Staff Management

You may think that the reply is obvious, but you may be surprised that sometimes you are.  If an employee causes damage or is injured during the course of their employment, then the employer is jointly liable to pay for any claims arising.  The employee must be acting in the course of their employment and not to have “metaphorically taken off his uniform” An example of this would be the plumber who floods a house while at work or doing…

Many employers are not aware that they can be responsible for the actions of their employees conduct at work. The legal term is vicarious liability and refers to a situation where someone is held responsible for the actions or omissions of another person. If this act is one of discrimination, then the employer could find themselves facing an award by an employment tribunal but how much? Tribunals can make awards if there has been a constructive dismissal or unfair dismissal if an…

A recent tribunal case provides a stark lesson for all employers who fail to have appropriate HR Policies and Procedures in place, particularly when dealing with an employee dispute. The case involved a butcher who was dismissed by his employer for posting another butcher’s ‘meat deal’ on social media, to his then girlfriend. The employee, Michael Hayward, had worked for Noel Chadwick, butchers based in Wigan for seven and half years. The Tribunal were highly critical of the employer, as…

In a recent Court of Appeal case some useful guidelines on how to deal with long term absences has been given. The facts of the case were, that the employee, Ms O’Brien was employed as head of a department at a school and she was attacked by a pupil. Her injuries were not serious and she returned to work after a short period. When she returned she felt unsafe in the school and was unhappy with the way the school…

If you run a business you will frequently be faced with the problem of your employees ringing in to say that they will be late in; not arriving at all; or asking to leave work early due to an emergency. What should you do in these circumstances and when can you legitimately refuse such request? The first thing that you need to be aware of is that an employee has a statutory right to take time off to look after…

It seems that never a month goes by without an announcement for a National Awareness day for this or that. February is no exception with the first Monday in February being labelled as National Sickie day, as it has traditionally been the highest day for employee absenteeism. This was no doubt compounded by other events such as perhaps a hangover after Dry January, celebrating the Six Nations kick off or the Super Bowl or simply over indulgence of the first…

The Tax Paid Gift Card scheme marketed last month proved once again to be a runaway success for our clients, who found it to be a fantastic way to reward their staff, with all the inconvenience and burden of dealing with the Inland Revenue, handled on their behalf by HR:4UK. However it should not just be at Christmas time that you recognise and reward staff, as our Tax Paid Gift Cards are available throughout the year for you to motivate…

Much has been written over the past few days about the impact of Brexit on all aspects of business management – including HR. We thought it would be helpful to give business owners and managers some objective and measured advice. So, what does Brexit mean for your HR management? The short answer is – nothing. As you will know from news coverage of the Brexit process, it will take at least two years (and possibly much longer) for the UK…