Be prepared – changes in the workplace

Zoe Close speaks to Sarah Buxton and Ritesh Aggarwal about changes in the workplace and how to protect the team’s mental health during times of change.

Flexible working

Zoe Close: Sarah, I’m going to start with you because something I’m discussing a lot at the moment with practice owners is flexible working. For business owners, what are the things that we need to be preparing ourselves for or thinking about right now?

Sarah Buxton: Flexible working is one small aspect of what’s happening with respect to employment legislation at the moment. Employment law is one of the fastest-moving areas of law. It moves so quickly that what you were doing six or 12 months ago is no longer the right thing to be doing. If you are a practice manager where it’s only one small element of your job role, it’s hard to keep up to date and know what you’re doing.

The government announced a number of changes recently to employment legislation but I would like to focus on one of the changes that happened on 6 April this year which, as you said Zoe, concerned flexible working. So if you haven’t updated your policy in respect of flexible working, it will be out of date because the law has changed.

A lot of the changes coming in are focused on the wellbeing of the team. That’s why flexible working changed. The government saw that working from home, changing hours or a change to their working pattern helped people have a better work-life balance and benefitted them from a wellbeing perspective.

Some of the changes have been quite controversial though. Although, as a business owner, we employ 20 people, we want to look after the team and their wellbeing, some of the changes are making it quite difficult for the employer.

Day one rights

Sarah Buxton: The changes to flexible working that came in on 6 April mean that it is now a day one right. Before then, you had to have worked within a business for at least 26 weeks before you could make this statutory request.

So as an employer, you can believe you’ve recruited a full-time dental nurse. You offer them the job full-time; they sign the contract for full-time hours, they start work. On day one or two, they could then make a statutory request to change the working pattern you agreed.

If you want to reject it, there is a procedure to be gone through. We’re always at risk that if we don’t follow the correct procedure, or we don’t give the right reasons to reject or accept, we could end up in the employment tribunal. So, this change has been incredibly controversial and a headache for a lot of clients.

Also, previously you were only statutorily entitled to make a request for flexible working once every 12 months and now it’s twice within a 12-month period. So again, as an employer, you may have to deal with all the admin and bureaucracy associated with this more frequently. If you employ 200 people and you have specialist HR teams, then you can streamline that procedure, and it might not be as big a headache as for a lot of dental practices.

For small to medium enterprises though, this is a huge burden on the practice owner or whoever deals with HR, and they do need support with it. I understand where the legislation has come from in respect of looking after the wellbeing of the team. However, I think the legislation doesn’t do enough to tailor itself to the different sizes of businesses we have.

Protecting mental health

Zoe: Thanks Sarah. I would imagine that things are feeling quite pressured at the moment. I talk to people that some days don’t know if they’re coming or going, and all these new rules seem to be adding up. So Rick, how do you prepare for change like this when it’s going to impact your mental health, not just your own but the team’s as well?

Ritesh (Rick): Any change management is difficult. The biggest piece of advice I can give about change management is communicate, communicate, communicate; whatever that change may be.

I know we’re talking about change in terms of employment law here, but this holds true for change in general in the practice, whether it’s changing personnel or changing working patterns, whatever it might be. Explain very clearly to the team why the change is happening. Be very open, honest and transparent in your communications.

To get buy-in from your team, people need to understand the benefits of the change, what’s happening and why we’re making the change. Being transparent and offering the team the chance to contribute towards that change by allowing them to give their opinions and having a collaborative approach to that change in direction is very important.

Obviously, some change is going to be based upon legislation, as Sarah has outlined, but for other changes that may occur in the practice, I advocate taking a team-wide approach to it. Don’t just be the practice principal who says: ‘I’m in charge and I’m going to do it all.’ That’s because, number one, you’ll probably isolate yourself from the rest of your team. You may even experience some disengagement from your team. And number two, you’ll only end up ramping up the pressure on yourself.

Emotional support

Rick: Another big part of change management is to make sure you’re on hand, or have people on hand, who can provide emotional support. Change is a scary time.

We all like our routine. So, when you’re pushed out of your routine, it’s difficult. Make sure you provide emotional support and that you’re qualified enough to do that; but also know your limitations. So doing things like attending a Mental Health First Aid course, for instance really helps you to support your team. I would recommend everyone within the team be trained in mental health first aid. However, you should also understand the limitations of what that provides you with. It doesn’t suddenly make you a counsellor overnight.

You’re likely to have people who will be early adopters towards change, so they will embrace the change. I would also get them on side to almost be a change champion to promote that change. You’ll also have people who will possibly resist the change. In that case, I would schedule things like one-to-ones with those people, to try to find the root cause of their resistance and try to work with that person to come to a compromise that suits everybody.

Zoe: Thank you, Rick. Following on from your point about mental health first aid courses, at Practice Plan we appreciate how valuable they are, which is why our practices can gain access to subsidised courses as part of the additional support we offer.

Thank you both for your insights.