Category Archives: HR Tips for Business and Charities

What it says on the tin – some useful guidance for smaller organisations on HR and employment law topics

Private Investigations

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The current (at the time of writing) allegations against an unnamed (again at the time of writing) BBC Presenter have caused a media frenzy and plenty of speculation, while also showing up some of the vagaries of media law.  This post is not to discuss the specific issues in this case (we don’t know them and only have partial media reports about what has or hasn’t happened). But there are also plenty of employment law and HR issues that need to be considered when dealing with serious allegations against a member of staff.

The first of these is that if an allegation of this type is made, the organisation should respond to it immediately – but that this should be the start of an investigation process into what has happened, not jumping to conclusions. If the incidents have happened outside work this can make the process even more complicated. Even where things seem a little more clear-cut, a proper investigation may take a couple of weeks, even in a small business – as witnesses may need to be spoken to, meetings noted and documents reviewed, and a final report produced.

If the matter appears to involve something that may be criminal in nature, the organisation will probably want to involve the police. In my experience, the police will respond to such issues in one of two ways

  • They will suggest that there appears to be nothing to the issue from a criminal perspective and advise you to simply proceed in accordance with your internal procedures. In some cases they may ask you to report back with your findings in case further information means they need to rethink this, or
  • They will ask you to pause any internal process while their own enquiries are made, so as not to prejudice (or warn individuals about) the police investigation.

You may want to suspend the member of staff while the investigation is ongoing. In the past this was assumed to be automatic in cases where serious allegations were made. However, recent Tribunal cases have suggested that suspension should be considered as one possible option and if there are other, less draconian possibilities – such as moving the employee to a different location – these should be looked at.

You also have a duty of care to the individual who has been accused of the alleged offence, as well as any others who may be involved. This means keeping details confidential within the investigation and certainly not making any public commentary until matters are concluded.  This applies even when the organisation is a high-profile publicly funded body like the BBC (regardless of any additional media law implications).

In this case, if the BBC have known about the allegations against a staff member for over 7 weeks and not done anything until the news story broke last week, then they could be accused of failing to respond to the issues (and it wouldn’t be the first time that they have made basic HR mistakes). If however, they have been investigating but needed time to do so thoroughly (and may have had to wait for the ‘green light’ from the police first) then 7 weeks in not necessarily an unusual period for a disciplinary investigation. The fact that the Director-General of the BBC does not appear to be in possession of the full facts is also not unusual – he might need to be involved in a subsequent disciplinary hearing and so should only find out the detail when the investigation is completed.

The BBC has employment law responsibilities – these may be inconvenient for certain sections of the media and for those who like to speculate on social media, but it doesn’t mean that the organisation can ignore them. If you are an employer in this situation, the same responsibilities apply to you, regardless of any external pressure. You are the one who will face the unfair dismissal (or worse) claim with its financial consequences for your business if you don’t do things in a correct way.

close up shot of a smartphone screen
Photo by Brett Jordan on Pexels.com

Billion Dollar Brain

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Over the last few days, Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter and the ensuing announcement of mass redundancies has been in the news, with mostly negative headlines. Businesses often restructure and reduce staff numbers after a takeover or other major ownership changes, so what (apart from the reputation of Mr Musk) makes this one particularly newsworthy?

Firstly, unlike the recent P&O case where the employer took a deliberate decision to break the law, it’s become clear as more news has emerged that this is more cock-up than conspiracy.  Twitter seem to have taken the view that the approach to redundancy in the US would apply throughout the world without any reference to local employment laws or expectations.

In the UK for example, there is a duty to consult staff in advance of redundancies taking effect, with specified time limits when more than 20 redundancies are planned. There’s also a requirement to notify the Government (via the Insolvency Service) of redundancies at the same time. It appears from reports that Twitter announced the mass redundancies and then realised they needed to consult so are hastily trying to put together consultative arrangements. However, consultation must also be meaningful, and it’s hard to see how it could be so in this case if the decisions have already been made.

Secondly, the method of announcing the decision was crude and arbitrary – staff seem to have found out in advance of a formal announcement when they were locked out of work email and social media channels (as another example of the US-centric nature of the exercise, announcements were made at 9am California Time – after the end of the working day for most of Europe and at the end of it for the UK)

Thirdly, it now appears that at least some of the people who were made redundant are actually needed by the company, with a number being asked to return. Having been treated in such a manner, it’s unlikely that many will.

It’s a salutary lesson that even if you are a ‘successful billionaire tech business person’ you can still make major mistakes – and ones that play havoc with people’s lives. It’s little surprise that goodwill towards the company is in short supply.

If you do need to consider redundancy in the UK, and sadly they are a fact of life for many businesses at one time or another, remember these key points.

  1. Think carefully and plan where and when redundancies need to be made, allowing for consultation and other periods – including legal minimum timescales
  2. Remember your legal obligation – in the UK – is to avoid redundancy if you can so give thought to possible redeployment of affected staff
  3. Inform staff face to face if you can, but if that is not possible then an email explaining the situation and the reasons for redundancy
  4. Your decision will have a major impact on people’s lives – bear that in mind and show some empathy for what they are going through. And don’t expect people to always behave ‘rationally’ in the circumstances. (Even if you don’t have any fellow feeling for specific individuals, remember that other staff in your business will be watching how you treat their colleagues and their subsequent goodwill may depend on how you deal with the situation)
  5. Make sure you know what people are entitled to in terms of notice and redundancy pay, and pay them promptly after their employment ends.

The restructuring of Twitter is proving to be something of a case study in how not to reduce your workforce. And while Elon Musk has bottomless pockets which will allow him to buy his way out of employment litigation, most businesses don’t, so make sure you do it right!

Cricket, lovely cricket?

Cricket, lovely cricket?

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One of the most difficult situations a business – small or large – can face is when an employee, or ex-employee, makes an allegation of discrimination. The natural, and understandable, reaction of many is to become defensive – but as the recent coverage of the issues raised by former cricketer Azeem Rafiq about Yorkshire Cricket Club have shown, it’s possible for an organisation to make a bad situation far worse. As one MP said, Yorkshire’s response to the allegations was a “Venn diagram of stupidity.”

I’m not going to comment on the Yorkshire situation (plenty of others have done that) but there are some key learning points for all companies to try to avoid the club’s many mistakes

  • Take any allegation seriously. If someone feels strongly enough to raise a formal complaint about racism/sexism or any other discriminatory behaviour, then you have a duty to follow it up, no matter how uncomfortable it might be.
  • If possible, have the allegations investigated independently. But don’t bring in lawyers to do it – approaching the issue as a way of avoiding tribunal claims or other litigation automatically means that the investigation is skewed.
  • Equally, don’t treat it as an exercise in reputation management. The role of an investigation is to decide if there is any substance to the allegations and make recommendations on how to resolve the situation, not to protect your business when it may have done something wrong
  • Don’t just make it about individuals. While in some cases the ‘rogue employee’ defence may be true, it’s unusual that they will have been able to get away with discriminatory behaviour unless others have tolerated or ignored it. As Azeem Rafiq pointed out in relation to events that happened in the presence of England captain Joe Root “Maybe he didn’t remember it, but it just shows the institution that a good man like him cannot remember those things” (my emphasis)
  • Don’t allow your own view of incidents to take precedence. It is sometimes suggested that  an individual is being ‘over-sensitive’ and if this is genuinely the case then there may be little substance to the allegations.  But what is ‘over-sensitive’ to you may be the culmination of a series of micro-aggressions to the individual – things which individually are not worth mentioning but which cumulatively result in a perception of discriminatory behaviour. This powerful video makes the point very effectively.
  • Take action on the findings – don’t brush them under the carpet. And this doesn’t just mean ‘sacking a perpetrator’ if deeper organisational issues are revealed.

Not dealing with matters invariably makes the situation far worse. And while your organisation may not end up all over the media or having to justify its actions to MPs, rest assured that the long term damage to it may be just as bad.

My thanks to Business Coach and Organisational Culture Specialist Lorna Leeson (@reallornaleeson) for some of the ideas and points featured in this post.

No Jab No Care Home Job?

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There’s been much in the media today about the fact that the Government is to ‘require’ care workers to have the Covid-19 vaccination in order to continue working in front line support. Those who don’t will either have to be moved into work that doesn’t bring them into contact with residents or dismissed.

While the employment law implications are one which may worry business owners, the decision throws up a whole series of HR issues for that particular sector – ones which may also have implications for a lot of employers in the broader health/social care sector (which includes many of my charity clients)

Firstly, it’s important to remember that no vaccination is required by law in the UK.  The often quoted example that ‘doctors and nurses must have a Hepatitis B vaccination’ is based on clinical guidance issued by Public Health England which is then adopted by individual NHS and other healthcare employers as part of their health and safety policy/risk assessment process.  

If the government introduce a specific law (which would take some time to go through the parliamentary processes) or regulation (which wouldn’t) then sacking someone who fails to comply would be fair in law as a ‘statutory restriction’. (Update 21/6/21 – the change will be introduced by regulation, effective October 2021) An employer must still go through a fair process – exploring redeployment options before taking a decision to dismiss – and a dismissal would be with contractual or statutory notice.

If however they introduce the new rules as (prescriptive) guidance then it will be down to the individual employer to build them into their health and safety policy and recruitment guidelines.  While employers would be expected to follow them, it would be very difficult to justify dismissing someone (or not recruit someone) using the statutory restriction argument. Employers would probably have to rely on the catch all “some other substantial reason”, again ensuring that they dismiss with appropriate notice.

In addition to the risk of potential unfair dismissal claims, the sector already faces serious staff shortages with some estimates that there are 100000+ vacancies at the moment. The prospect of sacking otherwise competent staff at a time when it is difficult to recruit, and reducing further the number of prospective job candidates, is likely to cause further problems.

Care businesses will also need to communicate the changes clearly and effectively to staff; take time to collect appropriate vaccination records; perhaps give time off for people to be vaccinated; and ensure that staff understand the consequences of not being vaccinated. This is particularly important for the small number of people who are advised not to have the vaccination because of a health condition, which may mean there are also disability discrimination issues to be addressed.

None of this is to say that the aim of having all care home workers vaccinated (or indeed health and social care staff more generally) is a bad one. But we have seen too many instances in recent years of rushed new regulations being implemented without proper thought-through consequences, and subsequently having to be amended or repealed, for employers to be confident that another hastily announced policy will be any more effective.

It’s a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world?

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At the start of 2020 (when a new virus affecting people in parts of China was hardly being covered in the news) I published a blog post on the issues of philosophical belief and how employers should consider issues relating to it, in the light of two high profile cases. on veganism and gender-critical beliefs.

The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) has ruled today on the appeal in the gender-critical case. That case originally failed on the grounds that the claimant’s gender-critical beliefs could not count as a philosophical belief on the basis that they failed the 5th legal test, that a belief “must be worthy of respect in a democratic society and not be incompatible with human dignity or in conflict with the fundamental rights of others”

The EAT overturned this view, stating that a belief would only fail the 5th test if it was ‘akin to Nazism or totalitarianism’ or espousing violence and hatred ‘in the gravest of forms’; a belief that simply was ‘offensive, shocking or even disturbing to others…would not be excluded from the protection’.

This is a subject which results in much heated and vitriolic debate, particularly on social media platforms. The purpose of this post is not to discuss the merits of these views (or the decision itself) but to highlight to employers a key part of the judgement. The EAT was very clear and explicit that:

a. This judgment does not mean that the EAT has expressed any view on the merits of either side of the transgender debate and nothing in it should be regarded as so doing.


b. This judgment does not mean that those with gender-critical beliefs can ‘misgender’ trans persons with impunity. The Claimant, like everyone else, will continue to be subject to the prohibitions on discrimination and harassment that apply to everyone else. Whether or not conduct in a given situation does amount to harassment or discrimination within the meaning of {Equality Act] EqA will be for a tribunal to determine in a given case.


c. This judgment does not mean that trans persons do not have the protections against discrimination and harassment conferred by the EqA. They do. Although the protected characteristic of gender reassignment under s.7, EqA would be likely to apply only to a proportion of trans persons, there are other protected characteristics that could potentially be relied upon in the face of such conduct.


d. This judgment does not mean that employers and service providers will not be able to provide a safe environment for trans persons. Employers would continue to be liable (subject to any defence under s.109(4), EqA) for acts of harassment and discrimination against trans persons committed in the course of employment.

The above points are taken directly from the judgement (which you can find here if you want to read it in full) – they are also evidence that court judgements aren’t always in impenetrable legalese! They are however a very useful reminder that discrimination, bullying or harassment are something which an employer is liable for regardless of whether the alleged harasser claims they are only doing so because they have a particular religious or philosophical belief.