As everyone grows weary of Covid-19’s bite, your company culture might also be feeling some long-term stain. The last year hasn’t exactly been the height of sociality and undoubtedly the social aspect of your workplace has felt the full effect of this - a lack of staff lunch time get-togethers, seasonal parties or charity coffee mornings.

Let’s delve into our top tips for keeping the momentum of company culture as your staff continue to work remotely, from virtual get togethers to workplace communications.

Culture - Is It Really That Important?

Businesses have faced many challenges over the course of the pandemic, from navigating sudden closures and changes due to social distancing restrictions, the subsequent financial pressures of wage subsidy schemes, redundancies and lay-offs, as well as the personal and mental impact of business owners. They could be forgiven for letting company culture slipped to the wayside.

But one year on, it’s time businesses accept these challenges and their impacts, and start knuckling down to get their organisations back on track.

As the Winter Lockdown continues, your employees may be struggling with the lack of social interaction as they continue to work remotely and live away from friends and family.

Their motivation and engagement will undoubtedly affect your business’ performance, interaction with customers and clients and in the long-term, your reputation. Maintaining and extending your company culture virtually is crucial to ensuring your colleagues feel connected to their teams and your business.

Company Culture Remotely: Top Tips

1.      Team Calls… But Not Too Many

Video meetings and calls are crucial to maintaining basic communications between your colleagues and teams. While work chat platforms like Teams, Slack and Trello can be great for instant communication that we’ve had to transfer from conversations shared in office kitchens and cubicles, it can be difficult to get tone and meaning across in a message.

Organising daily or weekly check-in meetings with teams keeps everyone dialled into company activities and ensures management remains approachable to staff members. But remember - don’t organise too many team calls. Just like the dreaded ‘meeting could have been put in an email’ situation, sometimes a video call really isn’t needed. Don’t leave colleagues tied to their laptops back to back - try and find the right balance for your team calls.
2.  Reward Culture

Everyone loves being rewarded for hard work - recognition and appreciation is key to motivating colleagues and keeping them engaged.

While your colleagues may not be in the office, this doesn’t mean you can’t reward them. Whether it’s as simple as a gift card through to work from home care packages, continue to promote a reward culture from home and your appreciation for your colleagues will be clear.

3.  Back To Basics

Company culture starts at the basics - lunch time breaks, set work hours (where possible), full holiday leave.

Whilst remote working has brought a culture of flexible working to the mainstream, this has at times been to the detriment of traditional, basic working practices. As video calls are booked to the extreme, and workers juggle caring arrangements alongside their jobs, working hours can fluctuate with breaks falling through the seams. As people hold off booking annual leave in the hope of some form of vacation after restrictions ease, your staff can easily fall into a trap of becoming burnout quickly.​

Get your company culture working right remotely by going back to basics - your business’ performance will thank you later!

As the country continues the battle against Coronavirus, working hard to return society to some form of normal, the important issue of holiday leave has begun to dominate in the list of challenges that your HR department will be tackling.

But where do you, as the employer, legally stand post-Coronavirus? What are your employees entitled to in terms of carrying over leave from 2020 into 2021? And what is the best approach to managing holiday leave as we continue to tackle this pandemic?

Whether you are struggling to encourage employees to take annual leave while working from home or finding monitoring employees’ travel during time off in line with self-isolation guidelines, let’s explore some top tips for holiday leave post-coronavirus.

Holiday Leave: Employers’ Rights Post-Covid

Workplaces, large and small, all have their own holiday policies. However, as Covid-19 hit the Irish workplace, your HR team has undoubtedly been inundated regarding holiday leave queries. So, what are you entitled to from your employees in terms of their annual leave?

Simply put, it all depends on how your employees have been working over the past few months. Perhaps they have worked from home throughout the pandemic but have used little leave. Maybe you haven’t had the capacity to afford them the time off if you have been working with a skeleton staff. Or perhaps they have been receiving their pay through the Wage Subsidy Scheme (WSS).

As an employer, it is your role to ensure your colleagues are clear on what their holiday entitlement is. Perhaps as we begin to enter back into offices and structured workplaces, it would be productive to get your HR team to review what holidays each employee has left remaining, remind them of this figure, and encourage them to take breaks.

Understandably, some of your employees may be reluctant to use holiday leave as they may feel they cannot use it to head away overseas. For those employees, it is important to remind them of their rights but also to ensure they are aware of their limitations on carrying over leave, depending on your organisation.​

The Organisation of Working Time Act, 1997 provides that the timing of an employee’s annual leave can be determined by the employer “having regard to work requirements” so this gives employers the right to ask their employees to take annual leave during the emergency period. In relying on this provision, employers are obliged to consult with their employees 30 days before the start of the annual leave. While this may be quite restrictive, it still offers the opportunity to exercise your rights as an employer.
Holiday Leave: Employees’ Rights Post-Covid
Understanding the rights of your employees during this period is also crucial to ensuring you keep staff satisfied and your business’ reputation high.
For those employees that have worked throughout the lockdown, they will be entitled to fully paid holiday leave. For those that have been unable to take leave due to the needs and capacity of your business, now is the time to afford your employees that treasured time off. Not only will it ensure that you keep on the right side of your employees, but it will ensure their rights are met, improving job satisfaction and leaving them refreshed to boost your business performance.
For those employees that you had placed on the WSS, their rights will differ. Employees can only accrue annual leave relevant to the time that they have worked. While those staff will likely have accrued full annual leave entitlement up until the month of March, it is important to make the right calculations for their leave entitlement during their placement on WSS and communicate this to them.
For those employees that you may have unfortunately had to lay-off during this period, it is important to remember that they retain the right to be paid for a public holiday during a lay-off period of up to 13 weeks from the date of lay-off.
Jet-Setting: Employees’ Rights for Overseas Travel
While many of your employees will remain cautious throughout the rest of 2020, some will be itching to throw open the suitcase and jet-off somewhere abroad. While various quarantine rules continue to remain, it is important to acknowledge these in relation to the annual leave entitlement of your employees. While you may have the capacity to grant the initial holiday request, with two more weeks of isolation needed, employees must be notified that they will not be able to receive pay for this additional time off (unless they can take their full quota of minimum holiday entitlement).
Do your staff have a duty to inform you of overseas travel? While opinions may differ, if they make a false declaration and have been overseas but are not self-isolating then this could result in disciplinary action as it would be a serious breach of health and safety legislation and could out the rest of your staff and possibly your customers at risk
 

As we start our journey along Varadkar’s step-by-step ease of lockdown, the true economic impact of the Covid-19 is beginning to make its mark. With catastrophic job losses, a possible 25% unemployment rate, a €30 billion deficit and a severe economic downturn are forecast, you can be forgiven to worry about your business, its future and the impact on your colleagues.

As Satayana once famously quipped, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. Ireland has had its fair share of financial heartache amidst the crash of 2008. And while this left chaos in its wake, it is not too late to get your business prepared for the eventual short and long-term impact that this global pandemic will ultimately have on your business.

It’s time to focus on the top HR tips that you can follow in the fight against another recession:

Get On Top Of Your Employee Contracts
Your legal responsibilities to your employees during a recession are paramount. While it does not do well to dwell on the possible negative consequences of a recession to your business, it is inevitable that many employers will have to face the challenge of laying off workers or providing redundancy packages.

In order to get this right, for the benefit of both your employees and business, it is crucial that all your employee contracts are up to date to fit within the current context.

It is safe to say that most contracts may not mention specifically anything to do with a global pandemic. However, you must spend the time ensuring that your employee contracts can fit in within this context. This will help provide clarification to your employees on their rights during this period, what they will or will not be entitled to, and how any lay-off or redundancy process may take place.

HR As PR
Depending on the size of your business, this statement ring true for your management team rather than a separate HR department. Your HR team is often the face of your company to your employees during a recession, especially when lay-offs or redundancies are inevitable.

Having great communication between the company and its employees is the best internal PR. Utilise your HR team to communicate all actions that your company may be making during a recession with your workforce.

By keeping all employees well inside the loop, they will be more likely to maintain loyalty towards your company, growing a greater understanding of any sacrifices you may have to make to ensure your business survives a recession. Instilling great communication between these parties will also reassure employees, reduce anxiety of the unknown, and provide clarity to the situation.

Identify & Ask
You’ve built a business up, often from scratch. With no doubt countless years of hard work, you are proud of what you have created and grown. In the wake of coronavirus, many Irish businesses will fear the challenge of yet another recession, anxious to see if it can survive.

During this uncertain time, it is crucial that you identify any external assistance opportunities that will aid your business as Ireland prepares to rebuild post-Lockdown. Whether this is from the government, your bank for business, or industry bodies relevant for your sector – help is there.

Take the time now to identify what you are eligible for and utilise these opportunities; the Irish Government has provided a list of priorities for your business and where you can find eligible aid. They will help you to fight a recession post-Lockdown, ensure your business can remain successful for the future and provide some job security for your workforce as we move through 2020 and beyond.

If you have a specific HR enquiry or require HR support, please get in touch.