These are actual examples of HR Mistakes made by Employers in Hair and Beauty Salons. Some HR horror stories that have cost salon owners over £78000 and, in some cases, damaged their reputation.
- 11 months after starting her job in a local beauty salon an employee told her boss she was pregnant. She suffered very bad morning sickness. So, the salon owner dismissed her telling her “you’re not dismissed I’m just letting you go”. The employee received £12 000 compensation.
- A hair salon owner allowed a stylist to work in her salon on a self-employed basis. The self-employed stylist refused to arrive for work 30 minutes before the salon was due to open. On the basis that the self-employed stylist was self-employed, the salon owner advised her that she no longer needed her services. The self-employed stylist took the salon owner to an employment tribunal. She won her case because she was not self-employed. As she was in fact an employee who had been unfairly dismissed. Therefore, she won and was awarded £5000 for unfair dismissal.
- A trainee hairdresser was awarded £ 20 500 compensation from her employer for months of sexual and racial harassment. Including him deliberately dropping his comb and forcing the trainee to bend down to pick it up.
- A male hairdresser whose manager called him a “faggot” because he “worked in a hairdressers. Apparently, that made him ‘gay’. Therefore, he is appealing the compensation of £ 5 000 on the grounds that it is insufficient.
- A salon owner was fined £589 for failing to pay an employee the National Minimum Wage.
- A Muslim woman sued a hair salon owner for refusing to employ her because she wore a headscarf. She has doubled her claim for damages to £ 35000 after receiving hate mail.
- A hairstylist claimed her life was made a misery because colleagues laughed at her dyslexia. No decision has yet been made on any compensation in this case.
I’d really like to show you how to avoid something similar happening to you!
How can you avoid HR Mistakes made by Employers in Hair and Beauty Salons? How can you protect yourself as an employer? I’d like to show you some simple ways to protect yourself and your business from claims by employees. No cost, no obligation of any kind, just read on!
Some tips for your own self-protection
- Check the status of your workers. In the eyes of the law are they self-employed, workers or employees? If they’re employees, make sure that you have employment contracts in place the first day of their employment. Failure to do this can incur a £ 1400 penalty.
- Apprentices have certain rights. You are expected to have a different approach to their treatment when it comes to discipline. They are learning, but this doesn’t mean that you must put up with poor attitude or performance. Make sure that you have an Apprentice Contract in place that protects you. Do not assume you have to use the one given to you by the Learning Provider.
- If you employ young workers, do you know their rights? Do you know what hours they’re allowed to work? What breaks they’re entitled to and what happens to you, the employer, if you breach that? Ensure your employment contract reflect young workers’ rights?
These policies can all be found in the Contract
- Do you know the hot topics in employment tribunals at the moment? The Flexible Working Regulations and Illegal Deductions from wages? How compliant are your current contracts and policies? Get them checked to give you peace of mind.
- Make sure your disciplinary policy and procedure complies with the legal minimum standard. Otherwise, you may inadvertently take action that would usually increase any compensation awarded to an employee by as much as 25%.
- Implement a social media policy to set out your expectations of your staff in their own time and yours and how they conduct themselves on Facebook, Twitter etc.
- Unwritten rules/common practice over a period of time can work in the employee’s favour in a tribunal. Develop and complete thorough inductions and get people to sign to say they’ve read and understood what they’ve received.
More HR Issues to Consider
- Additionally, have written standards of expectations in place in a staff handbook so that your staff know what they are expected to do. Moreover, it will tell them what is right and what is wrong. How will you deal with lateness? Loss or damage to your property or when staff do not do their hair properly? What do you do if a client complains? Don’t copy someone else’s policies and procedures or download them off the internet. Make sure that you’ve got your own policies and that they’re tailor-made for your business.
- Take care when advertising for staff. Putting “young person” in an advert because this will make you vulnerable to an age discrimination challenge. Use application forms rather than CVs. Also, don’t ask questions about a person’s health until you’ve offered them the job.
- Ensure that you carry out Right to Work in the UK checks. However, not just on people with names that don’t sound like they are from the UK or on people with different colour skin. There’s a maximum £2000 fine for not carrying out these checks on every single member of staff.
These policies can be found in a staff handbook
- If you want to restrict the ability of your employees to ‘moonlight’. For instance, work for themselves or have a second job in another salon, you need to construct appropriate clauses in your contract to support this.
- As well as considering a search policy that you can implement if you believe someone is stealing. This policy that employees have already signed and agreed to can be implemented if you need to. Therefore, this knowledge can be very comforting should you need to use it.
- Do you have CCTV in the salon? Do your staff know? If they don’t you may well be breaching Data Protection legislation. Make sure you have a comprehensive policy in place.
- Do you have a layoff procedure? How would you deal with a flood to your salon that meant you were unable to open for business for a week? A layoff procedure, however, allows you to lay staff off on minimum pay while you get your business going again.
What to do Next
So, if you’d like to discuss HR Mistakes made by Employers in Hair and Beauty Salons any other HR problem that you may have, call us on 01706 565332 to schedule a confidential, free, 15 minute telephone consultation with me or complete the contact form and I’ll call you back.
I look forward to speaking to you soon!
Metis HR is a professional HR Consultancy based in the North West of England supporting clients across the country. We specialise in providing outsourced HR services to small and medium-sized businesses. Call us now on 01706 565332 to discuss how we may help you.
