Are you aware of your own unconscious bias?

Something which Employers are becoming increasingly aware of is the influence that “unconscious bias” can have on decisions they make. The risk for employers is that if this unconscious bias relates to a protected characteristic, such as gender, disability, age or race, it could be discriminatory. In employment terms, unconscious bias occurs when one person gives preferential treatment to another who looks like them and/or share their values. The issue employers face is that this bias can influence decisions when dealing with recruiting or promoting staff. A common effect of this is that there is a less diverse workforce, as…

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Maternity Cover Arrangements

    Acting up to cover maternity: When hiring maternity cover employees, there is still the risk that an unfair dismissal claim could be made when ending the arrangement, if the correct procedure is not followed, especially if an employee is moved into a role to cover maternity as they may have 2 years’ service. If the correct procedure is followed, the employer should be able to show a dismissal is fair and for ‘some other substantial reason’. We recently dealt with this challenging situation. When hiring an employee for maternity cover, s106 of the Employment Rights Act identifies the…

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Statutory redundancy pay rates increase for 2017-18

Something everyone needs to know: - The maximum amount that can be used to calculate an employee’s statutory redundancy pay increases to £489 per week this month. Calculations for statutory redundancy pay are based on an employee’s weekly pay (subject to the maximum amount), length of continuous service and age: for every year of employment in which the employee was aged 41 or over, he or she is entitled to receive one and a half weeks’ pay; for every year of employment in which the employee was aged between 22 and 40, he or she is entitled to receive one…

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Third Party Rights in Settlement Agreements

Often in settlement agreements, reference is made to third party rights.  Typical wording would be “Except as expressly provided elsewhere in this agreement, no person other than the Employee and the Company  shall have any rights under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999 to enforce any term of this agreement. “ Have you ever wondered what does this actually mean? Under the Contract “Right of Third Parties” Act 1999, third parties have the right to enforce contractual terms in certain circumstances. A standard clause can be inserted to prevent any third party from being able to enforce the terms of the…

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Pre-termination negotiations

  In 2013, the government introduced a new law to operate alongside the well-established without prejudice principle. Employers are now able to initiate settlement discussions with their employees, with less risk of those conversations being admissible if the matter subsequently goes to tribunal. These conversations are legally known as “pre-termination negotiations” and are also commonly referred to as “protected conversations”. Practically speaking there is no requirement to explicitly refer to Pre-termination negotiations within a settlement agreement in order to gain the benefit of them, as it will usually be sufficient to simply refer to any settlement discussions within the covering…

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