Businesses will welcome an EAT decision on the right to time off for dependants which highlights the need for employees to ensure that they make contact with their employer to tell them why they are absent as soon as reasonably practicable for them to do so. The employee in this Read more…
A Court of Appeal decision confirms that, where an employer has set out a formal contractual disciplinary procedure, it is bound by the terms of that procedure. In this case, the employee had appealed against the imposition of a written warning and the employer contemplated increasing the severity of that Read more…
Employers considering a business reorganisation should take note of an EAT decision which held that an employer failed in its duty to make reasonable adjustments when it did not adjust certain redundancy criteria that placed a disabled employee at a substantial disadvantage. This was despite the fact that the failure Read more…
Businesses should take note of an Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) case that highlights the importance of formalising employment relationships. The EAT held that an employment tribunal erred in finding that a director and shareholder, who performed part-time work for a company without pay for at least three years, was an Read more…
Two surveys have highlighted the risk of candidates providing fake references and the fact that a large number of staff fail their probationary periods. This suggests that employers may need to review their procedures for checking references and for assessing probationary periods. The Federation of Small Businesses and BBC1 worked Read more…
Changes to the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006 (SI 2006/246) (TUPE) came into force on 31 January 2014. Key changes include the following: Transferees may carry out pre-transfer collective redundancy consultation. The rules on changes to terms and conditions and dismissals have been redrafted to bring the Read more…
The Employment Appeal Tribunal has upheld an employment tribunal’s decision that an employer breached its duty to make reasonable adjustments under the Equality Act 2010, when it chose not to pay for an employee with work-related stress and depression to have private psychiatric counselling and cognitive behavioural therapy. Although a Read more…
A recent Court of Appeal decision underlines how useful restrictive covenants in employment contracts can be in protecting an employer’s business. The court dismissed the appeal of a former employee and director who had been ordered to pay at least £50,000 in damages, following a breach of his post-termination restrictive Read more…
Employers should take note of what appears to be the first case to consider the effect of a successful internal appeal on a prima facie case of indirect sex discrimination. The EAT held that an employee had not suffered indirect sex discrimination when her flexible working request, which was initially Read more…
The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) has held that an employer’s failure to provide an impartial grievance appeal process (by allowing an employee to appeal to a different manager than the one who had heard the original grievance) could amount to a breach of the implied term of trust and confidence. Read more…