Clearview National April 2020 - Issue 221 | Page 85

BUSINESS
REAL ACCIDENTS
Health and safety requirements can seem a
pain but it’s true that since H&S has risen up
the agenda and compliance has become more
onerous, accidents at work have fallen.
It’s important to realise that leaving aside
the moral duty to your staff, there will
be severe consequences for the business if
someone is seriously injured or killed. That’s
why, as well as doing whatever paperwork and
tick-boxes are required, you should encourage
a real culture of care among your team.
Think of what the highest risks are and try to
mitigate them.
If an accident happens which could
reasonably have been prevented, you may have
opened yourself up to a charge of corporate
manslaughter.
RISK OF EMPLOYEES TAKING YOU
TO AN EMPLOYMENT TRIBUNAL
If you’ve been raised watching Alan Sugar
and Donald Trump tell people that “You’re
fired” it’s easy to think that this is the way to do
things in the real world. Unfortunately, in the
UK, nothing could be further from the truth
and an employment tribunal represents a big
business risk.
The solution does take some time and
involve some cost, but is well worth the effort
in reducing your risk.
You need to have well drawn up employment
contracts and a company handbook and use
them in 100% of cases. You must also make
sure that you have carefully filed copies of the
related paperwork with signatures. If there
is no contract in place a court will deem a
disadvantageous one to be in place which is
much worse.
When you come to disciplining someone, get
professional advice before you start the process.
You may think you know what you are doing,
but it’s incredibly easy to say something that
will lead to a painful and expensive loss at an
employment tribunal. In my experience, these
requirements needn’t ever stop you doing what’s
needed for the business to prosper. It just means
it has to be done carefully within the law.
It’s also important to understand that if
someone commences legal action against you,
the risk isn’t just about the money that might
be awarded to the complainant, which is
unlimited in cases of discrimination. Probably
more damaging is the time that you will have
to devote to the case and the sheer strain it is
likely to cause.
When your staff know that you do
everything by the book, they are unlikely
to even start a claim. By following these
guidelines, I have never been dragged through
an employment tribunal, despite a long
management career and occasional threats by
staff.
BAD STAFF
Once I had a great solicitor. I used him
on several different housing transactions.
Not only was he reasonably priced, he never
failed to turn around actions the same day.
So naturally, I turned to his company when I
needed help with litigation.
Nightmare. I had to chase everything,
deadlines seemed to be completely elastic and
the different solicitor seemed to add no value,
only get in the way. Eventually I complained
and things improved, so I am guessing that
a rocket was let off in the appropriate place.
However, by then I was largely bypassing the
solicitor and dealing directly with a barrister.
Fortunately, we won.
The point of this is that the quality of
service you provide is totally dependent on any
staff that you employ or subbies that you use.
These represent a risk – your reputation for
quality can quickly be ruined by a single bad
worker. As a result, you must always resist the
temptation to lower standards or fail to take
fast action when needed, however busy you
are. It’s better to delay work than trash your
hard-earned reputation.
CUSTOMER RISK
I recently used a fair-sized ground works
company to do some work on my home.
Before I took them on, I looked into their
history. Why had the directors previously run
a similar company that had gone bust, I asked?
The answer was that they had done a lot of
work for a larger contractor. That contractor
had gone out of business, leaving a big debt
owing. This is the difficulty of relying on one
large customer.
Once you couldn’t cope with non-payment
of the outstanding debt from any one
customer, that customer’s business risk is
added to your own risks. The horrible thing is,
you have no control over that risk. And it gets
harder and harder to try to insist on payment
terms the larger the amount of business that
you do with them. There is nothing you can
do other than to reduce your reliance on
them.
For these reasons, it’s probably worth
turning down work once you are above a
certain threshold, hard as that is.
UNEXPECTED EXPENSES
I wish that it was easier running a business,
but I guess that then the potential rewards
would be smaller. One of the easy traps to fall
into is not allowing for large expenses that
may arise down the road. Some examples of
this are the VAT bill on a large invoice that
hasn’t yet been paid, assuming you are on the
standard VAT reporting scheme. Another is
the replacement of important machinery. Then
there is the annual income tax or corporation
tax bill.
Knowing what’s coming and planning
ahead is the answer here.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Benjamin Dyer is CEO and co-founder of
Powered Now. Powered Now’s mobile app
aims to take the pain out of paperwork for
installers, as well as other trade businesses.
www.powerednow.com
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