Employee references: what can you safely write?

I have been asked by a former employee to supply them with a reference for a new job in another company and that company has now sent me a fairly lengthy list of questions about my views on the employee. Unfortunately this employee had been a very poor performer – should I reflect this in […]

What’s all this about “Gender Pay Gap Reporting”?

We are a fairly small company, however we take on seasonal staff every year in April for the summer – we swell to around 300 employees (we normally have less than 100 for 9 months of the year), also most of our staff are part-time so our full-time equivalent staffing is never more than 200 […]

A difficult member of staff! ..can we take disciplinary action?

This morning a member of our staff reported for work wearing a police tagging device! He is very blasé about this and has been showing it to his work colleagues. He has not told his supervisor officially about this, however it is not stopping him from attending or completing his work. Management are uncomfortable […]

Unfair Dismissal : they are lazy – why can’t I just dismiss them?

We are a fairly small organisation and every member of staff has to pull their weight. One person is not doing so, they are basically lazy, often late, disruptive and have a very poor short-term sickness record with lots of individual days off. Given all this is there any reason why I can’t just dismiss […]

Compulsory retirement : can I still specify a retirement age?

As there is now no compulsory retirement age, I am reviewing the retirement policy in our handbook. Currently it refers to “the normal retiring age is 65 years of age”. Is it OK to leave this in as it stands – it is a simple statement & should be viewed as a suggestion to employees […]

Can we discipline an employee if they are on sick leave?

I suspended an employee this week and have written to him asking him to attend a disciplinary hearing next week. Today I have received from him a doctors fit note declaring him ‘not fit for work’ for four weeks with depression’. Does being signed off on sick leave make him automatically unavailable to attend the […]

Implementing a social media policy…

We are introducing an new social media policy what happens if staff refuse to sign it?

Hopefully you will have somewhere within your contract of employment a statement such as:

“You will be subject to the terms and conditions as agreed and amended from time to time by the the Company as outlined in its […]

What is Shared Parental Leave?

I run a small company developing bespoke software for a variety of clients. We employ 2 staff as well as myself, and have become pretty busy over the last year as the business has grown quickly. Now a key member of my staff has informed me that his wife is pregnant and he will be […]

Can we stop staff using Facebook at work..?

How can we state in an employment Contract that use of the internet for social networking e.g. using Facebook and Twitter is strictly prohibited.

It is perfectly in order to place such a restriction within the statement of terms and conditions that you will issue to the employee when they commence working with you. However […]

Holidays unused due to sickness can be carried over for 18 months

We have an employee who has unfortunately been ill and consequently off sick for over a year. On return she now wants to carry over all those holidays to the next leave year – can she do that?

If a worker is unable to take their holidays due to sickness absence, then they can carry […]