Oh dear, yet more employment legislation! The Government that claims it wants to help business strikes again!

Let me begin by saying that in 2008 any business that is able to be and doesn’t have a flexible approach to its staff is missing a trick. Good employers, generally, have a more effective workforce and reduce costs by retaining them for longer. If being flexible helps an employee, and doesn’t have a deleterious impact on the business, surely it makes sense to be so. Good employers have long since recognised the benefits of being flexible and therefore there is no need to introduce legislation to make them be so. It leads to better performance and gives them edge over those who are not.

The problem with legislation is that it has a disproportionate impact on smaller businesses and takes away the ability to apply commonsense. It must also be said that it does not discriminate between good and bad employers. Good employers will follow it diligently but nevertheless occasionally end up facing the unfairness of Industrial Tribunals and, in any case, incur the additional costs of implementation. Frankly, bad employers will ignore it.

It seems to me that this government has got so wound up with political correctness and an apparent wish to interfere in all aspects of our day to day life it has failed to understand that reasonable people can rub along perfectly well without their constant intervention. Legislation may keep some people on the rails but at the end of the day most of us will be good (most of the time) and some people will be bad. We do not require the State to constantly tell us what is right and wrong and how to behave.

Since it came to power in 1997 this Government has stated that it wants to support business – at best it has been inconsistent. I am not sure that this legislation would be welcome at anytime but at a time when business people across the country are trying everything they know to sustain a future for their businesses the announcement of yet more legislation should be condemned. It really does appear that the only answer this government has to life’s challenges is yet more legislation.

To paraphrase Albert Einstein “Continuing to do the same thing and expecting a different outcome is a sign of madness”.