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Changing Contracts

Molly

Hi everyone,

I have recently joined a charity who up until 2 months ago had no HR function.

They have a very outdated handbook that needs a lot of updating, but all our employee's contracts state the handbook is a contractual term. So before making any changes we would need to do a full scale consultation. As part of this the management would also like to propose we standardise some of the benefits employees receive.

Would really appreciate if anyone could share any advice on key stages of the consultation or if they have been through a similar process and the challenges they faced.

Thanks in advance.

Molly

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  • Hi Molly,

    I was in this situation when I joined my current organisation, inheriting a handbook that stated that all the policies were contractual. Those policies had been developed/evolved over a long period, were sometimes contradictory and certainly didn't match current legislation - so we needed to do a reasonably large piece of work anyway. I spent a bit of time planning before starting the process of changing it all up.

    Firstly we have a consultative group, so I was able to talk through with them the issues and why we needed to change things. Consulting every member of staff every time we wanted to amend a document was clearly going to frustrate everyone, so I identified the policies that I felt would be most contentious (around pay/benefits mainly) and flagged them as contractual policies. When I'd worked through updating all the different policy areas (many of which were enhanced in the process) I then consulted on the whole lot - the changes suggested to all policies, and the move for all but five of those policies and procedures to become non-contractual. I communicated with the consultative group, but also to each member of staff individually, taking feedback and updating before publishing the lot.

    It wasn't a quick process, and took about a year to complete - but I'm very glad I went through the pain of it then! I had almost no pushback by the end of the process, because everyone had the chance to input.

    The takeaway for me was to identify the potential concerns and to try and head them off in advance - either by keeping certain policies contractual (and let's face it pay would always be considered contractual) or by speaking directly to some key influencers to get their thoughts in advance. If you're new to the charity, you may need to get some other senior managers on board to help with this.

    Good luck!

    Nina
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  • Hi Molly,

    I was in this situation when I joined my current organisation, inheriting a handbook that stated that all the policies were contractual. Those policies had been developed/evolved over a long period, were sometimes contradictory and certainly didn't match current legislation - so we needed to do a reasonably large piece of work anyway. I spent a bit of time planning before starting the process of changing it all up.

    Firstly we have a consultative group, so I was able to talk through with them the issues and why we needed to change things. Consulting every member of staff every time we wanted to amend a document was clearly going to frustrate everyone, so I identified the policies that I felt would be most contentious (around pay/benefits mainly) and flagged them as contractual policies. When I'd worked through updating all the different policy areas (many of which were enhanced in the process) I then consulted on the whole lot - the changes suggested to all policies, and the move for all but five of those policies and procedures to become non-contractual. I communicated with the consultative group, but also to each member of staff individually, taking feedback and updating before publishing the lot.

    It wasn't a quick process, and took about a year to complete - but I'm very glad I went through the pain of it then! I had almost no pushback by the end of the process, because everyone had the chance to input.

    The takeaway for me was to identify the potential concerns and to try and head them off in advance - either by keeping certain policies contractual (and let's face it pay would always be considered contractual) or by speaking directly to some key influencers to get their thoughts in advance. If you're new to the charity, you may need to get some other senior managers on board to help with this.

    Good luck!

    Nina
Children