Caught between a rock and a hard case

Friday 27 April 2018

Next time you are facing a tough call, spare a thought for the Employment Forum. Each year they have to make a recommendation on the island’s minimum wage – which means they are likely to be castigated by staff for not setting it high enough, and by employers for being too generous.

Or what about other employment law changes such as the introduction of better ‘family friendly’ rights? What might be fine for a global multi-national with a dedicated HR team to implement all the changes, might be the last straw for a small business with tight profit margins, and an owner/manager responsible for everything from emptying the bins to bringing in the business.

In some ways, whatever you decide will be ‘wrong’ for someone. Which means the word “balance” is going to be something you cling to very tightly, as Express discovered when speaking to Helen Ruelle, the Chair of the Employment Forum, to find out how they go about making their decisions on issues which affect all staff, and employers in Jersey.

Helen Ruelle: The Forum is a non-political, independent body. It’s been in place for 19 years so it’s a very well-established body made up of nine members. Three employer reps, three employee reps and three independent members. Although when we say “representing”, yes, they are taken from those backgrounds so when we recruit to the Forum, we’re looking for people who have experience from those areas. So, for example, the employee reps would come predominantly from people, say, who have come from Union backgrounds - they might have been a representative of their Unions or from employee associations, but there not there to represent the views of those associations.

Similarly, with employer reps, they are there to bring the experience that they have, so they would traditionally be people who have got experience in business and have been employers. We are there to consult on, and make recommendations to the Minister for Social Security, in relation to the minimum wage, but also in relation to other things that the Minister might direct us to consult upon. We consider that direction and we have an ability to think about how we take that direction forward.

So, how do we consult upon that? We gather evidence that we think we need to make the recommendation, and then we make the recommendation back. It’s then for the Minister to decide whether he or she accepts the recommendation, and whether that is then taken forward to the States to become Law, or whatever it might be that needs to be done.

Pictured: The Employment Forum is based at the Social Security department.

Express: What’s on the agenda for this year?
Helen Ruelle: Sometimes it can be a real juggling process, depending on what we have. So, the Minimum Wage, yes, is on the agenda for this year, but we don’t know yet what else is on the agenda because we haven’t got any other direction yet from the Minister - and obviously this year it’s a bit more uncertain because obviously we’ve got elections coming up. We will wait and see what comes forward.

Express: Once you’ve received that direction from the Minister, how do you reach a final decision?
Helen Ruelle: For example, if you look at one of our recent topics like Family Friendly, that was an enormous topic and that took us a year to consider. That was a big piece of work. The first thing we would do is think about how big is this topic? How much work do we need to do? We would effectively plan it like a project. What’s our timetable? How much time do we need for the consultation? How are we going to consult? Who do we need to talk to? And then we would start to think about designing the consultation. What sort of questions do we think we need to ask? Who do we need to reach? 

We have a database with about 300 people so that’s evolved obviously over time. Over 19 years that’s grown and it’s a great database. That’s always our starting point, but obviously depending on the subject as well, we would want to think about whether there are other groups of people we want to get out to. One of our aims is always how do we get a really good consultation response? We would be talking to people promoting the consultation, doing all of those things. We would be having stakeholder meetings, we are always very keen to meet people who want to come into the Forum to talk to us.

For example, a lot of the Trade Associations like to come in to speak to the Forum. But we also gather evidence from other areas. On Minimum Wage, we would always meet with the Stats Unit. They would come in with the economic evidence to talk to us about things like that. So, when we are gathering information, it’s from all sorts of sources, not just the consultation response.

Pictured: Helen Ruelle says that so far the Minimum Wage is the only thing on the Employment Forum's agenda for this year.

Express: How do you balance conflicting responses?
Helen Ruelle: It is always a balancing exercise. There is no doubt about that and that is what we do. For the Forum, it is never about “he who shouts loudest gets their way.” It’s not about the most forceful, recurrent, voice is the right answer and it certainly isn’t statistical - “a 100 people said they want x therefore x is the winner.” It is all about balance. It’s all about gathering all of the evidence together and looking at that in the round. It isn’t a case of a saying somebody’s more important than another. It is just a balancing exercise and we have to make a judgement when we look at all of the responses. We have to make a judgement when we look at everything in the round and that’s why sometimes these things take a long time and are difficult. What we find is really helpful in consultation responses is when people give us reasons for their responses.

So, for example, when we did the Family Friendly consultation. We found that we got a lot of really good reasoned responses, and when you get those that makes things a lot easier for us. Because when people explain their reasons, when people give their views and their reasons, rather than just ticking boxes, that really helps us because then we understand.

Express: Does the Forum have specific objectives to guide it?
Helen Ruelle: When we’re doing the Minimum Wage, we have statutory obligations. We have things that we have to take into account.

Express: How do you balance the needs of major multi-nationals and small local businesses?
Helen Ruelle: We do absolutely discuss that and those are the sorts of deliberations that the Forum has. In the same way we talk about how does this affect employees and employers, we talk about how does this affect a large business and small business?

Again, when we’re looking at Minimum Wage for example, it’s really helpful to hear from Minimum Wage paying businesses for example because those are the businesses that are really affected. In the same way it’s really helpful to hear from employees who are paid the Minimum Wage.

Pictured: "It’s not about the most forceful, recurrent, voice is the right answer and it certainly isn’t statistical," says Helen Ruelle.

Express: How would you reassure small businesses owners that their input is being recognised by the Forum?
Helen Ruelle: Firstly, I would encourage anybody that feels they are concerned by anything the Forum is considering to respond to the consultation. That would be my first thing. And that can either be directly to the consultation, or to come and speak to the Forum. There are so many ways that they can respond.

But the Forum is a really experienced body, and we think that we are pretty sophisticated in our deliberations. We’ve been doing this a long time and we think that we are good, very good, at what we do, and we are very aware of the dynamics of the Jersey market, and that we do absolutely take all of these issues into account, and we really balance all of everybody’s concerns and considerations.

The trade associations represent views to the Forum as well. You know, we always have consultation responses from the trade associations like the Chamber of Commerce, the Jersey Hospitality Association, the Farmers’ Union. So, I think business is well represented before the Forum but, as I say, I think, we’re conscious of balancing everybody’s interests.

This interview appears in the March edition of Connect Magazine. Click here to read it.