC is going to increase compliance is extremely clever: it will make the employer decide whether or not someone falls within IR35 rather than the individual, because it knows that many employers will err on the side of caution and say that they do. We’re only in the consultation stage right now but I’m pretty sure of the way the wind is blowing. Sweet dreams!
Q Is the government’s new ‘Good Work Plan’ a good plan?
A The plan, published just before Christmas following the Taylor Review of modern employment practices and billed as the biggest package of reforms for twenty years, is to have ‘good work’ built along three themes: fair and decent work; clarity for employers and workers; and fairer enforcement. All good plans for work, I’m sure everyone would agree. So it would be good to start planning your Good Work Plan right away. Whether or not these good work plans will work is another matter altogether. All clear?
This article can be found in March’s LPM magazine: Cost Crystallised