There’s a situation that’s quite unsatisfactory and easily rectified to benefit all parties. It’s that often documents comprising the contract of employment are ‘issued’ by the employer to the employee once the new hire has actually started in the job – indeed anything up to eight weeks after they start. It’s lawful but unfair and risky. It also misses a huge opportunity to get relationships off to a flying start. Here’s why.

Many managers deliberately mix internal and external recruitment in the hope of selecting the best person for the job from as large a pool as possible. Simply, consider internals first, in isolation. If any internal can do the job – judged by a fixed bar - they go forward with an internals-only contest. Because any one has the ability to excel, a variable bar selection can be used to rank them. Anything else is just wrong, damaging and here’s why.

The nature of work and careers have changed. Despite myth, the average employee tenure is still over eight years. And in that time staff must grow. When it comes to employee career development, you, as manager, have a clear decision to make and that decision depends on the relationship your firm has with the worker. You'd best take a contingency approach: develop your knowledge workers, give opportunity to your foot-soldiers, make alliances with your specialists and hire your contractors when needed.

In May, a job applicant with Asperger Syndrome had her case upheld by the Employment Appeals Tribunal (EAT). Her treatment by the Government Legal Services amounted to indirect discrimination. She had been required to take a multi-choice situational-judgement test – a form of psychometric test - as the first part of the recruitment process. So does this mean that psychometric tests are discriminatory? Simply, no. But it does require that they are administered, managed and analysed correctly. Here's how.

Online gaming can be used as part of a selection process. If you play the game well, you get to make a job application. It’s a way of testing the applicant whilst promoting the organisation and informing the applicant about the job. TimelessTime's web-delivered customised assessment delivers quality in selection. It’s not America’s Army but it’s pretty close to CanYouCrackIt. Ultimately it is for that manager to validate what the automated systems are saying. What can gamification offer your firm?

Employment tribunals in England and Wales and Scotland deal with disputes between employer and employee. Fees are no longer payable. Just because there are no fees does not mean access to informal and speedy justice. Employment tribunals are neither informal, nor are they speedy. In principle, all grievance could move from tribunal to company procedures. This needs high trust by employees on management. There’s significant benefit for management striving to be a high trust firm. Here's how..