First Tuesday Q&A

We work in a very dangerous environment with knives and machinery and want to implement a drug & alcohol policy that would allow for random, with cause and pre-employment testing. Can we do this with Union agreement and without the consent of each employee?

Are organisations required to provide feedback to unsuccessful candidates? Can we have a policy which states feedback will only be provided to candidates who reach the final round interview?

Must a staff handbook be provided in hard copy or is it sufficient to refer employees to policies on your company’s intranet?

With the increasing use of mobile devices, we want to issue guidelines with regards to staff responsibilities about protecting the information on them. A staff member recently had her laptop stolen and we feel it would be prudent to ask her to submit a report regarding the type of information she had stored on it so we can make an assessment with regards to privacy, data protection etc. We are also questioning whether she should claim for this on her own insurance as she had been careless with its storage.

We have over the last two years begun to use Twitter and Facebook as a big communication tool with our customers, with live chat going on around specific events. We have issued a policy for staff but are unsure how best to regulate staff participation in these communications from their private accounts, as we were concerned that to prevent communication from their own private accounts might be an infringement of staff individual rights outside work.

Rumours that one of the staff in our organisation is having an affair with another employee is causing concern to the manager of one of the parties. Both of the individuals are married and do not work in the same area. The manager is concerned on a number of fronts:

1. the female is at a junior grade, whereas the male is a management grade, and
2. the amount of time the individuals spend calling in and out of each other's offices during the day.

The manager feels this it is causing a disruption to other staff and it is becoming a talking point in the organisation. While the manager does not see his role as a moral guardian to either party and has no proof that an affair is taking place, all of the actions of both parties, and general rumour, indicate this is the case.

Is it in order to confront the parties on the issue or how should we proceed?

An employee has been receiving an additional payment from 2003 to date for additional duties/responsibilities. We have withdrawn this from 31st December 2011 as it does not meet Policy/Procedures. The question is: may an allowance be withdrawn without any negotiations/discussions?

If we have been using the ‘old’ grievance procedures for period of time rather than new LRA code, how will that be viewed by Tribunal, or is the most important thing that we followed a procedure, rather than nothing?

Employee searches – what does signed consent mean? And what if the employee subsequently refuses to be searched?

If an employer acquiesces to an employee's request for flexibility in their working hours either by reduction or by change in start/finish times, are they setting a precedent or can they treat these requests on a case by case basis? We recently did this for an employee and it caused major discussion amongst other employees whose requests had been refused due to the inability of the Company to accommodate them, words like favouritism and preferential treatment were used. Is this something the Company should have a written procedure on? Also where the Company permits this flexibility should they stipulate a review period where they can decide to revert the working hours back to the contractual one?