As the World starts to open up again, we look at what you need to consider if your business has employees in other countries who are visiting the UK to work.
Business travel across borders, and even within them, pretty much stopped in 2020 and 2021 due to the Covid 19 pandemic. As travel restrictions are being lifted, businesses have the opportunity to allow employees to travel and international business travel is on the rise.
Employers need to take some time to refamiliarise themselves with the relevant rules around immigration and employment tax before they accept a visit from an overseas employee to ensure compliance.
Recent independent studies undertaken by the Legal Services Board and Xero convey a worrying and consistent theme that SME debt is a ticking time bomb.
UK SMEs are losing more than £40 Billion per year through disputes and have £131 Billion tied up in late payments. YouGov has reported that 82% of SMEs currently have outstanding balances with each firm owed an average £62,957.00.
David Osrin is the Managing Director of Music Makers Business Development Consulting Ltd. He started the company in 2004 with the aim of providing business development support to professional and financial services firms. The company now specialises in a range of sales focused support services, including lead generation, coaching, outsourced sales director and consultancy work.
Ecommerce has seen remarkable growth over recent years, especially during lockdown, and is changing the landscape of how people buy and sell goods and services. The growth in ecommerce is shifting activity away from the high street to digital means, which in turn is changing the way businesses operate. In addition, the popularity of marketplace platforms, such as Amazon and Facebook, has made this growth even more noticeable.
The National Security and Investment Act 2021 (the “Act”) came into force on 4 January 2022, giving the UK government an additional screening process on the grounds of national security.
The Act covers a broad range of transactions, requiring mandatory notification if it is connected to one of 17 key sectors.
Stockbrokers at London firm FinCapp have decided to give their employees unlimited holiday entitlement. After a bumper 6 months for workload and profit, the business has decided to introduce the policy to guard against staff burn out. The move will flip the standard holiday policy on its head – instead of a maximum limit, the company will instead introduce a minimum level of holiday for employees. Staff will be required to take a minimum of 4 weeks off per year and a few days per quarter to ensure they get regular breaks.
An employee has the right not be subjected to detriment by their employer on the ground that they made a protected disclosure. In deciding whether treatment is done ‘on the ground’ of making a protected disclosure, the tribunal must decide whether the protected disclosure was a material factor in the employer’s decision making but it does not have to be the sole cause. It is possible to distinguish between treatment which results from a protected disclosure and treatment which occurs because of something else instead – the manner in which a disclosure was made, or something that was done at the same time as the disclosure or even something which is a consequence of the disclosure rather than the disclosure itself. Sometimes it will be possible to separate the disclosure from these other things but the case of Fitzmaurice v Luton Irish Forum has shown just how much care an employment tribunal must take in applying the legal test to the facts of a case.
An employment tribunal has found that a fear of catching Covid-19 is not a protected belief under the Equality Act 2010 (EA). Section 10 of the EA says that a belief means any religious or philosophical belief. To be a philosophical belief, the case of Grainger v Nicholson said the belief must be genuinely held, be a belief rather than a viewpoint or opinion, concern a weighty and substantial aspect of human life and behaviour, attain a certain level of cogency, seriousness, cohesion and importance and must be worth of respect in a democratic society. In X v Y, an employment tribunal looked at how the law applies to a claimed belief involving a fear of Covid-19.
Section 15 of the Equality Act 2010 deals with discrimination arising from disability. This is where an employee is treated unfavourably because of something arising from their disability. An employer will have a defence if it can show that its actions were a proportionate way of achieving a legitimate business aim.
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