We’ve had a bit of a lucky streak lately when it comes to problematic employees moving on. While we haven’t quite mastered the art of telepathy, a surprising number have chosen to resign just as things were coming to a head. Often, it’s because they realise their employer is getting proper HR advice – and the days of coasting without consequences are rapidly coming to an end.

A resignation, especially one submitted without drama or grievances, is often the ideal outcome. If they leave with immediate effect, that’s even better – no notice to pay (just accrued holiday), and a clean break for everyone.

However, we’ve had two recent cases where employers were so wound up and ready to dismiss that they couldn’t quite let go of the idea – even after the employee resigned.

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I’ve never been slow when it comes to buying shiny things online through social media. Most of my purchases have turned out just fine, and for those that didn’t, I either chalked it up to experience or got my money back via PayPal!

But this week, I had a realisation: the tried-and-tested marketing strategies still work brilliantly on social media. You don’t have to go “full American” with dramatic countdowns, flashing discounts, or the desperate “BUY NOW OR YOUR LIFE WILL END” tactics. There’s a much smarter way to do it.

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If you’re thinking about parting ways with an employee, chances are you’ve thought about how you’re going to justify the decision.

And in my experience, a line that’s trotted out more often than most as justification?

“There’s been a loss of trust and confidence”

If you’re thinking about using a similar line, I’ve got two words for you:

Please don’t.

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I’ve been on the hunt for a new bookkeeper.

First and foremost on the shopping list is someone who knows their numbers, but inevitably, something else comes first:

Marketing.

You see, it’s no good being the best bookkeeper since sliced bread if you can’t get yourself in front of any prospective clients, and my experience so far has left rather a lot to be desired.

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I don’t know whether there’s something in the water in 2025, but we’ve had a lot of emails from people requesting the same thing:

“Can you send me a template to give a verbal warning to an employee?”

We always say no.

Because, more often than not, warnings are being used incorrectly.

Warnings have their place, but this isn’t it

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I don’t know about you, but these early months are hibernation time in the Wahlen household, as we hide away from the wind and rain and catch up on some TV drama.

And recently – between dog walks – I’ve been diving into Death in Paradise; the sun and beaches are always welcome visuals when it’s beating it down outside.

Until they drop a clanger.  From an HR perspective that is.

On one particular episode the murderer is revealed, and his motive?

“Well, you see I worked for his company for 30 years and then they made me redundant and I got nothing!”

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I’ve got an announcement: I’m officially old.

This realisation has little to do with the page turning on another year, and everything to do with my internal thermostat.

I’m officially old because I’m ALWAYS cold.

Being increasingly sensitive to the temperature comes with its fair share of challenges – the simplest way to counteract the cold is to whack the heating up, but the evil smart meter in the corner of the room blinks red at me far too often for this to be the complete solution.

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I know that in the doom and gloom of January, harking back to the festivity and frivolity of Christmas isn’t exactly a popular move.

But I hope you’ll forgive me for doing exactly that today – there is a good reason!

The Christmas Day just gone was the best one I’ve had for decades, despite returning from Thailand cursing the weather and feeling very “bah humbug” about the whole thing in the run-up to it.

So, why was it the best?

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I’ve been here, there, and everywhere these last few weeks, delivering employment law talks to the great and good.

Which means a lot of miles on the road and plenty of hotel rooms, too.

I’ve always found hotels fascinating. The fact that you can pay roughly the same and yet have an entirely different experience from place to place is bizarre and interesting in equal measure.

The last hotel I stayed in was a case in point: staff were friendly, they upgraded my room, but when I got upstairs, there were two rather weird elements.

First, the (seemingly now) standard freezing cold room and incorrect thermostat – I had to crank it to 25 degrees just to get 21 degrees on the bedside table.

Second, slightly rarer: the WiFi code was nowhere to be seen.

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I’ve recently ticked something very special off my bucket list – polar bears, in the wild, in Canada.

Jaw-dropping.  And rather cold.

Sometimes ticking something off your list can be a bit underwhelming: you’ve built it up so much in your head that the reality doesn’t match the vision.

This was absolutely not one of those occasions.

Everything was perfect, from first to last, and there were a couple of nice little touches that I thought were worth highlighting – inspiration for anyone in business.

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I had a fantastic time at a recent conference, in no small part down to the emphasis on building the right team and looking after the staff that make our organisations great.

(Long overdue, in my opinion!)

If you were there, you’d know “Employee Assistance Programmes” (EAP) were mentioned quite a lot.

What is an Employee Assistance Programme?

A confidential helpline dedicated to helping your employees smooth out personal and work-related problems.

Yes, it might seem a bit touchy-feely, but the reality is that it really does make a difference and can help you keep your team together, turning up and functioning as you need them to.

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I’ve always loved buying things, from when I was a little girl, counting out the pennies for a paper bag of cola bottles, right through to now, when everything is available with the click of a button, or swipe of an iPhone.

The internet really has reduced purchasing friction, and I’m regularly finding myself drawn to products advertised to me on Instagram and buying them before I’ve even thought twice about it.

And – philanthropist that I am – in the last couple of years, most of those products aren’t even for me, but for our beloved miniature schnauzer.

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I’ve been trying to sell my son’s moped for 18 months now.

Why the delay?

A combination of my lack of motivation, paired with a significant lack of understanding of the second-hand moped market.

I started off by putting ads out at a sales price I considered eminently reasonable.

The prospective buyers did not agree.  Zero enquiries.

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It’s rapidly approaching that time of year again – the skeleton crew is in operation, staff disappear to make merry, and you lose half of December to run your business!

Before we get into the silly season, let’s answer some of the key questions we get around holiday:

 

How much holiday entitlement do my employees get?

“It depends” is the short answer.

Normally, this would be specified in their contract of employment.

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I’ve stayed in a lot of different hotels this year, from humble hostels to five-star specials.

But regardless of the brand or quality, they’ve ALL had one thing in common: a woefully inaccurate thermostat in the bedroom.

The one that really took the biscuit was the Hotel Adlon in Berlin – a beautiful hotel, but with a thermostat that swore blind that it was 18 degrees in the room.

And having set my home thermostat at that temperature to keep costs down, I can tell you one thing: I KNOW what 18 degrees feels like.

As I’ve experienced over many months now, 18 degrees means warm socks, a woolly jumper, and a blanket if I’m watching TV.

“18 degrees” at the Adlon?  A different temperature entirely – the kind you could sit in wearing a summer dress and still feel pleasantly warm.

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As the saying goes, when it rains, it pours, and in the last month, we’ve had a particularly dense deluge of “employee incidents” to deal with:

• The employee who took clients out for a meal and then decided to head to a nightclub, only to be turned away at the door because there was cocaine in his bag
• The head chef who pinned a 21-year-old waitress into a corner and told her, “If you give me a kiss, I’ll let you go”
• The house manager who got into a waitress’s car without permission and then proceeded to assault her

Yep, as I mentioned, it’s been busy.

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If you’ve dealt with committees before, then this won’t be news to you, but I just felt the need to write this after dealing with several incidents recently made a whole lot worse by committees…

• A club manager we were helping being told not only NOT to pay for HR advice (standard) but also being told off for getting free advice from ACAS “because the government will log what problems we have and use it against us”!
• A chairman deciding to cancel ALL HR support because they hadn’t had enough issues to justify the cost (Note – not NO issues).
• A committee member refusing to ask for a sick note from an employee who was off because “we are a caring organisation”, ignoring the actual process, although that would imply that they even knew there was a process.
• A committee failing to manage a head greenkeeper for 15 years, giving very limited feedback, and then deciding that he “had to go” because the course “isn’t as good as it could be” and because they are a “caring organisation” paying him a year’s salary to go without a fuss, rather than managing him properly over the years and having a better course!

So I am sure that you can see how committees are like teenagers now:

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We’re recruiting again – there seem to be no end to staff issues at the moment, so we’re pretty much at capacity.

And when it comes recruitment, I’m pretty ruthless – after all, I’ve got to be happy with the successful candidate giving out critical HR advice in our name, so they’ve got to know what they’re doing.

Step one of The Wahlen Gauntlet is designed to quickly and painlessly weed out the people who aren’t HR experts – a straightforward 10-question employment law quiz, which requires a minimum of 70% to proceed to the next stage.

You’d think everyone applying for an HR job would ace it, but you’d be wrong – only 20% applicants actually make the grade.

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Stephen King coined the phrase, “Books are a uniquely portable magic”.

I’m in total agreement – books are pretty much my joint favourite thing.

The trouble is, the other thing at the top of the list is travelling, so I really do need my books to be extremely portable.

Enter my Kindle, allowing me to take 300 books on the go.

It’s had more than its fair share of use over the last year or so though and is slowing down as a result, and though I could just go on less holidays, I decided a new Kindle was a better bet – it’d been to five of the seven continents, so a pretty good innings.

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There’s a golf club that’s keen to use us for their HR support, but there’s just one snag:

They’re with Citation.

Having been with them for three years, they’ve decided they’re not getting the bespoke, personalised support they need, and see the value in working with someone that specialises in golf clubs.

Anyway, they’d fulfilled their original three-year contract, and while they didn’t imagine they could leave straight away, they assumed it’d be a case of giving six months’ notice and they’d be free to go.

No dice.

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