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Halborns News

Executive People Update

Posted on: August 20th, 2019 by Ginny Hallam

As part of keeping you in our focus, our exec people update ensures you’re on top of the latest people opportunities, threats and legislative changes so you are ready to update the Board. If you want more insight, give us a call or send us an email and we’ll make sure you’re fully up to speed with all the detail.

New harassment helpline

There’s a new helpline giving women free legal advice if they’ve experienced sexual harassment at work. Having received high profile support from Emma Watson and significant press attention, the helpline is funded by donations and is operating limited hours at present. It is covered by two female employers aiming to support “women to exercise their legal rights in the workplace”.

Criminal record reform

The Ministry of Justice has proposed criminal record reforms to help ex-offenders back into employment. Currently, if someone has served a sentence over four years (even as a child), this must be disclosed to potential employers for the remainder of their life.

The proposed change will mean that some sentences over four years will no longer have to be disclosed to employers after a specified time (to be determined after public consultation). This will not apply to the most serious sentences including life, or for sexual or violent offences.

EU Settlement Scheme

Over one million people have now been granted settled or pre-settled status. If you haven’t already, audit your workforce to determine if anyone needs to apply or has already had their status granted. If any of your people still need to make an application, the Government has a useful employer toolkit to help you support.

Here are the deadlines for settled status applications in a deal/no-deal scenario:

Deal – 30th June 2021
No-deal – 31st December 2020

Good Work Plan (GWP)

We’re still hearing you don’t know about the GWP, so here’s a reminder of what you need to get in place for April 2020:

All workers, not just employees, will have the right to an employment contract from day-one
The reference period for calculating holiday pay will extend from 12 to 52 weeks

Apprenticeship agreements

Whenever we get our hands on an apprenticeship agreement, it’s rarely flexible enough. De-risk your apprenticeship agreements by ensuring you have the flexibility to terminate the arrangement if the apprentice consistently under performs – here’s out latest update.

Let us take a look over your agreement if you’re in any doubt.

Tribunal trends – our views

Posted on: August 13th, 2019 by Ginny Hallam

Our tribunal advocate, George Miller, explains the tribunal trends we’ve seen in the last year (and how to avoid being on the wrong side of a claim).

Poor claims designed to elicit cash

Lack of evidence and bringing every claim under the sun are common. But, tribunals are wise to employees manoeuvring employers into defending claims without the prospect of success. They’re striking out claims and issuing orders for employees to pay money into the tribunal to continue with their claim.

Low value claims

There’s been an increase in claims for smaller amounts of cash – like holiday and notice pay for example.

A long time for cases to be heard

15 months in some cases for the claim to be heard at tribunal. Tactically lengthy waiting times can take the wind out of an employee’s sails, but often you’re as keen to dispose of the case as they are!

Increase in claims being withdrawn

We’re increasingly successful in encouraging employees to withdraw their case or settle for low values. It’s still only 10% of cases that ultimately end up going to a full hearing.

Lack of fees make tribunal claims attractive to disgruntled employees, but there’s plenty you can do to avoid one landing…

Train – great managers to have great conversations
Talk – nip issues in the bud early to avoid escalation and surprises
Respect – deliver consistent decisions in accordance with company values
Culture – drive great behaviours and trust so employees know you’re trying to get it right
Processes – set, update, and communicate sound processes to support challenging employment issues
Performance – communicate frequently and follow up often
Evidence – keep records on a great people system (they’re your first defence)
Precedents – don’t settle unless you really need to (if you’re known to pay out at the sniff of a claim you can often find plenty more landing your way).

Watch this space for news on when tribunal fees are set to be introduced again (no news yet!).

Executive People Update

Posted on: July 23rd, 2019 by Ginny Hallam

As part of keeping you in our focus, our exec people update ensures you’re on top of the latest people opportunities, challenges and legislative changes so you’re ready to update the Board.

If you want more insight, give us a call or send us an email and we’ll make sure you’re fully up to speed with all the detail.

40% increase in employment tribunal calls to ACAS

New data in the 2018/19 report from ACAS shows a 40% increase in Early Conciliation calls from individuals who intend to sue their employer at tribunal. That said, of the 39,000 calls of this type, just under 10% ended up in front of an employment tribunal (either because the individual withdrew or settlement was entered into). Watch out for our take on tribunal trends in future updates…

Holiday pay should include voluntary overtime (sometimes)

We’ve been given further clarity on what needs to be paid to employees during their statutory four weeks’ annual leave. Provided the pattern of overtime is ‘sufficiently regular and settled’, the court was clear the overtime pay must be included within the holiday pay calculation of four weeks’ statutory leave – even if the overtime is voluntary.

Living Wage accreditation

Join Ikea, Nestle and Aviva in securing accreditation from the Living Wage Foundation, if you:

• Pay the ‘real Living Wage’ to employees aged 18 and older (£9.00 or £10.55 in London)
• Provide at least four weeks’ notice of shifts
• Provide an accurate contract that reflects hours worked
• Provide a contract with a guaranteed minimum of 16 hours a week.

Why pay it? 86% of businesses say it’s improved their reputation…

Parental bereavement

It’s truly tragic circumstances that give rise to such legislation, but The Parental Bereavement (Leave and Pay) Act is due to come into force in April 2020. It affords two weeks’ paid leave for parents who’ve been employed continuously for 26 weeks and lost a child under the age of 18. We’ll be updating our policies on Intelligent Employment to ensure you stay ahead.

Give us a shout if you have any questions and we’d be delighted to chat through with you.

Changes to IR35

Posted on: July 4th, 2019 by Ginny Hallam

Disclaimer: what you’re about to read should come with a health warning! Tax is a tricky beast, so we’ve tried our best to make this as straight-talking as our usual updates…don’t say I didn’t warn you!

IR35 states that if you’re working with a self-employed individual in such a way that they’d usually be an employee of yours (were it not for the company under which they operate), then they should be paying PAYE and NICs.

From April 2020, if you pay the individual’s company (rather than the individual directly) for work they’ve done, you may be responsible for PAYE and NIC deductions in respect of their fees (and HMRC penalties if you get it wrong).

From April 2020, if you’re a medium or large company* you’ll need to:

• establish whether, if you disregard the company under which the individual operates, the individual would really be an employee of yours;

• notify the individual and any company supplying them such as a recruitment business of your decision as to their true employment status and your reasons for that decision;

• ensure each layer of the supply chain involved with that individual is aware of your decision as to their status and the reasons for it;

• be clear on your process for resolving a dispute with the individual in respect of their status;

• deduct PAYE and NICs (if you pay the individual through their company) bearing in mind you will be charged interest and penalties by HMRC for failure to do so.

Small steps…

At the moment, we’re waiting for the final draft of the legislation. In the meantime…

• audit your workforce and contracts to identify any individuals who are supplying services through their company;

• use HMRC’s Check Employment Status for Tax to identify the status of individuals you pay through their company;

• discuss with them the changes to the regime and your thoughts on their status;

• consider how you’re going to make the appropriate deductions to HMRC where necessary;

• consider your on-boarding process for suppliers and how you’re going to ensure that deductions are made as appropriate;

• update your consultancy agreements to ensure the appropriate provisions are incorporated to deal with these changes. Click here and we can help you with that!

Watch this space!

*P.s – if you’re wondering, medium and large businesses are those which satisfy two of the following: turnover of more than £10.2m / have a balance sheet of more than £5.1m / have more than 50 employees.

GDPR a year on – 10 things we’ve learnt

Posted on: May 28th, 2019 by Ginny Hallam

Cast your mind back: 25th May 2018. A year on and a few data protection headlines later, we thought it prime time to share our practical insights on the new regulations…

Increasing tactical use of subject access requests – it’s almost common practice for employees to request their data wherever they’re case building.
Charges for excessive subject access requests are beginning to be used – provided you make sure charges are reasonable and you can justify them, they can prove a useful deterrent to having to deal with the request and stop the 30 day response clock ticking until payment is made.
Increasing trend to move from hard copy people files to on-line solutions to help keep information secure and relevant. Click here for information on our platform – Intelligent Employment Hub.
Lack of impact assessments when new data processing technology is introduced – start assessing! You’ll able to show the ICO you’ve taken a diligent approach to introducing a system which might ultimately compromise personal data.
Opt-ins for consent to process data are still not being secured. If you need consent (e.g. to respond to reference requests) ensure you secure written consent. Click here for more information on Intelligent Employment and our up to date employment contracts (containing consent).
Consents aren’t being stored. Don’t delete them! The ICO recently fined Vote Leave for failure to prove they had consent to send out text messages.
Sharing data with third parties isn’t being given enough consideration – if you use third party programmes like Survey Monkey, have you informed individuals whose personal data will be made available on that platform that you’re passing their information on? If not, you need to!
A good privacy notice can be really useful – with one in place, many data protection queries can simply be answered by referring someone back to your privacy notice.
Most breaches we’ve dealt with haven’t needed to be reported to the ICO. By way of example, sending an email to the wrong person should be recorded as a breach on your log but only needs to be reported to the ICO if the unintended recipient is going to do something with the data beyond deleting it.
Personal data registers still aren’t widely in place (they’re required if you have over 250 employees). Click here for more information on our data protection toolkit and template register.

Our “Data Protection Toolkit” is still available if you need any help with getting the right documents and processes in place – you can see the list of contents here.