The difference between gross misconduct and ordinary misconduct. “Gross misconduct” is misconduct that is so serious (“sufficiently grave” is the term legally used) that it may warrant dismissal for a one time and first offence. This is seldom used and must fit all the following criteria if it is not to end up expensively in […]
Recently a conciliation judgement recommended a Human Resources Audit which the HR Department of the company concerned had never heard of. A Human Resources Audit is a systematic method of reviewing existing Human Resource policies, procedures, documentation and systems to determine the “health” of the Human Resource function. This is often done by someone outside […]
Question: What does a company do when a charge of sexual harassment is made against a senior manager? Answer: Let me first explain: there are two recognized forms of sexual harassment. The first is known as “quid pro quo” which is where an employer promises reward or punishment to an employee if the employee does […]
Question: I am told by my General Manager that we have to retrench, at least 15% of our workforce, if we are to stay in operation while she finds some new customers. We make children’s clothes and our main customer in Barbados has shut down. We have 50 employees, mostly women who have families to […]
Question: Can you tell me what gives an employee the right to extended sick leave? We have an employee who has been on paid sick leave for three working weeks, all duly covered by doctors’ certificates, as you said. He has now sent in a note requesting another four weeks off enclosing a medical certificate […]
Question: When is it appropriate to use flexi-time? Answer: When it will make the organisation more efficient for less cost and when it solves problems faced by employees and customers. Banks and some retail stores, as well as some IT firms have used one variant of this system for years, hiring staff to work […]
Question: The recent claims that the Judiciary have been using Psychometric Tests in their selection process for Judges with somewhat disappointing results lately has us confused. Are these tests reliable or not? Can we download tests from the internet? Sometimes we do it for fun. Answer: Well, “cheap thing no good and good thing […]
Question: We are a small family-owned company in central. We sell hardware stuff. We only have ten employees, three have been with the company for thirty years, and four, some of them our best workers, are over sixty-five, but still able to work and want to work. Except one. She has recently decided that she […]
It happens that due to ill health or ill fortune, an employee may be on sick leave for a longer than usual time. First they exhaust the normal paid sick leave provisions which are usually in the range of two working weeks per annum. Then, if it is a serious illness, they apply for an […]
Question: I work for a fairly new company, and due to the recent drop in business, my company has been taking on “Freelancers” or “Contract Workers” when there is a project to handle or when there is (what turns out to be a temporary) upsurge in business, instead of taking on permanent staff that we […]
