June 2018 Newsletter – Manufacturing & Engineering sector

It’s June and if you can take your eyes off the World Cup and Wimbledon we’ll try to compete for your attention with our update on HR/Employment law news. Hopefully the excitement of the World Cup is having a positive impact on your staff, but just in case there are issues our guidance on Russia 2018 should help.  We also update you on ACAS’s guidance on the World Cup as well as on religion and belief discrimination.  The Government is also offering help to employers this month with its toolkit on tackling tobacco, alcohol and drugs and more from the ICO on GDPR.

In our case update we bring further news on employment status; guidance from the Court of Appeal on the use of the “final straw” argument in constructive unfair dismissal claims; and when a dismissal for misconduct may amount to disability discrimination.

What we’ve been doing in the Manufacturing & Engineering sector recently…

There seems to be a mixed picture in the manufacturing sector at the moment, some of our clients are contacting us to assist with making redundancies and some are winning new contracts and recruiting. Recruiting is an area that really deserves some close attention not least because we have had plenty of clients over the years tell us “we should never have taken them on”. A few years ago companies could rely on a former employer to do a lot of the heavy lifting with the recruitment process by providing a detailed reference. Nowadays the norm is for companies to give and receive very basic factual references that essentially just confirm that the individual worked for them.  The tide has gone so far now that we would suggest that if you receive a very positive reference from a former employer that you should be slightly sceptical, as it could have been drafted as part of a severance package with a departing employee (often it is the employee who has drafted it!).  Remember, we are not just here to advise on dismissing employees, we have plenty of experience assisting with recruitment.

Next month we’ll talk about how important unconscious bias training is for people involved in recruitment, watch this space…

Simon Martin
Partner, Solicitor
email Simon or call 0117 325 0929

• Russia 2018: World Cup wellbeing
• ACAS guidance: World Cup football
• ACAS guidance: Religion and belief discrimination
• Government reforms (1):  Tobacco, alcohol & drugs
• Government reforms (2): Data protection - GDPR guidance
• Case update (1): Employment status
• Case update (2):  Unfair dismissal - waiting for the "final straw"
• Case update (3): Disability discrimination - cause of misconduct