Acas Chief Executive Susan Clews has worked in Acas frontline operations and as Director of Strategy and Chief Operations Officer.
If I said the words ‘joint consultative committee’, what associations or images would they bring to mind?
For many they would conjure up face-to-face meetings (remember them?), with agendas bulgaria phone number library sent out well in advance, formal etiquette during the meeting itself, and detailed minutes with action points to follow. Heavy in process you might think.
To some the words might also feel a little dated. In their guide on how best to consult staff, the CIPD suggest using terms like ‘innovation forum’. But what strikes me about consultation is that whatever words you use to describe your arrangements, it’s vital to recognise that building trusted consultation channels takes time, and it can be testing. Change in the coronavirus (COVID-19) world is ever more complicated, technical perhaps, and that means working hard to create the change adb directory that you believe is right.
Consultation: a voice lost in a crowd
A new Acas policy paper, published today, suggests that no matter what we call the moving forward with the subject process of involving employees in decision-making – engagement has become popular – we should not forget the reason we do it. We do it, for example, because getting people back to work safely involves reassurance, planning, logistics, and ultimately, reaching consensus on what works best for everyone – for the business and for workers.
Consultation is more important than ever because
Habits acquired in the good times serve you well in the difficult times
But if you haven’t started involving your staff, it’s time to start. And the changes to the Information and Consultation of Employee Regulations, that became law on 6th April this year, mean that it is easier for employees to trigger an information and consultation request from their employers (the threshold has been lowered from 10% of the workforce to just 2%). This is, of course, a legal requirement for many collective redundancies.