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Employment law is a vast area of law that is prone to change. Therefore, making a mistake regarding your legal obligations as an employer is easy. However, making a mistake can lead to a claim in an employment tribunal which can prove costly and time-consuming. To help you avoid employment disputes, this article will explain five employment law mistakes that you, as an employer, should avoid making in your workplace.
1. Dismissing You Staff Without a Full, Fair and Reasonable Process
As an employer, you cannot dismiss staff without following a full, fair and reasonable process. Firstly, when dismissing your staff, you must have one of the five fair reasons for dismissal. A fair reason for dismissing your staff may be due to:
- their poor conduct;
- their capability or performance in the role;
- business restructuring that results in redundancy;
- a legal reason why they can no longer carry out their role, such as losing their driver’s licence; or
- another substantial reason.
However, this alone is not enough to ensure a fair dismissal, as a full and fair process must be used. A full, fair and reasonable process includes, for example:
- carrying out a thorough investigation;
- holding a disciplinary hearing where misconduct is involved; and
- giving written warnings where required.
Failing to use a full and fair process can result in an unfair or wrongful dismissal claim.
2. Not Getting Maternity Rights Correct
One employment law mistake you should never make as an employer is to get your employees’ maternity entitlements wrong. Employees with specific rights and entitlements regarding maternity include:
- pregnant employees;
- employees who just had a baby; and
- employees returning to work after having a baby.
The rights and entitlements these employees have include:
- the right to take 52 weeks of maternity leave;
- entitlement to Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP); and
- the right not to be chosen for redundancy because they are on maternity leave.
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3. Failing to Stop Harassment
You must ensure that harassment does not occur in your workplace. Where harassment does arise, you must immediately deal with it as part of your broader zero-tolerance approach to harassment.
Even if you did not carry out the harassment, you could be partly responsible for it if you did not take reasonable steps to prevent it from occurring. One step you can take as an employer is implementing and enforcing a harassment and anti-bullying policy.
4. Not Managing Sick Leave Correctly
Dealing correctly with ill-health starts with ensuring you have a sickness policy in place in your workplace. This policy should detail how you as an employer deal with sickness, including long-term sickness absence.
You should also not forget that your staff still have rights when on sick leave, such as continuing to accrue the usual annual leave.
5. Ignoring or Not Keeping Up With Employment Law
As an employer, you should never ignore or fail to keep up with changes in employment law. While this may sound like a common-sense employment mistake, it is an easy one to make.
Employment law covers a wide range of subjects for an employer to understand, such as:
- flexible working;
- holiday pay;
- redundancy; and
- discrimination.
Therefore, you must keep up to date with relevant changes to employment law.
Key Takeaways
There is much to take on board regarding employment law as an employer. Hence there are many mistakes you could potentially make. Nevertheless, you should do certain things, such as:
- address and prevent harassment in your workplace; and
- manage maternity rights correctly, such as providing employees their full 52 weeks of maternity leave.
If you need help understanding employment law mistakes in England, our experienced employment lawyers can assist as part of our LegalVision membership. For a low monthly fee, you will have unlimited access to lawyers to answer your questions and draft and review your documents for a low monthly fee. So call us today on 0808 196 8584 or visit our membership page.
Frequently Asked Questions
There are many employment law mistakes as an employer you should never make. One of these is ensuring you do not dismiss your staff without following a fair, full and reasonable process.
As an employer, if you make employment law mistakes, you could face an employment claim at an employment tribunal which can be costly and damage your reputation.
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