Employment and HR

• A Guide to Dealing with Requests for Flexible Working Arrangements

• From 6 April 2009, the statutory right to request flexible working arrangements was extended to parents of children aged 16 and under. Employees with caring responsibilities for children aged up to 6 (18 and under where the child is disabled) and carers of...

• Collective Redundancy Consultation

• Employers should be aware of the potentially serious financial consequences of failing to consult when making collective redundancies. If an employer is proposing to make redundant 20 or more employees at one establishment within a period of 90 days or...

• Compensation for Illness in Unfair Dismissal Cases

• In Adey-Jones v O Dowd , the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) considered the extent to which an employee could claim compensation from her former employer for illness she suffered after she had been unfairly dismissed Mrs O Dowd was responsible for the...

• Compromise Agreements

• As a general rule, out of court settlements of employment disputes are not legally binding in that they cannot exclude an employee's right to take the matter concerned to an Employment Tribunal (ET). A formal compromise agreement is one of the few...

• Compromise Agreements - Tax Position Clarified

• A compromise agreement is an agreement made between an employer and an employee who is having their contract of employment terminated. It sets out the terms under which the termination will take place and contains a provision that the employee will receive a...

• Dealing with Employee Absence

• Employee absences can be both costly and disruptive. It is advisable to have systems in place to measure and analyse these costs so that you can identify problem areas. Are there patterns of absence? Does a particular department have a below average...

• Disability Discrimination by Association - Case Settled Out of Court

• An out of court settlement has now been reached in the long-running case of Coleman v Attridge Law , which has confirmed that employees are protected from associative discrimination under the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA). Sharon...

• Drug Policy - Recognising the Signs and What to Do

• Research findings from Medscreen, based on drug testing carried out over the last ten years across a variety of professions, reveal that there has been a 3,000 per cent increase in the number of workers testing positive for cocaine. More than five per cent...

• False Claims on a CV - What to Do

• According to research by the Risk Advisory Group, more than half of CVs submitted by job applicants contain lies or inaccuracies. These range from gaps in employment history to false claims regarding qualifications and failure to mention fraud committed...

• Get the Christmas Party Right

• It s that time of year again. Love them or hate them, the invitations to office Christmas parties will be arriving soon if they haven t already. For employers, parties pose a particular threat. Here are some tips on making sure your Christmas office party...

• Health and Safety - VDU Use

• More and more workers are spending a large part of their day looking at a computer screen. The Health and Safety (Display Screen Equipment) Regulations 1992 specifically deal with the health and safety issues associated with working with VDUs. The...

• Health and Safety Breaches - Penalties

• The Health and Safety Offences Act 2008 received Royal Assent on 16 October 2008 and came into force on 1 January 2009. It amends Section 33 of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 and has increased penalties for breaches of health and safety...

• Increased Paternity Leave for New Fathers

• The Government has announced its proposed timetable for introducing legislation that will allow new parents greater flexibility as to how they make use of the statutory period of maternity leave. Currently, fathers who are employees are entitled to two...

• Lesbian Soldier Sees Settlement Reduced

• A lesbian soldier who won her claim for sex discrimination and discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation has had her compensation award of 186,896 reduced after the Ministry of Defence (MOD) launched an appeal. In November 2007, the Leeds...

• New Minimum Wage Rates

• The Government has announced that it has accepted the recommendations of the Low Pay Commission (LPC) on new rates for the National Minimum Wage (NMW) that will come into force on 1 October 2010. As announced last year, the adult rate of the NMW is to...

• New Right to Request Training

• The right to request time to train was included in the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009 , which received Royal Assent in November 2009. The introduction of the right is to be phased. From April 2010, it is available to employees in...

• Recruitment - Preventing Illegal Working Without Discrimination

• Hardly a day goes by without there being some mention of illegal immigration in the news. The number of people discovered working here unlawfully has risen sharply in recent years. There has been much talk of the possible introduction of a national...

• Stress - An Employer's Duties

• Dealing with stress in the workplace is a difficult issue for employers. As well as specific duties under health and safety legislation, employers owe their employees a common law duty to take reasonable care to safeguard their health and safety and this...

• TUPE - Post-Transfer Obligations and Collective Agreements

• The Court of Appeal has overturned the decision of the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) in Alemo-Herron and others v Parkwood Leisure Ltd . Parkwood Leisure Ltd. had taken over a company that acquired employees of the London Borough of Lewisham s...

• The Corporate Manslaughter Act

• The Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 established a new statutory offence of corporate manslaughter (corporate culpable homicide in Scotland). An organisation is guilty of the offence if the way in which it manages or organises...

• The New 'Fit Note' System

• Employers are reminded that from 6 April 2010 a new fit note regime replaced the old system whereby doctors issued hand-written sick notes. Under the new system, a doctor will provide a patient who is off work for more than seven days on account of a...

• Varying Contracts of Employment

• In the current economic climate, many employers are seeking ways to reduce staff costs. For example, both British Airways and British Telecom are reported to have recently offered staff increased time off work in return for a deduction in pay. However, when...

• Whistleblowing - Allegations Arising During Tribunal Claims

• When someone believes they have been dismissed or suffered a detriment at work because they have made a protected disclosure under the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 (PIDA), they can bring a claim to the Employment Tribunal (ET). Last year, there were...

• Workplace Bullying

• Recent allegations of bullying within 10 Downing Street have raised the profile of a subject which receives relatively little coverage outside the employment tribunals, in spite of indications that instances of intimidatory behaviour are widespread in the...

• Written Statement of Employment Particulars

• A contract of employment may be verbal but all employees, whether part-time or full-time, are entitled by law to be given a written statement setting out the main particulars of their employment, provided their employment lasts for one month or more. All the...