Employment Law

Managers have a key role to play in creating a happy and productive workforce. The large volume of employment legislation that now exists, however, makes managing people a high risk activity. Getting it wrong can lead to large numbers of grievances being raised and costly employment tribunal cases. Understanding the key areas of risk and developing strategies to reduce risk will make managers more effective in handling people issues.

The workshop will take an interactive problem solving approach exploring the key areas of risk through sharing of personal experiences, discussion of practical examples and exploration of how existing and forthcoming legislation influences management decision making. Delegates will be encouraged to develop strategies for managing people at low risk within the law and will prepare personal action plans to support the transfer of their learning from the workshop to their work environments. Your procedures will underpin each topic and will be explicitly referred to as appropriate.

By the end of this interactive course, delegates will be able to:

• Understand the key principles of employment law and apply them in the workplace
• Apply your companies procedures in their day to day management of people
• Resolve work issues within the law and according to best practice
• Use the organisations HR service as an advisory resource to support management practice and decision making
• Increase manager’s awareness of good practice in managing people and equip them to make fair and reasonable decisions that do not infringe employment law

Content covered includes:

• The Challenges We Face
• How law impacts on you as managers of people
• Working Together – Creating a Healthy Environment
• Discrimination – race, sex, disability, age, religion or belief, sexual orientation and gender reassignment
• Harassment, bullying and violence.
• Family friendly – maternity, paternity, adoption and parental leave and rights to flexible working
• Fight, Flight or face up?
• Grievances and Discipline
• Legal requirements – new ACAS Code of Practice, best practice
• How to act fairly and reasonably – sources of support
• Saying ‘good bye’
• Types of dismissal – wrongful, unfair, constructive, redundancy
• Reasons for dismissal – fair and unfair
• Costs of getting it wrong – ETs, awards, effect on relations
• Forthcoming legislation to be aware of
• Role of HR, relationship with managers