There’s been a lot of talk in the UK over the last week or so about the Beecroft Report and, in particular, a proposal in the report that certain legal protections should be removed so as to allow what’s being called “no fault dismissal.”
Should you be late to the party, let me clarify a few things for you. The Conservative Party is the largest party in the coalition currently governing the UK. Adrian Beecroft, the author of the report, is a prominent businessman and donor to the Conservative Party - he’s given them something in the region of half a million pounds. Perhaps that’s just a coincidence, though - stranger things have happened.
Beecroft is also heavily involved with the high-interest pad-day lender Wonga: should you be unaware of Wonga, it’s a company that makes short-term loans, at interest rates of around 4000% per annum. Such is the nature of life in the UK at the moment that people are desperate enough to take such loans. The Office of Fair trading recently criticized Wonga for its aggressive and unfair collection practices. But I digress.
One of the proposals that Beecroft makes is that it should be possible to sack employees without going through all that tedious unfair dismissal stuff, so long as you give them a bit of a lump sum - what he calls Compensated No Fault Dismissal. How like the current stage of the UK that the government comes up with a report that, essentially, suggests it’s okay to remove protection from employees, so long as you give them some money. Everything is up for sale. Anyway, Beecroft feels
“the result of this change would be that the onus would then be squarely on the employee to perform well enough for the employer to value them as an employee. It would no longer be possible to coast along, underperforming in a way that is damaging to the enterprise concerned but not bad enough for the employer to want to undertake the whole rigmarole of the unfair dismissal process”
It’s interesting that he feels CNFD would be necessary to overcome
“the difficulty of removing an employee whose performance, once felt to be satisfactory, is no longer acceptable. This can be for reasons to do with the employee’s motivation or with changes in the demands of the job concerned as the company grows, technology changes, customer needs evolve and so forth. Or it can result from promotion to a higher level for which the person concerned proves not to be competent.”
none of which circumstances appear to have anything to do with employees “coasting” along and are as much to do with poor management practices as with the ability of an employee. But I digress again.
The mindset behind Beecroft’s proposal is that what’s holding the UK back is that small businesses are afraid to hire new employees because they won’t be able to fire them easily. It’s tempting just to dismiss this as the fatuous nonsense that it so palpably is - Britain, unlike Germany with its strong Mittlestand, has never relied on small and medium sized enterprises to drive its economy although that may well be changing as traditional industries die away.
The fact is, however, that we shouldn’t just dismiss this assertion because that’s all it is - an assertion. The words “research” or “evidence” don’t appear in the report; it’s just that Beecroft thinks it would be a good idea; it would make his life, and the lives of certain employers, easier. And who are these “employees” (mentioned 100 times in the report) whom employers should be able to fire at will? You and me; not some amorphous, faceless mass but you and me, your husband or wife, you children. With little to no protection in the face of their employers; with reduced job security and increased uncertainty in their future.
I’ve worked with a lot of managers and, with the best will in the world, a lot of them have absolutely little to no clue what they’re doing and even less of an idea what to do when confronted with an employee who - for perfectly legitimate reasons - is underperforming. The thought that they might just be able to sack people - because let’s face it, it’s easier than actually trying to fix the real problem - fills me with horror.
We used to care about each other in this country; the lives of others, the rights of others used to matter to us. Sixty-odd years ago, in the midst of austerity, after the most horrendous war the world had ever seen, we established the National Health Service. We can look back on that generation and be proud. In the midst of this austerity, what are we doing to make the future better? Will our grandchildren look back at our generation with the same pride?
