Lawyers International Network for Employees and Executives (LINEE)

Workplace Issues

Advice on How to Approach Difficult Performance Reviews At Work

by

What motivates you at work? For some, it is their salary, for others getting on with work colleagues. A recent survey held the biggest single motivator is people’s enjoyment of their role. However, that same survey carried out by the Institute of Leadership and Management, revealed that 25% of employees think their appraisals are performed poorly by management.

Appraisals and performance reviews are an important part of your professional development. Recognition for work done and constructive, supportive feedback on improving performance can be key motivators. If you feel that that you are failing to meet the standards required but you are not being helped to achieve them, you are likely to feel demotivated very quickly. Equally, if you work hard and perform well you will feel frustrated if your efforts are never recognised or rewarded.

When things aren’t going well at work and you are struggling to meet expectations but feel unsupported you need to know what to do to turn things around. You need to know where to turn if you feel that management is failing to properly manage your performance and motivate you in your role. Read more.

What to Do If You Are Worried about Getting a Bad Reference from Your Last Job

by

When you leave a job in difficult circumstances, it can come as a huge relief to be out of a stressful situation. But that relief can be short-lived when you come to applying for a new job and are worried about what will happen when your prospective employer asks for a reference. We set out some guidance that may help you handle the situation.

These days it is very common for an employer to give a basic reference covering job title and dates of employment, whether things end amicably or otherwise. These are so common that a reference like this is unlikely to harm your chances of finding a new job. The bigger the organisation, the more likely that they will have a policy of just giving this sort of reference. So however badly things ended, you might not get the negative reference you are worried about after all.

There’s no obligation on an employer to give a reference, but if they do then the reference should be true, accurate and not misleading. In practice, that’s not tremendously helpful; employers rarely lie, they just say “we think they were useless” or similar. That’s their opinion and it’s difficult to say it’s false. Commonly, the problem is not with the written reference, which may be bland, but if someone telephones your previous employer they may get more information in the call and it is very difficult to get evidence about this. Again, the bigger your former employer, the less likely this is to be a problem; the call is more likely to get directed to HR, who won’t know you personally and who will be less likely to expand on the written reference. Read more.

Employment Solicitor: Why Employers Should Be Taking Stress at Work Seriously

by

Britain may be clawing her way out of an unprecedented economic downturn but the cost of the crash is far more than just financial.

Stress is now the biggest cause of long-term absence from work in the UK according to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development; an entire workforce is sat at home, unproductive.

According to the Health & Safety Executive, in the midst of the economic crash an astonishing 400,000 people a year were absent from work due to stress. In 2010 and 2011, 1,152,000 people were absent due to work-related illnesses – stress is by far the biggest danger at work. Read more.

The Dangers of Social Media in the UK Workplace

by

Most people will, I suspect, have had little sympathy for the Wandsworth Prison officer sacked and others that faced disciplinary action after photos of them wearing T-shirts saying ‘We Have Madeleine McCann’ during a drunken night out were posted on Facebook. It was a story that provokes a visceral response of incomprehension and repulsion, but that obscures a far more subtle point which concerns the rights and wrongs of action against employees where they have done something wrong in their private lives or online explains Employment Solicitor Ivor Adair…….

I sometimes wonder if Don Draper from Mad Men (if you don’t know the show, most of his colleagues know little about him or his private lifestyle), lived and worked in 2014 could ever have been the subject of the remark, “No one’s ever lifted that rock. He could be Batman for all we know.” I doubt it.

TOWIE suggests that there are more than a few UK employees who have degraded themselves in some drunken act whilst on holiday with friends. Should every employer be free to dismiss or discipline when it discovers through social media that an employee has done something wrong outside work? Of course not and the law recognises that – but there is a balance to be struck between having a private life (assuming there is an expectation of privacy) and a justified inference with that. Read more.