We’re not your average HR consultancy. Led by Sam Swinstead, a plain-talking HR professional with over 20 years of experience, we focus on sensible, practical advice that gets results.
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Veganism has more than quadrupled in Britain since 2014 and there are now over 600,000 people that follow a vegan diet. With 8 in 10 of us knowing friends or family that are vegan, the trend is showing no signs of slowing down and there is a high chance that you may...
Since 2014 flexible working has been something that every employee with over 26 weeks service has the right to request and many do, but unfortunately it seems that many businesses still find it so hard to deal with that these requests they are all too often denied....
As the calendar year comes to a close, so does the holiday year for many businesses. If you have been on top of monitoring your employees annual leave, you will know how much unused holiday your employee's have, if any. What if you have employees who have not taken...
A client asked a question today about GDPR compliance when completing a reference for an ex-employee so I thought it might be useful to clarify what you need to do: Providing a reference will be an act of processing personal data and you will need a legal basis to do...
When does targeted job advertising become discrimination? A question that looks likely to provoke a fair amount of debate in 2018. It's long been the practice of recruiters & employers to place adverts where their target employee audience are most likely to see...
The gig economy under discussion again... At the Westminster Employment Forum, Hermes have claimed they are not like other gig-economy companies. Currently we're not seeing how what they describe as their operations differs from other courier firms, and just a couple...
Yet more news to pay close attention to if your business uses self-employed contractors on a regular basis. Following a ruling by the European Court of Justice today, if those contractors are at any point deemed to be workers (and bear in mind the recent Uber &...
This is the email I just sent to a client who is unsure if they are paying correctly when it comes to holiday pay. Is it any wonder employers get confused and get stuff wrong sometimes ...?! The problem is that the rules around holiday pay keep changing! It was first...
Do you have apprentices? Are you up to date on the requirements? We're rapidly discovering that not many employers are aware of the rules that came into effect earlier this year about apprenticeships. It doesn't seem that all training providers / assessors are keeping...
The Parental Bereavement (Pay and Leave) Bill gets a second reading in parliament today and if passed it may be law by 2020. This proposes that all parents will, from day one of employment, be entitled to time off work if they lose a child under the age of 18. With a...
vivoHR has a staging date of January 2018 or pension auto-enrolment and I'm delighted to say that we're getting our plan in place now so that we'll be ready for that date. One less thing to stress about in the busy world of running your own business! If you are not...
Voluntary overtime should now be included in holiday pay. As we hope you are aware from our previous posts and newsletters covering this subject, compulsory overtime must be included when calculating holiday pay. We've long thought that voluntary overtime would be...
Employment tribunal fees are unlawful and unconstitutional, The Supreme Court ruled on 26 July. The Government must now repay all tribunal fees to claimants who have paid them since they were introduced in 2013. We understand that fees will stop being charged...
EU citizens who work in your business may have a little clearer idea on their likely status post-Brexit. Theresa May has set out her proposals that qualifying EU citizens will be able to apply for settled status if they have lived in the UK for 5 years or more after a...
The self employed "gig economy" is coming in for yet more criticism it seems. MPs have criticised contracts at Uber, Deliveroo and Amazon as being unintelligible - with the House of Commons Work & Pensions Committee describing the Uber contract as "gibberish"! It...
As well as the minimum wage rate increases we wrote about on here the other day, new limits come onto force for statutory pay rates on 6 April 2017 as follows: Maternity / Paternity / Adoption / Shared Parental Pay - rises to £140.98 per week Statutory Sick Pay -...
From 1 April 2017 the National Minimum Wage rates increase as follows: £7.50 per hour - 25 yrs old and over (new rate for over 25s was introduced April 2016 and referred to as the complusory National Living Wage) £7.05 per hour - 21-24 yrs old £5.60 per hour - 18-20...
We are loving (in a kinda horrified way!) these top 10 reasons why employers are not paying the National Minimum Wage. We've refused to work with employers before who won't pay staff NMW - usually café or restaurant owners who think tips should make up part of that...
Less than 10% of new parents are taking advantage of the opportunity to share what used to be mum's Maternity Leave with the new Shared Parental Leave rights since its introduction in April 2015. It's possibly a pretty complex process for new parents to work out how...
Personnel Today always publish a useful round up of upcoming employment law changes - so here's the heads up for 2017. To be honest many of those anticipated changes won't have a significant impact on your small business but there are a few you should be aware of, in...
National Living Wage (for over 25s) will rise to £7.50 per hour from April 2017. No great surprise to see an increase in this in the Autumn Statement if the Government intend to fulfill their promise of reaching £9 an hour by 2020. Other employment matters coming into...
The National Minimum Wage rates went up on 1 October, we mentioned it earlier this year but we just wanted to remind you £7.20 per hour - 25 yrs old and over (what has been called the National Living Wage) £6.95 per hour - 21-24 yrs old £5.55 per hour 18-20 yrs old £4...
Have you heard of the Apprenticeship Levy? According to the British Chambers of Commerce nearly half of all businesses have no clue what it is. The Apprenticeship Levy comes into force in April 2017 and affects companies with a payroll of more than £3million per...
How do you refer to holiday & Bank Holidays in your employment contracts? Careless wording with all good intent could end up costing you more money! The statutory holiday entitlement is 5.6 weeks (28 days for a 5 day a week employee) - this includes bank holidays....
So Sports Direct have reportedly "scrapped" zero hours contracts....except they haven't, not really! They have in fact stopped them being compulsory - instead offering the choice of a 12 hour per week contract or zero hours. This recognises that in actual fact there...
The National Insurance contributions (NICs) Employment Allowance was introduced in April 2014. It was aimed at reducing the cost of employing people for small businesses. Eligible employers could claim the allowance from April 2014, which reduced their Employer NICs...
Receptionist sent home from work for not wearing high heels! Really?! What decade are we living in?! It is perfectly reasonable and lawful to set a dress code on your place of work, and in fact it is reasonable (and not discriminatory) to have different requirements...
