News and Features

Expanding employment legislation

In 2004, we asked the Human Resources heads of 30 major employers what were the key problems they were facing. Surprisingly, a major theme was alarm about the burdens from growing employment legislation, in terms of both direct legal sanctions and also claims from employees.

For example, from the point a job application is made, the applicant has 5 grounds on which they can claim discrimination! On the first day of employment this rises to an incredible 95 grounds to claim against the employer including race and sex discrimination! And this will increase further with new Age Discrimination legislation in 2006. Tribunal awards are getting larger; in 2003, £178,000 was awarded to an employee after just one week's service. (sexual harassment; Graham v Beadles)

Specific areas of HR concern were;

All employees need to be aware of good practice in these work-related areas, empowering them to act responsibly and hence reduce the risk to the employer.

The new employment imperative...

Induction of new employees and new managers has always been important in explaining the business and the specific individual job role. Today's employers, however, are being faced with a whole range of employment issues which were previously unconsidered. These are now so extensive that simply making employees and managers aware of them is a significant challenge for any business. This is true whatever the size of the enterprise, and irrespective of whether it's in the private, public or voluntary sectors.