Employment Library

• 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...

• Adoption - A Woman's Rights

• Employers are reminded that women who are planning to adopt a child have similar rights as regards protection from unfavourable treatment as employees who are pregnant. This was illustrated by a landmark decision of the Employment Tribunal (ET). Anna...

• Age Discrimination Checklist

• The Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006 aim to achieve equal treatment in employment and vocational training to eradicate discrimination on the grounds of age. Under the Regulations it is unlawful to make employment decisions based on a person...

• Changes to the Sex Discrimination Act

• In 2007, the former Equal Opportunities Commission brought judicial review proceedings against the Government regarding some of the provisions of the Employment Equality (Sex Discrimination) Regulations 2005 , which made amendments to the Sex...

• 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...

• 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 - Normal Day-to-Day Activities

• For the purposes of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA), a person has a disability if they have a physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on their normal day-to-day activities. In Chief Constable of...

• 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...

• Driving on Company Business

• Research by the Health and Safety Executive shows that 20 people are killed and 250 are seriously injured each week in traffic accidents involving someone driving for business reasons. The threat of employers being prosecuted for road accidents...

• 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...

• Employer Responsible for Work-Related Suicide

• Employees, or their dependants, are entitled to claim damages for injury caused by a workplace accident if: there was a duty of care owed to the injured person; that duty was not performed; and it was reasonably foreseeable that harm would...

• Equal Treatment for Agency Workers - Later Not Sooner

• After many failed attempts over the last six years by the EU Council of Ministers to agree on proposals to improve the employment rights of agency workers, the European Parliament finally adopted the Agency Workers Directive on 19 November 2008. Member...

• Expired Disciplinary Warnings and Unfair Dismissal

• The Court of Appeal overturned the decision of the Employment Tribunal (ET), upheld by the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT), that an employee was unfairly dismissed because his employer had taken account of an expired disciplinary warning when deciding to...

• Faulty Work Boots - Employer Not Liable for Employee's Frostbite

• The House of Lords ruled, in the case of Fytche v Wincanton Logistics , that an employer s absolute obligation to maintain or repair protective equipment, under the Personal Protective Equipment at Work Regulations 1992, does not extend to a situation where...

• Graduate Recruitment

• Most businesses would like to benefit from an influx of talent, enthusiasm and fresh ideas. The challenge is to achieve it at an acceptable cost. One option is to employ a recent graduate. In the past, most graduate recruitment was undertaken by large...

• Guidance for Employers of Teleworkers

• Nowadays, many people work away from the traditional office environment through the use of modern technology. The Government estimates that there are now more than two million teleworkers in the UK who do some work from home, an increase of 65 per cent in...

• Immigration - A Brief Guide to the Points-Based System

• The Points-Based Immigration System (PBS) has replaced the previous routes to work and study in the UK for migrants from outside the European Economic Area (EEA) and Switzerland. In addition, the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009 , passed...

• In Brief - Advice on Occupational Asthma

• The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) estimates that each year between 1,500 and 3,000 people in Great Britain develop occupational asthma. The number rises to 7,000 cases a year if asthma made worse by work is taken into account. The cost to society is...

• In Brief - Data Protection

• The Office of the Information Commissioner has published a consolidated version of the guidance on data protection issues in employment. This brings together the four existing guides on recruitment and selection, employee records, monitoring at work and...

• In Brief - Guidance on Cancer and Working

• Changes introduced in December 2005 extended protection under the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 to those diagnosed with progressive forms of cancer. The Chartered Institute of Personnel Development, together with the Working with Cancer group and...

• In Brief - Working at Height Regulations

• Falls from height are the single biggest cause of workplace deaths and one of the main causes of serious injury. In order to help prevent accidents of this type, revised Regulations came into force on 6 April 2005. The Work at Height Regulations (WAHR)...

• In Brief: ACAS E-learning Guides

• The Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) now has ten electronic learning guides available on its website. The topics are: bullying and harassment; managing absence in the workplace; handling redundancy; discipline and...

• In Brief: ACAS Guidance on Holiday and Holiday Pay

• The Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) has useful guidance for employers puzzling over staff holiday pay entitlements. These clarify the law in a useful question-and-answer format. Subjects covered include the entitlement of agency...

• In Brief: Assessment of Repetitive Tasks Tool

• Musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) are the most common occupational illness in Britain. They include problems such as low back pain, joint injuries and repetitive strain injuries of various sorts, and affect more than 500,000 people every year. They are often...

• 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...

• Informing and Consulting Employees

• The EU Information and Consultation Directive 2002 establishes minimum requirements for consulting and informing employees on a wide variety of subjects. The Information and Consultation of Employees Regulations 2004 implement the Directive in the UK. ...

• 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...

• Night Sleeper Entitled to National Minimum Wage

• The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) confirmed ( Burrow Down Support Services Ltd. v Rossiter ) that a night worker who was required to be available to deal with security issues at his employer s premises, but who could sleep for much of his shift on...

• Pregnant Women and Risk Assessments

• The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 require all employers to carry out an assessment of workplace risks that could harm employees and to do whatever is reasonably practicable to control these risks. In particular, Regulation 16...

• Preventing Occupational Deafness

• The Control of Noise at Work Regulations 2005 introduced tighter controls on exposure to noise levels in the workplace, to protect workers from damage to their hearing. The noise level at which workers are required to have hearing protection available is...

• Protecting Business Interests

• When an employee leaves to go to work for another organisation, their employer may wish to have in place safeguards to protect sensitive information relating to the business, to prevent it from falling into the hands of a competitor. One possible way of...

• Race Discrimination and the Burden of Proof

• Recent case law has led to confusion as to whether Section 54A of the Race Relations Act 1976 applies to direct discrimination on the grounds of someone s colour. In Okonu v G4S Security Services (UK) Ltd. , the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT)...

• Resolving Workplace Disputes

• In order to establish what it is hoped will be a more flexible system for dealing with workplace disputes, as of 6 April 2009 the Employment Act 2008 repealed the Statutory Dispute Resolution Procedures in their entirety. In their place is a voluntary...

• Sickness Absence and Holiday Leave

• The EC Working Time Directive lays down minimum health and safety requirements for the organisation of working time. The purpose of the entitlement to paid annual leave is to enable a worker to rest and to enjoy a period of relaxation and leisure. The...

• Staff Handbooks and Contractual Rights

• It is not uncommon for employees contracts of employment to expressly incorporate the staff handbook, although much of its contents will refer to policy matters rather than having contractual status. Following a recent decision of the Court of Appeal (...

• 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 Consultation

• The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) has considered ( AMICUS and TGWU v Glasgow City Council ) whether the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006 (TUPE) require a transferee employer to consult with the union representatives...

• 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...

• TUPE Regulations 2006

• The Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006 (TUPE) apply to any size of business and protect the employment rights of employees when their employer changes as a result of the relevant transfer of a business or a part of one....

• The Civil Partnership Act

• When the Civil Partnership Act 2004 came into force in December 2005, amendments were made to the Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2003 in order to make it clear that the status of a civil partner is comparable with that of a spouse....

• 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...

• Time Limits for Equal Pay Claims - Stable Employment Relationships

• Local authorities across the UK face thousands of claims from women who contend that they have been paid less than men for doing similar work or work of equal value. Following a recent decision of the Court of Appeal, women who have worked for the same...

• Triangular Agency Working Arrangements - The Correct Approach

• A further case ( East Living Ltd. v Sridhar and TSG Services Ltd.) has confirmed the approach an Employment Tribunal (ET) should take when deciding whether or not an agency worker is in reality the employee of the end user company. Mr Sridhar was...

• Unfair Dismissal Claims - A Minute Late is Too Late

• An employee must bring an unfair dismissal claim within three months of his or her effective date of termination and the time limits for presenting claims to the Tribunals Service are normally strictly enforced. If the deadline is missed, the Employment...

• 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...

• Whistleblowing Disclosure Must Be In Good Faith

• The Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 (PIDA) often referred to as the Whistleblowing Act came into force in July 1999. PIDA inserted new sections into the Employment Rights Act 1996 which give workers legal protection when disclosing information...

• Workers on Long-Term Sick Leave - Non-Payment of Holiday Pay

• The judgment of the House of Lords in the long-running case of Stringer and others v HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) will be a blow to many businesses struggling to survive in the current economic climate. The Law Lords have overturned the decision of the...

• 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...