The holiday season is upon us and the next instalment of the Flowers v East of England Ambulance Trust saga has arrived from the Court of Appeal. The case involves voluntary overtime and whether it should be included when calculating holiday pay. European law says that holiday pay should be based on ‘normal remuneration’. If pay or hours vary, then an employer must look at the previous 12 weeks and pay the average.
Indirect age discrimination is where a policy that is applied to all employees negatively affects people in a certain age group. An indirectly discriminatory policy can be justified if it is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim. A legitimate aim of saving costs, on its own, is not enough to justify a discriminatory policy.
Article by Sean Murphy, Consultant and Director at Evidential Ltd
About Sean Murphy
Educated to degree level in graphic design, Sean started his career working at the Imaging Unit of Greater Manchester Police as an Imaging Analyst.
Some of the high-profile work Sean worked on included million-pound drug operations, football hooligan violence and many different murder cases. Sean also worked on the in-quest into the deaths caused by Dr. Harold Shipman.
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North West law firm Bermans has announced record financial results for the fifth consecutive year, with the firm reporting an increase in turnover of 15% from £5.95M to £6.85M for the financial year ending on 30th June 2019.
If an employee wins their unfair dismissal claim, a tribunal can order compensation. They also have the power to order reinstatement (to the old job) or reengagement (to a comparable job). A tribunal might not make such an order if it is not ‘practicable’, for example if the relationship between employer and employee has broken down completely. But what happens when a tribunal orders reengagement but the employer refuses – can the employee force the employer to reengage them?
Discrimination arising from disability happens when an employer treats an employee unfavourably because of something that arises because of their disability (and which cannot be objectively justified). However, an employer will not be liable if they didn’t know the employee was disabled and could not reasonably have been expected to know.
Our lives are moving more online and sadly this has resulted in a rise in financial scams. A recent poll of over 2000 individuals by YouGov and Lloyds Bank found 10% of them had been the victim of a financial scam. Property transactions are particularly vulnerable, with high values involved and often time is of the essence. There are numerous cases where solicitors and sellers have been duped into sending the sales proceeds to fraudsters, or buyers have paid the purchase money to someone who was not the real owner.
Locking in your key employees is always a balancing act between work life balance, remuneration packages and showing employees they are valued and part of the very fabric of the organisation.
One of the most effective ways of imbedding employees into your business is through capital ownership, which provides a shared goal towards exit and increasing value.
This is a powerful way to tell a key employee of their value to the business and can create an “in this together” attitude.
Such a structure creates rewards for all on a fair basis through the eventual sale of the business.
One of the most popular types of employee share option schemes with SMEs is enterprise management incentives (‘EMI’).
EMI schemes are a popular way of attracting and retaining employees and they can provide significant tax benefits.
Continue ReadingBack in 2000, legislation was introduced to ensure individuals who operated as independent contractors but who worked like employees, paid broadly the same tax and national insurance contributions as employees. The ‘off-payroll working rules’ are commonly referred to as IR35. With around 900,000 contractors operating in this way, this legislation affected a not insignificant part of the workforce.
What do Riverford, the organic vegetable box company, Richer Sounds, the hi-fi chain and Turleys, the planning consultancy have in common? Well, as from May 2019, they are or are about to become employee owned businesses with Julian Richer being the latest business owner to announce he is transferring 60% of his shareholding into an Employee Ownership Trust (EOT).
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