Bill Betts discusses the evolving landscape of employee rights and HR practices with Megan Snow, a HR consultant working with many in the pet grooming industry. They delve into significant proposed changes by the new government that could impact employee rights, including the potential for employees to claim unfair dismissal from their first day of employment. Megan emphasizes the importance of being proactive and well-informed, noting that knowledge is power for employers navigating these changes. The conversation also highlights the necessity of having proper policies, procedures, and documentation in place to mitigate risks and ensure compliance. With practical advice on managing employee relationships and the benefits of utilizing HR systems like Breathe HR, this episode provides valuable insights for business owners looking to thrive in a challenging environment.

Takeaways:

• Understanding employee rights is crucial for managing staff effectively and avoiding legal issues.
• Employers need to be aware of new proposed legislation regarding employee rights and responsibilities.
• Implementing proper HR systems can significantly reduce administrative stress and improve organization.
• It's essential to have a comprehensive employee handbook that outlines all rights and policies.
• Transitioning employees to self-employment should be carefully considered to avoid potential legal repercussions.
• The importance of a safe working environment cannot be overstated for employee wellbeing.

As always, I'd like to thank the podcast sponsor Lopay, the low-cost payment platform that helps you keep more of the money you earn! You can find out more and sign up for Lopay here: https://merchant.lopay.app/ref/PETPASSION2500, where listeners of this podcast get £2500 of fee-FREE transactions!

And of course, if you feel like you could benefit from Bill's business programs for the Pet Grooming industry, visit our website: https://petpassiontoprofit.com/

Welcome to the Pet Grooming Business Podcast with me, Bill Betts, where we give practical business advice to help you grow your pet grooming business.

This podcast is sponsored by Low Pay, the low rate payment app that gives you more.

So without further ado, let's get going.

Welcome, everyone.

Welcome to our next edition of our podcast.

I am here again with the lovely Megan Snow this time.

You've changed your name since we last spoke, haven't you?

I have, yes.

So previously Saint, but now Snow.

They might be like, who's that?

Who's making the snow?

Maybe you just want to give us a quick introduction as to who you are.

I always call this like blind date, who you are.

Where did you come from?

Okay, yeah, so I'm Megan Snow, as Bill just said.

So I'm a HR consultant.

I'm based in Nottingham but sort of work with any business in the uk, so just helping them with anything to do with their employees, self employed workers that they have with them.

So that includes things like contracts, handbooks, policies, but also advising on, you know, disciplinary matters, workforce headcount.

If there's too many employees, they want to get rid of some employees if they need to recruit new employees.

Just anything to do with, you know, staffing needs.

Really?

Yeah, I mean, we met you around 2020 and we brought you into our business to help us with our staff.

I mean, we haven't got, we haven't got lots of staff.

We've only got, well, I say lots.

Eight, eight or nine.

I have to count on my fingers.

But Emma, Emma, my wife who runs the business with me is just like, it's just so nice to have someone on our side and someone that can help us and advise us.

It stops that procrastination when we get questions from staff around hr, have issues with HR ourselves.

It's.

Yeah, definitely.

And it's a good point.

You don't have that many employees, but you know, some of my clients on retainer have literally just one employee and it's still beneficial to have that support whether you've got one employee or 500 employees.

Because, you know, the same kind of questions crop up, the same issues crop up and sometimes a Google search just isn't quite going to cut it.

And you need that sort of specialist advice.

Yeah, it's not always Google search is.

It's Facebook groups.

Always great for people searching, advice and looking.

Yeah, yeah.

You have to be careful about who you take advice from, I think.

So, you know, you work with us as a business, but you also come on these podcasts Quite regularly and you hang out in the Facebook group.

I think the dog grooming industry is keeping you quite busy.

Yeah, definitely.

I get a lot of clients who dog grooming, which is great because it means that I actually understand the industry really well now as well.

Probably couldn't groom a dog, but I know kind of how it works.

I can, I can dry a dog, but never dry enough.

Dry enough.

And I'm chaos if I.

If they sit me on reception because dog bookings go all over the place.

But once we.

Our last episode was.

I loved the last podcast that we did because it was all about.

It kind of took you on a journey from thinking about employment to doing the advert, you know, doing the interview, the do's and don'ts, you know, the regulations through to issuing the contact disciplinary and all and how to actually dismiss or remove someone from your business.

So we did quite a comprehensive timeline of employers.

Right.

Or employers responsibilities.

I think that's about right, isn't it, employers?

Yeah.

We wanted to bring you back on to have a chat about.

Things have changed.

We've got a new government since then and we wanted to bring you back in to have a chat about what it might look in the.

In the future and a few things that are cropping up in the Facebook groups to sort of just put some meat on the bones, give some advice or some help around it.

So obviously the.

The new government's coming and there's legislation in the office.

I don't think it's gone through yet, has it?

But it's.

It's all proposed.

I just.

It's all proposed.

But they did initially say that within 100 days it would go through parliament and the 100 days takes us to like mid October, so.

So not that far away.

So yeah, it will be interesting to see what happens in October and if we do get more information on the changes because they kind of.

Throughout the election, throughout, loads of things they wanted to change that are quite significant changes, more significant than we've seen in the last 10 years or so.

But they're not given much information.

I suppose when they made these promises, these changes, they hadn't looked at the bank balance and the statements and maybe they're a bit preoccupied now, but it has created quite a lot of fear within businesses, isn't it, around what might be coming around the corner?

Yeah, absolutely.

And I wouldn't want any business owner to feel fear around the changes, but they are likely to have quite a significant impact on how businesses operate, particularly with their employees and also how they carry out their processes and making sure that they do get everything right.

Because essentially, if we're going to summarize what the changes that the Labour government have proposed, they're going to do, they're going to increase employee rights, which obviously then means that employers need to be on the ball with everything, because the employees are going to have more opportunity to make a claim, they're going to have more rights that the employers need to be aware of so that they're not unintentionally breaching anything that they should be actually doing day to day.

And just generally that awareness is quite important.

Yeah.

And I think I always say to my clients, you know, knowledge is power.

And as an employer myself, there are times when you're dealing with employees issues or contracts or employees rights where it does make you feel a little bit, like, hemmed in, a little bit trapped and a bit suffocated by everything.

And you can sometimes feel like, what can I do?

How can I do this?

And this is where we lean to you to say, you know, what's the solution?

What rights do we have as an, as a business and stuff like that?

And everything gets ironed out, everything, you know, that we've not lost and it's not win or lose, but we've not had a negative outcome from any of, like, the issues that we've had with our employees.

Yeah.

And I think it's just knowing how to do it properly, because feeling trapped is something that I get a lot from clients and they do feel like, oh, my gosh, it's all in favor of the employee.

I'm in this situation and there's no way out of it.

I'm going to end up in tribunal, I'm going to end up losing my business.

Business.

And, you know, most of the time there will be a solution to the problem.

It's just finding out what that solution is and then how you.

How you actually get there.

Yeah.

I think one of the big stories in the press was all about the employee, the employees.

Right.

To ask for flexible working.

Like from day one.

I mean, I read that and I was like, oh, really?

You know, but then when you start, and these are like headlines that are there to cause, like, a bit of hysteria, a bit of, like, make you sit up and look and listen them and make a little bit panic.

But actually when you look at the devil, the devil's in the detail, isn't it?

Yeah.

And that's a really interesting example because actually it's already a day one, right.

For people to Request flexible work.

And that change came in, in April.

So what the Labour government were actually proposing to do is to make it a default right from day one.

So at the moment, and since April and previously, to be fair, if an employee requests flexible working, there's certain criteria that you would have to use to reject that flexible working request.

But what the labor government are proposing is that actually the flexible working request should be approved as a default unless it's not reasonably feasible, which is the exact word and not particularly helpful.

But yeah.

So it's sort of like you'd have to really be able to justify not approving the change.

But with regards to the media, again, be careful of, for everybody out there, be careful of what you read and how you interpret it.

Because I saw things saying Labour government are proposing a four day week as default, but that's not actually what Labour government are proposing.

They were just linking that back to this flexible working from default so people could request it.

But it's not like they're going to just implement.

Everybody works four days.

Yeah.

And for an example, if, if a member of staff came to us in our business and said, I would like to work, you know, three days a week and condense my hours and so that they get paid the same but do less work, we would then obviously come to you and say, right, we've had this request, they've had it, put it in writing, which is what they're supposed to do.

Yeah.

And then actually you would actually take us through a balanced approach as to like, you know, how does it work on our side as the business owners and then what do we need to consider for the staff member and you know, look at the not look at the compromise.

But if we really can't do it, you then help us to, to put that case forward, wouldn't you?

Yeah, exactly.

And sometimes you do have to compromise with things like this.

So actually we can't accept that request or have thought about this.

Would this be suitable and give them an alternative that would actually work for the business.

And you know, sometimes it will just be no, we can't do that.

But as long as you have a good business reason as to why not and you could demonstrate why then again you're not really trapped, there will be a way to sort of decline the request.

And I think sometimes when people get these things, come across their email or their desk or they get spoken to by employee, they instantly think they have to reply there and then.

But I suppose one of the best bits is just to slow down and pause and give you some time to think.

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Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, even as a HR consultant, sometimes I'll be speaking to a client and it'll be maybe a bit more of a complex situation.

And actually the best thing is not for me to reply there and then is to go away, think about it, think about all the legislation and then come up with an approach.

So, absolutely, business owners that don't specialize in those areas definitely shouldn't be sort of coming up with an answer there and then, even if they're not looking to go and get support, which I would advise in first instance, but even if not to just go away and think about it and yeah, you never have to give an answer there and then.

Yeah.

And then you help to take some of the emotion out of it as well.

Then you.

Yeah, I, I, obviously I've worked with your business for a while, I know your employees, I've spoken to your employees, but I'm still external to your business.

So, you know, I can sort of be that impartial, no emotion, just based on a decision on the fact.

Whereas it's hard to do that when it's your own business.

You are a HR buffer.

So what other things are being discussed at the moment?

I know you've got your own group.

Hr, was it?

HR for small businesses was what's being discussed in these groups that are causing concerns for people.

So, I mean, another, just another change that the Labour government are proposing, and I think we made a post about this in the group the other day, is that employees would have the right to claim unfair dismissal from day one of employment.

So anyone that's spoken to me about an issue has probably heard me say, how much service have they got?

Have they been with you two years?

And that's obviously because at the moment you need two years of service to take a claim for unfair dismissal to a tribunal, which means, actually, there's quite a lot of leeway in those first two years with regards to dismissing an employee.

But, yeah, the Labour government are proposing that an employee would be able to take that claim from the first day of employment.

So what that really means for small business, well, all businesses really, is that, again, you need to be on the ball with everything because, you know, it might be easier for somebody to think, oh, they're in a probationary period, I can just tell them to leave.

They felt their probation, but actually that's not the case.

And whereas ordinarily it might be quite low risk because they can't take a claim for unfair dismissal when the changes come in, if they do come in, they would be able to claim unfair dismissal from that first day that they're employed.

So again, you just really need to make sure all your policies and procedures are nailed down and in line with the law.

And one of the common sort of things that people fall foul on when it comes to unfair dismissal claims.

So in the first two years, you obviously can't claim unfair dismissal, but what can happen is you can.

There are some automatically unfair reasons for dismissal.

So that's for example, if you tried to enforce a statutory right and you'd been dismissed on the back of it, so I don't know if you'd been paid below minimum wage and then you said, well that's below minimum wage, I need to be paid more.

And then you got dismissed.

That could be an automatically unfair reason to be dismissed.

If you'd made a complaint about a health and safety issue, for example, and then you were dismissed on the back of it, that would be automatically unfair.

So people can fall foul a little bit there because, you know, we say you can't claim unfair dismissal, but there are a few reasons that you can say look for.

There's also the discrimination element that you don't need any qualifying service for.

So, you know, if you've dismissed somebody maybe for, I don't know, having time off for a dependent or with a child, then that could potentially be deemed discriminatory.

Even though there's no right to unfair dismissal.

Yeah.

It's a complex, complex matter, isn't it?

Yeah.

I mean, even at the moment, if somebody has less than two years service, they don't necessarily have that right to claim unfair dismissal as such.

But we should still be doing things as correctly as possible.

We shouldn't rarely be using that as an excuse because there are other things that they can claim.

Yeah.

So we, like I said with our last episode, we kind of went through employers obligations and from beginning to end.

So it's worth checking that out if you're thinking about employing someone.

I thought maybe we could just touch on a few things that have come throughout through my group, just to talk about one you just said about pay and stuff and there was a question the other day where an employee had done.

Was going for a job.

Sorry, someone was going for a job and they were told as part, it would be part of their contract if they left within, like, five years, they'd have to pay back the training.

And.

And we've.

We've done something not similar to that, but with your advice, we've paid for training of an employee, but then we put it in their contract that if they left within a certain amount of term, they would owe us so much money.

But most people, when it comes to looking at that.

Yeah, so that's a good point.

It has to be reasonable.

And I know the post that you talked about in the group, I think I'd replied on that and said, you know, they are quite common training agreements.

They are common, they're perfectly legal.

Not for apprenticeships, because that was what the post was initially about, wasn't it?

So you absolutely can't do it for an apprenticeship.

But if it's, you know, just a course that they want to do, it's not an apprenticeship, then you can put in a training agreement or a clause in the contract that covers it.

But as you said, it has to be reasonable because what you would put in a training agreement is that you reserve the right to deduct from their wages or that they'd have to pay you back.

So, you know, firstly, to be reasonable, it would have to be just the cost of the course, so you couldn't add things on, like, I don't know, the time it took to organize and arrange them, getting involved onto the course or something.

It really would just be the cost of the course.

And it's subjective as to how long you can have that agreement in place.

But what you should really think about is the return on investment that the company's got.

So, you know, if they've been on this course and then, you know, within the first six months of being on the course, they've actually improved in their role.

They're adding a lot more to the business then you've kind of got a bit of return on investment from that anyway.

So it wouldn't really be reasonable at that point to claim the whole amount back, because you have seen a benefit of that five years.

That is a long time.

A very long time.

So, again, you'd think about the cost of the course initially as well, how much it actually sort of cost your business in comparison to how much your business overturns and things like that.

Yeah.

So those sort of things really would be important to consider.

To give a practical example, one we had, and I can't remember whether I think we put a groomer through their fast track qualification, which I believe at the time was maybe £500, we put a so it's a quarter training agreement in place, didn't we?

Yeah.

If that person left within the first month of that qualification, they would owe us 90% of the money back.

And then it was a sliding scale, wasn't it?

Down to probably a year, I think.

Yeah.

And those sliding scales work well if you think about, you know, as I just mentioned about the return on investment.

So you know, the further away is from them doing the course or the further into the course they are, you are actually starting to see the rewards of that anyway.

You know, after a year you would like to think that they had been demonstrate and those additional skills that they'd learned and that you had actually received, you know, your, your return on investment for that.

Yeah, yeah.

So still on the contract, I think another part of that question was there was like a non complete, non compete clause in the contract as well.

You often get asked people to put non compete clauses like if you leave, you can't set up within like 20 minutes or 10 miles.

How do they get.

So I do actually include those in my contracts but I do also tend to make people aware that they are kind of a deterrent and they're not particularly enforceable.

They can be if they're written properly and they're reasonable.

But if you put in there and sometimes, you know, clients will say, oh, can we put in there?

They can't set up within a 20 mile radius.

Well, actually that's not reasonable.

Is somebody setting up a business 19 miles away really going to impact your business that much?

Or we might have somebody want to put one in there for five years or three years.

And again, is that really reasonable?

Because when, if it were to sort of be taken to court, they would look at whether it was reasonable and also if it was preventing that person from actually sort of making a livelihood and if it was, then it's not likely to be deemed reasonable unless the business can demonstrate why it's so important that they can't set up within that radius.

Yeah.

So when we talk about taking into court, that wouldn't be an employment tribunal.

That would be like a breach of contracts kind of.

Yeah, yeah.

That's going to be a lot of money in it.

This is the thing as well.

Like it's probably not going to be worth your time, your stress and the money that it costs you to fight it, particularly if you know it is 10 miles away and it probably isn't going to really impact your business.

Obviously you don't want someone setting up next door.

That's not ideal.

And that probably would, would be reasonable if it was a small radius and just for a limited amount of time as well.

I think the new Labour government actually had prop at some point to reduce the amount of time that you're legally allowed to put on a non compete because there's no set time at the moment and I think they were saying to reduce it to three months.

Right.

But again that's not actually happened.

It was just a proposal.

Yeah.

I mean if they took all your clients details and obviously there's breach of data protection and stuff like that in there, isn't there?

But that's a, that's a different matter really, isn't it?

And it's a different clause as well.

So there is a place for non compete clauses.

But actually what I think is more important is a non solicitation clause and they are a lot more enforceable because what that says is, you know, you can't take customer contact details, you can't contact our customers when you lead things like that.

So that obviously is a lot easier to justify from a business perspective why they can't do that and it's not preventing them from making a livelihood.

They can still get clients, they just can't get your clients hearing those words.

Like non solicitation clause.

You know, we all have it in our heads what we're trying to think of and what we're trying to get across.

But it's you that has the actual phrases and the terminology because once you say that it's like of course it's, it's obvious, isn't it?

But yeah, how do we explain that?

How do we put that across?

So yeah, it's interesting.

I'll take it.

Our contract's got that.

It has, don't worry.

Okay, cool.

So when, when someone's.

So we obviously we've, we learned that we have to issue a contract to all new employees.

That's the law on the day that they, they arrive at your place.

If you, if you've got an apprentice.

I get a lot of inquiries about apprenticeships.

What kind of contract does an apprentice need?

Is there anything different?

Yeah, so they would still have an employment contract and they obviously have the apprenticeship agreements with the apprenticeship provider.

But what you might want to consider with an apprentice contract is actually putting them on a fixed term contract just for the duration of the apprenticeship.

It might be that you intend to offer them employment afterwards but you never quite know how they're going to pick it up, how they're going to take to it.

So I would always advise to do it on a fixed term contract basis.

So at the end of their apprenticeship there's no obligation on you to provide additional work, but you know you can if you want to.

And then you'd issue another just permanent employment contract.

So that would be the key difference really.

But also including things about their training and you know, they have to keep up with their studies.

If they're not, then you would reserve the right to maybe carry out a disability disciplinary process with then and terminate the agreement because you are still investing in that apprentice whilst they're on an apprenticeship.

So you don't want to be investing your time, your effort and then ultimately they're not, they're not giving that back.

And there's been scenarios where the actual apprenticeship provider has withdrawn the apprenticeship from the person, has that then void the contract that you have with that person.

Yeah.

So again it'd be good to have something written into your contract that says if that happens your contract terminates.

So that should really be included in an apprentice contract.

And also things such as the right to change the training provider.

So if that happened.

But you thought, you know what, no, I can really see potential in this apprentice, you could actually move the apprentice to another provider.

So there are a few different things that you'd want to put in an apprentices contract.

Cool.

And then one question I have around that is actually the apprenticeships are generally sort of 12 months long and they're put across as 12 months.

But the actual assessment period can.

The EPA, I think it's called, can actually be a.

You know, it could be 15 months after.

So they do the 12 months apprenticeship but the actual assessment could be a few months later in your.

Do you have to keep extending your contract or do you just say when your apprenticeship ends rather than a physical date?

You can say when the apprenticeship ends.

How I tend to do it is I will put the anticipated end date, but then I'll say if you've not finished the apprenticeship by this date, then the company will consider a reasonable extension to allow you to complete it and then maybe do it.

If you have a date of when the EPA is, then you can obviously extend it and put that finish date or if not just keep rolling it on.

But you know, until the apprenticeship is actually completed.

Yeah, growing pains of the apprenticeship.

I think they enrolled lots of apprentices but haven't kept up with the.

Yeah, the EPA's tend to be a bit of a sticking point at the end because the apprentices sort of ready and they're all good to go.

But they're just waiting on a date for the epa, which is a shame sometimes.

Yeah.

So our apprentices come into the end of their apprenticeship, they've passed their endpoint assessment, do we need to do a new job offer for them onto a full time contract or do we just have that discussion with them and issue them with a full time part time contract?

Yeah, so I guess it depends what contract they had as an apprentice.

If they had a fixed term contract then you just reissue a new contract, a permanent employee contract.

You would take their start date from the start date of the apprenticeship though, because their service would continue.

But yeah, then you'd just issue a new contract and state that start date in the new contract.

It's also nice sometimes to send a bit of recovery note with it like congratulations, your hard work has paid off, you've now passed your apprenticeship or at least have that conversation with them and just sort of congratulate them on passing.

But if they had just a standard contract, it wasn't a fixed term, then you wouldn't necessarily issue a new contract, you just issue a change of terms letter that again says, you know, congratulations, you've passed your apprenticeships, these things will change.

All of the terms and conditions remain the same.

So you know, the rate of pay is likely to change their job title, things like that.

So you just confirm the bits that had actually changed.

Yeah.

Cool.

Can we just stay on the contracts side of things?

Because I have another question coming to my head and I remember hearing you say sometimes that zero hour contracts can be quite tricky, but they can be quite favorable for people that are a bit worried about that commitment.

Yeah, so they can be tricky.

They are more tricky and especially when it comes to things like calculating holiday payments.

But I think there is also a place for zero hour contracts as well because the flexibility, if they're done right, the flexibility works both ways.

It's just, I guess the difficulty comes with people not using them correctly and, you know, sort of trying to still have all that control as though they were on a normal contract, but they're not allowing the employee to have that flexibility of the contract too.

So it's one side of flexibility.

And you may have seen the government as well are proposing to ban zero hour contracts, although the wording is to ban exploitative zero hour contracts.

So what it might mean is they just change how you can use them or they might ban them altogether.

Not sure yet.

But the reason that they're proposing those changes is because some employers do sort of have that one sided flexibility where they Kind of want all the benefits of the zero hour contract for themselves but there's no benefit in it from the employee for the employee.

Sorry, just out of interest, how does it work?

So if we issue someone with a zero hour contract, do you have to agree the hours for the week at a certain point or can you literally just phone them up and say can you come in tomorrow?

So the contract will be really important because what you do in the contract is you'll set out exactly how it will work.

So as long as you agree on how it will work before then it kind of is okay however you do it.

But yeah, the contract will be so important for zero hours because that's what you'll use to, you know, prove that this is what we'd agreed we were going to do, this is what we've been doing.

And also when you're writing the contract you might realise when you're putting it all down in writing actually that's very one sided and that probably isn't the best way to go about it.

So there's a bit of thought that needs putting together.

If you were going to go and draft a zero hours contract you'd probably be asking well what's the arrangement going to be?

When are you going agree the hours for the week?

You know, how much notice are they going to have?

Yeah, that sort of stuff.

So it's not just the, I'll just get a zero hours contract.

There's a, there's a lot of thought that has to go into it first, isn't there?

Yeah, a lot more thought.

And with the holidays it honestly can be so complicated to, to calculate those and it'll be really important to have really good records of when your employees worked because that's what you're used to calculate their holiday entitlement.

I mean you have to sort of work out an average over the past 52 weeks.

So from an administrative perspective as well, it's a bit of a nightmare.

Yeah.

But you know, I suppose again people think, and I may, I may have fallen for this as well actually like that assumption.

Well, if I don't want a zero hours contract, does it have to be 15, does it have to be 30?

I can't afford to issue a 30 hour contract.

But actually we've worked together, haven't we?

And I've got someone on eight hour a week contract.

Yeah, you can negotiate the hours and.

I think that's the best thing to do.

So what I'd always advise clients that come to me and say can I have A zero hour contract is say, you know, obviously, yes, but have you thought about doing it this way?

And you know, is there a set minimum number of hours that you would definitely be able to offer every week?

You're confident that you'd have that amount of hours for them?

And more often than not it will be a yes.

You know, definitely eight hours, definitely 16, even four hours.

And then it's a lot more easy to, you know, things like holiday pay becomes easier.

You still have to have an average of their pay so that the pay is reflective when they take holiday of what they have actually worked.

But if they have that minimum number of hours, you can just offer overtime and then.

Yeah, we do everything based on that minimum number of hours that they are contracted to.

Okay.

I hate holiday.

It really confuses me.

I know.

And there's always like holiday calculators on websites and stuff, but I'm like, no, just give it to Megan.

And then I think a few tries, we get it right, don't we?

Yeah.

And yeah, you're not the only one.

It can be complicated, especially when bank holidays and stuff are thrown in as well.

I think it just throws some people off a little bit.

Yeah.

Someone gets married, we get an extra bank holiday put in the mix.

It's like so going on to.

We're talking a little bit about proposed legislation and you know, obviously a minimum wage could be going up again.

It's also caused a bit of worry about, about this employing people within my group and I've seen a few groomers now starting to look at the option of they may have members of staff and then they think, well, actually I'll just turn them into table renters.

I really struggle to see how this works, but I was hoping that you could give us some clarity around employers rights and employees rights when it comes to, you know, flipping your employees into a table renter and how that might work.

Yeah, I mean, the first thing I'll say is it's not an ideal muse from an employment law perspective.

It's not ideal.

And the reason I say that is because it has to be a genuine change of the employment relationship.

So it's not.

You can't just use that as a way to get out of paying holiday pay and sick pay, because that's illegal.

And I get it, I do get it.

It can be scary, especially with all these changes.

And you might think, you know what, I don't want employees.

It's easier to have a table rent as somebody self employed, there's less responsibility, etc.

But if what you're going to do is turn them into a table renter and treat them as an employee, you're likely to get yourself in some bother.

And what would happen is if they ever made a claim, you'd have to back pay, you know, all of that holiday pay, the sick pay, things like that, and likely would get some fines as well.

So it's kind of not worth it unless you are genuinely changing the employment relationship.

So the way I see it, the way I try and get my head around it, is that you're thinking that your business is struggling, you're struggling to pay the bills, you're struggling to pay your staff.

So there is a legitimate redundancy kind of business case there.

So you're effectively looking to make your staff redundant and then offering them the opportunity to rent a table in your salon afterwards.

That's the only way that I can see that happening.

So there are.

Yeah, I mean, there are two ways to do it.

So redundancy is one.

So if the reason that you wanted to make the change is because I can't afford my employees, then you are in a redundancy situation because you can't afford your employees and you need to reduce the amount of employees or get rid of all of your employees because you can't financially sustain them anymore.

So that is a genuine redundancy situation.

But there is another way to do it whereby you would essentially terminate their contract and then offer to re engage them on new terms.

So I mean, either way you have to terminate the current contract.

So it's whether you do it through redundancy or through dismissal.

Now the redundancy option would be follow a redundancy process, you get rid of them, you terminate the contract, you pay them any redundancy pay their owes.

And then, yes, you say, oh, I do have this option to round a table if you're interested.

And then it's up to them whether they want to or not.

The dismissal route is you dismiss the employee for what is called some other substantial reason.

So there are five legally fair reasons to dismiss somebody and one of them is some other substantial reason.

So it's kind of like it covers everything else that doesn't fit into the other.

So that's what you would use.

And you would essentially say, you know, the way I want to operate, my business is changing.

I want to terminate your current contract and engage you on these new terms.

But obviously with that comes the possibility that you'll get an unfair dismissal claim.

Because what we tend to think about is what's best for the business.

But do employees that are employed actually want to be self employed?

Because if they did, would they not have gone and find a self employed role anyway?

So if they don't agree to it, then you have to dismiss them and you're like unilaterally terminating the contract that you've both signed and agreed to.

And they don't agree with that.

So they could then take that to an employment tribunal.

The way I sometimes look at it and think if I, I can see the business case for it, I can see the business side of it.

There's, there's fear, there's bond to save money, there's, you know, stress around managing employees and dealing with legislation.

Obviously all that stress is given to you for us.

But as an employee, I used to be an employee, you know, and I kind of look at the other side of the flip side of it.

You're like, you want to take away all my holiday, you want to take away my sick pay, you want to take away my, my protections and just say, there you go, you go make your own money.

Praise.

I would, I fathom, I don't understand why people agree.

Yeah, how would you even get that agreement?

Yeah, how would you agree?

If you're an employee, why would you agree to have all that taken away from you?

Security, sick pay, holiday pay and everything like that to then have to go out there and market and build your own business?

That's where I really struggle with that bit.

And I guess the reason that somebody might agree to it is because with that should come increased flexibility.

They don't have to work, they don't have to work when they're told to work.

They can choose as and when, you know, they, they can do the work however they want to.

So the odd person, it might actually appeal to them.

But as a rule, I would say generally if somebody is employed, they're employed because they want to be an employee.

They, they want those holidays, they want the sick pay, they don't want to have to sort out a self assessment, they just want it all done for them, which you know, is completely fine.

But if you're trying to force them to go self employed and they don't want to, it's just not gonna, it's just not a favorable position to be in.

I think I'd be like, no, maybe redundant.

I'll take the redundancy, thanks.

Yeah, yeah.

And go somewhere else.

But yeah, it's, it's a very tricky one and I, I completely sympathize, you know, with People who have employees, you know, it is stressful, it is hard work.

There's a lot of admin behind the scenes.

You know, we've got 100 grand salary bill to sort of look after at the end of the day for us personally and it's, and I was talking to someone the weekend and it is a weight on your shoulders.

It is a, you know, a weight.

But also there are some real positives to having employees and it might be that the business model just isn't working quite right or taxes aren't working or you've not got enough support to help you with all this.

So there are other ways of doing it, isn't there?

Yeah, I think before jumping into that decision because it's, it does come with a lot of risk because I think even with the best intentions, if you're like, yeah, the employment relationship will completely change.

They'll have their own business, they'll get their own clients, have their own pay at card machines and stuff.

When you've been working with someone for a certain way for so long, it's easy to slip back into those habits.

So I think it should always be a last resort and actually you should think, oh, do I need to reduce my employees hours?

Do I need to outsource some of the admin tasks?

Asks is there anything else I can do first?

Yeah, quite often I see with some of my clients when they first start off or we're talking about changes in their business, you know, we as humans, we quite often go down the path of least resistance.

And I suppose if a business owner has so much fear and anxiety around increasing prices, talking to customers, you know, about imposing new prices, new services, that's a lot of like time and effort and worry and fear.

Sometimes that path of least resistance might be I'll just get rid of my staff, you know, and that's the easy way to go.

But I just don't know if it is.

I don't know.

Yeah, and I think it's the easy way to go if it all goes right potentially.

But when it goes wrong and if you do end up having a claim, then it won't be, it won't be an easy way out.

No, unfortunately it won't be.

But when it comes to talking about like employment tribunal and stuff, is it something that.

Do we normally have this kind of insurance when we take out business insurance or is this something that we really need to ask for?

So yeah, you should definitely check your insurance policy.

So employee liability insurance should cover things like this, but absolutely check that it does, yeah.

Yeah.

For tribunals.

Yeah.

They won't be paying for that as well.

Just take a bit of a stress off.

So maybe we can just touch a little bit on some employees rights, because I think that's really important.

I met someone at Crufts who was working for a company and that kind of inspired me to get in touch with you and talk about this, because she was having a bit of a rough time.

But can you set out, like, roughly what are your rights as an employee, what your basic rights are?

Employees have a lot of rights, I think.

So I.

I sort of listed a few key ones that I think we should go through, but this list is literally not exhaustive.

There are a lot of employee rights, but we've spoken a lot today about unfair dismissal, but that is a really important one.

So they have the right to not be unfairly dismissed.

So, as an employer, we need to be really careful that if we are letting staff go for whatever reason, whether it be redundancy, conduct, performance, that we're following a fair process.

So, you know, get in touch with a professional, read up on acas disciplinary and grievance procedure, things like that, to just make sure that you are doing everything fair with regards to the law, because you might feel something's fair, but actually something feeling fair and something being legally fair could be quite different.

So that's a key one.

And then we've also touched on discrimination.

And again, everybody has the right to not.

Not be discriminated against.

So as a business owner, make sure you are aware of the protected characteristics and you know that you're not doing anything that could disadvantage somebody because of one of those protected characteristics.

Okay.

They're kind of like general ones, but in terms of more specific rights that employees have.

They have the right to an employment contract.

So as you mentioned earlier, on or before their first day of employment, they should have a written employment contract issued to them.

They also have the right to a safe working environment.

So health and safety, you need to make sure that, you know, the premises that you're employing people on is fit to have employees there.

Now, I'm not a health and safety expert, but things such as fire exits, first aid boxes, you know, the real basics of health and safety, making sure there's a toilet that they can use, things like that.

That is personal point that you make here, because I actually did a coaching call with my program clients last night, and we were talking, or I was talking at them about health and safety, because we've done a lot of work within our business over the last few months around the health and safety.

And there are salon owners out there that, you know, again, it's probably a bit like getting a handbook and getting contracts and it all gets too much and it gets put away and put some.

Gets put on the bottom of the pile, bottom of the list.

But this is really essential stuff.

So there's owners out there, salon owners out there that haven't got fire extinguishers, smoke alarms, you know, all sorts of stuff like that.

Real basic first aid kits and stuff like that.

But like you said, it's that it's the employee's right to be in a safe working environment.

So you've got to make sure that, you know, there's a lot of legislation out there to.

To beat you with if.

If it all goes wrong.

Yeah, absolutely.

And we've spoken about insurance policies.

Potentially there's something in your insurance policy that actually says, you know, you're not covered if you don't have these things.

So it is really important that you've got the basics, you know, at least the bare minimum that you need to provide a work, a safe working space for your employees.

Yeah, and health.

And when you mention health and safety to me, it's just completely blocked.

I get completely blocked.

And it's actually something that Emma took on because she was trying to ask me for some help and I was like, I don't know what to do.

And she.

She went and did it all in the end.

So I'm really pleased with that.

But I'm.

I've actually made contact with a health and safety advisor and business owner and hopefully they're going to come on and do a podcast with us to give some the same way as you like.

What are the basics that we need to look after to make sure we're compliant?

Yeah, I think that's a really good idea because particularly in dog grooming as well, like the.

Generally the building needs to be safe, but there are also some hazards within, you know, the industry.

You're dealing with sharp scissors for a start, you know, and then the health and safety of the dogs as well.

So a lot of people will put in their contracts and handbooks, you know, that they can't be left unattended, all the gates have to be closed at all times, things like that, because it's the health and safety of your employees.

But actually, you know, your customers, the dogs, anybody that comes into that building, you're responsible for, that's it.

Water, chemicals, and then, you know, all this stuff doesn't mix Very well.

And we've got it all going on in a very closed environment, along with, you know, work experience, along with, like, student placements, along with young apprentices.

You know, all this stuff is like, it's a recipe for disaster.

Don't work with, like, people and animals.

Yeah, exactly.

To consider, isn't there?

And I think a lot of us fall foul of.

Well, I'm an adult and I wouldn't touch that when it was on or hot.

That doesn't mean someone else isn't going to do that.

And with apprentices as well, they're new to the workplace and something that might be obvious to somebody like us that's been in the workplace for a while, it might not be obvious to somebody that hasn't worked before.

That's it.

Don't lick scissors, they're sharp.

But, yeah, we make a little bit of a joke about it, but I basically said to a client yesterday, you know, health and safety is there to protect your staff, protect the people that was visiting your salon and to keep you out of prison.

Yeah, yeah.

Because ultimately, if it is a serious breach, that's how it could end up.

Yeah.

And you only got to look at the news at the moment.

There's stuff in the news where people are being prosecuted and appealing their sentences and stuff like that.

And God forbid, it never happens to any of us.

But, you know, we.

We have to plan for the worse and, and make sure that we're.

We're set up.

So that's, you know, a sideline.

But everyone's got a right to work in a safe environment.

That's really important.

Yeah.

And then another sort of area of employee rights is their right to certain types of leaves.

So most people will probably be aware that employees have the right to statutory sick pay if they're off sick.

So the first three days of a sickness would be classed as waited days and they're unpaid.

But from the point day of a sickness absence, the employer does have to pay statutory sick pay if the employee qualifies, and the qualifying criteria is essentially a lower earnings limit, which is, I think about £123 a week at the moment.

So if they were eligible, then the employer does have to pay statutory sick pay and that can't be claimed back anymore.

So that is a cost to the employer.

And it's not free working days.

It's three days, isn't it?

Yeah.

If it goes over a weekend, you don't work.

That doesn't matter.

It's three days.

Yeah.

Okay.

I remember the days when we Used to be able to claim that back.

Yeah, see, it was kind of before my time in hr, to be honest, but I know that you did used to be able to claim it back.

You've been showing me up on my age today.

Sorry, that's the second time I've done that today.

I know.

Thanks.

Okay, so statutory sick pay.

Yep.

And then there are also things such as paternity leave, maternity leave, shared parental leave.

Now, again, there are qualifying criteria for those things.

Every female that has a baby would be entitled to maternity leave, but they're not all necessarily entitled to the pay.

So again, that's based on how long they've worked for you, whether they'd get the pay or not.

Paternity leave, actually, not everybody's entitled.

Again, it depends how long you've worked there.

And same with the pay for paternity.

A shared parental leave, again, is the same.

There's then things such as time off for a dependent.

So that is.

I think we might have covered this in the previous podcast, but time off for a dependent should be used in an emergency situation where you have to go and support a dependent.

And a dependent could be, you know, a child partner, husband, wife, grandparent, parent, potentially a grandparent, anybody.

That sort of depends on you personally.

If they have an emergency, then employees are automatically entitled to that leave.

It is unpaid, although you can choose to pay if you want to.

And then there's also a new one that I don't know if people heard me banging on about earlier this year, but carers leave.

So that's a new leave that was introduced in April, which is if you are a carer for somebody or if your employee is a carer for somebody, they have the right to a week off each year in each 12 month rolling period to arrange provisions for that person with regards to their career.

So there's carer of adults, care of children.

So if you're a carer for your.

Yeah, just a carer for anybody, as.

Well as the carer for a child.

Yeah.

And the difference between carers leave and dependent leave is that dependent leave, that's for an emergency situation, whereas carers leave, it will be planned, you know, you request it with notice, whereas, you know, in an emergency situation, it's not planned, you don't request it.

It's just, oh my God, I can't come in today.

I've got to do this steps.

All right.

Okay, okay.

This.

And again, you know, all this is on the government websites to try and work out, but it's, it's it's an impossible task to try and work this stuff out.

And I can see now someone coming to you saying, all right, this situation, I've got someone that's, you know, expecting a baby.

How much do I pay them?

And I think that.

I bet the first question you say was, when did you employ them?

And if you haven't got that, if we haven't got those basic details right and the contract right, then all starts to unravel a little bit, doesn't it?

Yeah, exactly.

And, you know, we said there's so many employment rights, but that again, we always end up coming back to the handbook.

But that's where the handbook is really useful, because that actually covers all the employee rights in there.

Because, you know, if you're trying to look on the government website, but you don't actually know what you're looking for, there's bits scattered around everywhere, isn't.

There are different things and it will have all the information.

But if you don't actually know everything you're looking for, you're probably not going to stumble across everything that you need.

One question I've got, actually, is what.

What if an employee comes in in the morning and, you know, they look like death.

They.

They're really struggling to do their work.

They're not hungover, but they're just generally ill.

And then the kind of employee that, you know, go above and beyond, they're always coming in.

But when they're real and you don't want to.

You don't want to have the.

Get the flu yourselves, if you take them home and say that you need to go home, you're not fit for work, does that count as a sick day?

Or do we.

Do we pay them?

What's the rules around that?

Is there any rules around that?

Yeah.

So if you're sending an employee home, but they're willing and saying they're able to work, unless you have some medical note, like a doctor's note or something from a hospital saying that they're not fit for work, if you decide that they're not fit for work and you send them home, then you would have to make sure that's paid.

So if you were to send them home, but they were like, well, I'm okay, I can work, I'm a bit ill, but I'm okay.

And then you sent them home and you didn't pay them, they could make an unlawful deduction from wages claim.

Okay, so I suppose your advice would probably be like, see if there's alternative work that they can do.

Yeah, yeah, definitely.

So, you know, are there any lighter duties they can do?

Is there anything they can do from home?

Can help you out with some admin, do some social media posts or something?

Because ultimately if you send them home, you can end up paying them anyway, so you might as well ask them to do something.

Yeah, I'm assuming, like, if someone had broken their arm and then, you know, the doctor will probably only sign them off for so long and then they're like, well, I can come in, you can.

You can move around them, use your arm and stuff like that.

But yeah, not always that much use if it's their working arm that they've broken, you know.

Yeah.

So in that case, you'd like to think that the doctor would put on the sick note, maybe fit for work with amended duties.

And then if they come in, you have a discussion and you think, actually there are no amended duties, there's nothing else you can do, which sometimes might be the case, then you would be fine to say, you know, we don't have any amended duties, so actually you're not fit for work.

And that wouldn't have to be paid, it would just be ssp.

But if you did have additional duties, then you really should be offering it to them.

Sounds like there's some very fine lines there, which would probably be best to consult someone like yourself about what those lines are.

Yeah, I mean, I hate saying it all the time, but honestly, just with anything, just get some advice on it, because I'm sort of giving general advice here.

But each case will be very specific, so I wouldn't advise anybody to make a decision based off a conversation like this because it might be that the circumstances are different.

Oh, definitely.

And you know, from working with pet Grooms, I know that every person runs their business differently.

The salons are set up differently, roles are different.

So it is all individual, isn't it?

Circumstances.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Cool.

So a question's coming from Alison and it's about.

It's probably covered in the handbook, but it's about loan working and whether what we need to consider for, like, health and safety and are they allowed to work on their own?

Yeah, that's a really good one.

So, yeah, employees are able to work on their own, but I would have a loan working policy.

And again, I think that falls under health and safety.

Really?

But we've got one in your handbook, haven't we, Bill, about, you know, if you are working alone, then make sure people know, you know, when you're supposed to be working.

Ideally you'd Want a manager or somebody to be checking in with them every few hours to just check that they are okay, making sure that you have a procedure in place in case something happens, who they're supposed to call, you know, what they're supposed to do.

So yeah, really just setting that out in a policy somewhere.

If somebody is going to be lone working so they know exactly what they should be doing and also say that there is somebody checking in to check that they're okay.

Yeah, I think in our circumstances we often have people opening up half an hour to 15 minutes early.

So we've kind of classed that as a lone working.

And the rules are like, lock the door behind you and don't let anyone in unless they're a member of staff sort of thing.

Yeah.

And I can imagine that's probably quite common again in the dog grooming industry, that someone is alone, you know, for the first hour, half an hour or so whilst they're opening up.

And you wouldn't necessarily have to have something in place that somebody checks up on you in that half an hour, but certainly, you know, locking the doors and just having a procedure in place of, you know, if something does happen while you're there on your own, what should you do?

Yeah, cool.

So we were talking about, you know, logging things and writing things down and I saw the other day that you put out that you've gone into partnership with a, with a company.

Tell us about that.

Because I think that might help people to get organized.

Yeah, absolutely.

So I'm really excited about this actually, and I did want to speak to you about it at some point though.

But.

Yeah, so it's a, hey, HR system and what that allows you to do is, well, all sorts really.

But the key things that I think would be important for people, particularly in this industry, is that, you know, you can log absences on there, employees can book their holidays on there and it'll sort of take off the holiday from their entitlement.

So, you know, a lot of people, when I go to write the contracts and I say, how did your holiday booking process work?

They'll say, oh, they just asked me and I say, yeah, well, if there's ever a dispute about holiday, there's no way you can prove what was agreed if it's just verbal.

So, you know, having that audit trail through a proper system, there's no doubt at all.

It's clear to everybody, you know, where the holidays are, how many they've got left.

You can also send out reminders on there if they're coming up to the end of the year and they've still got a lot of holidays to take, saying, you know, you need to book your holidays.

So the holiday module is really good and I think that will really benefit business owners as well.

It takes away the admin as well and the paperwork.

You don't have to think, well, where's that holiday request form?

Because it's all just in one system.

You can access it from wherever you are.

And it's also got a module where you can ask employees to clock in and out.

So, you know, you could do it from a mobile phone or a tablet or something in your salon and they just clock in and out when they arrive, when they leave.

So that's good for sort of monitoring timekeeping, but also looking back to see, you know, if somebody did have a day off, if there's a discrepancy with their sick pay or something, you know, exactly when they were in, what time they were in and things like that.

I, I asked a company once and it's not.

This isn't to spy on employees, this is to make it easy.

But it does sound like it's SPIRAL employees.

And I asked the company once if they could like Geocache, our, our shop.

So put a ring around our shop and then when that employees HR app enters, that little ring fence, it clocks them in automatically.

Because we have tried this clock in, clock out thing, you know, scan a QR code.

Even, even my wife, like the owner of the business, forgot holidays, you know, so I was like, wife, if you could see that when they enter the, the, the five meters of the building, it clocks them in because they're there.

He's like, I'm not sure privacy would really allow us to do that.

But you get that with like, we've got an app for our kids.

So I know when the kids have arrived at school, I know when the kids are arrived at home.

I was like, surely we can just do that for employees.

But I mean, you'd absolutely need their permission to do it.

But yeah, I mean, potentially, if the system allowed you to do it.

But I know exactly what you mean about the clocking in and clocking out, because if you work somewhere six months, five years, however long it is, and you've not had to do it, you're just not in the habit of doing it and it is difficult and especially when you're busy and you get to work and you think, right, I need to do this, this and this.

You forget.

Yeah.

So it is about, in those initial stages, really putting in that effort to form those new habits and eventually it will click.

But it does take a lot of.

Time, does this, the new system, and store documents, pay slips, things like that.

Yeah, so that's another thing that's really helpful.

So it's got, you know, an employee file, so you can save all of the documents to it.

You know, that contract, the handbook, you can choose which documents the employee can see, which documents only you can see.

And again, because it's cloud based, you can literally access it from anywhere.

So if you're on holiday, you need to check something, for example, you can access it from there as well, rather than everything being maybe locked in a filing cabinet or something and you've got no chance then, have you?

So you can make sure that everything's in there and then if there are ever any issues or your meeting records and everything is in that file, you know exactly where to go for it.

Yeah, yeah.

And this is all about being organized, isn't it?

Because it's all very well, it works while it works, but like you said, as soon as someone raises a query, a question, or, you know, you're looking at payroll and you're like, oh, have I paid too much or not enough?

That's when the pain starts to come on.

And I remember when, when running A to Z, we had like, I don't know, four, five, six members of staff.

We didn't have a holiday policy.

They had to request holiday on pieces of paper which got lost.

You know, the folder was kept at work so I never got to see it.

And, you know, it was just chaos.

And then it was like, we're just going to hand it over to like a, an app and a system.

And, and actually we don't, me and Emma don't actually do the holiday request anymore.

We even handed that over to our receptionist to.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

Kim runs the diary, Kim runs the booking system.

The holiday policy is like only one person off at any one time.

So Kim is on the system to approve people's holiday and that's even less to do.

And you can even put like rules into the system as well that says, you know, only one person allowed off at one time.

So if another person did book it, you went to approve it at the flag and say, you know, there's two people off at that time, which is helpful too.

Whereas if you're using paper records, you obviously don't get that little nudge.

And that reminder.

Does it do any like, payroll or anything like that at the moment?

Yeah, you can run payroll exports from it as well.

I've not looked at that module so much in detail, but you absolutely can run a report off it and then, you know, you could send that over to your accountant, ask them to pay however much it is.

So, yeah, what's it called in told us.

Keeping you all guessing.

So it's called Breathe hr.

So if anybody does want more information or would like to jump on a call and we can run through and I can demo the system for you, then just let me know and we can arrange that as well.

But yeah, whether you use BREATHE or another system, they are really, really helpful for just making sure you're organized and they do genuinely save you, you know, time, money, stress.

That's the big thing, stress.

And, and people say, oh, it's another expense and, you know, more money that I have to find.

But I just.

The message I always say out is like, how much would you pay to sleep better at night?

How much would you pay to have less stress?

Or how much would you pay to have an afternoon off because you're not having to do all your HR stuff and stuff like that.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I think sometimes people overestimate how much these things actually cost.

I mean, breed starts from £18amonth.

So if you think about that in terms of maybe your hourly rate, how many hours would you save in a month by having all those processes automated?

And would you actually therefore be benefiting financially as well as having that less stress and being able to sleep a little bit better at night?

The investment in the business and you don't have to be a limited company to do this as sole traders.

Can.

Can use.

Yeah, yeah.

Anybody?

Anybody?

Excellent.

Well, I think we've probably fried everyone's brains enough.

I always, I'm always conscious that some of these conversations, and it's not because of you, but because of the topic, I can be quite negative and you know, oh, you know, it's really hard to employ people, etc.

But I think we do, you do have to come with, come at it with your eyes open.

And that's the reason why I want to get people like you on the podcast, is to show people that, you know, there is help available if we go into it with our eyes open, if we follow processes and do things correctly, you know, it doesn't have to be as bad as what Facebook tells you it is.

No.

And people are always going to have bad experiences and they're all.

You're always going to hear about the bad experiences more than the good experiences.

But actually, how many businesses are there out there with absolutely fantastic employees that really help to grow and contribute to that bottom line.

But we just don't hear those success stories as much because, you know, especially on, you know, your Facebook group.

My Facebook group people come for advice.

They don't really come to say, oh my gosh, this happened today.

It was amazing.

You know, the questions are going to be more about negative things because they're asking for support and advice.

That's very true.

I must remember that as well.

Yeah, I, I generally, I didn't really like being an employer.

I, I love the fact that it's given people opportunity.

It gives people friendship.

You know, we've got a lovely little team that work really well together.

Very happy.

You know, the socialize and as groomers they have got a skill for life that they can take anywhere it potentially in the world.

You know, I've got a client who used dog grooming to get her to New Zealand and she immigrated her family out there.

So in being an employer is is really important and they can work really well for you as well as a business.

Yeah, absolutely.

You just need the right support around you and to make sure, you know, you have the right policies, procedures and everything in place.

But it absolutely can work well for you.

Yeah.

Well, thank you for your time.

Let everyone know how they can get a hold of you.

Yeah.

So you can add me on Facebook.

It's Megan Snow.

Obviously you can join my Facebook group.

There's a link to it on my Facebook page.

But it's HR support for small business owners.

Or you can send me an email.

My email address is meganourhrhandle.com Excellent.

Thank you, Megan.

That's okay.

Thanks, Bill.

Speak soon.

Bye bye.

Bye.

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