Our service provides our clients with everything they need to navigate employment law.

Our retained clients benefit from employment law advice and drafting services on an ongoing basis for a competitive, fixed monthly fee. This means that clients need not have any hesitation in seeking our assistance as they are not “on the clock”. We encourage our retained clients to take advantage of this by taking advice early and often.

We understand that employment law is a complex matter for employers to deal with. By providing pro-active and practical advice and assistance, we can take the uncertainty and difficulty away from you and give you confidence that you are following the proper procedures and making appropriate decisions.

We regularly advise our retained clients on the following matters:-

• recruitment exercises (job descriptions, criteria, application forms)
• calculating holiday entitlement for part-time / casual workers
• performance management
• absence management
• disciplinary and grievance procedures
• redundancy exercises
• the employment law requirements of business transfers and insourcing / outsourcing contracts

Our advice service includes drafting the letters employers will need to provide to their employees for use throughout the procedure that is being followed.

The law requires employers to provide employees with a written statement of main terms of employment. As well as being a legal requirement, it makes good sense to write down the terms of the employment contract so that both parties are clear regarding what can be expected of and by them. We provide our retained clients with contracts of employment that comply with the law and meet the client’s requirements. 

We also provide our employer clients with a handbook of HR policies so that employees can understand the organisation’s policies on a range of matters. Well drafted and clearly communicated policies and procedures are of great value in the employment relationship. Included in the handbook are policies on:-

• annual leave
• sickness
• absence management
• family related leave (maternity, paternity, etc)
• performance management
• use of email and internet at work
• equal opportunities

As well as drafting the handbook, we keep it up to date for clients, reviewing it annually so that it is always up to date with developments in the law and the client’s working practices.

Not everyone who works for an organisation is engaged as an employee. Sometimes organisations engage casual workers and, on other occasions, individuals are engaged on a self-employed, consultancy basis.
We work with our clients to ensure that individuals are being engaged on the correct employment status and then put in place the appropriate contract with the individual.

There are a number of additional services that we make available to our retained clients, as follows:-

While, for the most part, employers who follow our advice throughout a process do not find themselves in Tribunal, it can of course happen from time to time and it is important to have good representation.

If we have advised through the process that led to the claim being issued, we will be confident of defending the client at Tribunal. Our team has many years of experience defending employers in Employment Tribunals against allegations of unfair dismissal and discrimination.

We will always offer pragmatic advice to a client, including whether it is sensible to consider settling a claim or whether it should be defended. In advising on this, we encourage clients to not only consider the merits of the case, but also the time, costs and emotional energy involved in defending a claim.

We believe that good training and help to avoid issues arising in the workplace. We can be engaged by our retained clients to train their managers and staff on a range of issues, including:-

• Conducting investigations, disciplinary and grievance procedures
• Equal opportunities
• Recruitment and selection

In some circumstances, our clients like us to be present at meetings with employees and this can be arranged as an add-on to our retainer service.

Often, in a small organisation, it can be difficult to ensure there are sufficient people to deal with an investigation, disciplinary / grievance and an appeal. It can often be helpful to engage the services of an outside consultant, usually at appeal stage, to review the decision taken by the business owner.

Our preference is to remain available to advise on all parts of the process so, rather than undertaking the role of decision maker at any of the stages ourselves, we have trusted partners who we refer clients to if they want to appoint someone from outside the organisation to make the decision on the disciplinary or grievance hearing or appeal.