If you employ staff here are 10 things you should at least be aware of:
Contracts of employment
A written statement of employment particulars must be issued to new employees within two months specifying certain key information e.g. pay, hours and place of work.
Changing terms and conditions
Whilst you can change T&Cs, care needs to be taken. Making a fundamental change such as completely altering someone’s duties could be constructive dismissal. Therefore, for significant changes you require a sound business reason and must consult with staff.
Discrimination
Discrimination on grounds of sex, race, disability, sexual orientation, religion or belief or age is unlawful. Discrimination can occur at any point from recruitment until retirement. Employment Tribunals will check if you have an equal opportunities policy and adopt it. For disabled staff you may be obliged to make adjustments to someone’s job where arrangements place the disabled person at a substantial disadvantage compared to able bodied workers. Compensation for discrimination is potentially unlimited.
Dismissal
Every year about half of all claims to the Employment Tribunal are for unfair dismissal. Dismissed employees are entitled to the greater of their contractual or statutory notice entitlement (unless correctly dismissed for gross misconduct). Employees with 51 weeks’ service can bring unfair dismissal claims. You must show you had a potentially fair reason to dismiss (e.g. redundancy) and dismissal was reasonable in the circumstances. The dismissal must follow a minimum statutory procedure although the current procedure is to be replaced with a less complex process probably next year. Maximum compensation for unfair dismissal is generally £72,900.
Equal pay
A woman doing the same job as a man is entitled to receive the same pay and benefits. However, it will not be discriminatory to pay a woman less than a man where the difference in pay is not gender but a genuine material factor such as greater experience and skill.
Family friendly rights
This includes maternity, paternity and adoption pay and leave, parental leave and time off for dependants and flexible working requests. Maternity pay is now 39 weeks and the Government want to allow women to transfer some of their maternity leave to their partner. How this will work in practice has yet to be explained. Flexible working (e.g. switching to part-time or home working) can be requested by those with children under 6 or disabled children under 18 or for an adult they care for.
Holidays
Employees are entitled to 4.8 weeks paid holiday (5.6 weeks from April 2009). Bank holidays can be included within this. Employers can postpone holiday requests where inconvenient to the business. Statutory leave cannot be carried forward to the following year. Employees must be paid in lieu of outstanding statutory holiday on termination.
Redundancy
Redundancy is a potentially fair reason for dismissal but care must be taken especially where selection issues arise. Selection criteria should be objective. Many traditional criteria like “last in, first out” may be age-discriminatory. Employees with 2 years+ service are entitled to redundancy pay (up to £9,900).
TUPE
If you buy or sell a business with employees or are involved in outsourcing then you will probably be affected by TUPE: the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006. These preserve employees' terms and conditions when a business is transferred to a new employer. Any dismissals because of a transfer may be unfair. Affected employees have rights to information and to be consulted about any measures to be taken affecting them.
Working time
The limit on maximum average working week is 48 hours although UK employees can still opt out of this right. Employees are entitled to 20 minutes rest after 6 hours’ work, 11 hours rest each day and a day off each week.
