I went up to London with Frances and Christopher at the weekend.
I’d booked the Mischief Theatre’s Magic Goes Wrong at the Vaudeville Theatre, so we hopped on the train and off we went.
I printed the tickets, checked the route in London, and although it said 20 minutes on the Bakerloo line, I left 60 minutes just in case.
Turns out we needed every minute of it.
An important change is coming to the holiday pay reference period, and it’s going to be used to calculate holiday pay entitlement for employees and workers.
Until now, average weekly pay for holiday pay purposes has been calculated using a twelve-week reference period.
Only those weeks where monies have actually been earned are counted; weeks of annual leave, sickness absence or nil earnings are not included in the calculation. Neither are those where an individual has been in receipt of statutory payments such as paternity pay.
This means that you have to count backwards until the individual has twelve successful weeks of earnings.
In early 2019 the government stated that this twelve-week reference period punished those who work irregular and fluctuating weekly hours because they would receive less holiday pay after quieter times.
The government passed the Employment Rights (Employment Particulars and Paid Annual Leave) (Amendment) Regulations 2018 which come into force on 6 April 2020.
These Regulations increase the holiday pay reference period to 52 weeks.
From that date, holiday pay will need to be calculated on average hours worked over 52 weeks.
Just before Christmas I read about a small employer trying to save money.
Nothing wrong with that, but only if you’re sensible about it.
This company wasn’t.
Instead, they’ve ended up in tribunal after telling a pregnant employee that it was the company’s policy “not to pay statutory maternity pay (SMP)” under any circumstances.
Supposedly, they were going to help her to apply for maternity allowance directly from the government.
However, as the tribunal pointed out, where an employee meets the criteria for SMP an employer MUST pay her at least the current statutory rate; it can’t ever avoid this legal responsibility.
More to the point, they were giving away free money.
Small business owners often tell me that they don’t want to employ staff of childbearing age as they’ll have to pay maternity pay as well as for a temp to cover the position.
They are always amazed when I advise them that they will be able to claim back any maternity pay from the government at 103%. The government pays YOU for being THEIR paymaster.
Given that this is pay that you have to pay anyway, getting something back from the government is surely worth doing and means you avoid the £20,000 costs of a tribunal!
If you need any of this clarifying, just drop me a note and we’ll talk it through.
Imagine this: an employee has taken you to tribunal.
And then, with the tribunal settled, they ask the Court of Appeal to withhold the tribunal ruling from the public register because the details are “embarrassing”.
Are they allowed to do this?
Well, here’s what happened recently in the case of L v Q.
In L v Q Ltd 2019 L had brought claims of disability discrimination, harassment and victimisation against his employer, Q Ltd (Q).
At the final hearing, L’s solicitors asked for the tribunal’s judgment to be anonymised and withheld from the public register. They submitted that L was embarrassed about aspects of his case and disability.
When the tribunal agreed to do this, Q appealed.
The Court of Appeal decided that, save for cases involving national security, there’s no explicit power to prohibit the publication of a judgment on the register.
The Court said that case details should not be edited to prevent potential embarrassment – whilst this can be unfortunate, all information should be available to assist readers in understanding the case.
However, the parties can be anonymised, but only where it’s deemed genuinely necessary.
As I have grown older and financially independent able to buy my own gadgets, the joy of getting Christmas presents is now a little bit muted.
Maybe you feel the same?
Giving gifts is still immensely enjoyable, but most of the things I want I am in the lucky position that I can just go out and buy.
So, I was blown away by my present from South Oxfordshire District Council.
Yes, a PRESENT from my local council.
We had an interesting one this week.
An ex-employee at one of our clients has she decided she wants her image to be removed from all company social media, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and the websites, quoting GDPR and the “right to be forgotten” at them.
Our client was not best pleased, as there are hundreds of images to trawl through to remove her.
And – make no mistake – he does have to do this, but if he had taken action earlier, he’d have been able to avoid it.
What he needed to do was the equivalent of a talent release form in the acting industry.
Get your employees to sign the “Consent to use of employee image” form (we can provide you with this).
Once they’ve signed it, they’ll have consented to having their images used on your social media and promotional materials.
They can remove that permission at any stage, but NOT retrospectively.
So you would not have to remove their image from wherever it already is (although if they have left, taking them off the “meet our team” section of the website makes sense), but you would not be able to use it again going forward.
We strongly recommend that you use the form to avoid the hassle – all of our clients will automatically be sent this, and it is a standard part of our standalone GDPR for employees pack (£95 plus VAT).
Send me an email or give me a call if you are interested!
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