The lessons to learn from the FA’s handling of the Eva Carneiro case

The lessons to learn from the FA’s handling of the Eva Carneiro case

As I’m sure you’ve all read, the Football Association this week decided that Joe Mourinho, the Chelsea boss, had no case to answer to in regard to the alleged discriminatory comments that he made towards the team’s Doctor, Eva Carneiro.

Jose Mourinho was alleged to have made discriminatory remarks and comments towards Eva Carneiro during Chelsea’s first home game of the season. She ran on to the field of play to treat Eden Hazard after he had been injured during the game. Mourinho felt that she was naïve in her attempts and subsequently removed her from all first team duties. Last Month Eva Carneiro left Chelsea football club.

So what can we learn from an employee and employment aspect here.

1. When Eva Carneiro ran on to the field, she was doing her job! Let’s be very clear about this, her role as the first team doctor is to ensure the physical well being of the players on the pitch. Her role is not to assess the likelihood that Eden Hazard is making a meal of it and how many players Chelsea have on the pitch – the role of the team doctor at Chelase is clearly different. 
2. The FA are clearly not interested in finding out exactly what happened here which is made clearer by the fact that at no point during the process has the Football Association asked Eva Carneiro to give evidence. Any normal Tribunal will look for real evidence before a decision is made. Clearly not the case here with the Football Association (which, let’s be honest, is broken beyond all repair)
3. Chelsea must have a very thin EmployeeHandbook- surely this team of incident, in terms of how it is handled should be detailed somewhere in the organization. A normal business will have a handbook of policies and procedures to cover such eventualities.
4. Is football so corrupt and focused on money, that it is quite happy to publicly state that they have not offered a fair hearing? Unfortunately I think so!

Now, I don’t believe this is the last we will hear about this. No doubt there will be stories that come out about back hand payments and so on, but one thing is clear.

Any business that has a concise EmployeeHandbook will be able to handle this type of situation significantly better than the Football Association and Chelsea!

Why Do You Need An Employee Handbook?

One of the most common questions we are asked by business owners when they are in the lucky position of starting to take on board their first employees is a simple one. Well, the question is simple however the answer is not quite so simple.

And the question is this:

“We’re just about to take on our first member if staff, and hopefully our first of many. 

 

What do we need to do?

 

And when do we or should we need to do it?

 

I’ve heard that we need an Employee Handbook but we don’t know what needs to be in it”

The simple answer to the question is; “Yes. If you are going to be hiring staff for your business, you need a handbook”

An Employee Handbook sets out from day one what expectations your company has of it’s staff and avoids confusion about how things are to be done. By avoiding uncertainty in personnel issues also gives confidence and pride to your staff about the business they work for and represent and increases overall productivity and motivation.

Now to start, one of the main areas that needs to be considered here is exactly what type of company you are, and by this I don’t mean what industry are you in, but what type of culture do you want to breed and spread amongst your employees.

The answer to whether you need to have a full blown Employee Handbook or whether you can provide more simplified version that covers the man policies and procedures for your business really depends on the answer to the above.

Very often small businesses use the Employee Handbook during the on-boarding process, for new employees to provide them with further information about the business, tell them where local sandwich shops, pubs and amenities are and generally see it as an ‘Introduction to their company’, which will then be supplemented by a general summary of the companies more formal business practices and policies.

Of course, there would still require to be detailed policies and practices backing this up that all employees would need to have access to when they need it, particularly the ones covering the key areas and statutory legislation such as Maternity.

The other option is to have a much more formal, detailed Employee Handbook that your provide to each employee when they join your company that spells out in detail all aspects of businesses policies and practices.

Whichever way you businesses decides to go, the Employee Handbook is without doubt, the best way of communicating your businesses expectations and obligations and implementing them.

They key policy areas that you will want to consider for the makeup of your Employee handbook include:

•    Adoption Policy and Procedure
•    Alcohol, Drug and other Substance Abuse Policy
•    Capability Policy and Procedure
•    Data Protection Policy and Procedure
•    Disability Policy and Procedure
•    Disciplinary Policy and Procedure
•    Equal Opportunities Policy
•    Flexible Working Policy and Procedure
•    Grievance Policy and Procedure
•    Harassment Policy and Procedure
•    Health & Safety Policy
•    Holiday Policy and Procedure
•    Maternity Policy and procedure
•    Parental Policy and Procedure
•    Paternity Policy and Procedure
•    Prevention of Illegal Working Policy
•    Shared Parental Leave Policy and Procedure (Birth)
•    Shared Parental Leave Policy and Procedure (Adoption)
•    Sickness Absence Policy and Procedure
•    Social Media Policy and Procedure
•    Special Leave Policy and Procedure

Whichever path you decide to go down, you must remember to be consistent in the way in which you apply the procedures so that your staff are confident that they will always be treated fairly, no matter what the situation.