We took legal advice!
April 25 2007
Reference to legal advice is heard often and, curiously, Employment Tribunals seem unimpressed. Regrettably we cannot pass responsibility for our actions to our advisers. What counts is our understanding of how and why we made a particular decision.
Therefore we need to be as professional in our approach to employee relations as we are in the core of our business. Indeed, the relationship with employees is part of that core. Contracts, policies and procedures that meet business needs offer great benefits.
Policies and procedures should reflect your organisation’s culture. An Equal Opportunities policy for a small IT company might be one page. For a Housing Association it could be ten pages.
For example, an IT company needs to understand the difference between taking on free-lance workers and taking on employees. Misunderstanding can lead to missed opportunities and, sometimes, exposure to serious levels of unexpected expense.
In contrast, a company engaging sales people on commission has different needs. Care in designing the bonus scheme protects the business and creates competitive advantage.
So if you are choosing a supplier to write your employment contracts and handbook enquire how much discussion there will be with you. You should be weighing up suitable types of contract for your business; perhaps self employed workers, or nil hours or fixed-term employees. Experienced advice on pay, hours and holidays is valuable too, as well as on terms that recoup some losses if an employee leaves.
Ask a potential supplier whether it is to be your handbook – or theirs with your name on it?
Make sure that they will they explain everything to you, establishing agreement and understanding before the handbook becomes the key part of your relationship with your employees.
How will the handbook be available? Will each employee get a copy or will there be just one copy in the office? How will it be kept up to date? Paper versions are notoriously difficult to update, there are more modern solutions.
Get all this in line with your needs, understand what you have, follow your procedures and you are much less likely to need expensive legal advice.
