A new partnership has been entered into between Teysha
Technologies and the Kind Planet Company, empowering women and placing women in
rural Africa at the forefront of ethical and environmentally friendly materials
innovation.

The Kind Planet Company produces a comprehensive range of
skincare products using 100% organic ingredients that are exclusively
cultivated, picked, processed and packaged across 43 farms by women in Ghana in
West Africa. The women are not only provided with everything they require to
cultivate the fruits, but also taught invaluable land management skills that can
help them run profitable businesses.

Teysha has introduced its patented technology to produce
lids for the packaging that are fully biodegradable and created from natural
waste products. Matthew
Stone, Teysha Technologies’ Managing Director, stated that the company was committed
to producing environmentally friendly, ethical products that meet
sustainability demands.

Teysha Technologies patented platform has the potential to
revolutionise the global packaging industry, which currently contributes
towards the 8 million items of plastic that end up in seas and waterways around
the world each day. Matthew Stone commented that Teysha had made the decision
to go right back to the original source not only of the packaging but of the
products inside.

The choice to partner with the Kind Planet Company was made
in support of the empowerment of women in Africa and other communities in
developing nations. Teysha as a company has strong female representation from
the highest level, so the ethos of the Kind Planet Company resonated with its
existing business values.

The partnership was finalised and announced in August 2020.
Teysha is now working on developing a prototype for a full range of
biodegradable packaging lids to be used across the exclusive skincare product
portfolio of the Kind Planet Company. Once a prototype has been approved
product testing will commence, with plans to begin full scale production and
manufacture in 2021. This will happen under the leadership of Duncan
Clark, Teysha Technologies’ Head of Business Operations.

If you’re reading as an employer, we’re glad to have you here. As an employer, you will come across several situations at work when employees will claim the work injury. In such a situation, you will need to make sure that they are paid the wages and medical expenses. Failing to act on the request of an employee might get you in trouble. Here, in this guide, we will help you in sifting through a situation when employees demand work injury claims.

Here are a few steps that you need to
take:

1.      Inform the
Insurer

In the beginning, you need to pay the
daily or monthly wage to the employee. This way, you won’t get in trouble if
the court hounds you. As an employer, it is your responsibility to make sure
that the company isn’t unfair to the victim.

2.      Take Them to
The Hospital

If your employee has experienced a
serious injury, you must rush them to the hospital as soon as possible.
Especially if you live in a locality where the ambulance service isn’t
hands-on, it is imperative that you rush the victim to the medical facility
real quick.

3.      Keep a copy of
the Medical documents

As an employer, you need to have a
stronghold over the medical documents. There have been cases in the past when
employees demanded way more than the actual medical expense.

If your worker has a work permit, you
need to take care of them to the fullest. This is because failing to attend the
victim will give you a bad reputation. However, if the worker doesn’t have a
work permit, you don’t need to be omnipresent for them in the medical facility.
Not to forget, employees can file the compensation within the 1^st
year of the accident, so you need to have copies of all important documents.
Don’t forget to sift through the guide to accidents at
work
for more information.

As an employer, you will have to
frequently pay the monthly wage to the employee, even if the insurance money
hasn’t been paid. However, you don’t need to worry because the insurance company
will take care of the money you will pay after the damage has been done.

How to report the Accident?

When an accident happens on the site, most employers begin to panic and know nothing about handling the situation. As an employer, you must know,  it is important to report work-related accidents within the first ten days of the occurrence. Please make a report of whatever happened on the site, send it to the concerned department and the insurance company asap. Don’t panic if the accident was caused because of the company’s fault. If you have a top-notch lawyer by your side, they will make sure the company doesn’t have to pay more than what the employees deserve. Most employees tend to exaggerate the situation, which is why the insurance company has to pay a lot of money. As an employer, you will need to take control of the situation before things get worse.

Speculative trading during the recent
coronavirus pandemic has been like nothing the markets have experienced in the
past several decades. Not since the late 1980s, in fact, have so many people
made such large profits in short time frames. Why? The primary reason for the
recent volatility is directly related to uncertainty surrounding the virus. In
the early months of 2020, no one could make a guess about whether there would
be a vaccine, cure, or treatment of any kind. Nor did medical experts have a
clue about how long the pandemic would last.

Now that most of the world is slowly
beginning to return to normal, the global economy is inching back to something
like a normal state of affairs, even though there will likely be some deeply
permanent effects on various market sectors. But for investors, there are some
profound lessons. One is that commodities trading has the potential to deliver
quite large profits for those who are willing to learn how to trade real assets
as opposed to corporate shares of stock. The other lesson is that once you find
a CFD trading broker, it’s
possible to participate in the commodity sector with very little red tape, low margins,
and simple ordering methods. CFDs, contracts for difference, represent a
uniquely simple way for ordinary investors to trade just about anything,
including asset-based vehicles like gold, silver, cattle, oil, and wheat.

Wild Price Action

During the COVID viral crisis, which is
ongoing as of late 2020, many investors took advantage of the wild price swings
in all segments of the market, including corporate stock shares, commodities
like gold and oil, international currencies, and forex currency pairs. No part
of the global trading marketplace was untouched by the crisis, which send
industrial production and employment to lows not seen in more than 50 years.
For sharp-eyed investors who refused to lose their composure, this dip in the
price of virtually everything represented a unique
chance to buy all sorts of securities, assets, commodities, bonds, and real
estate at bargain-basement prices.

And now prices are beginning to swing in
the other direction, upward in most cases, those who bought in at super-low
levels are reaping the rewards. But there are still all sorts of opportunities
for anyone who wants to take part because the crisis isn’t over yet. For
example, the per-barrel price of oil is not yet back to its pre-COVID levels
and still has quite a ways to go. The same can be said for many other
commodities and corporate stock shares.

Gold as an Example

During the pandemic, the most popular precious
metal, gold, reached new heights, notching well past the $2,000 mark for the
first time in history as speculators and long-term investors sought out the
yellow metal as both a safe haven against economic uncertainly and as a way to make
fast profits on the sharp swings in value. After a pullback from those
historic highs, both gold and silver continue to offer profit potential for
anyone willing to speculate on further rises or drops in the value of those
precious commodities.

Major Opportunities

Why are there opportunities in times of
crisis? COVID might be unique in many ways but it’s certainly not the first
financial or economic crisis to come along. For more than a century, attentive
investors have watched prices surge and dip during uncertain times, which
typically occur during wars, political turmoil, natural disasters, credit
crunches, real estate gluts or scarcity, and other events that have the
potential to deeply affect the international economy. But, as every watchful
trading enthusiast knows, whenever prices drop precipitously or rise
unexpectedly, there’s almost invariably a reaction and eventual return to the
norm. No one can ever predict with absolute certainty how long it will take for
stability to return, but the point is that it almost always does return. Buying
during huge price dips and selling during upward spikes can be a smart path to
profits.

Advantages of Contracts for Difference (CFDs)

One of the ways people can take part in any
of the financial markets is via CFDs, also known as contracts for difference.
These simple to use vehicles allow people of varying experience and background
to buy and sell just about anything you can imagine, from stocks, bonds, and
options to index funds, futures, and commodities. There are many advantages of
using CFDs. They include the ability to make transactions with very low margin.
That means you can leverage a very small amount of funds to control a rather
large investment.

Redundancy
is a challenging, emotionally-charged process that no business leader or owner
wants to face. However, the Coronavirus pandemic has brought challenges to all organisations
from large corporates to the smallest SMEs, and for many, restructuring and
redundancy may be the only option.

In
times of crisis, businesses go through three phases – Survive, Reset, Thrive.

The
survive phase saw us all getting by day by day to get the job done, in many
cases supported by the Government’s COVID-19 furlough scheme to keep staff in
employment.

Most
businesses will have now moved on to the Reset
phase. This is where plans must be developed, and very difficult decisions
made, to put the organisation in the best possible position to thrive in the
future.

Unfortunately,
there may be a need for fundamental changes to staffing – and support from
expert redundancy HR specialists can be required to achieve this. Even large
companies with their own HR teams may require specialist
restructuring and redundancy HR support, particularly if they are
preparing to make a large number of redundancies.

Before
taking any action, it is crucial to understand what redundancy means, the legal
process required, and the pitfalls that can be encountered along the way.

What are
restructuring and redundancy?

This
may sound like a straightforward question, but many employers struggle to
understand it. First of all, there is no legal definition of restructuring and
redundancy and the term restructuring may in fact cover a range of options such
as reduced hours, lay-offs and changes to pay and contracts that stop short of
redundancy.

As
many businesses seek to cut staff costs due to the impact of Coronavirus, it’s
important to understand that businesses do not make a ‘person’ redundant
– it is the role they perform that is now no longer required. This means in
order to make a job redundant, there must be a reduction in the requirement for
the work to be carried out, a business closure, or the closure of a workplace.
You should also consider alternatives to restructuring and redundancy before
you begin.

What
are the alternatives to restructuring and redundancy?

Redundancy
should be a last resort, and there are a number of alternatives that should be
considered. Many will require the agreement of employees, but in the difficult
circumstances we all face because of COVID-19 you may find that staff are
agreeable to change if it means they remain in employment.

Not
every solution will be right for every business but you may consider pay
freezes or cuts, a temporary deferral in pay, a cut in hours, and unpaid
sabbaticals. When considering restructuring or redundancy you should also look
at whether it is possible to redeploy one or more employees to another part of
the business. Sometimes an external eye – such as an outsourced HR provider –
can help with identifying these alternatives and spot opportunities you may
have missed.

If
there are no viable alternatives or employees do not accept the offer of a
change to hours, pay or terms, then redundancy may be a fair reason for
dismissal. It is crucial that fair and legally sound processes are followed –
again, an employer or in-house HR team may need support from an external HR
provider to support with this.

A fair
redundancy process – consultation is key

From
the largest corporates to the smallest businesses, the same rules of redundancy
apply. In large companies which may be making a significant number of redundancies,
it is essential that a thorough consultation process – including collective
consultation where relevant – is carried out meticulously and fairly. Getting
this process wrong can be expensive and risks exposure to employment tribunals
and reputational damage.

If you
intend to make 20 or more employees redundant within any 90-day period at a
single place of work, then you must follow collective consultation rules which
require a consultation period of 30 days (45 days if the number of employees being
made redundant is 100 or more). There is no set consultation period for
employers proposing to make fewer than 20 redundancies but it is good practice
to consult, and a tribunal could decide that a member of staff has been
unfairly dismissed if they were not consulted or if the consultation was not
adequate.

When
selecting employees for potential redundancy, you must be scrupulously fair. Of
course, selection must not discriminate on the grounds of any protected
characteristics such as age, race, religion, sex or sexuality.

Usually
candidates are “scored” on performance – their output or quality of work,
attendance, and disciplinary records. This can be a complex process and may be
subject to a challenge by an employee – so often to ensure complete compliance,
objectivity and impartiality, this process is run by an external HR provider
that specialises in restructuring and redundancy.

Restructuring
and redundancy for employees on the Coronavirus furlough scheme

Staff
who are on furlough may
still be dismissed on the grounds of redundancy. However, businesses should be
wary of making redundancies as soon as the furlough period ends as HMRC may interpret
that the intention was to make the redundancies all along.

It’s
important to note that despite the existence of the furlough scheme, all normal
employment rules, including the need for redundancy consultation, are still in
effect.

If
furloughed staff are not at work then meaningful consultation must take place –
either bring them safely into the workplace, or carry it out by phone or video
call.

If you
do make an employee redundant, then you will need to calculate their statutory
redundancy payment. This is based on a number of factors including their pay,
length of service and age. Redundancy payments are based on the employee’s full
salary – not the reduced amount paid through the furlough scheme. An employer
must meet the cost of this payment – it cannot be claimed through the job
retention scheme.

External
HR support for restructuring and redundancy

Restructuring
and redundancy is a complex process, especially taking into account the
additional factors of Coronavirus and the furlough scheme.

Even for
very large companies, it may be that internal HR teams need support from an
external HR team which specialises in redundancy. An external team can view
your workforce with an objective eye, identify alternatives to redundancy,
ensure consultation is carried out legally, fairly and sympathetically, and
advise on any potential issues your business may face as a result of the
process.

This
article was produced in association with Reality HR which
delivers bespoke HR services including restructuring and redundancy support to
a range of organisations through its team of CIPD qualified specialists.