‘Loretta and me, in the Gateway studio’

That’s the philosophy of my guest on last Thursday’s radio show, Loretta Fletcher – or rather, her boyfriend …

Loretta first came on the programme on 4th August, to talk about the impact on her business of the TV show ‘The Only Way Is Essex’.

This time, she was back to talk about something a whole lot more personal. In August, we talked a lot about what she does; but this time, it was all about why she does it – what prompted her, at the age of twenty, to leave her job in London, for a company focused on health and fitness, and set up in business on her own, as a beautician, specialising in healthier alternatives to traditional treatments.

Ironically, what sparked that decision was illness. In fact, if you read Loretta’s story, you’ll see it was even more than that. It was the sudden and completely unexpected onset of rheumatoid arthritis – closely followed by the equally sudden and unexpected experience of discrimination.

I’m not going to try paraphrasing the whole series of events. Loretta tells it much better in her own words than I ever could. All I will say is that she survived the initial symptoms, a wrong diagnosis, finally the right diagnosis – followed by medication – which brought some horrible side effects. She also survived a college experience which should have resulted in the institution in question taking a long, hard look at itself and its treatment of students with chronic conditions of all kinds – and now, she’s making it as a young entrepreneuse, having discovered a real gift for business, as well as beauty therapy.

Last week’s show was on air a day after the latest unemployment figures were released. There are currently 2.57m people out of work in the UK, of whom almost a million are ‘young people’ – under twenty-four – the highest number since separate recording of youth unemployment began, in 1994. No stats were published re people with disabilities, but experience tells me if there were, the numbers would be pretty high. Loretta could so easily have been one of those statistics; but instead, she’s building a thriving enterprise, with a growing list of celebrity clients.

While the closing record was playing on Thursday (Chris Brown’s ‘Beautiful People’), we were chatting a bit more about some of the points from the interview and she said with a grin, ‘My boyfriend always says “It’s mind over matter – and if you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter’.

I’ve heard the saying before, of course – but it really meant something, after the catalogue of hassles and hurdles I’d been hearing about for the last twenty minutes. I don’t know about you, but I found a strong business message in there: we all come up against barriers of some kind or another in the course of our businesses, don’t we? They might be physical, financial, or even psychological – but whatever form they take, we either have to get over them, or quit. It’s as simple as that. The trouble is that many of us (and I know I’ve been guilty of this in the past) expend so much time and energy worrying about how we’re going to get through – or just raling against the injustice of finding ourselves faced with these obstacles at all! – that we lose momentum. It’s those who take the ‘mind over matter’ approach who find themselves able to step over the high-jump pole or walk through brick walls.

This Thursday’s programme is very different. I’m talking to Ivan Newman of Living Inside The Brand, about excellent customer service… Although, maybe it’s not that different. Some customer service encounters can feel like banging your head against a brick wall – whichever side you’re on – can’t they …?

You can catch the programme at 3PM this Thursday afternoon, on 97.8 FM in Basildon & East Thurrock, or online, at gateway978.com, anywhere.

In a radio interview, Keys referred cryptically to “dark forces” being at work at Sky. Well, that could be true if Mr Murdoch gets his hands on the 61% of the company he doesn’t already own – but that’s another story, for another blog!

As to this story, as I said on Monday, I see a lot of positives in the fact that the FA and Sky were both quick to react to Gray and Keys’ comments about assistant Ref, Sian Massey – but I find certain aspects of the whole thing a bit uncomfortable.

I’ve seen and heard a lot of discussions this week, with a woman on one side and a white man on the other (his colour is relevant here). When the man has tried to say he can’t see what all the fuss is about, the woman has, quite rightly, come back and said,
“That’s because you’re highly unlikely to experience discrimination in your career”.

It’s very difficult, if not impossible, to appreciate the demoralising effect of constantly being defined by just one dimension of who you are, if you’ve never experienced it.

Well (again, as I said on Monday) I’ve seen it firsthand – discrimination on the grounds of my eye-sight seriously got in the way of my progress up the legal career ladder in the early days. Pre-DDA, I was openly told by one employer that
“You can stay here as long as you like, provided you don’t expect to progress beyond the typewriter – we couldn’t take that risk”.
As a young woman in the law, I was once told (by a middle-aged, white Solicitor I dared to argue with),
“Go away, dear, have a cream cake and calm down – there’s a good girl!” Yes – really! One of the most satisfying days of my nineteen-year legal career was the day I got the result I wanted for my client in that particular case!

I don’t like discrimination in any form – but one thing I realised when I worked with the Disability Discrimination Act is that it is a fact of life, whether we like it or not. Human beings will always judge each other on the most obvious aspects of who we are – including race, gender and disability. That might not be a particularly palatable idea for a lot of us in the 21st century, but it’s true. When I trained employers in how to work with the DDA, I used to start by acknowledging this – then point out that the way to deal with it is to:
“be honest with yourself about your own prejudices – because then you can make a conscious effort to put them to one side and not let them drive your decision-making processes”.

You can’t legislate for attitudes – never could, never will. Changing ingrained views which are learnt from the cradle, and so changing cultures, takes time and education.

Sky and the FA have been very clear about the culture they’re trying to create – and good on both of them for that!; but two things make me uncomfortable about the issue of Gray and Keys:

1 – the fact remains that their comments were off-air – it was effectively a private conversation. They expressed outdated, ill-informed views in an unpleasant way, but they didn’t intend what they said to be for public consumption and their views won’t (or shouldn’t) impact on Ms Massey’s career prospects. It wasn’t the first offence – but to my knowledge, previous cock-ups didn’t make the national news. Why did this grab the attention particularly? Is there anything in the timing of it, I wonder?

2 – why did the FA remove Sian Massey from her next scheduled match? Surely their support of her and other female officials should have extended to letting her get on with her job? One argument could be that they were trying to protect her from a lot of media attention and/or abuse from the terraces – but personally, I think protection is a dangerous route to take. She’d done nothing wrong, so why was she not allowed to carry on as normal? The risk of too much protection of someone who’s open to discrimination is that it sometimes happens, unwittingly, at the expense of respect – respect, in this case, of this woman as a professional in her chosen field (no pun intended!).

What I don’t know – and if you do, I’d love to hear from you – is whether Sian Massey herself asked not to officiate at that next match?

We’re aiming to explore the issues in more detail in an interview, to be added to the site next month.

Sir Alan Sugar’s refrain is now famous but employers must take care if they follow his example.  The average Employment Tribunal unfair dismissal award is £8,000 and the average legal fees, win or lose, another £8,000 so uttering these words could be extremely expensive for your business and I doubt Sir Alan would feel obliged to help out.

All change!

The old law relating to dismissal was scrapped as of 6^th April 2009, now we have the new ACAS Code of Practice.  So businesses can no longer be accused of automatic unfair dismissal for saying these 2 famous words.  However the new Code is several pages long and failing to follow all the steps/principles will be taken into account by the Employment Tribunal, so ignore these steps at your peril.

How to dismiss without getting into trouble.

It always amazes me that more people don’t dismiss failing employees in their first year of employment.  Businesses have up to 51 weeks to decide an employee is just not working out.  As long as there is no discrimination, health & safety or trade union issues, your employee has no unfair dismissal rights until they have 1 year’s service (this deadline includes the statutory 1 week notice period).  You can dismiss an employee before 51 weeks, even after you previously confirmed they passed probation! 

Dismissing after this period can be time consuming, stressful and expensive.  I always ask when the employee problems started and so often the answer is “as soon as they started work”.  This is when you need to follow one aspect of Sir Alan’s approach.  Don’t dither – Do it!

Too late?

If you have missed the 51 week deadline, you can still dismiss but you must follow the new ACAS Code.  All grievance and disciplinary codes written before 6^th April 2009 must be updated.

The new code is easy to follow and has a common sense approach.  It doesn’t prescribe forms/paperwork but focuses on ensuring the procedure and decisions are fair and reasonable and the good news for SME’s is that reasonable is determined in relation to the size and resources of the organisation.

Unfortunately following the ACAS Code faithfully is still no guarantee that you won’t get hit with a claim because the claim form can be downloaded and lodged for free.  However there is no legal aid for employment tribunals and the free sources of legal support tend to carefully assess the chances of success (eg most legal expenses insurance companies will only accept a case with a 51% or greater chance of success).  So responding robustly to an ET1 (the Employment Tribunal Claim Form) and demonstrating that you followed the ACAS Code, can lead to a case being dropped by the legal team.  Then your employee has to decide whether to pursue the case at substantial cost to themselves because costs are very rarely awarded to either side by the tribunal. 

Once you have responded to a claim, ACAS will mediate between you and your employee free of charge so here is another chance to see off a claim without incurring huge costs.

This strategy only works if you can prove you followed the ACAS code and your decisions were fair and equitable in all the circumstances.  After the first year of service saying “You’re Fired!!!” will nearly always cost you and your company dearly, no matter what you believe your employee has done.  So always, without fail, act as soon as a problem occurs and never let employee problems persist beyond the 51 week point.

© 2009 Hornet Solutions Ltd

All Rights Reserved.

This article is reproduced with the express permission of Karen Woodbridge whose right to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with

the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

This article is intended to provide information only and neither Karen Woodbridge nor Savvy Business Ltd (including its staff and agents) can accept an liability whatsoever for any losses incurred as a result of reliance upon it as anything other than generic information.