Employment Law for Businesses
Advice for employers: contracts and policies, difficult departures, restructuring, and the defence of tribunal claims in Scotland.
Employment law is reserved to the United Kingdom Parliament, so the substantive rights, including protection from unfair dismissal, the discrimination framework, working time and statutory pay, apply to an employer in Glasgow on the same terms as to one in Manchester.
Where Scotland differs is in administration and procedure. Employment tribunals in Scotland are separately administered, with their own President, and an appeal from the Employment Appeal Tribunal in a Scottish case proceeds to the Inner House of the Court of Session and not to the Court of Appeal of England and Wales.
This is also an area in which the law moves. Employment legislation has been under sustained reform, with provisions commencing in stages over several years, and any statement of current rights has a short shelf life.
For that reason we publish no figures or qualifying periods here. We give them, current at the date of the advice, when we are instructed.
The documents
Most employment problems in a business are contract problems that were left alone. We prepare and review contracts of employment and directors' service agreements, staff handbooks and the policies behind them, and the restrictive covenants that determine whether a departing senior employee can take the client list. A covenant drafted too widely protects nothing at all, which is a distinction worth paying for once.
Difficult departures
We advise on disciplinary and capability processes while they are still running, which is the useful point at which to be asked. We advise on redundancy and restructuring, including the consultation obligations that are triggered by numbers and timing, we prepare settlement agreements, and where it assists we conduct the conversation that precedes them.
Business transfers
Where a business or part of one changes hands, employees may transfer automatically with it, along with their terms and their accrued rights, and information and consultation obligations arise on both sides.
At that point employment advice and corporate advice have to be the same advice, and we run them together.
Tribunal claims
Where a claim is brought, we defend it. Conciliation through the statutory service is a step in almost every case, and the time limits for bringing a claim are short and strictly applied, so the first matter to establish on any claim form is when the period began.