Welcome

We hope you will continue to enjoy this short employment law update. As usual, we promise not to send too many, or make them too long. Email this to a friend if you think they would enjoy and like to subscribe to this free newsletter.

Are you updating your contracts or handbooks?  Are you using ‘standard’ clauses, even though your business is not standard?  Many clients spent hours taking clauses from here, extracts from there and end up with something that really does not reflect their business or their needs.    Worse still, we still regularly see drafts that are way out of date in legal terms, or offer additional rights that our clients had not intended.  For an intelligent second opinion on your drafts, talk to us.  

For specific advice you can email us at advice@irenicon.co.uk or our consultants are only a phone call away on 08452 303050. For new clients, your initial 20 minutes advice will be FREE!  For more general news and views from the front line, check out our blog site. Your comments are more than welcome – use the comment link at the bottom of each ‘article’.

Looking for clarity?: 

The new guidelines on determining who is disabled are to be applied from 1 May 2006.   The 45 pages of guidance hardly make for light reading.  They will be used by tribunals when considering Disability Discrimination claims.   Here are some key points.  

1. Disability includes physical or mental impairments and certain progressive conditions.
   
2. When assessing whether an impairment has an effect on an individual’s ability to carry out day to day tasks, the assessment should be made of the condition without treatment (eg eyesight without glasses, not with).
   
3. Individuals may be classified as disabled when they are without symptoms – for example someone between bouts of rheumatoid athritis.

Recent calls to our hotline service indicate that many clients still routinely treat all sickness absence in the same way, whether due to disability or not.  Record disability related absence separately, so that consideration can be given to what constitutes a reasonable adjustment.

Managing sickness is an increasingly complex area, with Data Protection, Unfair Dismissal, Disability Discrimination, Health and Safety and other legal implications.   If you add age discrimination into the mix, it is time to review sickness and absence policies for overall practicality and compliance. 

Many clients do not have the appropriate strategies, policies and contractual rights in place to properly manage absence levels.  Contact us to arrange your review.   

Now is the time to book your delegates onto our public training courses:

TUPE course – 29 June 2006

This programme explores the commercial and practical implications of the Transfer of Undertakings Regulations (TUPE) and highlights the key steps to avoid legal complications. Anyone contemplating buying or selling a business, pitching for a contract serviced by their staff, or changing contractor  should be aware of these issues before planning their changes.

Managers Rights programme – 13 July 2006

Do your line managers know what they can and should do to manage performance and conduct?  If they only know what they must not do, they will be blocked.  Time to let them know how to go forward.   Book them onto our Managers Rights programme on 13 July to get them back on the right track.  

Click here to book via our web site.  Or you can make your booking by phone.