Sniffle… Peninsula Ireland have appeared on Maman Poulet’s hall of shame before. Invariably they are described in the media as an employment law firm, one with a penchant for tabloidesque press releases, they never fail to get their guff covered in some paper or other.

‘Peninsula offers a full range of services covering health and safety, tax and employment law. These services provide bespoke assistance to you and are designed to allow you to concentrate on the day to day needs and priorities of your business.’

So every so often they do a few phone calls, release a press statement, and get air time spouting ‘rubbish’ from their ‘research’, while they try not to hawk their ‘services’. The actual research statistics are never published for sociological analysis – just a press release full of noises to make bosses worry and fill pages of Metro and a column inch or two in the Irish Times.  (Journalists are not free from my ire here – stop fecking printing press releases and do some research of your own!)

This weeks press release is about Swine Flu. Seemingly 7 out of 10 employers think that employees are going to fake swine flu. Alan Price, Managing Director has given us the phrase Pandemic Panic and said

“The problem many employers face is that some members of their workforce will see Swine flu as a good excuse to take some time off, and this is where employers need to take action and be fair but firm.�?

He advised investigating the matter thoroughly if you suspect employee sickness to be fraudulent and conducting back-to-work interviews, pointing out the impact the individual’s absence has had on the business in order to discourage further offending.

“There have been cases where an employee has stated they wouldn’t be coming in because someone in the office may be showing symptoms. This is unacceptable and employers are well within their rights to record this absence as unauthorised and take appropriate action. As much as employers should be understanding and careful, they do need to ensure they protect their bottom line.�?

Can you imagine the team meetings in Peninsula HQ about the next PR/Panic initiative? – Next week they’ll be publishing research on the amount of time spent by employees skiving off to visit Ikea! They could of course publish research on the amount of time Peninsula’s own employees spend visiting blogs and leaving comments pretending to be ordinary punters but failing.