March 2018 Newsletter

It’s March and in keeping with the spirit of Spring (if we ever see it this year!) there are budding new HR/Employment laws sprouting. In particular, it’s all change for the taxation of termination payments from 6 April 2018 and, of course, GDPR is just around the corner on 25 May 2018; we’ve got more guidance for you on that. One growth area that you might not be too keen on is the 147% rise in Tribunal claims – time for some weeding out of the tricky people problems before they add to those statistics! We also recommend that you proactively tackle your pay equality issues rather than find yourselves on the receiving end of the whopping 233% increase in Equal Pay claims. So if you haven’t yet undertaken an Equal Pay Audit, now is the time to call us.

In our case update we give you good news that a pregnant worker will not benefit from statutory protection on account of pregnancy until her employer is made aware that she is pregnant. Further, an employer does not have to take every possible step to establish whether an employee is disabled to avoid knowledge of disability. The not so good news is that the holiday pay rate for term-time workers should not be calculated on the basis of 12.07% of annual pay and employers would be wise to consider bumping at some point during a redundancy process.

• Government reforms (1): Taxation of termination payments
• Government reforms (2): Data protection – GDPR guidance
• Government reforms (3):  Tribunal claims
• Case update (1):  Sex discrimination – pregnant workers
• Case update (2): Happy holidays! Pay for term-time workers
• Case update (3): Disability discrimination – are you in the know?
• Case update (4): Redundancy – to bump or not to bump?