Welcome to the tenth and final post in our current series of hands-on guidance for UK HR professionals. In this series we’ve looked at common HR issues that you’ll encounter in the workplace and given you practical guidance on how to deal with them. Over the course of the series we’ve covered a variety of topics, such as how to handle grievances, disciplinaries, sickness absence, performance management and much more besides.

This week we look at changing terms and conditions.

Click here to read our guidance note on changing terms and conditions.

Welcome to the next post in our weekly series of hands-on guidance for UK HR professionals. In this series we look at common HR issues that you’ll encounter in the workplace and give you practical guidance on how to deal with them. Over the course of the series we’re covering a variety of topics, such as how to handle grievances, disciplinaries, performance management, sickness absence and much more besides.

This is the first of two weeks where we focus on bullying and harassment. This time we give a brief overview of taking steps to prevent bullying and harassment, and how to manage an incident if it arises.

Read our Addressing Bullying and Harassment note >

Welcome to the next post in our weekly series of hands-on guidance for UK HR professionals. In this series we look at common HR issues that you’ll encounter in the workplace and give you practical guidance on how to deal with them. Over the course of the series we’re covering a variety of topics, such as how to handle grievances, disciplinaries, poor performance, sickness absence and much more besides.

This week we look at suspending employees in relation to potential disciplinary matters. Suspending someone should not be an automatic response to allegations of misconduct, but a carefully considered decision. The consequences of getting this wrong can be considerable.

Read our FAQs on when and how to suspend an employee for disciplinary matters

Following catastrophic falls in economic output during quarter 2, the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer has, today, made a ground-breaking economic statement setting out the UK government’s second phase of its economic response, which includes a significant effort to “protect, support and retain jobs”.Given that largescale unemployment would be a key factor in creating long term scarring for the economy, a key emphasis has been on reducing the number of unemployed as we emerge from the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (“CJRS”) at the end of October 2020.Set out below are the key points for employers:

• Job Retention Bonus. To incentivise employers to bring furloughed employees back to work, the government will pay employers a bonus of £1,000 per employee on condition that following the end of the CJRS, they remain employed by their employer until at least January 2021, earning a minimum of £520 per month.
• Kickstart Scheme. This scheme will provide new jobs to 16-24 year olds who are on Universal Credit.  The government will pay the national minimum wage of young people employed under this scheme for the first 6 months of their employment, subject to the job being a new one; salary being a national minimum wage or above and the role being for at least 25 hours per week.  There will be no cap on the number of places available under the scheme and participating employers will also receive £1,000 for administrative costs. It is estimated that this £2 billion scheme will see the creation of
  

There is no change yet, but an expectation that there will soon be a UK lockdown exit plan. By 7 May 2020 we may have a better idea how and when the lockdown will fall away. But no promises are being made.

Along with the possible easing of restrictions, there is also the end of the UK government’s job retention scheme. Furloughing will become a thing of the past. As it stands, the date for that is the end of June, although there are suggestions that, like the lockdown, there will be a gradual rather than cliff edge assignment of furloughing to history.

For some businesses it will mean a focus on managing within the workplace issues such as social distancing, testing and tracing. The direction for these businesses will be a return to a resemblance of normal.

For others, the direction will be acting on the permanent damage to the business or the sector in which it operates, and that means redundancies.

For many it will be a combination of the two.

The UK job retention scheme, as the name suggests, was intended to keep employees in jobs rather than them being made redundant during lockdown. It can hardly be a surprise that its end means that employees’ status will need to be reconsidered. To some extent that will depend on the permanent damage. To some extent it will depend on the speed and scope with which the lockdown is lifted. We can hope that the lifting of the

Our September update considers recent key developments in UK employment law, including a case on calculating holiday pay for irregular workers and a Supreme Court decision on non-party access to court documents. We also outline other points of note, including developments relating to non-disclosure agreements and gender pay gap reporting.

Read more here

In 2019, discrimination is rarely overt or deliberate.  As a society we have come a long way from the ‘No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish’ signs of decades past.  But conscious intent is not necessary for unlawful discrimination to occur.  We all have unconscious biases based on stereotypes and prejudices.  We may not always realise our biases, but we do need to be aware that biases related to protected characteristics such as age, sex and gender can give rise to unlawful treatment.

In the UK, under the Equality Act 2010, direct discrimination occurs where “because of a protected characteristic, A treats B less favourably than A treats or would treat others”.  In a discrimination claim, it falls to the Tribunal to consider the reason why the claimant was treated less favourably.  In other words, what was the conscious or subconscious reason for the treatment?  This requires the Tribunal to undertake an enquiry into the mental processes of the alleged discriminator.

As a reminder, the burden of proof lies initially with the claimant, and then shifts to the employer where the claimant shows a ‘prima facie’ case of discrimination.  If the claimant can establish a sufficient difference in treatment then there is likely to be a prima facie case of discrimination.  The alleged discriminator will then need to show a cogent reason for its actions.  Where there is no overt evidence of discrimination, the Employment Tribunal is entitled to draw inferences from the surrounding facts in order to conclude that unlawful