Employment Law
Dismissal Process ‘Call for Evidence’
Monday, March 19th, 2012During its term in office, The Coalition Government is already conducting a review of employment laws and regulations that may prevent an employer taking on new employees. This was detailed in our news item on 26 November 2011 as a result of Business Secretary Vince Cable’s speech to the Engineering Employers’ Federation on 23 November [...]
Employment Law Review – Annual Update March 2012
Monday, March 19th, 2012BIS have published their updated Annual Review document detailing the employment law reforms that are already going through Parliament as a result of its Resolving Workplace Disputes consultation: Effective 06 April 2012 (and subject to Parliamentary approval of secondary legislation): Increasing the unfair dismissal qualifying period from 1 to 2 years Increasing the maximum limit [...]
Employment Law Payments and Awards – A Reminder
Sunday, January 29th, 2012Section 34 of the Employment Relations Act 1999 and Article 33 of the Employment Relations (Northern Ireland) Order 1999 provide for an increase or decrease in the following statutory limits each year according to the year-on-year change in the Retail Price Index (RPI) at the previous September. The Employment Rights (Increase of Limits) Order 2011 [...]
Employment Law Payments and Awards
Monday, January 9th, 2012Section 34 of the Employment Relations Act 1999 and Article 33 of the Employment Relations (Northern Ireland) Order 1999 provide for an increase or decrease in the following statutory limits each year according to the year-on-year change in the Retail Price Index (RPI) at the previous September. The Employment Rights (Increase of Limits) Order 2011 [...]
Employment Law Reforms
Saturday, November 26th, 2011In a speech to the Engineering Employers’ Federation on 23 November, Business Secretary Vince Cable spoke of several employment law reforms which will impact the payroll department. We do not intend to cover these in any depth; however, it is worthwhile pointing these out, particularly as some may impact the payroll function: The Government plans [...]
Latest HR News
Monday, June 13th, 2011Are you aware of the demands of the Bribery Act that comes into force on 1st July? – yes, just days away! You may believe that this sort of thing does not affect you and the people you work with. Indeed the Justice Ministry has indicated that it does not expect a rush of prosecutions [...]
Gross Misconduct – what it is and how to handle it
Monday, June 13th, 2011Much misunderstanding appears to exist about the definition of gross misconduct, largely because many employers place a subjective rather than a legal interpretation upon it. If they are particularly annoyed about the behaviour of an employee, they treat the incident as one of gross misconduct. Even worse, much worse, they sack the person “on the [...]
Latest HR News
Wednesday, April 13th, 2011The concept of the Default Retirement Age has been abolished in practice and, as a result, employees are now entitled to choose themselves when to retire. This is raising a number of questions that will only be resolved satisfactorily as, over time, cases emerge from the higher courts. In the meantime you cannot force employees [...]
Closure of the Worker Registration Scheme
Friday, March 18th, 2011The Worker Registration Scheme is a transitional scheme that was introduced in 2004 when the ‘A8′ countries (Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia) joined the European Union. Nationals of these countries must register under the scheme if they commence employment in the UK and 1.1 million did so between May 2004 [...]
Latest HR News
Wednesday, March 9th, 2011Some time ago we looked at the issue of changing employees’ contracts of employment. This is becoming increasingly common as employers have to persuade their staff to make changes to the way they work and are compensated in the face of serious operating difficulties. The article made clear the importance of gaining employees’ acceptance of [...]
Disciplinary Appeals
Wednesday, March 9th, 2011An important element of British law is the right of individuals who have been subjected to a sanction or other disadvantage by authority to appeal if they believe that they have been treated improperly. Indeed most people would consider this a critical requirement of natural justice. Whatever, it certainly forms an important part of the [...]
Downloading Pornography a Good Cause for Candidate Rejection?
Wednesday, March 9th, 2011A client rang the office recently in something of a panic. She had rejected a candidate for the vacancy of payroll clerk, quite properly as she saw it. But subsequently several of her colleagues had told her that she had left herself and the organisation vulnerable to legal action. She had, they suggested, breached laws [...]
HR Problems Page
Wednesday, March 9th, 2011Here we take our weekly look at answering some of the tricky HR questions we’ve been emailed. If you have a tricky HR question you needs answering email it to help@payroll-help.com and we’ll post the best here with an answer each week. A TUPE Problem We are shortly to have a change of ownership and our [...]
Varying terms and conditions of employment
Friday, February 25th, 2011In a decision given on 14 January 2011 in the case Morgan v Network Europe Group Ltd, the London Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) ruled that, where an employee has been issued with new terms and conditions but no attention is drawn to a significant change, the employee is not deemed to have accepted the variation. [...]
Latest HR News
Wednesday, February 9th, 2011Last month we urged you to audit your discipline procedures. Well, while you are in the mood, do the same with your equal opportunities policies, procedures and practices since failure in this area again leads to many legal actions and some hefty awards of compensation against employers. And often this is not a result of [...]
HR Problems Page
Wednesday, February 9th, 2011Here we take our weekly look at answering some of the tricky HR questions we’ve been emailed. If you have a tricky HR question you needs answering email it to help@payroll-help.com and we’ll post the best here with an answer each week. Disciplining Different Types of Misconduct One of our employees has appealed to me against [...]
New proposals for resolving workplace disputes
Friday, January 28th, 2011On 27 January, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and the Tribunals Service published a joint consultation document entitled Resolving workplace disputes: A consultation, setting out the latest Government proposals for reforming employment laws. These new proposals are set against a backdrop of an ever increasing number of Tribunal claims – 236,000 in [...]
Employed students and the accommodation offset
Friday, January 21st, 2011The national minimum wage (NMW) rules allow employers who provide accommodation for workers to include it, up to a specified limit, as a benefit in kind towards payment of the NMW. The current limit is £4.61 per day, or £32.37 for a full week. On 18 January, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) [...]
Questions from our forum 21/01/11
Friday, January 21st, 2011Each week we receive a number of payroll questions on our forum, and here are this week’s batch. Can you help with any answers? Forum posts: Calculating Leavers Salary We are all part time employees and we are paid on the 15th of each month in 12 equal payments. On Tuesday 23rd November, after finishing [...]
HR problems page
Wednesday, January 5th, 2011Here we take our weekly look at answering some of the tricky HR questions we’ve been emailed. If you have a tricky HR question you needs answering email it to help@payroll-help.com and we’ll post the best here with an answer each week. Bullying boss I am secretary/PA to a man who is a bit of a [...]
