Party Planning

if you’re charged with organising an office party, ensure that all staff are invited, to avoid potential discrimination claims: this means choosing a venue and entertainments that will suit people of non-Christian faiths or no faith and that they should have the choice to opt out if they feel uncomfortable for any reason – and if partners of employees are invited, make sure you include same-sex partners.

Pacing and getting home

If you’re organising or attending a work’s Christmas party, remember that alcohol can cause more than merriment: and that you can lose a job through your behaviour if you drink too much during a work event. Employers need to be aware that if they contribute to an employee’s drunkenness by running an open tab at the bar and or providing booze at the dinner table, and then need to discipline that employee for their behaviour they could actually be considered to have contributed to the problem, and might find themselves facing an Industrial Tribunal. And remember that employers who let staff drive when they are under the influence may be legally liable too – a company has a duty of care to staff which includes ensuring people have sensible plans for getting home when alcohol is involved.

Dressing up

If you have a workplace party, make sure that the Christmas tree and decorations don’t present risks to health and safety – and when people dress up for Christmas events in the workplace it can be a risky issue too: Converse trainers instead of safety shoes, sparkly dresses instead of T-shirts and trousers and distressed denim instead of polo-shirts and chinos can all lead to accidents as clothing dips, dangles and drapes into machinery around the workplace.

Traditions

Watch out for habits and customs. It’s not just mistletoe that can lead to misunderstandings: when employees have been used to getting a Christmas bonus or days off, and the company has to change the set up for some reason, it can lead to discontent: promises made verbally can be considered binding in law, so ensure managers aren’t mistakenly telling staff that ‘traditional’ benefits will continue unless that’s actually the case.

When schools or nurseries shut through bad weather, parents need to have a Plan B, especially if they have to combine working with childcare.  It’s a good idea to make sure you have the resources to entertain stuck at home children whilst continuing to be work, as best you can, from home. But finding the balance between amusing the kids and being an effective worker can be difficult. Here are 3 ideas to make the process easier.

Swiss Family Whoever

When the weather is bad outside, getting the kids to play survival inside is fun and even educational. Set up a tent in the living room (it can just be blankets stretched over chairs for the littlest ones, whilst older kids can use their ingenuity to build a camp from bedding and furniture) and turn off the lights. Hand out torches, and get them to conduct ‘raids’ into various rooms to get the equipment needed (food, books, phones, games consoles etc) whilst remaining silent. Back at camp they can work out how to ration the food etc for themselves. Smart kids will even set up their own missions and treasure hunts.

Winter Wonderland

Simple science can be good fun in bad weather if you take a few precautions. Ensure your children are well wrapped up in layers of outdoor clothing and that you have warm, dry garments to hand indoors. Then let them try a few experiments: examining snowflakes under a powerful magnifying glass, for example, or raindrop races down a window. Perhaps give them some equipment to try and make a wind gauge or if it’s very muddy outside, send them out to discover and identify bird and animal tracks. Even in a city you can get the kids to look at the growth of moss and lichens between paving slabs and on city trees and try to work out how the plant got there and what it survives on. Back home, write up a science journal and drink hot chocolate to reward the budding scientist.

Artistic Endeavour

Teens can be encouraged to make snowmen or snow angels if the weather is really bad, or even to paint pictures in the snow using food colouring. If it’s really atrocious outside, get them to customise their own old clothing, or yours, using fabric paint, scissors and ingenuity – then hold a fashion show!

While a lot of employers are now allowing staff to dress up for Halloween as part of charitable activity, some have managed to turn the fun and fundraising into a workplace team booster too. As an example, one large company in Brighton limits the amount people can spend to create their costumes (and receipts must be produced) and every department competes to win a £500 donation to the charity of the department’s choice. A call centre in the north of England has a different approach: teams are each given a theme and have to come up with the imaginative and entirely recycled costumes on that theme.

If you would like to create Halloween costumes at home, whether for family or work fun, here are a few ideas:

Tourist
Find an old Hawaiian shirt or loud T-shirt and team it with some baggy long shorts, old sandals and thick socks. Wear silly sunglasses and carry a camera, map and translation book. Get people to take your photo in front of random things like pillar boxes and speak slowly and loudly.

Timekeeper
This costume literally costs pennies. Buy white foundation and a black eyeliner. Pull back your hair, paint your face white and draw Roman numerals like a clock face – then draw the hands originating from your nose (you may need help with the numerals, it’s difficult to draw them backwards in a mirror). Wear a black T-shirt and leggings.

Sweet Treat
Many offices have large clear rubbish bags. Grab one and cut arm and leg holes, keeping them on the small side. Then either buy balloons or a bag of small bright plastic balls (pound shops usually have these) and blow up the balloons until they are barely inflated. Write an M on each one to look like M&Ms. If you prefer a British sweet, small boxes can be painted white with a middle layer of black, black and pink or black and orange to look like Liquorice Allsorts. Put the sweets in the bag and sellotape it to your shoulders. Be careful when sitting down!

Siamese Twins
If you have a friend or colleague you can really bear to spend Halloween with, this costume always earns giggles. Buy two large or extra-large men’s T-shirts and cut the right side and sleeve away from one and the left sleeve from the other and then sow together so you have one shirt with two armholes and two necks. Wriggle in and prepare for fun!

The Accrington Stanley team have demonstrated their support for the East Lancashire Hospice by wearing specially printed T-shirts for their team warm up each Saturday.

The T-shirts are designed to help raise awareness about the services the hospice offers as well as raising money for it. Supporters are encouraged to contribute to the running costs of the Hospice during a collection held before the match. The season-long partnership will have events most weeks to raise funds for the hospice.

Over in Coventry, shoppers were surprised by office workers dressed as animals. The ‘beasts’ who work in Homeless Internationals office usually wear office attire but for one day they put on animal costumes and travelled the city centre to raise funds for the charity’s slum dweller programmes in Africa and Asia. Two of the staff even chose to wear their costumes on their cycle to work, rather than donning their usual casual clothing.

November is a great time to organise a clothing based charity event at work, as it coincides with Halloween. Many employers are now offering the chance to wear fancy dress for the day as a way of building team spirit in the office or factory along with giving something back to the local community or a nominated charity.

In one Louisiana hospital, from 2012, smoky clothing will be outlawed.  Employees who turn up in clothes smelling of smoke will be sent home. Exactly this policy is already in place at the hospital, in the wings that care for women and children, as these are the groups where third-hand smoke and other smoking contaminants have been shown to have the most far-reaching negative effects. But from July next year, the whole hospital (Christus St Frances Cabrini) will come under the same rule.

Because employees are not allowed to smoke at all during their shifts, the hospital will offer smoking cessation services based at the hospital on a 24 hour basis. Under the program employees were sent letters explaining that they had nearly one year to make adjustments to their lifestyle and comply with the new hospital policy.

There are concerns about the fairness of hospital administrators choosing to institute these kinds of sanctions on staff who may be working double and triple shifts regularly but there are also clear indications that employers are starting to consider how the behaviour of employees may reflect on an organisation.

Alternatives that might be considered to this kind of approach are offering staff a clothing bank where they can swap an item of work-branded clothing for a fresh one between shifts, thus allowing them to go and have a smoke if they wish, or, as is more commonly done in Japan, organising a shift bath, where a local gym or bathhouse offers all the members of the same shift the chance to take a shower and sauna or steam room before changing clothes and either going home or going back on-shift again. This can be a good solution for companies wishing to invest in employee health, as it gives staff an incentive to swim or visit the gym when they finish work. For smaller firms, organising a five-a-side football side or other team activity and providing sports clothing for those taking part can create a healthier way to encourage people to stop smoking.

A recent survey by Peninsula, the legal specialists, discovered that over 60% of British workers have had a workplace affair.

For companies this is a dangerous issue: every employer wants staff who enjoy their jobs, like their colleagues and have fun at work, but when this good workplace vibe tips over into clandestine romance, it can lead to work-based rows, colleagues breaking up and others taking sides, people leaving the workplace to avoid a former lover and even to legal action.

Part of the issue is familiarity which causes us to get to know our colleagues better than anybody else – once we reach a point where the office, factory or shared workspace becomes our world, we start to expect to meet our emotional needs within it, and colleagues easily become sources of admiration, attraction and love. The team-building part of work can also lead to romances – when we’re encouraged to bond with our workmates, it’s easy for them to start looking like life-mates too.

It’s not all bad, around half the people currently working in offices have met a partner at work, according to the Industrial Society, but on the other side, around 20% of people regret work romances enough to leave their jobs, which can be damaging ot the company.

Some organisations try to control workplace romance by setting rules about appropriate clothing and ‘fraternisation’.  This rarely works and can lead to a different form of legal problem, when people object to being restricted in their behaviour. It’s better to try and widen the pool by bringing your workforce into contact with a similar workforce nearby – shared cafeteria facilities, organising sports such as 5-a-side football, running groups at lunchtime or gardening clubs to improve an industrial estate or suite of offices can all bring your staff into contact with people in a similar situation which sparks romance.

Just about every workplace research project and survey has proved that motivated employees not only get their motivation from being in a happy workplace, they motivate others to become more highly motivated, productive and energetic – and that businesses that are classed as ‘pleasant environments’ by employees are also those that have the lowest levels of absenteeism and sick leave.

So it’s in any employer’s interest to provide a creative and fun working environment to improve efficiency and performance. Here are a few tips to help turn your business into a great place to work:

•    Flexibility – allowing variety in working hours and working systems means that early birds and night owls can each schedule work time to suit their own natural energy systems. Occasional work from home also gives staff a break and a boost.
•    Exercise – getting a trainer or fitness guru into your workplace to give your team a workout can be a brilliant resource. Endorphins rush through their individual systems and collectively the idea of working out as a team builds confidence in each other. Get them to bring in their favourite T-shirt and shorts or joggers so they can get into a quick zumba routine or play a game of rounders in the car park at lunchtime.
•    Make fun a priority – have little games and contests – guess the number of bulldog clips in a jar or racing to answer the phone first are silly little bits of fun that can get everybody in the mood for excellence. Surprise a team with smoothies for breakfast or hire in a burger van for a day and let the whole organisation take a break for a burger and a cup of builder’s tea together.
•    Take ten-minute time-outs – buy a dvd and put ten minute yoga exercises on the company intranet: get each team, division or group to take little breaks. Work out ten minute walks that start from the office or factory and post them up around the building with jackets and umbrellas for people to borrow so they can get fresh air even if the weather turns nasty: get staff to take photos of fun things they see on these walks and post them on the intranet or on noticeboards.
•    Look for the fun side. If there’s a deadline looming, tell jokes about deadlines and reprieves. Get the funniest people in the organisation to share their hilarious experiences of dealing with difficult customers during coffee breaks. Put up a cartoon board near the coffee machine or water cooler and get people to caricature each other during times of great stress. When the tough times are over, make a wall of fame detailing those who really made a difference during the crisis, with thank-you notes from inside the organisation and out.

The two biggest issues that cause problems for employees and employers over the summer: heat and holidays!

The problem with heat is often an intermittent one, especially in the UK, which can make it difficult for employers to manage soaring temperatures for just a few days, such as in the recent heatwave. However when temperatures become uncomfortably high, and there is no set maximum, employers should consider improving conditions by:

•    Insulating heated areas such as pipes
•    Providing portable air-cooling systems
•    Ensuring window shading is effective
•    Offering fans and other air circulation
•    Relaxing clothing rules to ensure people can dress sensibly to take account of heat while still remaining safe
•    Moving work-stations and benches further from heat sources or rotating work roles so nobody spends all day subject to radiant heat.
In addition, those working outside should be offered hats and water breaks to ensure they don’t develop heat- or sun-stroke.
Holidays are often a bone of contention too. In 2010 ACAS took more than 100,000 calls about holidays and the working time arrangements. The most common questions include:

Can flexible working requests be made just to cover just the school holidays?

The answer is no, any request for flexible working, if agreed, creates a new work pattern with the employee who has made the request and that is a permanent change to their employment contract. However, many employers make other, informal, arrangements temporary or interim changes to work patterns to ensure that they can cover the businesses needs in the summer holidays and to allow them to treat all employees fairly.

Can employee legally take time off if their childminding arrangements break down during the summer?

Yes, employees have a legal right to ‘reasonable time off for dependants’- this means giving them time off to resolve family emergencies – usually this is unpaid and generally lasts around one or two days (or whatever you consider reasonable in the individual’s circumstances) giving time to put alternative arrangements in place. It is acceptable for the employer to suggest that the employee uses annual or special leave for this purpose and an employer can consider, but is not bound, to offer special leave with pay.

Many people entering the workplace for the first time after school or college, or returning to work after a break, are finding it difficult to master buying and wearing a work wardrobe. It’s particularly tough when you have a limited budget, if, say you’re in your first job and juggling student debt and the need to pay for food, rent and other unavoidable bills.

Larger firms are giving advice and even seminars to new staff to help them through the first few difficult months but if you don’t work for a company that’s going to train you to buy the right gear, here are some tips to help.

•    Try to develop a sense of your new workplace before making an investment in workwear.  You can do this by wandering past the building at lunchtime and seeing what people are wearing as they come out, or by Googling a big firm on the internet to see what the people in news stories and on the company website pages are wearing. That stops you buying garments that are too casual, like vests for the office, or too formal, like shirts for the building site, and that are therefore never worn.
•    Get a friend to come and help you sort your current clothing out before you buy, often a fresh pair of eyes can show you how to use items you’ve barely or never worn, or shows you could sell barely worn and unwanted garments to help fund your new purchases.
•    When buying casual, check the washing labels as it can be annoying to have to use special washing machine programmes or even hand-wash work clothing.
•    Set and budget and buy online. Online retailers often provide discounts for multiple purchases so, for example, you can buy six polo-shirts and get one free, or get free delivery which allows you to buy another shirt! They don’t do that on the high street.

The Institute of Fundraising’s chair, Mark Astarita, has made a forthright challenge to the value of Payroll Giving. He told the media some weeks ago that he thought, ‘the only people who really love [payroll giving] are those who make loads of money from managing the transactions.’ It’s a controversial viewpoint and one that many major charities would be wary of supporting, but for smaller firms it’s true that the cost of payroll giving can make it a burden.

The alternatives to payroll giving have different kinds of costs: the time taken to organise fundraising events like ‘dress down Fridays’ or corporate events, the cost of persuading people to pay up for sponsored activities and the difficulties of balancing the demands of the workplace with the desire to give back to society.

There can be simple ways to reduce the costs of workplace giving. One idea is to have team based activities with the winning team (either the one that raises most money or the one that donates the most time) being given a special printed T-shirt to wear for the day and rewarded with certificates and employee recognition in newsletters and on websites. This can seem a little too much like being given gold stars at school, particularly for undemonstrative British firms, so an alternative is to offer a volunteer bank where people can ‘bank’ the hours they spend working for a particular charity of their choice. When they reach an agreed level they receive back a dividend of Time Off In Lieu to give to the charity – in other words, their employer pays for them to have a day off, as long as they spend that day doing voluntary work.