As we approach the month of April, let’s give some reminders of employment law changes that are shortly to come into effect and might have an impact on your business, briefly;
- Be aware of second gender pay gap reporting deadlines that apply if you employ 250 or more employees. You need to ensure that this is published on your website and that your results have been uploaded to the government reporting website.
- Payslips need to be updated to state the exact number of hours that you are paying “workers” for. The right to a payslip has been extended to all workers rather than just employees; This will therefore include agency staff, casual staff and zero hours staff.
- Ensure that you are paying the national minimum wage which will increase.
- Ensure that you adhere to statutory increases for family related pay and statutory sick pay.
- Adjust statutory redundancy pay calculations as appropriate.
- Continue to monitor Brexit and its implications for your business.
The above points are just a sample of some of the changes; as the year progresses, we need to be mindful of recent employment law cases that might influence future employment law and have consequences for employers. The case that we have chosen to highlight is Royal Mencap Society v Tomlinson Blake as it might have a direct impact for some of our clients. This raised much debate and continues the on-going commentary about the National Minimum Wage and night time/ sleep-in working. The Court of Appeal has ruled, (overturning the Employment Appeal Tribunal Decision) that being available for work is not the same as working. Therefore sleep-in care staff are not eligible for National Minimum Wage whilst they are asleep at or near their place of work; they only become eligible if they are woken for the purpose of doing some work. The debate will inevitably rage on.
If you need any further advice or support with regard to any of the issues raised above or indeed any other employment law changes that are coming into effect soon please do not hesitate to contact Clover HR via email info@cloverhr.co.uk or by phone on 01905 824051
