Bosses RIGHT to tell staff if they’re too fat, say HR experts
BUSINESS experts yesterday backed claims that bosses should tell their staff if they are overweight.
Yesterday the Scottish Daily Mail revealed that obesity experts want employers to tell staff if they are fat, to prevent a workforce health crisis.
One leading human resources authority said the issue should be tackled in the same way as depression or the early onset of dementia.
Lee Turner, founder of HR Network Scotland, said some managers or occupational health departments are already trying to help overweight staff lose weight and added that employers have an obligation to raise the issue of staff obesity in the interests of their health.
He said employers should consider the issue where staff obesity was affecting their health or productivity.
Mr Turner added: ‘Conversations like this are probably going on. It becomes an issue where someone has had time off work with an obesity-related issue and it has an impact on their work.
‘There is a duty and an obligation on employers to make sure the health of staff is good.
‘It might be similar to how staff with depression or the early signs of dementia are dealt with. There are organisations which are already doing well on staff health and see it as a huge corporate responsibility. Mentioning obesity is the issue and I would like to see that as being less taboo.’
The call for bosses to tell ‘visibly obese’ workers to lose weight was made at an Edinburgh summit on Scotland’s obesity crisis. Two-thirds of Scots are overweight and one-quarter are obese but this is forecast to soar, raising fears of a workforce dogged by obesity-related problems.
Elaine McIlroy, employment partner at law firm Weightmans, said: ‘Obesity can amount to a disability and could be a protected characteristic under law.
‘That depends on the impact the person’s weight has on their ability to carry out activities such as walking and standing.
‘So having a conversation with an employee about them losing weight could result in a discrimination or harassment claim. Therefore the only circumstances where an employer has a conversation about an employee’s weight should be if the employee’s weight is impacting their ability to do their job or where an expert has raised the issue.’
A spokesman for the Faculty of Occupational Medicine said: ‘Line managers should be open to employee-led conversations about how they can be supported. But we do not feel line managers should directly raise concerns about an employee’s weight without that employee prompting the conversation.’
AFEW days ago I happened to spy an application form for a job at the Scottish parliament. As an illustration of the diversity-fixated etiquette of our times it made fascinating reading.
Candidates were not asked to state their sex but rather their ‘gender identity’. They were gently encouraged to say something about their ethnicity but also offered an out in the form of a reassuring tick box which said ‘I prefer not to answer this question’.
Describe your nationality: British, Scottish, English … ? Or do you consider that none of our business either? Splendid. Just tick ‘prefer not to answer’.
Now, religion or belief system? Sexual orientation? Any disability under the terms of the Equality Act 2010? You’d rather not say? Excellent. Just tick those opt-out boxes and we’re good to go. Thank-you for telling us next to nothing about yourself, as is your absolute entitlement in a free and equal and, above all, tolerant society. We’ll let you know.
It is gratifying to witness such scrupulous care to avoid offence, really it is. If ever there was an age when this land railed more loudly against racism, sexism, homophobia and misogyny then I surely never lived in it.
Trump Schmump. Right here, right now in Scotland, I am feeling pretty darn good about the rights of the individual.
All except for our consumer rights, that is. Feel free to make a mockery of those. Offend to your heart’s content. We’re used to it. How curious it is that in these censorious times, where the slightest transgression against PC sensibilities triggers a tsunami of opprobrium, ripoff culture continues to thrive unabated. Is it because it wrongs everyone regardless of colour, creed or sexual orientation that we are okay with it?
We learn this week that half the ‘unmissable’ deals on offer for next week’s Black Friday spending splurge are anything but. In fact it is much better to miss them and buy another time when they are cheaper, a Which? study finds. Of the products it tracked, 49 per cent went up in price for the Black Friday sales, not down.
Rationale
There is no polite way of putting it. People across a range of gender identities, ethnicities and religious affiliations are being conned.
The same consumer group points out that millions of us (including minority groups) are not getting what we pay for when we sign up with broadband providers. ‘It is not good enough,’ says a Which? spokesman and he is not wrong.
On what rationale could it possibly be fair to promise broadband speeds which three quarters of customers will never enjoy when they hand over their money? And yet current advertising rules say that is quite all right. In fact only 10 per cent of us need to get what we paid for to make these advertising boasts legitimate.
Imagine if the law provided that a minimum of 10 per cent of members of the LGBT community must be treated with fairness and respect but that contempt and deceit could freely be applied to the remainder. Preposterous. Why, then, is it okay to hoodwink 90 per cent of consumers?
I say the rip-off culture is completely non-discriminatory but that does not mean that certain demographics do not suffer more than others.
People who don’t do their homework suffer most in the great Black Friday sales scam. People who struggle to understand terms such as megabits per second (or its abbreviation Mbps) are particularly vulnerable to unscrupulous ISPs (Internet Service Providers).
My highly intelligent mother does not have a clue about those and understands still less about the megabytes or gigabytes of data her mobile phone is using every month. I don’t blame her. Her degree is in English and philosophy.
But that is why her son must come along as a minder when she shops for a new mobile phone deal among the hundreds out there.
In some enlightened future age maybe retirees with little or no techy savvy will be able to visit smartphone emporiums unaccompanied without fear of getting burned, but we are some way from there yet.
So sons or daughters sit in on the prospective transaction like lawyers protecting their client in a police interview. ‘You don’t have to answer that one, Mum,’ we counsel. ‘They’re bluffing.’ And ultimately, ‘Come on, we’re leaving. This is a fishing expedition.’
And yet even we sons and daughters, antennae twitching with suspicion, walk headlong into contracts we know perfectly well must be booby trapped. The other day I booked flights with Ryanair, then cast a wary eye over their hire car deals. I know I should have ignored them. I know it. I know it.
Credulous
I know that, as cynical and world-weary as I feel when it comes to sales ploys, I am still too credulous, too trusting. So when I saw that hire car deal with my favourite rental agent at that highly attractive rate there in black and white on the Ryanair website, I went for it. Naïve or what?
Even in the minute or so it took to receive the confirmation email I already knew I had been a fool. And, sure enough, when the confirmation arrived, I found I had booked a car with a rental agent I don’t like at all.
How the blankety blank do they get away with it? Well, life is short, and it is not as if they are targeting me for being straight or white or male or middle class. These crises of faith in multi-billion pound airlines are available to all.
But, for the sake of science, I fired my angry email off to customer services and demanded the deal with the rental agent specified on the website. They wrote back hours later and very politely informed me that that would be an extra £64.
See what I mean? Consumer rights – the perennial poor relation.