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Establishing a successful recruitment process and clear written employment contracts for new employees can have a major impact on your business.
Every business needs to be aware of its obligations under minimum wage and equal pay laws, as well as recent pensions auto-enrolment changes.
You must comply with legal restrictions on employees' working hours and time off, or risk claims, enforcement action and even prosecution.
The right employment policies are an essential part of effective staff management. Make sure any policy is clear and well communicated to employees.
While sick employees need to be treated fairly, you need to ensure that 'sickness' is not being used as cover for unauthorised absence.
Most pregnant employees are entitled to maternity leave and maternity pay, while new fathers are entitled to paternity leave and paternity pay.
As well as undermining morale, illegal discrimination can lead to workplace grievances. Employee discrimination is covered by the Equality Act 2010.
Home, remote and lone workers are becoming increasingly commonplace. Key issues include communication and how to manage and motivate people remotely.
The right approach to consulting with and providing information to your employees can improve employee motivation and performance.
Disciplinary and grievance issues can be a major burden to employers. Putting in place and following the right procedures is essential.
Following the right dismissal and redundancy procedures helps protect your business and minimise the risk of a legal dispute at tribunal.
Employment tribunal claims are a worrying prospect for any employer. A tribunal case is a no-win situation – even if the claim is unjustified.
You must comply with legal restrictions on employees' working hours and time off. Failing to do so could lead to claims from employees, enforcement action or even prosecution. Giving employees fair holidays, work breaks and pay can also help to improve performance, reduce accidents and cut unauthorised absenteeism. You are legally required to consider requests from most employees for flexible working patterns.
The Working Time Regulations set requirements for employees' holidays, working hours and rest breaks. The regulations are designed to help protect employees' health, safety and welfare in line with the EU Working Time Directive.
Employees are entitled to work a maximum of 48 hours a week, unless they freely opt out from this limit. The working time regulations also include requirements for work breaks and for rest periods between working days.
Following a recent Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) decision, employers should check the working time of mobile employees who have no 'fixed place' of work. In this case, the judge ruled that time spent travelling to and from the first and last client of the day should count as working time.
The test of whether time qualifies as working time depends on whether the employee is:
Where workers have no fixed place of work, such as a central office or depot, workers are deemed to be working while travelling to and from a job.
Employees have a statutory holiday entitlement of a minimum of 5.6 weeks' paid leave a year. This applies pro rata to part-time workers: for example, an employee working two days a week has an annual leave entitlement of 11.2 days. The holiday entitlement can include public holidays such as bank holidays.
Special rules apply to young employees, night workers and Sunday working.
Employees have statutory entitlements to maternity, paternity and adoption leave. Parents and carers are also entitled to take unpaid parental leave of 18 weeks per child until their 18th birthday, with a maximum of four weeks per year per child. Employees can take reasonable unpaid time off to deal with an emergency involving a dependant (for example if a child falls ill) and then apply for either annual leave or parental leave if more time off is needed. Employees have the right to unpaid compassionate leave for a dependant's funeral.
Employees are entitled to paid or unpaid leave for a variety of activities. For example, you need to allow employee representatives paid time off for carrying out their duties (for example, as a health and safety representative). You also need to allow employees unpaid time off for various public service activities such as acting as a magistrate. If you are making an employee redundant, you must allow time off for job-seeking.
You should have a clear policy on sick leave, time off related to a worker's disability, and any discretionary leave you allow. Include details about your employees' rights to parental leave and compassionate leave in your company handbook or employment contracts. You should also make clear the procedures employees must follow to request leave.
Flexible working can involve a wide range of arrangements, including flexitime, part-time work or working from home. Bear in mind any flexible working arrangement that you agree to is likely to become part of an employee's contractual terms, unless you specifically agree a temporary or trial arrangement.
All employees have the right to request flexible working. However, employees adopting employee-shareholder status do not have the statutory right to request flexible working except in relation to a flexible working request on return to work from maternity, paternity or adoption leave.
A request for flexible working might include a change to flexitime, part-time, working from home or some other arrangement.
You can only refuse the request for limited business reasons: for example, because the proposed flexible working arrangements would be too expensive or harm business performance. If you do not want to agree to a request for flexible working, you must ensure that you follow the right procedures and give a valid reason.