Employment Law

Fixed Fee Employer Protection Plan

In our latest blog Head of Employment Law, Katie Ash, goes through the eight key steps to lawfully recruiting someone into your business.  It can be a costly mistake to ignore the rules and get this wrong.

Flexible working has been at the forefront of many businesses since the pandemic began, and for many it is now time to formalise a flexible working policy. This guide tells you how to handle flexible working requests but we can also assist with a policy if required.

 

For many women, returning to work after maternity leave can feel like a daunting prospect and one of the biggest sticking points is in relation to those who continue to breastfeed or express milk once their maternity leave has ended.

Here, Banner Jones’ Head of Employment law, Katie Ash, looks at the state of current legislation here in the UK. 

Handling an employee’s return to work after maternity leave can feel like a bit of a minefield to most employers. Added to this is the risk of expensive pregnancy and maternity related discrimination claims as well as possible sex discrimination and constructive dismissal claims if they get things wrong.

For many business owners and decision makers, the lockdown restrictions introduced as a result of the Covid-19 crisis have provided them with an unprecedented opportunity to review their operations.

To the dismay of employees, but a decision arguably welcomed by employers, the Supreme Court has recently ruled in cases Royal Mencap Society v Tomlinson-Blake and Shannon v Rampersad and another (T/A Clifton House Residential Home) that sleep-in shift workers are not ‘working’ when they are asleep. This in turn means that care workers should only be paid the National Minimum Wage hourly rate on sleep-in shifts when they are awake for the purposes of actively working.

Over time, the gap between women’s and men’s median hourly earnings has been narrowing. In fact, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) it has fallen by over a quarter among full-time employees in the last decade.

 

On the 20th February 2021, the Supreme Court handed down its Judgment in the long awaited Uber case (Uber BV and Others v Aslam and Others). All six Judges unanimously ruled that the Uber drivers were workers, not self-employed contractors and as a result were entitled to basic employment rights like National Minimum Wage, holiday pay and sick pay.

With the country now in its third lockdown, it is clear that the hospitality sector has been hit the hardest and with no sign of hotels, pubs and restaurants reopening soon, employers in this sector will be almost certainly be facing some tough decisions about their staff in the coming weeks and months.

After a lengthy transition period, the UK has now left the EU with a deal agreed. While many possible scenarios have been discussed at length in recent years, until now we have been limited to speculation and conjecture in terms of what the outcome might be. Not to mention how it might affect businesses and, more specifically, employees.

Employers need to protect the mental health of those who work alone. This blog gives you an overview of what you should be considering.

For many, 2020 will go down in history as the year that changed everything, and one of the most significant changes was the way in which we work.

As a business owner, we know you try to plan for every possible situation but unfortunately, nobody could have predicted what 2020 had in store.

Over recent weeks there has been a huge amount of emphasis on dealing with the lockdown. Businesses and business owners have worked tirelessly to get their heads around the terms of furlough under the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, ensuring staff who need to work can do so remotely, and that the office, factory or other workspace remains safe for those who do need to physically attend the workplace.

As the country continues to grapple with the evolving situation relating to the Covid-19 pandemic, many businesses and business owners are reacting in real time to the government advice relating to social distancing and non-essential travel.

When the first cases of the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) were reported last month, it was widely assumed it would run its course relatively quickly, with a minimal number of people affected resulting in little impact on the UK economy.

Whilst the end of the calendar year can often prove busy from an operational perspective within many organisations spanning many sectors, for business owners and decision makers the period leading up to the financial year end is usually the most demanding.

No business owner likes to think about the things that can go wrong when running a company, but it is just as important to plan for such eventualities, as it is to plan for when things are going well. Arguably more so. Redundancy is one such challenge that many organisations have to face at one point or another, but getting it wrong could cause more issues than had been anticipated, including potential employment tribunal proceedings.

The weather is finally getting warmer and it looks like summer has almost arrived. There is a buzz around the office as people are getting ready to jet off on their holidays.