We know that there’s never a dull moment in the world of HR Managers and business owners, so we’ve collated our top ten list of 10 employment law issues to focus on in the year ahead:
- Review your standard contract terms: changes in the minimum information you need to provide employees mean that templates will need updating from April, it’s also a good chance to check that your contract terms reflect how
- Check your holiday pay arrangements: recent case law has meant that you may need to change the way in which you pay holiday to staff whose pay varies with how much and/or when they work, including if they carry out voluntary overtime
- Review your restrictive covenants: the Supreme Court looked last year at clauses which restrict what an employee can do after they finish working for you and it’s worth thinking carefully about what business interests you’re trying to protect and whether your current clauses really do that
- Keep an open mind about potentially protected characteristics: in light of recent cases in which ethical veganism and Scottish nationalism have been found to be beliefs which are capable of protection under the Equality Act, we advise that you think carefully about your employee’s characteristics which may be protected
- Decide your stance on covert recordings: with employees able to secretly record disciplinary and other meetings, we advise that you’re clear about whether this is acceptable in your organisation
- Review your disciplinary procedures: the key learnings from recent cases are that you should be cautious about when you suspend an employee and make sure that your investigations are reasonable and impartial
- Be aware of the scope of vicarious liability: the Morrisons data breach case heard by the Supreme Court in November, was the latest in a series of cases widening the scope of an employer’s liability for the actions of their employees
- Review employment status: the IR35 rules are due to come into effect in April, impacting the way many contractors are taxed for work they do in private companies. In addition, we’re seeing increasing numbers of cases involving the likes of Uber in which ‘self-employed’ individuals are claiming to be workers entitled to rights such as holiday pay and National Minimum Wage
- Review family-friendly rights: we’re expecting to see rules on better protection during a redundancy process for new parents, the introduction of parental bereavement leave and clarification about shared parental leave and pay
- Consider Brexit implications for staff: Brexit will see changes to immigration rules for EU nationals working in the UK and we may see a watering down of some areas of employment law currently governed by the EU
We’ll be looking at these areas in more detail in our next Employment Law Update on 3 February. For more details and to book, click here, or give us a call, 01904 437680.