The latest legal news

You cannot have failed to notice the continued headline-grabbing on employment law last year, whether that be the very rare multi-million pound awards made by the Tribunals in certain high profile discrimination cases, or political intervention and/or fallout and sound-bites from the recent leaked report commissioned by the Government on “lazy workers” (the draft Beecroft Report), where it was suggested by a Conservative Donor and Venture Capitalist that unproductive employees and other über-malingerers should lose their right to claim unfair dismissal or that employers introduce ‘compensated no fault dismissals’ where staff can be sacked on notice pay only for any reason the employer sees fit (would this really make for engaged, confident and productive staff, or sheer panic and a chronic case of job insecurity? Discuss...)

By the way, these are ideas only (that have clearly not been put forward by our expert employment team or faced our scrutiny!) and the Coalition government has no confirmed plans to introduce these as policy. Whilst this does appear to be the stuff that blogs and tweets are made of, being ideas up for debate rather than having the substance to launch government policies, it is indeed easy for employment lawyers to rubbish and sneer at proposals for change.   

The fact is that employment claims can be very costly for the employer to defend and enormously time consuming.  Quite often, it is cheaper to settle a weak employment claim then to defend it all the way to the final Tribunal hearing. 

When Employment Tribunals were set up in the 1970s they were intended to be cheap and informal.  However, in addition to the costs of defending claims, the cost to the taxpayer of running the employment tribunal Service is estimated by the Treasury to be £84million per year.  218,000 claims were issued by the Employment Tribunals between 1^st April 2010 to 31^st March 2011, which represents an increase of 44% on those issued in 2008/2009.  29% of these claims were settled through ACAS. 

Some changes will be introduced following the various government consultations which took place last year as follows:

• From 6^th April 2012, an employee must have 2 years continuous employment before being able to bring an unfair dismissal claim (an increase to the 1 year minimum continuous service currently required)
• Currently there is no fee for an applicant who wants to make an employment tribunal claim. The Chancellor George Osborne has announced that from April 2013 there will be, for the first time ever, a fee of between £150 and £250 for lodging a claim at the Tribunal and a further £1,000 for proceeding to a hearing. Fees will be higher for cases where damages of more than £30,000 are sought, although the low-paid, or those without an income, may have the fee waived or reduced at the start of the process on a sliding scale basis.

This may deter claimants from bringing spurious or opportunistic claims (or may exclude potential claimants with meritorious claims who fall outside the fee exemptions, although successful claimants can recover these fees from the losing party).

The Government has announced a "fundamental review" of the Employment Tribunal Rules of Procedure to help speed up the Tribunal process, which are expected to be introduced on 6th April 2012. Under these changes employment judges will hear unfair dismissal cases alone in the tribunal, unless they direct otherwise. The maximum amount of a costs order, which a tribunal may award in favour of a legally represented party, will increase from £10,000 to £20,000. Witness statements are to be taken "as read" unless a tribunal directs otherwise.

And back to those “lazy” employees: -

Staff are your greatest asset and should be treated as such.  However, in the case of poor performing employees, there is no need to “tip toe” around the issue for fear of facing a Tribunal claim or wait for the introduction of yet more employment law legislation.  Holding off on taking action could only lead to resentment by others (staff I mean, not parliamentarians), who may perceive that they are taking on extra work as a result of others’ failings.  In any case, there may be a genuine reason why staff are struggling which needs to be carefully considered. 

Addressing these issues, involves following your written procedures which may include:

• talking to staff confidentially about their performance,
• setting mutually agreed goals and objectives,
• reviewing these frequently and
• supporting managers and providing them with the time and training they need to implement this

and then we can all enjoy a productive and happy 2012...

 For further information contact Hannah Thomas on 020 8858 6971 ht@grantsaw.co.uk