Employment

Unfair Dismissal

If your job is terminated by an employer before the expected date of leaving or retirement, then the employer will have to show that your dismissal is for one of four potentially fair reasons:

 

 

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If an employer has a genuine redundancy then an employee may qualify for a redundancy payment (in accordance with a set formula) provided the employee has at least two years' continuous service with the employer.

It can be the case that redundancy is not the real reason for dismissal or even if there is a genuine redundancy situation then certain employees have been unfairly selected for redundancy. In such situations it is possible that there will be a claim for unfair dismissal and the higher levels of compensation that go with unfair dismissal cases.

 

The Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act came into force on 6 April 2008 and applies to deaths that have occurred since that date.  The new Act does not place any new duties or obligations on a business and the offences under the Health and Safety Act 1974 and gross negligence manslaughter continue to apply to individuals.  The new Act targets the corporate management of health and safety and provides for companies to be prosecuted through the criminal courts if the way in which they manage and organise their activities results in a gross breach of their duty of care and causes a person's death.

 

To comply with the Act a business should at the very least have a proper health and safety management system in place and that system should undergo regular reviews.  The system should include details of the manner in which the company's activities are managed and organised at a senior level and they should be strictly enforced.  The system must ensure that all health and safety responsibilities are dealt with in an appropriate manner and the person responsible at each level should be clearly identified.

 

There is guidance available from bodies such as the Health and Safety Executive and Institute of Directors and this should be considered and where possible used and referred to in the management system.  General policies, systems and accepted practices within a company's field of activity will come under close scrutiny and will not automatically protect the company from prosecution.

 

The Institute of Directors and the Health and Safety Executive have published guidance for directors and board members on their responsibilities under the health and safety legislation and this can be found on the Health and Safety Executive website at www.hse.gov.uk

 

Those firms who take their health and safety obligations seriously, regularly review their management system and are vigilant in ensuring compliance are not likely to find themselves in breach of the new provisions.

 

Contacts:

 

Luke Rees

 

Lesley Purveur 

How should I deal with a workplace dispute, when one of my employees has made a complaint?

 

Whilst an employer is able to deal with an employee's verbal complaints on an informal basis, if the employee raises a complaint in writing, you have set legal obligations that you must follow.

 

As an employer you are required by law to initiate a set Grievance Procedure to deal with any complaint, no matter how trivial you may think that complaint may be.  The set procedure requires you to hold a formal meeting with the employee to discuss the complaint; to investigate the complaint thoroughly and provide the employee with an outcome; and to provide the employee with an opportunity to appeal the outcome and attend a further appeal meeting.  The Grievance Procedure can be extremely time consuming and disrupt the day to day running of a business.  In addition, if you fail to follow the requirements of the Grievance Procedure you risk a disgruntled employee submitting a claim in an Employment Tribunal.

 

All of this makes it important that you identify potential complaints at an early stage and take steps to resolve them as soon as possible before they are allowed to become formal.  This will mean that you have a far happier workforce and will allow you to concentrate on making your business as successful as possible! 

 

Contacts:

 

Luke Rees

 

Whether you are an employer or an employee, a contract of employment should be viewed as an essential document to govern the term and conditions of work.

At Larken & Co we want to spend time with our clients, getting to know the client and understanding what terms have been agreed for any contract of employment. In our view this is the only way the contract will properly reflect the parties' intentions. It is all too easy to use a standard form contract but the danger is that this will not reflect what you really meant to agree.

Too often contracts are signed without any thought about what they might really mean until the day a problem occurs. The contract of employment is so important that you really do need proper legal advice.