Ep 6: Guaranteed hours, graduate roles, World Cup

This month's episode of the Personnel Today HR Podcast, brought to you by Deel, looks at one of the most complex aspects of the Employment Rights Act 2025 – guaranteed hours. Are the government's plans to end one-sided flexibility in zero-hours contracts workable?

Employment law expert Darren Newman joins the PT team to unpick the government's consultation on when and how employers will have to make an offer of guaranteed hours to people on zero-hours or similar contracts. Who will be eligible? And how will it apply to agency workers?

We look at whether the rise in remote working since the pandemic is fuelling the demise of entry-level jobs, after economists in the US found a link between how "remotable" a role is and a reduction in early-career recruitment.

And we look at advice for employers on how best to manage the implications of the men's 2026 World Cup, including absence, banter and the feelings of the non-football fan.

Presented by Rob Moss, Jo Faragher and Adam McCulloch
Produced and edited by Rob Moss
Music: Eternity Bro/Shutterstock

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:05

Hello and welcome to the Personnel Today HR podcast brought to you by Deal. Hire, manage, and pay anyone anywhere. I'm Rob Moss, editor of Personnel Today, and I'm once again joined by our contributing editors Joe Farager and Adam McCulloch. Welcome both. And our President Employment Law expert Dan Euman is back to you. Hi, Dan.

SPEAKER_01 0:31

Hi Rob, thanks for having me back.

SPEAKER_03 0:34

We're here to look at some of the most significant HR stories of the past few weeks and examine the implications for HR practitioners and employers. Coming up in this month's episode, we're going to talk again about one of the most contentious and complex aspects of the Employment Black Act. Guaranteed hours. Will they fix one-side flexibility around zero hours contracts as the government intends? What do the measures mean for employees on casual contracts and how will employers respond? We're going to examine the level not of AI but of remote working in the decline of entry-level job vacancies. And with the Men's Football World Cup now fully underway, we'll discuss the impact the competition has on workplaces and the risks it presents to employers. But before any of that, a message from our friends at Deal, sponsors of the Personnel Today HR Podcast. Deals, the all-in-one people platform for modern HR teams. Bring hiring, onboarding, payroll performance, offboarding, and more into one global system so you can focus on people, not paperwork. Serving over 150 countries, Deals simplifies compliance and helps HR teams move even faster. See what hiring without borders looks like. Visit deal.com slash personnel to book your demo. That's D E L dot com slash personnel.

Guaranteed hours

SPEAKER_03 2:13

Okay, let's kick off with you, Darren. A new Make Work Pay consultation has been launched, and it's a it's a big one, is it not? Tell us more.

SPEAKER_01 2:21

Yeah, it's certainly about one of the big issues, one of the sort of um signature policies that was part of the Employment Rights Act 2025, is this idea of tackling exploitative zero hours contracts. Um, so what the government wants to do is to provide uh security to people who are currently on contracts where there is no certainty about when they're going to get to work and how much work it'll be offered, sometimes subject to very short-term changes in the shifts that they're offered, sometimes called in to a shift at a very short notice. The government wants to tackle that. It is an incredibly uh complicated set of provisions in the Employment Rights Act. It takes up the first 17 pages, which is just bizarre, and that's not taking into account another 17 pages in Schedule One, which is applying all of these measures to agency workers. We've also got a need for regulations to flesh out the details because those 17 pages don't actually tell you what you need to know about who's gonna be affected by this and what the new right will actually be. So, what the government is now consulting on is what's gonna be in those regulations that will flesh out the details of this already very detailed provision.

SPEAKER_03 3:38

Okay, and we're gonna unpick what's in this consultation and what the government is asking uh businesses and unions to respond on. When when Labour were campaigning for the last general election in 2024, they were talking about banning zero hours contracts originally, weren't they?

SPEAKER_01 3:58

Yes, I mean that they were always very careful about their phraseology. They were all about banning exploitative zero hours contracts, which led which which has a constructive ambiguity about it, doesn't it? Because you could either see that as saying zero hours contracts are exploitative and therefore we will ban them, or we will ban those zero hours contracts that are exploitative and not ban the non-exploitative ones. And I think the government would say that it's that second option that they always meant. So what they're going to do is remove the exploitation from zero hours contracts and allow people to be offered guaranteed hours when they're in on paper a zero hours employee and they don't have that security, but in fact they're working regular hours. And I think that's the key thing. This is about people who are on a zero hours contract or on a low hours contract, but are in fact working more than they are guaranteed. Um, and in those circumstances, they'll be entitled, if they meet certain conditions, to be an offer of guaranteed hours, which they will then have the option of either accepting or rejecting. So nothing's being banned. It all comes down to what an employee ultimately wants.

SPEAKER_03 5:05

And this offer would be made would change their contract, supposedly, or an addendum of some kind to it.

SPEAKER_01 5:14

Yeah, it would it would be an offer of a new contract because essentially you'd be taking someone who doesn't have guaranteed hours or has a limited number of guaranteed hours, and you will be offering them a new contract, which requires them to work a certain number of hours and requires the employer to offer a certain number of hours. So that means essentially it's going to be an employment contract. It's very difficult to see how you could meet the guaranteed hours offer and not create an employment relationship, even in circumstances where at the moment someone might be casual and not count as an employee. They might count as a worker.

SPEAKER_03 5:50

So who is eligible for the opportunity to perhaps get guaranteed hours? Well, we don't know.

SPEAKER_01 5:57

Um, and that's one of the small details that the government didn't deal with when it was passing the act. So it will apply to people who are either on a zero hours arrangement or have a number of guaranteed hours that falls below a threshold. One of the things that the government is consulting on is what that threshold should be, and they've expressed a preference in this consultation for a threshold between eight hours and 20 hours. Um, but they've they've asked an open-ended question. If anyone's got any suggestions about what the threshold should be, then they can basically tick the appropriate box.

SPEAKER_03 6:31

So how will the employer um measure the amount of hours they're doing? And is there a time frame over that? I think they do they call them reference periods?

SPEAKER_01 6:42

Oh, yes. Oh, and and this is, I mean, this is going to be priceless. So there is what's called an initial reference period. So when you engage your zero hours worker or your worker who's guaranteed fewer than whatever the threshold number of hours is, there will be initial um reference period that the government wants to be 12 weeks. I've expressed a clear preference for that to be 12 weeks. So over 12 weeks, the employer will have to measure the work that it gives to this worker. And at the end of the 12-week period, it will look at whether it has offered hours to that worker over and above a threshold that the regulations will also have to set, and with a level of regularity that the regulations will also have to set, and will then have to make an offer of a guaranteed um week or a guaranteed month or a guaranteed number of hours in a method that the the regulations will have to set. Um the brilliant thing is that while the initial reference period is going to be 12 weeks, the government doesn't seem committed to the idea that subsequent reference periods will be 12 weeks. So you'll take someone on for 12 weeks, and then the next reference period, the government is suggesting maybe it could be 26 weeks, or maybe it could be 52 weeks, and that would give an employer more flexibility. The other thing they're suggesting is that the subsequent reference period doesn't actually begin as soon as the first reference period ends. There might be a gap between the first reference period and the second reference period, and possibly between the second reference period and the third reference period. It's driving me mad, Rob. Can you tell?

SPEAKER_03 8:18

So presumably this gap is there because at the end of the initial 12 weeks, if we if it ends up being 12 weeks, at the end of that, the employer has to make an the offer to the employee or or the worker, and then the employee or the worker then has to decide whether to to accept it.

SPEAKER_01 8:38

Has to consider whether to take it on, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 8:40

So it seems fairly natural that there would be a gap before the next reference period starts.

SPEAKER_01 8:47

There there are there are two periods set out in the or sort of provided for in the act um that would be covered in regulations but aren't being consulted on at the moment. The government doesn't ask any questions about this. There's how long does the employer have to make its offer at the end of the reference period? We're going to call that the offer period. And then there's how long does the worker have to consider whether to accept the offer? Let's call that the consideration period. And so we don't know how long those periods are going to be, a few weeks for each, I would have thought. In the illustrated example, the government gives as a gap between reference periods, it doesn't ask how long the gap should be, but it gives an illustration of how the gap might work. And the gap they use in their illustration is 26 weeks. So what that conjures up is the idea of working for 12 weeks on that first reference period, then having a pause for 26 weeks, and then starting a second reference period, which might be 26 or 52 weeks. So that would mean that if as an employer you can get through the first 12 weeks without having to make a guaranteed hours offer because you don't offer um a large amount of work to this particular worker, it might be a year or more before you have to think about making a guaranteed hours offer again.

SPEAKER_03 10:04

Right. So employers might be happy about that.

SPEAKER_01 10:07

It's deliberately trying to make things more flexible for employers. If I were the trade union side looking at this consultation document, I would be livid. I would be absolutely livid at what's being proposed.

SPEAKER_00 10:19

But I can see what the employers are really up in arms about it, aren't they? The British retail consortium's quite worried about it, aren't they?

SPEAKER_01 10:26

Well, I mean they're worried about the whole idea because, of course, one of the things that isn't really dealt with in the act itself, and which this consultation document doesn't really have any suggestions for is how you deal with seasonal work. So if you've got someone on a relatively low number of guaranteed hours, um, but not so that you'd have them on a fixed-term contract, they're employed throughout the year, but their their work fluctuates, it's very difficult to see how you cope with big seasonal fluctuations, whether that's in the summer over Christmas or whatever, whatever your particular business provides for, and how you then reflect that in an offer that can guarantee some sort of regular pattern. It's it's very difficult to envisage what the final right is actually going to look like.

SPEAKER_03 11:13

So one way that employers could perhaps circumnavigate this is to offer a fixed-term contract that's shorter than a reference period. Would that work?

SPEAKER_01 11:24

You could. If the dismissal would have been a fair dismissal.

SPEAKER_03 11:55

You mentioned regularity. What do we mean by this? And what and what is the government consulting on?

SPEAKER_01 12:01

Well, the government has to set out what the regularity thresholds are. They give two options. One is that there will have to be a certain number of weeks worked in the reference period. So if there was a reference period of 12 weeks, you would have to work, for example, in at least eight weeks out of the 12. And that would be scaled up for subsequent longer reference periods. Or it might be that there would be a combination of that with a certain number of additional hours. Okay. So you would have to work, say, 96 hours over the guaranteed number, in addition to working eight hours out of the 12 weeks, is the example that they give. But uh, I mean, any sort of combination of those would in theory be possible.

SPEAKER_03 12:45

And in terms of how an employer would calculate the amount of hours that have been done in the reference period, would that be just a straightforward average?

SPEAKER_01 12:58

Well, there's a big question mark over this actually. If the government is consulting on whether the number of hours that are offered should be either the median of the hours that were worked over the reference period or the mean of the hours over the reference period. So do we take just a straightforward average or do we take the middle value of all the different hours that are worked? Um, and you know that that has different consequences. What's not clear is how that's going to be distributed over, say, a week or a month, because the offer's going to have to say when I can offer you these hours. And the government isn't consulting on how it makes sure that the offer that is made reflects the working pattern of the worker. So if the workers work nearly all of their hours on a Thursday, what's to stop the employer making guaranteed hours offer with all the work being available on Saturday and the Sunday? Um, so that needs to be dealt with in the regulations, but isn't the subject of the consultation.

SPEAKER_03 13:52

Yeah, so presumably an employer could even offer a night shift. Would that would that be?

SPEAKER_01 13:56

Unless there's something in the regulations to stop that, yes, that's what an employer could do.

SPEAKER_03 14:00

Adam.

SPEAKER_02 14:01

Yeah, I was I was just I was just wondering if Darren had any sense of um what businesses were doing to prepare for this, or whether they think that the level of detail is such and the proposals so convoluted that that they they may as well wait and see what the final outcome is.

SPEAKER_01 14:20

I think if they've got any sense, they won't be reacting at all at the moment. I don't think there's any point in changing what you're doing in order to prepare for this. I mean, maybe have a look at whether you're regularly offering more than you're guaranteeing and try to guarantee as many hours as you reasonably think you can. But I think I'd give that advice to employers anyway. I'm deeply suspicious about whether this is ever going to come in. I mean, I I think it's just too much of a crash. It's it's it's just too complicated. Yes. Um, and you're creating the single most complicated right in the whole of employment law, and it's also one of the lowest value rights, right? So, how is an employee who hasn't been given a guaranteed hours offer that correctly reflects what they should have got, how are they supposed to enforce that right? They've got to go to an employment tribunal, take the tribunal through the 17 pages of legislation and the goodness knows how many pages of regulations. And what do they get at the end of that? They get compensation that reflects their financial loss. But what have they financially lost? Because what they've lost is the guaranteed hours that would reflect the hours they're already working. Well, if they're already working those hours, they're not losing anything by not being guaranteed them. So you're getting a very small sum of money if you're getting anything, and in order to do that, you've got to navigate the most complicated employment law I've ever seen. I'm in absolute despair over this, right? I think it's the worst thing I've ever read. I would be astonished if it ever comes in. I I just think the government is going to have to keep kicking this can down the road until someone thinks of something sensible to do. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:55

And it doesn't exactly encourage employment, does it?

SPEAKER_01 15:59

I mean I I think one of the difficulties with the Employment Rights Act is the government has made all the noises that will annoy business and make business think that tremendous burdens are being placed on them, but without actually getting around to giving people the rights that would offset that. Um, so they're getting all the downside of business being uh annoyed at the burdens that they envisage in the future, but without actually giving anyone the benefit of anything because it's nearly two years since the employment rights bill was introduced, and we are nowhere near this provision being enforced yet. I mean, even on the government's timetable, it's scheduled for some time in 2027. I don't think that's gonna be early 2027. You know, I think the government would be doing really well if it managed to get this in place by the end of 2027. I'd have thought it would slip beyond that. When do we think the next general election is going to be? Um, I just I just can't see it happening. I just think it's it's too much of a mess. If anyone seriously looks at it, that they're gonna find something else to be doing with their time rather than implementing this, I think, because it's just it's just that bad. You know, when you have one of those tasks that's just an absolute nightmare to do, and you keep sitting down thinking, well, I really must get on with this, and you sit down and start getting on with it, and you suddenly find five of the things that are more interesting. Um, I think it's like that. I just think any minister is gonna look at this and go, Do we have to sort this out this week? You know, and I just I just don't believe in it. I've lost all faith in this, I just don't think it's gonna happen.

SPEAKER_02 17:27

What about the unions? You you mentioned that the unions weren't happy about some of the provisions, but if they were to drop the whole thing completely, do you think the unions would really kick off?

SPEAKER_01 17:35

Oh, it would be it would be a massive deal for them to actually drop it because it's an absolute centerpiece that they were proposing this. So I don't think they'll drop it. I think they'll always be just about to implement it. Um I just don't think they're ever going to get around to implementing it.

SPEAKER_03 17:51

Yeah. You mentioned seasonal work, Darren. What what what's the detail of the consultation around that?

SPEAKER_01 17:57

Oh, they're looking for suggestions. If anyone's got any suggestions for how to deal with seasonal work, the government would like to hear from you.

SPEAKER_03 18:03

Right, lit literally.

SPEAKER_01 18:04

So seriously, it's half a page. It's half a page of the of the consultation. One of the one of the biggest, most complex issues, and the government does not really have any suggestions, but they're keen to hear from us. And what about agents? Sorry, I'm starting to sound bitter about it all now. I've been following this for nearly two years.

SPEAKER_03 18:21

Well, you you've previously described this consultation as a work in progress, haven't you?

SPEAKER_01 18:27

I do wonder whether this is one of those situations where it was just it just had to be published at a particular time, and the poor civil servant drafting it wasn't ready yet. Um, and I think sometimes I've had experience of thinking my deadline is further ahead than it was, and I've got to rush off a piece of work and get it through early, and some of the details are not quite there. And I think that's very much the case with this consultation. I think some of the details that you would expect to see in the consultation are not in the consultation. Um, and I don't understand why that would be.

SPEAKER_03 18:59

One more question, I think we can move on to another topic agency workers. So I know that some of the associations that represent staffing agencies, they're up in arms about this and whether or not it should apply to agency workers. Is there anything you can comment around what's in the consultation regarding agency workers?

SPEAKER_01 19:18

No, the consultation by and large asks the same questions about agency workers as it does about the directly employed staff. In fact, it duplicates itself and and you know it's quite repetitive. The thing that I struggle with in understanding how this will work is that the offer of guaranteed hours to an agency worker has to come essentially from the end user. So the contract that you will end up with will be a contract between the agency worker and the end user rather than the agency. Because I don't see how an agency can make an offer of guaranteed hours when it's relying on the hours being offered by a client. You know, an agency doesn't know that it's going to be able to guarantee hours. So you're essentially going to take an agency worker and create a direct contractual relationship with the end user that essentially is going to be an employment relationship. But I don't think the government has really grappled with exactly what the implications for agencies would be if this applies.

SPEAKER_03 20:16

Thank you, Darren. Do stick around and uh contribute to our next two topics. We will, I'm sure, revisit um guaranteed hours in the autumn at some point. We will see what happens. The closing date's the 25th of August, I think, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 20:31

Absolutely. So we'll probably expect a response to it maybe by Christmas, maybe a little bit after, but we'll see how we get.

SPEAKER_03 20:37

The person of the day, HR Podcast, is brought to you by Deal. Hire, manage, and pay anyone, anywhere.

Remote work's impact on entry-level roles

SPEAKER_03 20:45

Joe, coming to you, we've had Alan Milburn talk about NEECs. We've seen lots of uh statistics over the last year or so, really, around the decline in entry-level jobs. And one of the most common reasons for this has been AI. But I gather you've um you've found another potential reason.

SPEAKER_00 21:08

Yes. So we're looking at a story we we um did a few weeks ago, looking at the fact that it may not actually be AI that's fueling graduate and early careers unemployment, but remote work. So there's research from economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and they think it can explain 65% of the rise in unemployment for US college grads. Um, and so it is US focused research, but I do think it, you know, it, you know, we have a rise in remote work here since the pandemic as well, so I think it's relevant. And basically, the thinking is that if you're not there in person, if the manager's not there in person to train someone, they're not going to pick up the job as well, they're not gonna be able to ask those kind of serendipitous questions that you might do. The workplace and they're not going to feel as mentored, all that sort of thing. It's really hard to do that stuff over a team's call, as we all know. Um, but perhaps more worryingly, they're thinking that it may be putting off companies recruiting less experienced workers because they're thinking, well, I can trust somebody who's used to working from home who will just get the job done. And um I don't need to come into the office and train them. So I'm going to go for this second job or third jobber rather than nurturing somebody coming up for their first job.

SPEAKER_03 22:32

So I presume, I mean, this isn't necessarily that it's the organization, the employer that has a different approach, but it might come down to the hiring manager. Obviously, the there are sometimes big recruitment programs to get in a load of grads, but sometimes it's just one manager who needs another resource, and that manager is likely to think, well, I go to the office two days a week at the moment, and if I hire a new grad, then I'm gonna, you know, that's that's gonna be a lot of work for me. I might need to go to the office much more in order to train them up. The the research compared unemployment rates among people working in remotable jobs and non-remotable jobs. It's lovely how the language evolves, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 23:20

Yeah, so they were looking at, for example, you've got something like software engineering, which can probably be done remotely, versus mechanical engineering, and um there was quite a marked difference between being able to train up entry-level people in in the in-person jobs where you had to be like operating a machine or or coding, for example. And um, the other thing that came up as well is obviously there's a huge age bias thing here as well, because if you're going to put trust in someone and you don't want to be in training someone, that person is more experienced and therefore likely to be older. So you end up with a kind of a leaning towards more older workers in the workplace, which given that we've got an aging population is is a bit short-sighted.

SPEAKER_03 24:10

And I gathered that these economists that did the research they looked into a Fortune 500 company that is anonymised.

SPEAKER_00 24:17

But what did they find there? It's quite common sense, really. They found that when people are working next to colleagues, they tend to receive more feedback on what they're doing, they get more mentorship. But even if that even if it's one day away or a short distance of doing working remotely, then that that feedback and mentorship um tapers off quite dramatically. And it was really, really younger workers that were that were feeling this. It's interesting, isn't it? Because we've got, if you're a big company like Marx and Spencer's, you can invest in traineeships, getting people in store and getting them to know different parts of the business. But your average hiring manager in a medium-sized company might not be able to do that, or they may have to dramatically change how they how they work to come in and mentor that person. I mean, is it a moral obligation or is it what do we do?

SPEAKER_02 25:08

But I mean, if surely um, I mean, so many companies have uh back to the office plans now and have have implemented them. I'm surprised that this is a problem to that extent that it could be really affecting you know entry-level roles and etc.

SPEAKER_00 25:23

Or is that is that I think we only hear about headlines of the the back to the office movement. We hear about the the angry CEOs, we hear about the the Elon Musks who are demanding that people are in five days a week, the people who are really wanting control control. I think a lot of places are still anecdotally of still two to three days a week, and that and graduates are potentially sitting in their mum's bedroom sending off emails without any mentorship from a manager, yeah, without without even that collegiate atmosphere that that you might get when you were working five days a week, and then but then we've got to think of other groups as well. There's people who prefer the flexibility of remote working because they've got caring responsibilities, whatever. So it's like who who do you prioritize in that conundrum?

SPEAKER_01 26:11

It's really interesting, it just strikes me how much the pandemic essentially, as well as technology, has just completely broken the concept of a working day and what we expect, what we expect from from people. The idea that we're now talking about people having to come in three days a week as some sort of back to the office campaign, you know, seven or eight years ago would have just been completely inconceivable. It's it's uh it's just I don't think I've ever seen, and I've been around watching the regulation of employment for the past 30 odd years, I've never seen anything change so dramatically as in the past few years our attitude to actually turning up to work has changed.

SPEAKER_00 26:51

And I suppose the only the legal side of things on that might be well, if if we're changing our location habits for younger workers, then are we changing contracts as well? Are we are we having to have discussions about like, well, you know, you're a line manager, you have to come in four days a week now, and yeah, you know, that I don't think that's going to create industrial relations issues down the line, but but anything could. We've seen we've seen all sorts happen, haven't we?

SPEAKER_01 27:18

Well, I I think yeah, the contract thing's interesting because you know it's one thing when the pandemic happens and people get sent home, but their contracts are very clearly you work five days a week and you work where we tell you to work. I mean, it's not phrased exactly like that, but that's essentially what it says. It's contractually relatively easy to get back to the office in those circumstances because you just say, well, the pandemic's over, back you come. Um, it's not from a management point of view easy to do, but contractually it's easy to do. As we get into new generations who are coming into the work workplace for the first time where they've never had this well, of course, you'll turn up for work uh quarter to nine every day, every day of the week. Um, what do their contracts actually say? You know, because now people are talking when they're creating the contract about well, what's the working from home arrangement? What is it that you actually expect? And so then you are more much more likely to have something in the contract that says, Well, you only come in two days a week, you only come in three days a week, or we have a policy of you know, 40% of your time should be spent in the office. Um, and in those circumstances it becomes very difficult to change something if you if you think there's a as a problem, yeah, to re-engineer it because you do need contractual changes.

SPEAKER_02 28:32

That's right. But I was I was also reminded, listening to Joe, of um I think it was a survey during during COVID that actually found that managers were the most reluctant group to return to the office. And I think when we talk about this, we we talk about we talk about it as if it's the workforce who don't want to return and it's the managers who do, but it's that it's not, and maybe that's why the back to office movement hasn't really taken office because everybody's gonna be able to do that.

SPEAKER_00 29:03

Yeah, but that middle management layer is probably like you say, that's definitely the most reluctant. It's the people from the top who who who that visibility that are that are really.

SPEAKER_02 29:15

But they're not but they're not there that much anyway.

SPEAKER_00 29:18

No, they're in private jets.

SPEAKER_02 29:20

Exactly, they're in private chests, precisely.

SPEAKER_01 29:25

Well, I don't think we need to worry too much about the private jet class, but I think there is a there is a thing about relatively senior people who are mentors and and people that you could turn to in the office. Yes, and I I I think Adam's absolutely right. I think very often they're the ones who don't necessarily want to go into the office. You you get to a certain age, you don't want to commute five days a week. You've got a you've got a nicer house, right? You've got a study that you can sit in. If you're a 21-year-old graduate in a shared in a shared house, you might not have a nice office space to actually sit in. You want to go into an office in a nice nice part of London where you can go out afterwards and you can meet your friends and all of that. But once you get to a certain age, you don't want to meet your friends anymore, you just want to sit sit at home and have a cup of tea.

SPEAKER_00 30:07

So yeah, one one um maybe I mean a lot of the proposed solutions to this are probably problematic, like forcing everybody to come back in. But um there are funny little ways you can do this. So in Germany, they have um the Bosch, the big, the massive manufacturing company, has um an in-house agency of retired people that come in and kind of share knowledge and um mentor the younger workers. Um, so so there's kind of there's there's a dual benefit there because the young workers learn something and and the retired people kind of get a soft landing. They're not immediately sitting at home twiddling their thumbs, they're getting in and and and being useful. So um maybe, yeah, maybe things like that could work.

SPEAKER_01 30:56

I quite like the idea of being someone who's just brought in to potter around and tell young people what it was like in my day. I mean, it's essentially what I do now. It's lovely, isn't it? I I like if that's good work if you can get it, I think. I'll I'll be on the lookout for that.

SPEAKER_03 31:11

No, exactly.

The World Cup and the workplace

SPEAKER_03 31:12

Um, Adam, you are now officially for the next six weeks our personnel today's football correspondent. You've been watching the World Cup, haven't you?

SPEAKER_02 31:21

Well, I had been watching some of the World Cup. I was actually away when it started. Yeah, in the build-up to this World Cup, because of the sheer size of this World Cup, the length of it and the timings of the matches overnight, um, and the huge you know expansion of the number of matches, plus the fact Scotland are there, um you know, which is fairly untypical. So you have England and Scotland taking part. There's been a lot of concern in the HR community, one has sensed. Um, a little bit of anxiety, perhaps over-exaggerated, I'm not sure. But it's been, you know, personnel today, we've received lots of warnings, guides about handling absences, um, suggestions about laying down rules over the need to book holiday in advance. And and you know, I mean, I wrote a quite a sort of mocking piece about all this, um, uh entitled Has HR Gone In Studs Up. But in many workplaces, there is a serious, there is a serious point. It's difficult to quantify the effects of the World Cup on the workplace. But I mean, some of the some of the figures um that have been thrown around are quite startling. $17 billion in lost productivity, that's worldwide. Um, with 37% of workers planning to adjust their schedule because of the tournament. I I think a lot of this stuff is exaggerated in order to grab attention. In the UK, a company called UKG Workforce Management predicted a 681 million pound productivity impact. But I'm not sure if they're including lager producers in those figures, I'm not sure. With and only 22% of workers will uh treat um the day after an England win um as a normal working day. Um, and you know, in terms of absenteeism, up to 1.5 million workers predicted to call in sick to recover from late night matches. One in five employees admit they they they're going to work while tired or exhausted, and um a large number of the workforce is is streaming matches while actually working. Um so that's actually you know sort of affecting their ability to work. So I'm not sure now it's underway. I'm not sure whether any of this stuff has actually come to fruition, whether some of these warnings, these apocalyptic warnings are HR's response has been to suggest that um that HR should adopt more flexibility. Yes, um at the at the CIPD, for example, David DeSouza, who's the director of profession there, he said that uh the uniquely high level of interest means employers need to think about workforce flexibility and how accommodating they might choose to be for employees who want to watch matches. And and they suggest uh flexibility around working hours, earlier finishes, later starts to accommodate evening or early morning games can often be appreciated. But there's always a buzz, isn't that flexibility should be proportionate and aligned with business needs. Employers should be clear about their expectations, encourage employees to book time off where games could affect work performance. But there's also another aspect to this, which was um we were contacted with yesterday, which came from a workplace psychologist called Stephanie Davis, and she warned of the dangers of workplace banter. And she said that the difficulty with workplace banter today is that we have five generations working together, all with different views on what is and isn't acceptable humour. Now, she's actually worked on cases, um, admittedly involving Celtic and Rangers supporters, where there's been complaints to HR over workplace bullying and name-calling in the office over foot over football matches. I'm not sure if that you can get that in the in the World Cup to the same extent because I think club affiliations are probably more passionate than international.

SPEAKER_03 35:31

Well, maybe that'll happen. Maybe that will happen if um if England end up playing Scotland.

SPEAKER_02 35:36

Yeah, yeah, that's right. It probably it could do, couldn't it? But but uh she points out that um yeah, humour is the social glue that brings people together. So the World Cup can be a great source of humour and joking. But if um if someone asks you to stop, you need to stop immediately and understand why you're joking around cause defense. If you carry on, it's no longer banter, it's bullying. There's a there's a lot of different strands to this. Um, and I think it's it's interesting. I think the World Cup, in a funny sort of way, can reveal quite a lot about how we work and how we relate to each other. I think it probably has a lot a lot of benefits around sort of awareness of each other's sensitivity, but there's so many people not interested in football, and that gets left out of the conversation.

SPEAKER_01 36:25

Yeah, I feel oppressed. I feel oppressed, Adam, because I I I couldn't care less.

SPEAKER_02 36:29

Exactly, and and you represent a very large number of people, perhaps even the majority.

SPEAKER_01 36:36

What I have to try and do is fit my complete lack of interest in football into the Granger criteria for a philosophical belief. Um, it's not merely an opinion, it's not merely an opinion, it's a genuine worldview I have. Um, it's not susceptible to evidence, it's something I hold to passionately, it's an important part of my life that I don't care about football. And if anyone tries to make me care about football, I feel oppressed by that.

SPEAKER_03 36:59

Now I feel guilty for for asking you to stick around down for the football talk.

SPEAKER_01 37:04

If only if only I was an employee, Rob, I might have a case. This is the sort of thing that we get every time there's any sort of tournament, right?

SPEAKER_02 37:13

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01 37:13

It's it's the equivalent of solicitors writing to everyone in October about the dangers of a Christmas party, and it's not it's not nothing, right? That uh there is a peak in harassment cases in January and February because Christmas parties are a thing. There is a problem with major events leading to some absence the next morning. I I just think the HR profession can cope without much extra specialist advice on how to deal with a bunch of people with hangovers. I think I think if you're really struggling about what to do about that and you need a consultant to tell you, then then you know have a have a have a think about your career choice.

SPEAKER_00 37:49

It's probably always the same person who's getting into trouble, whether after the day after the football, the day after the Christmas party, the day after the cricket, it's always the same person.

SPEAKER_02 37:58

But about one angle I'd like to explore a little bit with about this the World Cup worry about productivity. It struck me that no one's done any studies about freebies enjoyed by senior management at events like Royal Ascot, Queen's Tennis, Wimbledon tennis, um, which there are loads of corporate freebies flying about.

SPEAKER_03 38:18

I've heard of it's not from me, I haven't been invited to anything. No, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 38:22

I never get corporate stuff. Well, I mean you know, no disrespect, but the personnel today awards are the absolute best corporate thing I've ever been offered in my career. No one's ever offered me a better night out than that.

SPEAKER_03 38:34

Um thank you for that, Advert.

SPEAKER_01 38:37

It's sort of nice, but if that sounds like a backhanded compliment, it is slightly. I never get tickets to ascort. No one's ever sent me to ascort or you know, a big sporting event, even if I did care about it.

SPEAKER_02 38:51

Yeah, but this is it. So, what is the effect on productivity of you know leaders being away at Royal Escort or Queens when big decisions need to be made and they're drinking.

SPEAKER_01 39:02

Oh, well, that's where the big decisions are made, Adam. That's where the decisions are made.

SPEAKER_03 39:06

Right. I think we're that we've come to a natural close there. That is all we have time for. Remember to subscribe to this podcast wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're interested in taking part and want to share something, do drop me a line by emailing rob.moss at personneltoday.com. We're taking a break over the seminar. So today's episode marks the end of season one. We'll be back with you in September. But for now, thanks for listening, and thanks to Darren Newman and Adam and Joe for taking part.

SPEAKER_01 39:40

Thank you, Rob.

SPEAKER_03 39:41

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 39:42

Good to see you, everyone. Cheers.

SPEAKER_03 39:44

The person of the day HR Podcast is brought to you by Deal. Hire, manage, and pay anyone anywhere. Thanks for listening. Goodbye, everyone.