Employment Law - yet more changes!

The Department of Trade and Industry, in their wisdom, decided that in order to help employers adapt to the vast and varied changes in employment law, there would be only two dates in the year when such changes would occur - 1st April and 1st October. The problem is that the amount of employment legislation on those two dates is so enormous that the burden on the employer to research, let alone implement, such changes becomes almost too great to bear.

There are some extremely useful websites setting out the changes including The Department of Trade and Industry's own. However, to simplify matters for both employers and employees, here are some of the crucial changes that you need to be aware of as from 1st October 2004.

Dispute Resolution Regulations - these introduce new minimum legal procedures to encourage employers and employees to resolve dismissal, disciplinary and grievance issues in the workplace. This is a minimum standard only. So, for example, the statutory disciplinary procedure only applies to dismissals, including redundancy, a small number of gross misconduct dismissals and actions short of dismissal. Such actions include a demotion instead of a dismissal. It does not apply to oral or written warnings, although employers are always advised to have a full and proper procedure in the interests of best employment practice.

The idea behind these regulations is that it will reduce the amount of applications to the Employment Tribunal - and my name is Cinderella and my pumpkin awaits.

The new legislation also introduces added incentives to follow the procedures, namely an automatic finding of unfair dismissal in the Employment Tribunal if the employer has failed to follow them; and any award can be increased or decreased by up to 50% depending on which party failed to comply.

Disability Discrimination Amendment Regulations - these are too numerous to describe here. However, the most important change from an employer's point of view is the removal of the small employer exemption. So from 1st October 2004, even if employers have only one employee, they are subject to the provisions of the Act.

Written Terms and Conditions - all employees are entitled to a written statement of their terms and conditions of employment within two months of starting work. From 1st October 2004, if this doesn't happen, an employer faces paying up to four weeks' pay to the employee in compensation.

Employment Tribunals - there has been a 'streamlining' of Employment Tribunals which includes setting time limits on conciliation through ACAS once an application has been received by the Tribunal. This is in an attempt to make the parties resolve the issues at an earlier stage thus avoiding last minute settlements which obviously interfere with the efficient organisation of the Tribunal hearings.

From 1st October 2004, there are new forms for both applications and responses in the Employment Tribunal. These forms must be used and consist of many pages and very searching questions (there goes another rain forest.)

Very often, it is all too easy for employers to ignore new employment legislation or to say they will deal with it later. I cannot stress how crucial it is to implement whatever procedures or documentation is necessary to comply with the employment legislation - or to put it another way, to shut the stable door before the horse bolts!

October 2004