Join Resource Management at the HR Distinction Awards 2014

Resource Management, part of Resource Solutions Group, is pleased to be sponsoring the HR Distinction Awards 2014, one of the major events in the HR Community attended by 500 HR Directors from a range of industry sectors. The Awards celebrate the outstanding contribution that innovatively designed and superbly executed HR strategies make to business performance and the bottom line. Winning an Award will affirm that a company is delivering best practice HR management and that its team is a distinctive leader in the field. 

Resource Management has been working with a variety of clients to help them successfully develop their employer brand for four decades. We strongly believe that an effective employer brand makes a huge difference to an organisation’s ability to recruit, retain and engage its talent. We, therefore, are proud to support the “Distinction in Employer Branding” category of the HR Distinction Awards, which recognises an organisation’s commitment to investing in and deploying employer branding projects that deliver against measurable objectives. 

All winners will be announced at a black tie Awards Gala Dinner and hosted at the HR Directors Summit by Jon Culshaw, the renowned impressionist and comedian, in Birmingham on 4 February 2014. We would like to wish good luck to all the participants! 

Resource Management's Group Company Becomes a Corporate Member of APM

RSG, Resource Management's Group company, has recently become a corporate member of APM (Association for Project Management) - the largest independent professional body of its kind in Europe with over 15,000 individual and 400 corporate members worldwide, promoting project management throughout the world across all industry sectors.

Our decision to join APM is a sign of our commitment to the profession and is an investment into RSG’s Project and Programme Management capability. We anticipate that our membership will allow us to actively follow and influence developments in the Project Management space, discuss good practice, enhance our knowledge and skills by sharing new thinking in the field as well as promoting networking with like-minded individuals at APM events.

Such a consultative, relationship-built approach is indicative of RSG as we seek to collaborate with our clients and candidates through such networks and together strengthen the UK professional marketplace. An example of this is our continuing support of the Business Analysis community which we do through our partnership with the UK chapter of the IIBA (International Institute of Business Analysis). We have been helping IIBA to set up a variety of best practice events for a number of years and RSG is now seen as the ‘go-to’ recruitment experts in this market.

I believe that building a relationship with your market and understanding its challenges and aspirations is vital for providing an excellent service and this is how we differentiate ourselves from other recruitment agencies. The whole of the Project and Programme Manager/PMO team is looking forward to attending various events across the UK in the New Year.

Will Boney

RSG, Head of Delevery - Business Change & Transformation

Confidential Termination Negotiations

Following a consultation exercise in Autumn 2012, the Department for Business Innovation & Skills (BIS) introduced legislation which, from this Summer, will enable employers and employees to engage in confidential settlement negotiations before termination of employment. As a consequence, both parties should be able to negotiate freely without fear that the anything discussed (such as the value of offers made but declined) may subsequently be raised in any subsequent ordinary unfair dismissal claim at an employment tribunal. Previously, this type of legal privilege only extended to “without prejudice” discussions taking place after a dispute had already arisen.

Sounds good, but what's the catch?

Employment tribunals will have a limited discretion to take into account anything said or done in negotiations which, in the tribunal's opinion, was improper and which it would be unjust to exclude. As such, the protection of the new rules could be lost because of the way pre-termination settlement negotiation are conducted. Also, the protection will only extend to ‘ordinary’ unfair dismissal proceedings, so will not cover claims arising from ‘automatically’ unfair dismissals, such as dismissal for reasons connected with pregnancy, for making a protected disclosure or for participation in trade union activities.

So how do I ensure that pre-termination discussions will be protected?

Following another consultation in February, Acas has published its response document, which includes a revised statutory Code of Practice on Settlement Agreements ("the Code"). A non-statutory guidance document will also be published alongside the Code to aid understanding of the new legal provisions. Failure to follow the Code will not, in itself, make an employer liable to tribunal proceedings. However, employment tribunals will take the Code into account and so compliance will be an important factor when considering whether there has been any improper conduct. In particular, the Code sets out some points of good practice for employers to follow, including:

• as victimisation and harassment;
• allowing employees to be accompanied at settlement agreement discussions;
• template settlement agreements and information on what parties need to so to make settlement agreements legally valid (template letters will also be included in the non-statutory guidance);
• allowing ten calendar days as the minimum time period to consider the formal written offer on which independent advice must be obtained; and
• that while an initial offer may be made orally, the final agreement must be in writing.

Katherine Sadler-Smith, Training & Know-How Lawyer, Osborne Clarke
(Guest Blogger)