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.

While many companies, suffering from financial strain, have put on hold their recruitment, others need to fill positions, both now through the lifting of lockdown. A quick search on Indeed Ireland found over 17,000 jobs currently being advertised – the world hasn’t stopped turning. Life goes on.

Luckily, technology is on our side. With modern video communication tools, online tests & virtual recruitment tools available, this article will focus on how best to support your HR team during lockdown and how to ensure you do not miss out on talent that you will need to elevate your business long after lockdown finishes.
 
Why Should You Still Recruit?
While much of the media rhetoric has focused on the job losses and the struggles of small and large businesses up and down the country during this pandemic, your business may still need to fill positions. Whether you’re in need of the latest software developers, or you’re a restaurant-turned-food-retail-enterprise, fighting to survive, there are a multitude of reasons why you might be looking for talent.

But how can you onboard new staff when you exist in a world two metres apart, fretting over whether a journey is truly ‘essential’?
 
Video Is Calling...
We’re are all now too familiar with those peculiar jingles of a video call. Zoom, Teams, Skype, Facebook, WhatsApp... the list goes on and on. It’s time to grab this technology and maximise its use. Get your best interview questions ready and get the video interviews organised.

Yes, it might be a bit different than what your HR office is used to; no hand shaking judgements, office introductions. But during these unprecedented times, your new recruit will have to begin their working life with your company from the comfort of their own home, with their own device and communicating through video.

Holding interviews via video shouldn’t be much different to the real, in-person thing. While you may be worried that you could misjudge a person’s character by just a phone call, video provides the opportunity to correctly judge someone’s personality, monitor their body language and eye contact, and get a better grasp of their experience.
 
Online Testing
Depending on the advertised role, one or several video calls may suffice during your Covid-19 onboarding process. However, if you want some extra reassurance, you could investigate implementing some form of an online test. From sophisticated question and answers tests that have been pushed in the online application processes of large supermarket chains such as Lidl or Tesco, through to simple long-form answer forms where you can get an initial feel for the candidate, this will help your HR team to differentiate who you should take the time to video call and consider for the role, and those who may not be fit for the position.

Schools & universities have been quickly forced to implement online exam testing for students. Just like this, your business should consider online testing tools that could help you to identify the right recruits and aid your business during a post-lockdown period for your organisation.
 
Found the Recruit? Time to Onboard
You’ve successfully held the application process, video calls and online tests. Lockdown may have eased by this point, but most likely it will still not be safe to onboard this new colleague in the office. Time to onboard from home.

Ensure you have a structured plan in place. It is always a stressful process beginning a new job with colleagues you do not know and possibly new skills to learn. While your new staff member might have to worry about the morning commute, it is still crucial that you as a business can best support them during the lockdown.
Organise video calls with the people or teams that they will be working with; your colleagues should know they have gained a new staff member and be encouraged to help train them. Why not organised an evening Zoom quiz to help your new colleague get to know the others better?

Having an effective online onboarding plan in place will ensure your new recruit feels valued by their new workplace and has equal opportunities for training and development that they normally would have access to pre-coronavirus. They will feel much more comfortable when the time comes for lockdown to ease and a return to some form of previous working practices.
 
 
 
 

You may well have lost count of the number of days you have been in lockdown. As much of Ireland’s workforce adapts to the ‘new normal’ of a working from home routine, ‘technical difficulties’ are becoming increasingly obvious.
As the pandemic has swept the island of Ireland, many businesses have been forced to alter their operations, with workers given laptops and applications like Microsoft Teams, Zoom & Slack. Despite this investment, technology only works if your staff can get the full utilisation out of it. Worried about how to get the most out of your staff during lockdown? Here’s how your HR team to best communicate any technological changes during this period and how to get the most out of this new technology.
 
Staff Challenges with Technology
Until only a few weeks ago, much of the Irish workforce had never even considered working from home before. Perhaps many thought it simply wasn’t possible. Nonetheless, your colleagues have been given the challenge of learning the discipline of working daily from home, and with this, adapting to the new technologies enabling this.
Whether this takes the form of live chat features, video calls through to using workplace programmes remotely, many of your colleagues may feel daunted by this.
It's important to understand these issues and understand how colleagues of all ages may feel overwhelmed by this new way of working coupled with the challenges that the current environment also presents.
With an abundance of ages, cultures and creeds, your staff and their experiences of this type of working may be very different. To get the most out of your staff during this period, it is paramount that they can maximise the capability of the technology brought to them.
 
Maximising Technology’s Capability
1.     Engage staff from the beginning
Picking the right technology can be a difficult task. You need to find what will work for your operations and your staff, as well as your business’ purse.
Engaging staff in these challenges and adaptions from the beginning will make all the difference. Use your HR team to chat with colleagues, understand their daily tasks within their job roles and what they would like to see or use during their time under lockdown. Perhaps they have used a certain application or brand in a previous workplace or personally; certain operations might require certain applications that are a must-have to work efficiently remotely.
Speaking with colleagues before you invest & make decisions will help your performance during this stressful period and make it easier for staff to adapt this new working from home culture.
2.     Provide the right resources
After speaking with colleagues and considering what you, as a business, needs, you should be in the perfect position to provide the right resources.
Training programmes that can be delivered remotely on these new technologies and applications will ensure staff are clear on what work you expect to be delivered. This will ensure they know how and when to use new applications, and maximise the potential for your business.
Sometimes too much information is just that – too much. It is easy to throw every resource or bud of information that you may feel be useful to some colleagues, but this can easily overwhelm. Remember – for many of your colleagues, this could be the first time that they have attempted to work from home. Amidst children who may be off school, caring duties for older dependents or partners who are simply off for the day, your colleagues will face many distractions and challenges during this ‘new normal’. Ensure you ping the right resource, not every resource, to your colleagues.
3.     Monitor & Review
Lastly, there’s always room for improvement. To measure this, ensure you are continually monitoring. Whether this is through your own department or through your management team, continue to gather feedback from colleagues. Check out what is and what isn’t working, what you are getting from these new technologies and applications, and what could be maximised further in order to get what you have invested in.
Reviewing your new work from home practices will help set up a future model for your business which may aid change in the aftermath of this pandemic. Most importantly, reviewing these practices can greatly improve the short-term results for your business and your customers or clients, ensuring present day performance isn’t hindered by our present-day pandemic.edit.

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While this period of redundancy and lay-offs may be hard to manage as a business, it’s likely the aftermath may be just as challenging. For those staff lucky to keep their jobs, they may feel threatened of further risk in the future. They may feel guilty that they have been able to stay on while fellow colleagues have not, resulting in negativity towards your business.

Your HR team can act as a catalyst to boost staff morale in such incidence as this. As they say, ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’ and neither can your business’ reputation be rebuilt as quickly. Leveraging the skills and talent of your HR team is crucial. Here’s why:
 
Loss of Loyalty

Periods of job loss can be a tough road to navigate. With different policies for different types of workers, legalities and a host of other related issues, it can be hard to keep focus on what matters – your staff. Regardless of their situation, they should always be at the forefront of any decisions.

Often, job loss can leave existing colleagues anxious for their own future. This can impact not only on their morale but in their long-term loyalty towards your business. With fears for the jobs in the future, many of your staff may begin looking elsewhere for a job with better prospects.

Maximise the potential of your HR team by ensuring that communication to all staff about these changes is a top priority. Explain fully why any redundancies are made and if you intend to keep certain staff on, communicate this to them. This will avoid any unnecessary anxiety amongst colleagues, keeping them onside and loyal towards your plan for your organisation in the future. While you may have been forced to lose valuable skills and talent due to financial constraints, this doesn’t mean that you can’t retain the talent that you have left; boosting staff morale by communicating all changes to your business will maximise loyalty and your future talent retention.
 
Rebuilding Your Reputation

It might take a decade to build a reputation in business, but a period of job loss can wipe this away, harming the perception of your organisation both internally and externally. Internally, your existing staff may distrust your plans for the future, feel guilty to those colleagues who have lost their jobs, impacting on their capacity to remain loyal to you. But your HR team can help with that.

Facilitate one-to-ones and focus groups of staff where you, as a business, can personally thank them for their loyalty towards your organisation, while listening to their concerns over any recent job losses. Ask your staff questions about how they feel regarding the situation, and where they would like to see change. But remember: don’t just ask, listen! It is all well and good leveraging your HR staff to organise these discussions, but if you don’t listen, you can’t act on any feedback.

Without action, your reputation will remain poor and you may struggle to retain talent and keep staff onside. It may be a challenge but your HR team are here to help.
 
Keeping ‘Human’ at the Heart of Business

The clue is in the name – Human Resources. Job loss, financial insecurity, stress – these are all issues that can challenge staff – your humans!

Your HR team and their skills have the potential to make a lasting difference to your business in the aftermath of job loss. Keep human and personal to your staff by facilitating discussions, using feedback and communicating effectively why you have had to make cuts, how this will help your business and your staff in the future, and what you need from your colleagues within your organisation.

We are all people at the end of the day, and your people will appreciate your efforts as a business to remain personable and approachable during any period of job loss.
 

Up until recently, for most people across the globe, a commute to work was something of a given, with the length, breadth and challenge of these commutes varying.

For some, your workplace could be your home, or a few streets away. For others, getting to work involves a stressful mix of trains, busses, car journeys & speedy walks in the rain, culminating in a multi-hour commute.

But in 2020, is this necessary? In the face of the recent global Covid-19 pandemic, businesses worldwide opened the floodgates for flexible working arrangements in multiple sectors, as the struggle to contain and delay the virus grew. Despite this, there is a chance that many of these businesses could revert to their old customs. Here’s why avoiding the rush hour commute could be positive for your business.
 
The Ever-Increasing Irish Commute
Irish workplace culture remains very much on a 9-5 basis, yet the commutes seem to grow increasingly worse.
1 in 10 Irish commuters spent an hour or more commuting to work in 2017, a 31 % increase in the 5 years previous. Meanwhile, AA found earlier this year that over half of Irish drivers spent longer commuting from work than they did in 2019.

While urban areas such as Dublin & Cork bear the brunt of Irish commuter woes, rural areas consistently suffer from poor transport connections, leading many people to overcrowd Ireland’s cities and only add to the increasing traffic pressures.

Something clearly must give – could it be your business’ working hours?

While our previous article delved into the possible pitfalls flexible working arrangements can present to your staff & business, flexi-time also provides the opportunity to calm the pressure on your commuting colleagues, leading to better performance & better work-life balance.
 
The Benefits & Necessity to Calm The Rush Hour Commute

1. Better Workplace Health

We’ve all been there. Started our early morning commute calm & collected, only to be met by burgeoning traffic delays, cancelled trains or the odd extreme weather element just to add into the mix. Arriving to work stressed to the hills is not a sign of a healthy, satisfied worker, but the opportunity for this stress to impact on your colleagues’ ability to work & your business’ performance as a result.

Introducing the opportunity to be flexible on working hours will allow colleagues to stagger their commutes, meaning less time in a car, bus or train, and more time in work, happy & ready for the day ahead.
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Meanwhile, for colleagues with personal dependents, flexi-time will give them the opportunity to get back home when they are needed, and not worried about the evening rush-hour commute ahead of them which could mean a missed swimming lesson, or a late departure from childcare.
 

1. Better Talent Retention

If your staff are unhappy with any aspect of their job, they could go walking. ‘Location, location, location’; where a workplace is relative to where you live is a vital part of any job. The shorter the commute, the more ‘me’ time you have left at home. In fact, 40% of Irish commuters claim they would take a pay cut if it meant being nearer to home.

By providing flexible working arrangements, this can ease staff stress around commuting, giving them back more time to be at home rather than travelling to and from work.

By doing so, you will most likely retain more talent and avoid the risk of a skills gap simply due to the location of your offices.
 
3. Better Business Performance
Psychologist Shawn Achor reflects: “Happiness inspires productivity” - the same can be said for your workers. Replacing the stress & pressure of the traditional rush hour commute with more flexible working hours will mean that your staff can enjoy shorter & less stressful commutes.

Coupled with the result of increased home time and a calmer start to the working day, your colleagues will be ready & willing to perform to a much greater capacity without the dreaded evening commute looming over them as the day wears on.

By taking this small step to changing the way your organisation & staff work, your business performance will increase - make flexible working arrangements beneficial & necessary for your business this year.