So what are the 3 biggest myths in employment law?
Golf HR expert Carolyne Wahlen addresses the biggest employment law myths.
MYTH 1:
When can you give an employee a verbal warning?
What do you think?
Audience: Any time that they’ve failed to meet the terms of their employment.
Carolyne: Okay, have we got anything different? Everybody unfortunately is wrong. Verbal warnings were abolished in 2009. You can use them if you want to but there is no point because they are legally worthless, they don’t mean anything at all.
MYTH 2:
What is the current default retirement age?
Audience: There isn’t one.
Carolyne: There isn’t one. There is no default retirement age. There is an age at which you can take your pension and that is not the same.
MYTH 3:
When can you make an employee have a medical assessment?
Audience: Following injury or illness, when an employee makes a claim against the company.
Carolyne: Okay, does anybody have any other answers? You can’t. You can’t make, you can only request. The advantage being if they have no medical assessment you don’t have to take their medical history into account when making your decision. If you have no information you can just go ahead on that basis. But you cannot make someone have a medical assessment. You’re not allowed to give them a medical questionnaire until you’ve made them an offer, and if you withdraw the offer on the basis of the content of that medical questionnaire, that is discrimination. It’s much better to not know because then you can dismiss on the grounds of performance and then they can’t claim it’s on the grounds of disability.