Adrian Fryer
Employers who need to make only a small number of redundancies must make sure that their consultation process doesn’t end up being a ‘tick box’ exercise.
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To bring a claim for disability discrimination, an employee must be able to show that they (or someone they are associated with) is disabled. At what point in time is an assessment of disability made? In Ahmed v DWP, the Employment Appeal Tribunal held that the tribunal had erred by assessing whether the Claimant was a disabled person using a three-day date window. The discrimination allegations spanned several years.
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If an employee submits their resignation to their employer, then this is a clear indication that the employment relationship is coming to an end. For whatever reason, the employee is moving on. Unless the employee is resigning because of some historic poor behaviour or discrimination on the part of the employer, the risk of claims is low.
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Sexual harassment can take several different forms. It can refer to unwanted conduct of a sexual nature. This is what most people understand by the term. Under Equality Act 2010, the term also has a wider meaning. It incorporates unwanted conduct which occurs because a person has either rejected or accepted the sexual advances of another.
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Preventing harassment in the workplace is often at the very top of HR’s to do list. Training and policies often focus on key problem areas such as sexual harassment. They don’t often include any reference to ‘smell harassment’. However, according to the Japanese newspaper ‘Mainichi’, there has been an increase (in Japan at least) in ‘smell harassment’ issues in the workplace. The newspaper reports that, as the weather in Tokyo gets hot and humid, the sweaty season has arrived. Employees are taking to social media to complain about the impact that bad smells from their colleagues are having on their working life. One reported feeling ‘dizzy’ because of the body odour of their colleague.
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Alex Murray
Around 83% of the UK population are active social media users. It comes as no surprise then that social media continues to have an influence in the workplace. As a result, employers must consider how to handle employee use of social media, both whilst they are at work and away from the workplace.
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Supporting wellbeing in the workplace is of increasing importance to employers. One hot topic is how those going through menopause or perimenopause can be best supported. Avanti West Coast’s latest attempt to tackle this may have resulted in a bit of an ‘own goal’. They have come under fire after handing out a goodie bag to female employees containing ‘gimmick’ gifts. Avanti confirmed that it had given staff a bag filled with ‘gifts’ including a jelly baby ‘in case you feel like biting someone’s head off’, a paper clip ‘to help you keep it all together’, a tissue ‘if you’re feeling a bit emotional’ and a pencil ‘to write down the things you might forget’. Other items included a fan ‘handy for the hot sweats’.
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Adrian Fryer
Where an employer knows (or ought to know) an employee is disabled, the duty to make reasonable adjustments applies. Under Equality Act 2010, employers must make adjustments to remove any substantial disadvantage that the employee would otherwise face at work because of their disability. The employer only has to make such adjustments as are reasonable.
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The law protects employees from unfair dismissal on health and safety grounds. If an employee, in circumstances of danger which he reasonably believed to be serious and imminent, proposed to take steps to protect himself from the danger and was dismissed as a result, he will have been automatically unfairly dismissed under section 100(1)(e) Employment Rights Act 1996.
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There are two claims which can be brought by employees associated with whistleblowing. The first is a claim of detriment. Employees can claim against their employer (and a wider category of individuals including colleagues) for unfavourable treatment on grounds of whistleblowing. This is a detriment claim. Employees can also bring a claim against their employer for automatic unfair dismissal where they claim that the main reason for their dismissal is whistleblowing.
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