KEEPING up to date with
developments in employment law
can be challenging, even for
specialist lawyers.
Responding to claims or work-
related grievances will take up valuable
time and can be expensive. But if you
follow some basic steps and know
when to seek advice,
you can reduce the risk
of being one of the
thousands of
employers each year
that have to respond
to an Employment
Tribunal claim.
Recruitment
You can be liable to
individuals even if they
may never become
your employees. Take
care with the wording
of job advertisements
and your approach to selecting
candidates for interview. For example,
if your advertisement refers to age or
you look at CVs and decide some
applicants are too young or too old for
the job, then this could amount to age
discrimination.
Do you carry out identity checks
on all new employees? An employer
can be fined up to £10,000 for
employing a person who does not have
the right to work in the UK. To avoid
liability, an employer needs to inspect
original documents, typically passports,
and verify the right the work. It would
be a mistake to make assumptions
about who is a UK citizen based on
names, skin colour or accent so treating
all staff equally is the best practice.
Contracts of employment
Employees who have been employed
for at least one month are entitled to a
statement of the main terms of their
employment. These terms can be set out in a contract of employment or in
a statement. If you do not prepare a
contract (or statement), you risk
disputes on matters such as the scope
of the employee’s duties, work location,
hours of work, sick pay entitlement,
sickness and maternity benefits, etc.
A well-drafted contract of employment can give the employer
flexibility to change
arrangements in the
future and provides
an opportunity to
impose restrictive
covenants that can
prevent senior
employees from
competing with the
employer’s business.
You cannot assume
that the goodwill of
your business is safe, so having suitable
employment contracts is money well spent.
Disciplinary action and
grievances
All employers should have written
disciplinary and grievance procedures.
If you have not reviewed these
recently, you should shake off the dust
and update your procedures in line
with the ACAS Code of Practice on
Disciplinary and Grievance
Procedures (available at
www.acas.org.uk).
The ACAS Code came into effect
in April and replaced earlier statutory
dismissal, disciplinary and grievance
procedures. It is important that you
follow the ACAS Code because an
unreasonable failure to follow the
requirements set out in the Code can
lead to an Employment Tribunal
increasing or decreasing compensation
by up to 25%, depending on whether
the employer or employee has been at
fault.
Anyone dealing with a disciplinary
matter or grievance should read the
Code carefully but the guiding
principles are that you must act promptly, investigate the relevant
issues, be clear about the basis of the
problem, allow the employee to state
his or her case before any decisions
are made and offer a right of appeal.
Appraisals
Do you aspire to hold annual reviews
of staff but find that things get in the
way or the record of the appraisal is
limited? Appraisals serve a number of
uses and can be key evidence if you
have to consider redundancies.
Usually, performance is one of the
criteria used for redundancy selection,
but if you have not conducted
thorough appraisals you may find it
difficult to score employees and
demonstrate that you have judged
performance fairly and reasonably.
Appraisals can also bring to light
whether an employee is suffering
from stress at work. If so, the
employer needs to address this or it
could lead to lengthy periods of
sickness absence and possibly a claim
for personal injury.
Discrimination
It is unlawful to treat people less
favourably on the ground of their sex,
race, sexual orientation, religion, disability or age.
In practice, disability discrimination can be a particular
problem because employees on long-
term sickness absence may have a
disability and it is not enough for the
employer to say that all employees are
treated the same, whether disabled or
non-disabled.
Disability discrimination extends to
requiring the employer to make
reasonable adjustments to prevent
working practices from placing a
disabled employee at a substantial
disadvantage when compared to a
non-disabled colleague. This can mean
that you need to treat disabled
employees more favourably and in
general you should seek advice on how
to deal with employees with a disability
or on long-term sickness absence.
Sometimes overlooked is the fact
that employers will often be legally
responsible for the discriminatory acts
of employees and claims are very
difficult to defend unless you have
clear policies and regular training on
equal opportunities, bullying and
harassment.
- This article provides general
information and is not intended as
legal advice. Neither the author nor
Lockharts Solicitors will accept liability
for losses arising from reliance on the
information in this article.
