Get in touch 0117 325 0526
Get in touch 0117 325 0526
It’s December and very nearly the Christmas holidays! Hopefully you’re on a Christmas wind-down and enjoying the festivities, so for fun holiday reading we bring you our last employment law/HR news update for the year. This year’s newsletters come to an end with a helping hand on the new statutory rates for next April, potential reintroduction of Tribunal fees, guidance on recruiting & managing staff with a disability or health condition.
In our final case update of the year we look at employment status and whether ‘self-employed’ taxi drivers were in fact ‘workers’; the dangers of a capability dismissal when the employee is receiving long-term disability benefits; and employer’s liability for an assault by the managing director on an employee at a Christmas after-party.
Perhaps I’m just getting old (“sooo ancient” as my kids tell me, with large sighs), but my feeling is that the percentage of HR and other business people I’ve spoken to this year who are just completely frazzled with the increasingly mad pace of work life has gone up from 80% to 99.9%.
My overwhelming impression of 2018 has been “we just all need to slow down a bit”. The pressure of the ever-present emails and social media continues to grow, intensified by our addiction to our mobile devices, and we all suffer.
Earlier in the year I learned that we are actually clinically addicted to the small shots of dopamine that every use of our smartphone gives us (depressing) but, like all addictions, once we know this we can choose to control our exposure if we wish (positive!). So now in the evenings and at weekends I’m getting better at recognising the urge for just a quick peek at my emails or the BBC News app… and catching myself just in time. Another cup of tea instead! (yes I know tea is another addiction, but it doesn’t involve being reminded of Brexit or Trump).
As well as that particular psychological insight, during 2018 I have armed myself against the pressures of the world with newly found yoga and a Mindfulness app. I’m not sure when the calm and the acceptance and the sense of inner peace is meant to kick in… but ask me next time you see me and I will give you a report. After all I am, as my wife reminds me, merely a work-in-progress.
I wish you a wonderful 2019, full of whatever excitement or calm you hope for, and in the meantime I hope you enjoy a well-earned rest.
After many requests from our clients over the years for help and support with commercial contracts and relationships they may have with their other suppliers, we have decided it’s clearly time to offer this as a proper service.
So we’re now pleased to announce that we now offer a wide range of advice and support on commercial contracts and commercial disputes, delivered by experts in the field.
Gemma Lally has been In-house Counsel at BP, SuperGroup plc and BT plc, following several years at a leading commercial law firm in Bristol. She particularly assists our clients with recruitment agency fee disputes, which is a niche specialism of ours.
If you’d like to discuss anything to do with commercial contracts, please contact Victoria Thorne.
Categories: Newsletters
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