News from HQ

NEWS FROM HQ HQ sports club

Ever thought of getting your club listed as a community asset? Well Communities Minister Marcus Jones thinks you should. Here he explains why, and how it could protect your club. In April the Government’s new Minimum Living Wage was introduced. HQ provides a refresher on both the new measure for over 25 year olds, as well as the current Minimum Wage bands. Still on employment, and with suggestions that a two-week sickness selfcertification might be in the offing, it’s now more important than ever to make sure you have the happiest team you possibly can, filled with enthusiasm and looking forward to another day at the club. Also: risk assessment, feedback footprints and avoiding IT fraud. List your club as a community asset

Communities Minister Marcus Jones has called on supporters and councils to up their game and do more to help boost sport locally by listing their grounds and clubs as Community Assets.

Since 2012, community groups have had the right to help protect sports facilities and other much-loved local buildings or land by listing them as Community Assets. More than 3,000 assets are now listed. This means that an owner cannot sell a ground or stadium, pavilion or pitch without a supporters group knowing about it or having the chance to put together a bid to buy it on behalf of the community.

“Clubs are rooted in their communities and many supporters’ trusts around the country have been exercising their rights and having more of a say in how their grounds and stadiums are run,” said Marcus Jones. “Taking control can not only secure their future, but it can also help them to grow and develop new commercial opportunities that help boost local economies.”

Community Asset kits have now been made available to supporters to give them more of a say over their clubs and their grounds future.

“I want to see more sports fans up their game by converting their community rights to ensure that their clubs and grounds remain at the heart of their local sporting communities,” said Jones.

Oxford United Supporters Trust was the first club to make use of the scheme, listing the Kassam stadium in May 2013 and more recently Tewkesbury Rugby Club listed their club as an Asset of Community Value with their local council.

In 2014, Plymouth Council handed over the 22 acre Horsham Playing Fields to the trustees of Plymstock Albion Oaks Rugby Football Club.

The transfer to community control provided the club with a platform to attract investment and the club is now going from strength to strength, securing lottery funding for a new pavilion, sealing a kit deal for all of their 16 teams and gaining promotion to the Cornwall-Devon League.

“No one wants to see their sports club kicked into touch so why not follow the examples of Tewkesbury Rugby Club and Plymstock Albion Oaks and explore the range of support and help available,” said Jones.

Marcus Jones Oxford United Supporters Trust

Tewkesbury Rugby Club

• To list your club as a community asset, visit www.mycommunityrights.org.uk

National Living Wage update

The government’s National Living Wage is now law. The National Living Wage is higher than the National Minimum Wage; anyone aged 25 or over is now legally entitled to at least £7.20 per hour (unless they are in the first year of an apprenticeship). The minimum wage will still apply for workers aged 24 and under.

Current rates

These rates (see box below) are for the National Living Wage and the National Minimum Wage which came into operation from 1 April, 2016.

The National Minimum Wage rates change every October. National Living Wage rates change every April.

The ‘apprentice’ rate is for apprentices aged 16 to 18 and those aged 19 or over who are in their first year. All other apprentices are entitled to the minimum wage for their age. arrears immediately. (You can visit the Government’s online calculator to work our arrears: visit https://www.gov.uk/minimum-wagecalculator-employers)

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) officers have the right to carry out checks at any time and ask to see payment records. They can also investigate employers if a worker complains to them. If HMRC finds that an employer hasn’t been paying the correct rates, any arrears have to be paid back immediately. There will also be a fine and offenders might be named by the government.

It’s the employer’s responsibility to keep records proving that they are paying the minimum wage –most employers use their payroll records as proof. All records have to be kept for three years.

National Living Wage and National Minimum Wage

25 and over 21 to 24 18 to 20 Under 18 Apprentice £7.20 £6.70 £5.30 £3.87 £3.30

Employer checks

It’s a criminal offence for employers not to pay someone the National Minimum Wage or National Living Wage, or to fake payment records. Any employer who discovers they’ve paid a worker below the correct minimum wage must pay any

Pay reference periods

Pay reference periods are usually set by how often someone is paid, e.g. one week, one month or 10 days. A pay reference period can’t be longer than 31 days.

A worker must be paid the minimum wage, on average, for the time worked in the pay reference period. The minimum wage is calculated differently for some types of worker.

What’s not included in minimum wage calculations

Some payments made by workers must not be included when the minimum wage is calculated. These are: •Payments that shouldn’t be included for the employer’s own use or benefit (e.g.: if the employer has paid for travel to work ). •Things the worker bought for the job and isn’t refunded (e.g. tools, uniform, safety equipment etc).

What’s included in minimum wage calculations

Some payments must be included when the minimum wage is calculated. These are: •Income Tax and National Insurance contributions. •Wage advances or loans. •Repayment of wage advances or loans . •Repayment of overpaid wages. •Things the worker paid for that are not needed for the job or paid for voluntarily (e.g. meals). •Accommodation provided by the employer above the offset rate (£5.35 a day or £37.45 a week) –visit https://www.gov.uk/nationalminimum-wage-accommodation for more detailed information. •Penalty charges for a worker’s misconduct .

• For more information visit www.gov.uk/national-minimum-wage-rates

Top tips for reducing staff sick days

An estimated 375,000 British workers took the day off sick on February 1, dubbed ‘National Sickie Day’. So what could employers be doing to help make club staff want to come in to work?

Janice Haddon, MD of Morgan Redwood and Thrive in Life 360, says: “At some point in their lives a lot of people have experienced the feeling that they can’t bear the thought of going to work and ‘pull a sickie’ to get out of it. Often this is down to the culture of the workplace they find themselves in. But there are a number of steps that can be taken that will result in less sick days and a more enthusiastic approach to work.”

Top Tips

1.Communicate. People like to be kept informed and to understand the vision and purpose of the organisation. Ensure people are kept up to date with progress and how their role contributes to this success. 2.Ensure HR and People Policies are up to date and provide for training and development with an environment free from harassment and bullying. 3.Look to flexible working with a variation of contractual hours and roles. 4.Have the right competency framework and performance management processes in place. Set goals and targets for individuals and review regularly. It’s a great way to check in with someone’s needs. 5.Make sure managers have the right leadership qualities. Research shows the biggest cause of stress for employees is the manager subordinate relationship. Train manager’s skills and review them regularly. Coaching is a great way of ensuring the development of high performance in managers. 6.In recent research by Morgan Redwood, work-life balance was the number one contributor to morale. Ensure you get it right for staff, bearing in mind what works for one might not work for someone else. 7.Wellbeing is another area at the top of the list in supporting morale for employees. This isn’t simply rebadging health and safety; it’s about genuinely helping staff to build up their resilience lev-

els for mental and emotional needs as well as physical and nutritional. 8.Provide staff with encouragement and support for getting active –this could include encouraging them to join in exercise classes or funding bicycles for them to cycle to work etc. 9.Relaxation is a fundamental part of our wellbeing.

Be an organisation that helps people to learn how to switch off. 10.Build in suggestion schemes, awards for a job well done, social and family events. Bring your employees together and build teamwork so you create a strong culture that everyone can connect to.

“The steps to a better workplace culture are simple ones, but ones that can prove extremely effective when combined. You don’t have to implement all of the steps to notice a difference, even just a few will go some way to improving the overall culture,” says Janice. “Make your workplace one that people are enthusiastic about being part of and you’ll make unnecessary sick days, if not a thing of the past, then certainly a rare occurrence.”

Healthandsafety–riskassessment

Risk assessment is a legal requirement. As part of managing the health and safety of your club, risks in the workplace must be controlled. This means assessing what might cause harm to people and deciding whether you are taking reasonable steps to prevent that harm. (Please note: if the club employs less than five employees there’s no need to write anything down, according to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).)

A risk assessment is not about creating huge amounts of paperwork, but rather about identifying sensible measures to control the risks in the workplace. Your club is probably already taking steps to protect employees, but a risk assessment will help you to decide whether you have covered all you need to.

Things to think about

Think about how accidents and ill health could happen and concentrate on real risks –those that are most likely and which will cause the most harm. For some risks, other regulations require particular control measures. Your assessment can help you identify where you need to look at certain risks and these particular control measures in more detail. These control measures do not have to be assessed separately but can be considered as part of, or an extension of, your overall risk assessment.

How to assess the risks in your club

•Identify the hazards •Decide who might be harmed and how •Evaluate the risks and decide on precautions •Record your significant findings •Review your assessment and update if necessary

Many organisations who are confident that they understand what’s involved can do the assessment themselves, says the HSE. You don’t have to be a health and safety expert.

When thinking about your risk assessment, remember: •A hazard is anything that may cause harm, such as chemicals, electricity, working from ladders, an open drawer etc. •The risk is the chance, high or low, that somebody could be harmed by these and other hazards, together with an indication of how serious the harm could be.

• www.hse.gov.uk

Are youexploitingyourfeedback?

Have you any idea about the size of your ‘feedback footprint’? We hear so much about our ‘carbon footprint’, but it appears that many businesses in the UK have no idea what a feedback footprint is –which means they are in no position to exploit it.

The big issue is ‘offline feedback’ –that’s the stuff you won’t find online, and those who are unaware of the size, scale and impact of their feedback footprint are damaging the health of their business.

Feedback can come from anywhere: the bar, reception desk, online, but because most businesses are unsure about how to capture such valuable information, they are, in effect, operating in a ‘feedback vacuum’.

Feedback, however, is important because today’s consumer rarely spends money on anything –from buying tickets to hiring a function suite at a club –without some kind of due diligence being involved. In most cases this will mean searching online and web-surfing.

A feedback footprint will help set an expectation of the product or service members will experience. Failure to live up to that experience will potentially lead to disappointed members going somewhere else in the future.

These five steps should help: • Get a member’s-eye view of both your on- and offline feedback footprint by scanning Google,

YouTube, Twitter and any relevant industry review sites –this will give you an immediate snapshot of your online feedback footprint. • While customer comment cards have their place, consumers are suffering from ‘survey fatigue’.

The key is to capture all ad hoc verbatim comments about your business and have a way of centrally storing and analysing them. • Don’t assume that social media is just about PR and marketing; it’s not. It’s also an excellent customer feedback mechanism. •Encourage your members to share their feedback online and use positive offline feedback to fuel online feedback channels. • Share offline feedback online and online feedback offline.

STOP PRESS:

Already online and on the ball? Then enter the Hospitality Social Media Awards. Turn to page 42 in this issue.

Top tips on IT fraud prevention

To help businesses prepare for the prospect of fraud, UKFraud.co.uk believes that the most useful steps that can be taken include: 1. Ensure that any people using the club website, emails and/or databases understand the technical risks and know how to protect your club from attacks, theft of customer information and infiltration. Customer details and payment details are the most ‘at risk’ data; access security is the most important to the police. 2. Remember that even with the best systems in

the world, one of the weakest points of vulnerability is always the people using the systems, as they can easily be misled or conned. Ensure that users have strong advice and warnings of any potential dangers. Also make sure that staff cannot access sensitive areas of your systems without proper controls and that whatever they do is stored and available for audit. 3. Look at your processes for weaknesses. These include: paper that need not be used, access to unnecessary data, who can access what and why people may need to access such details.

Ensure that people have what they need to do their jobs, but no more. 4. Make sure that your anti-fraud efforts are not just ‘after the event’ investigation-led. Ensure that you set deterrents and prevention. You should consider deploying early detection processes, systems, solutions and technology and that when you see a problem you take action to fix it properly and permanently. 5. And finally, if you employ a fraud specialist, make sure that they have the ability to take action and change the business for the better. <

KingstonePress–meettheCiderMaker

With spring turning into summer, and cider orchards bursting into blossom we caught up with Kingstone Press’ Head Cider Maker Rod Clifford to find out about this special time of year.

How long have you been making cider?

I’ve been in the cider industry for almost 40 years and have been making Kingstone Press Cider for about nine years. I oversee the entire process from husbandry of the orchards through to enjoying a glass of the finished product!

What’s your favourite thing about being a cider maker?

Making cider has been a passion of mine for a long time. I really enjoy being in the heart of the orchards and seeing our trees flourish and the fruit grow.

How do you prepare for blossom time to get the best results?

Blossom time is when we see the fruits of our labour since the end of the last harvest in October. To prepare for blossom time, our farmers prune the trees during the winter months so when spring comes, more light can reach the trees. This helps to stimulate new wood growth and allows the fruit buds to get enough light to grow.

How many different apple varieties are you growing?

We grow over 15 different varieties of dessert and bittersweet apple varieties to provide us with a variety of different taste characteristics to blend and create the most flavoursome ciders.

The blend for Kingstone Press includes four different varieties of bittersweets from our local orchards across Herefordshire and Worcestershire –Dabinett, Michelin, Gilly and Ashton Bitter.

So how do licences get involved with Kingstone Press?

Kingstone Press Ciders are available exclusively through our exclusive partner –Marston’s. You can contact their dedicated customer services team on 0800 587 0773 or if you are an existing customer contact your sales representative to discuss install today.

REFRESHING FACTS

• Our Head Cider Maker Rod Clifford is also

Head of the NACM (National Association of

Cider Makers) Pomology Group –leading the work to develop the UK’s cider orchards. • We have over 1,000 acres of orchards with over 25 different growers and provide 25-year contracts to secure the best quality fruit for our ciders.

• Our new orchards have over 400,000 young trees which will take 10 years to reach full maturity. • Beekeepers can use our orchards for free to house their beehives to help pollenate our apple blossoms and provide an abundant supply of nectar.

www.kingstonepress.co.uk