Tiffany And Co Online ‘Til death do us (employers

0411dfhrr

v class="googleright">
This is a great quote from Dilbert: In Japan, employees occasionally work themselves to death. It's called Karoshi. I don't want that to happen to anybody in my department. The trick is to take a break as soon as you hear a bright light and hear dead relatives beckon.”
Just recently I have been wondering whether there is a secret government plan to adopt a Karoshi-type approach for UK employers it would save a fortune on pensions!
This morning I was up and getting ready for work at about 5am. This isn’t especially unusual. I often finish work at about 10pm. My average working week is around 85 hours. I am regularly accused of being a workaholic by my long-suffering partner. And I’ve noticed that my team refer to me as a sort of clever performing animal (“she never seems to sleep you know!”). While it’s true that I enjoy the work I do, the intellectual challenge and the fantastic people I meet as a result of the work, I’m not doing these sorts of ridiculous hours because I want to but because, if I want my business to succeed (and I do), I have to; nobody else will. I could choose to cut down the hours to a mere 40 a week. If I did my business would fail and I would have to get a proper job. Believe me,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], when you’re at the stage of growing a business, you work amazingly hard.
As I got ready this morning, I considered a theory that has started to form in my mind in recent months. I have concluded that employers are being treated as cash cows.
My HR and employment law training consultancy is now in its 13th year. As a one-woman band for ten years the business developed and became hugely busy. For almost three years now, I have been trying to bring in new team members and to develop the business in a stable, planned way. But it’s been three years of almost continuous frustration. In the last 12 months, I have realised that I’ve never worked harder and I’ve never been poorer. Employees are the root of the problem. The combination of me wanting to be a good employer, punitive NICs (legally extorted by HMRC) and employees wanting to be paid a good wage, but still have life-work balance means that some poor sod has to do a disproportionate amount of work for a disproportionately small return to make sure that work’s coming in and being delivered. And guess who that is? It’s not the workers who are oppressed in my business, it’s the boss!
I have no axe to grind with my team, who are technically good, diligent,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], committed and personally delightful. My gripe is with the government (both the Coalition and the outgoing Labour one) and I am rebelling. If I’m going to work this hard,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], then I want to enjoy the results, rather than give it straight to the government and my staff,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], while wondering how I’m going to pay my bills.
Successive increases in employee rights (awarded magnanimously by profligate Governments but paid for by employers) have pushed me to the stage where I have decided to restructure, with a consequent loss