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The British public adores their dogs, so it’s no surprise that we are seeing more people bringing dogs in the office as the years go on. Taking your dog or dogs in the office seems like a no-brainer for dog lovers. They lower anxiety levels, boost morale and encourage you to take a walk outside.
Whilst bringing your dog or dogs in the office can bring benefits to some, there are also some downsides.
Blue Tree HR Solutions – who offer expert HR support for small businesses – is here to break down the pros and cons of a pet-friendly office and encourage you to ‘paws for thought’ before deciding to allow your dog or dogs in the office.
We’ll start with the bad news first –
Whilst it hurts to highlight this, some people simply aren’t dog lovers. What is a gorgeous, fluffy baby with paws for some could be seen as a stinky, hairy, and slobbery mutt to others. Unfortunately, this could mean that a dog in the office could negatively impact the non-dog lovers’ day, ending in them being irritated and less productive.
Some individuals may also have a condition called cynophobia. This is a real and intense fear of dogs, commonly bought on by a bad experience with dogs in childhood. This could result in this individual becoming increasingly stressed out and afraid if in an enclosed space with a dog they do not know or trust. It is in your best interest to protect your staff and not create situations where they feel fear.
Others have allergies! Pet allergies affect 1 in 10 people in the UK. If you’re in a big office, the chances are, somebody is likely allergic. In this case, your worker’s health is at risk and pets should be kept at home.
Dogs in the office can sometimes cause inequality and resentment between staff members.
Dogs are hard work and require attention when brought into the office. This means staff who opt to bring their pets into the office will ultimately spend time feeding, watering, walking, and giving attention to their fur babies. There is a very real possibility that these individuals end up doing less work than those without extra canine responsibility, creating inequality and jealousy in the workplace.
Welcoming a dog into the office should only be done if it’s in the pet’s best interests.
If your dog is stressed, scared, or worried when in the office, they do not feel comfortable being there and most likely only feels relaxed in its own home. Bringing this dog into the office is not fair on the pooch. A constantly stressed dog can cause health issues to itself down the line, and negatively affect your worker’s day.
While it may seem that the cons of welcoming dogs into the office are very prominent, it’s important to assess or address all of these issues before even considering opening your doors to some four-legged friends. If the correct policies and procedures are addressed and put into place, it’s possible to create a working environment where dogs in the office bring more positives than negatives.
By addressing all of the above issues professionally and correctly, you can begin to create a pet-friendly office suitable for dogs.
There are various ways to begin identifying issues, assessing these, and overcoming them. Blue Tree HR Solutions – offering the best HR services Essex has seen – recommends starting by asking all workers their thoughts and concerns on allowing dogs into the office. This is the best way to present the idea to staff, and start addressing any problems should there be any.
Blue Tree HR Solutions offers quality expert HR solutions to help our clients overcome any problems they will be facing. One of the best approaches to workplace issues is to take a proactive approach to fix a problem before it develops. This is a great way to avoid the problem of staff resentment and inequality in the office due to pets.
Setting up policies from the start where dog owners agree to spend only their free time – breaks and lunches – attending to their dog’s needs will remove the feeling of these individuals doing less work. This makes sure these workers are still maintaining the same level of work as non-dog owners, avoiding the problem of resentment arising altogether. Setting these standards early is the best course of action when making sure your office is pet-friendly.
If you’re worried about setting up policies and procedures, you feel you don’t know enough about the matter or you simply don’t have the time, Blue Tree HR Solutions is here to help. We specialise in HR support for small businesses and believe we can provide some of the best HR services Essex offers.
Some policies to start considering to create a pet-friendly environment for all may look something like this –
The health and well-being of your staff come before anything, especially dogs. When you choose Blue Tree HR Solutions for your HR needs, we can help create and implement these policies. This will give you peace of mind that you are covered and protected, giving you the tools to safely convert your office into a dog-friendly space with confidence and start reaping the rewards that office dogs bring!
Studies have shown that dogs reduce stress, calm anxiety, and decrease depression.
Those whose mood is uplifted by dogs feel better at work and in everyday life, which is highly important. A better mental state and increased mood also increased work productivity and quality. The positive effect dogs have on low-mood employees also affects those surrounding them. A good atmosphere from everybody in the office has a ripple effect on other staff members, overall boosting productivity and quality of work from everybody!
Dogs are experts at getting people to mingle and talk. If you’ve got an office where teamwork is not a strong element, dogs can fix this.
The perfect hound can help build relationships between staff members and increase social interaction in the office and a workplace that gets along is a more productive one! Teamwork is highly important in most professions, and there’s nothing like a dog to bring people together.
Unsurprisingly, dogs make going to work every day a little more bearable.
Studies have shown that pet-friendly workplaces have decreased absences and increased employee retention compared to those without an office dog. The Brits just can’t help but fall for those puppy eyes!
Whether you need help with policies and procedures, need advice on the best course of action to take, or just want a friendly chat, Blue Tree HR Solutions is here to help with the best HR services Essex has to offer.
Give Blue Tree a call now to see how our expert HR Solutions and HR support for small businesses can help you.
As a freelance HR consultant, I am often asked to give expert HR advice regarding sickness absence and how best to manage this, especially at this time of year. Sickness absence is a serious issue for many companies, in fact, data from the Office of National Statistics show that nearly 150 million days were lost to either sickness or injury in the UK throughout 2021, equating to 4.6 days per person! And whilst covid helped to make these the highest figures ever recorded, it is still businesses that must bear the brunt of the lost hours. The bottom line is, both short and long-term staff absences hit businesses hard.
There are obvious direct costs to sickness absence, such as lost man hours, statutory or occupational sick pay, and paying another person unexpected overtime to cover. But what of the more indirect effects, such as lowered morale among the workforce due to increased workloads? And when workers are having to cover fellow employees’ work there is an increased chance of mistakes being made, as others are becoming overworked. There is also the chance of lower productivity in the office, as constantly absent employees can lead to delayed projects and deadlines being missed, leading to lower motivation from the rest of the team.
The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development’s (CIPD) Health and Wellbeing report published in 2020 showed that both stress and mental ill-health are two of the main causes of long-term absence. The most common reasons for short-term absence are minor illnesses such as colds, flu, stomach bugs, headaches and migraines. The real issues begin when there is suspicion that an employee may not actually be sick at all, but is using sickness as an excuse for being absent from work. This is where managing sickness absence can get tricky and where it pays to have expert HR advice from an experienced team like Blue Tree HR!
So now that we know the main reasons for absence, and how this can affect the business, how can we effectively manage sickness absence? Here is my expert HR advice on how to effectively manage sickness absence in your business.
The first piece of expert HR advice I would suggest to any business wanting to effectively manage sickness absence is to invest in HR software that will track all employee absences, whether it be due to sickness, annual holiday or any other reason. I would strongly advise using Breathe HR, which allows you to manage holiday requests, manage absences, expense tracking, document storing, automated reporting and so much more. If your business has less than 10 employees it is just £13 a month, or just £26 a month for up to 20 employees! This really is an amazing piece of HR software, and you can get started right away by following this link https://hr.breathehr.com/signup?hrp=BTHR01
It is essential that any business has clear policies and procedures in place documenting the exact steps and repercussions for continued absence. By following our expert HR advice we would suggest these should clearly be made aware to all employees, and be available for review by an employee at any time. By having such policies and procedures in place you ensure that there can be no legal fallout should, in the worst-case scenario, you have to let someone go over continued absence.
Once you have the correct HR software in place you can review all absences and identify any trends, such as whether there is a particular individual who is always off sick on Mondays, or is there someone who always seems to be missing when there is an important deadline due? Perhaps an employee is regularly off with no real explanation or a series of different excuses? If you start to see a pattern then our expert HR advice would be that it is time to have a formal discussion with the employee. Likewise, it may be that you have evidence that the employee was not sick when they were supposed to be but was actually somewhere else having fun. Should this occur then the employee needs to be led through your official disciplinary procedures.
Holding return-to-work interviews are an excellent way to identify potential issues early on whilst ensuring that employees are aware that their sickness absence is being monitored and will be discussed with them.
Unfortunately, at this time of year, there is always an increase in sickness absence. But by following our expert HR advice outlined above you will be better placed to decide whether the absence is genuine or may need investigating. We would love to discuss this in more detail, so for further expert HR advice, please contact our team.
As the best HR support Essex has to offer, which includes both ad hoc HR and retained HR packages, how can Blue Tree HR Solutions help save your business money? The past 3 years have not been easy for anybody, especially small business owners, making quality HR support for small businesses more important than ever. With the pandemic, the impact of Brexit and now the cost of living crisis, many small businesses are reportedly worried about the future of their company and its stability. While keeping on top of every aspect of running a business is already tricky at the best of times, the impact of recent global issues has made a bad situation worse. More than 1 in 10 small businesses in the UK are expected to close shop in 2023 due to revenue-related issues.
Thankfully, there are expert HR services that can offer the constant support and advice you need. From avoiding costly situations to making your business more efficient, there are plenty of ways quality HR support for small businesses can help them cut down on unnecessary spending.
Here’s how Blue Tree HR Solutions can benefit your small business with the best HR support Essex can offer.
As the best provider of HR support Essex can offer, we are aware that the biggest worry of all for small businesses across the UK right now is money. If there’s a way to help save on your costs, then it can only be a positive option.
In the HR world, prevention is better than the cure. By embracing HR as a benefit instead of a cost, you’ll start to see how your business can save money by running more efficiently. One way to do this is by putting in place formal HR systems and processes.
The average employee uses £570 worth of sick pay every year. If your business has just 5 employees, that’s over £2,500 on sick pay every year. By having formal absence reporting and management systems, employees are less likely to call in an absence for minor reasons. When absences are recorded and kept on file, absence levels decrease. By reducing absence levels, you can minimise the impact absence has on your business earnings.
Blue Tree HR Solutions not only offer the best HR support for small businesses like yours, but we also offer expert HR software that will set up these systems and processes for you so that you can start saving money where it doesn’t need to be lost. Just another reason Blue Tree HR Solutions deliver the best HR support Essex can offer.
As a business owner and employer, it is your responsibility to demonstrate that a formal disciplinary and grievance procedure has been clearly communicated to all employees. If this is not the case, any employee you take action against can be deemed automatically unfair and you may be ordered to pay a reward, which can result in your business getting hurt.
Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for small businesses to not have these policies and procedures in place to protect themselves. With our expert HR support Essex businesses can get professional help to set these policies set up and communicate them across your company with all the correct legislation.
Employee legislation is constantly changing and evolving in order to better protect you, your business and your employees. While this is in your favour, it can be hard to keep up to date with every new or updated detail, especially if you are a small business. Your employees should also have access to an HR representative so that they can check their own rights and laws if they feel they have a problem at work. If you do not have an HR team, they will come to you to find this information out.
If you have employees it is your responsibility to know employment law and HR practices. If you do not know employment law, or you make a minor mistake, it could lead to you losing a claim made against you.
Unfortunately, many business owners simply don’t have the time to keep up to date with this crucial information when trying to run a business. This is where the best HR support Essex offers, Blue Tree HR Solutions, can help.
By gaining this kind of expert HR support for small businesses as early as possible, you can relax knowing the tricky legal part of running your business is taken care of. Blue Tree HR Solutions will not only always be here to offer credible and accurate guidance and advice on any employment law matters, but it is our duty to ensure all internal processes, policies and future paperwork follow the most recent legislation correctly. By opting for the best HR support Essex can offer your small businesse, it could save you thousands of pounds in tribunal rewards and lost productivity.
Looking for HR support for small businesses can save your business money when it matters most. Blue Tree HR Solutions offer the best HR support Essex has and are equipped with deep industry knowledge, and the latest technology to give you the best results and is highly recommended by many. We have every tool to help you avoid high costs and save you money. If you are looking for the best HR support Essex can offer, get in touch with our friendly team. We are experts at offering quality HR support for small businesses like yours through our ad hoc HR and retained HR packages.