InsightsPosts From May 2013

21st May 2013

Defending any Employment Tribunal claim, whether or not it has merit, is costly for businesses, both in terms of legal costs, management time and potentially negative PR...

21st May 2013

Gone are the days of the tape recorder; clunky, larger than a VHS player, with the sound quality of a Motorhead gig. Many smartphones now have, as standard, the facility to record good quality audio...

21st May 2013

The recent case of Mental Health Care (UK) Ltd v Biluan and another has provided useful guidance on how best to go about designing a fair method for selecting who should be put at risk of redundancy.

21st May 2013

As mentioned in previous bulletins, during October 2012 the Government announced its intention to create a new type of employment status. This was originally reported as "Employee Owners", but following consultation is now to be called "Employee Shareholders", the central idea being that individuals will give up certain employment rights in return for capital gains tax exempt shares in their employer.

21st May 2013

Employment law is always fast paced, but 2013 is proving to be an action packed year even for normal standards. There are to be improvements to the National Minimum Wage legislation, changes to the TUPE regulations, compromise agreements are to be replaced by "Settlement Agreements", we will shortly have new Tribunal rules and fees, whistleblowing legislation is to be changed, and flexible working for all and shared parental leave are on the horizon.

21st May 2013

Unlike unfair dismissal compensation, which is limited purely to financial loss (such as wages), awards for successful discrimination claims can include compensation for non-financial losses such as "injury to feelings" and "aggravated" damages. The latter are awarded in the most serious cases where the behaviour of an employer has (as the name suggests) aggravated a Claimant's injury to feelings. Importantly, both injury to feelings awards and aggravated damages are designed to compensate a Claimant for injury and not to punish an employer.