New workers’ rights incoming

Hello and welcome to Working It.

In the UK we’ve had endless rain followed by mud, mud, mud all winter — a sticky situation that also neatly sums up how many people currently feel about work. Now the nights are getting longer and the blossom is out, will we perk up?

I find a lot of surveys of worker sentiment confused and confusing, but a concrete statistic from the big KPMG/Recruitment and Employment Federation jobs report shows that February marked the fastest rate of contraction in demand for new staff in the UK since early in 2021. That’s “primarily driven by a fall in permanent staff vacancies”.

People have long been predicting that fewer job opportunities might cool workers’ demands and put pressure on post-pandemic hybrid freedoms — the very things that make a lot of people actually . . . happy at work. Or is that genie out of the bottle 🧞‍♂️? I’m keen to hear your view —[email protected].

Read on for an alert on new employment rights that everyone should be aware of, and in Office Therapy we counsel someone whose co-worker has a personal hygiene problem 👀.

New workers’ rights incoming next month

It can be hard to keep up with all the changes to employment rights but, handily, April 6 marks the introduction of a few that are important to note. I asked Gerard O’Hare, legal director for WorkNest Scotland, an HR services provider with many SME clients, to give an overview of what’s coming.

The most important change is the most complex: a new system for calculating holiday entitlement for workers with irregular hours or who work part of the year 🛬. Gerald said:

“They will accrue holiday entitlement at the end of each pay period at the rate of 12.07 per cent of hours worked — and it can be paid as rolled-up holiday pay if the employer chooses. While the law changed on 1 January 2024, the rules apply to holiday years that start on 1 April 2024 and so employers that operate a calendar holiday year will not be impacted until January 2025.”

This is a change that will disproportionately affect small businesses, as many of them employ workers on irregular hours. Gerald suggests organisations should review their current approach to holidays to ensure it takes account of the new system.

Workers can now ask for flexible working from day one of their employment (previously six months), although Gerald notes that actually granting this right is still the employer’s decision. There’s also a brand new right to carers’ leave: one week unpaid, to look after a dependant.

It’s also good to see extra protections being granted to staff who are returning from maternity, adoption or shared parental leave 👶🏽. From April they will gain priority status for being redeployed if there are redundancies. And Gerald highlights “changes to paternity leave, allowing fathers and partners to take leave and pay in two non-consecutive blocks of one week, rather than only one block of either one or two weeks, and allowing that leave to be taken within the first year after birth (or adoption placement), rather than within the first eight weeks.”

Looking ahead, I asked Gerald what other new rights are likely to be introduced this year. He summed up the main ones: “A new law on the fair distribution of tips seems likely in July, a right to request a more predictable working pattern is expected around September, and a positive duty on employers to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace in October.”

Have we missed anything important? Email: [email protected]

*A reminder that the minimum wage also rises in April, by 9.8 per cent to £11.44, with even bigger rises for young workers and apprentices.

Office Therapy

The problem: We can no longer ignore a colleague who smells bad. His body odour was an issue before the pandemic, then he worked from home for years so we all forgot about it. Now we have to be in the office on certain days.

Our manager is aware but has their own office so they don’t get the full “effect”. Is this a management or HR matter, or one for the team mates, or do we put up with it? We did leave deodorant on his desk in days gone by, make comments etc — all the obvious things.

Isabel’s advice: Sometimes I think BO (as we used to call it) may be one of the hardest of all workplace problems to confront. It’s just so personal. While it won’t help your current dilemma, I’d observe that colleagues with these problems do seem to be less prevalent than when I started work in the 1990s. (Are better deodorants making a difference? More aircon and showers?)

I’d probably stumble over a solution, so here are some thoughts on personal hygiene issues from Amanda Arrowsmith, people and transformation director for the CIPD, the professional body for HR and people development. Her first comment is that no, this is not an HR issue (cue sighs of relief in HR offices everywhere 😰).

Prepare yourself — or a colleague who is friendly with this person — for a tricky conversation. As Amanda says: “One of the colleagues needs to step up and let the individual know. It’s really important that any conversation is had with empathy and ownership from that person — saying they’ve noticed the individual (or their clothes) are smelling and they wanted to raise it with them confidentially.

“It’s essential that a colleague takes ownership as it would only be worse if the co-worker [who has body odour issues] thinks that everyone has been talking about them — or worse still, someone has gone to HR to “report” such a personal matter. In most circumstances, this direct approach — when sensitively managed — will be gratefully received as often, people just aren’t aware there’s an issue.” Good luck.

Got a question, problem or dilemma for Office Therapy? Think you have better advice for our readers? Send it to me: [email protected]. We anonymise everything. Your boss, colleagues or underlings will never know.

This week on the Working It podcast

“Asynchronous” work is the practice of not expecting everyone to be doing their work at the same time. It gives workers freedom over their schedule, fewer (or no) meetings, and embeds the expectation that you won’t get an immediate response from colleagues. Sounds great — but how does it work in practice?

Working It producer Mischa Frankl-Duval guest hosts the podcast this week, and talks all things async with Scott Farquhar, co-founder and co-CEO of Atlassian, which makes workplace software. It has a totally flexible work policy for its own staff, who are in many time zones. Mischa also talks to Jen Rhymer, assistant professor at UCL school of management, about the team trade-offs needed to make async work: you all need to “work in public” and make everything visible.

Five top stories from the world of work

1. Quit-Tok: Why young workers are refusing to leave their jobs quietly The FT’s Josh Gabert-Doyon and Dan Thomas go behind the viral trend for young (predominantly female) workers posting recordings on social media of being fired or “loud quitting”. How is this “outing” forcing changes to HR and management practices?

2. Has the push for female equality gone too far? Pilita Clark looks at why the backlash against gender equality is real, despite the fact that women are far from equal in any country. (And some of the 600 comments give a clear insight into what some men think when cloaked in anonymity 😱.)

3. In defence of showing off I really like this column from Jemima Kelly about the joy and, actually, purity of showing off to someone who appreciates your achievements. It’s not the same as bragging as no one else is belittled.

4. Chat apps have conquered office life: is that a good thing? Elaine Moore’s Silicon Valley-based commentary is always fascinating, and here she explores the enduring effect of Slack and other worktech on every aspect of our working lives: from how much we log on to how we talk to colleagues.

5. The rider who took on his faceless boss: The FT’s AI editor, Madhumita Murgia, previews her forthcoming book with this extract about an Uber Eats courier who fought back against the algorithm with his own coding.

One more thing . . . 

The National Theatre’s production of Nye, a new play by Tim Price, has many virtues: “a mighty, moving and sometimes messy piece of theatre”, said the FT’s always astute theatre critic, Sarah Hemming.

For work-watchers, Michael Sheen as Aneurin “Nye” Bevan offers a brilliant demonstration of how to force through huge organisational change, despite the opposition of vested interests. Bevan was the Welsh politician who presided over the establishment of the NHS in 1948, against the wishes of the country’s doctors and their powerful union, the BMA. The art of his compromise is a masterclass in how to do it.

Tickets to Nye are still available, and there is a live-streamed performance in cinemas on April 23.

A word from the Working It community

The recent newsletter about kind leadership, featuring the work of Hong Kong University business school’s Dr Bonnie Hayden Cheng on this topic, brought in varied responses (one person said they’d lost a job because they were too kind 😧). I wanted to share some thoughts from Dr Su-Lin Chong, reflecting on her time as chief executive of private hospitals in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia:

“Kindness is also about active listening. I had just taken on a new role and in my first week there we had a medication error on the neonatal ward that was caught in time. The senior nurse in charge was doing a double shift due to short staffing and told me she had a young child sick at home — so tiredness coupled with anxiety made her miss a vital step in checking the meds.

“It triggered my decision to stop double shifts on high-risk wards — safer to close beds than risk a medical error. This nurse went on to climb the ladder. Yes, I reprimanded her but also allowed her to tell me what had gone wrong. This is kindness.”