Employee Relations

Managing people can often be tricky particularly when you have legal requirements to consider. Our aim is to ensure you follow fair and compliant procedures whilst taking into account the commercial needs of your business. With a wealth of experience of dealing with employee relations issues, no matter what problem you may face we have probably dealt with a similar situation so can provide practical advice and support.

How can we help?

Handling disciplinary and grievance issues

Unfortunately, there may be times when an employee’s behaviour at work causes problem. For example, misuse of the internet, consistent lateness or theft from the company.   Conversely, an employee may not be happy with the way they have been treated or a condition of their employment and raise a complaint against the company.

We can support you to ensure that any disciplinary or grievance issues are dealt with swiftly, effectively and consistently so that they do not have a detrimental impact on your business and comply with statutory requirements.

We can ensure your policies and procedures are effective and avoid any pitfalls which might expose you to a risk of litigation. We will provide you with all the necessary documentation so that you have a written record at each step of the process.

Dealing with sickness absence

Absence can have a significant impact on productivity and costs as well as on morale if other employees have to pick up the increased workload caused by the absence.

Handling sickness absence can be tricky but being proactive and intervening early is one of the key factors in getting employees back to work. We can provide support in handling cases of persistent short term and long term sickness absence including guidance for managers on return to work interviews, implementing systems for monitoring and recording absence, preparing occupational health referrals and providing you with tailored letters to send to employees.

Performance management

If your business is going to grow and succeed, it is important that you engage with your employees to get the very best from them and ensure that the indicators you use to measure their performance are aligned with your overall business objectives. We can support you in the following ways to achieve this.

We can help develop and implement an effective, practical and straightforward performance management process which supports the achievement of your organisational objectives. You may already have a performance system in place and we can review this to ensure it is working effectively or we can design a new system tailored to your business needs and organisational culture.  

We can help you to put in place processes to manage employees who are under-performing and guide you on the steps you need to take if a more formal approach is needed.

We can help put in place a process to ensure that during the first few months after a new employee joins their performance and progress is monitored, appropriate feedback is given and any training needs are identified.

We can support your managers in carrying out performance review meetings so that they have the skills and confidence to conduct these fairly and consistently.

Dismissals

There may be times when you feel you have no other option but to dismiss an employee, for example as a result of misconduct, poor performance, long-term ill health or redundancy.   Dismissing employees can be difficult at the best of times and you certainly won’t in addition wish to be faced with an unfair or wrongful dismissal employment tribunal claim. We can help ensure you follow the right procedures to protect your business and minimise the risk of a tribunal claim.  

We can also help guide and support you in negotiating settlement agreements with employees with whom you wish to part company to ensure you meet your legal obligations and the process is conducted as smoothly as possible. We can prepare meeting scripts along with relevant correspondence and a draft settlement agreement for the employee to take to their lawyer and also give you guidance on termination packages.

Family friendly rights

Over the last few years, there has been an increase in the number of family friendly options available to employees. We can provide advice and guidance on maternity, paternity, parental and shared parental leave, time off for dependants, flexible working and rights for part-time workers including your legal obligations and any processes you need to follow to ensure your employees are treated fairly and consistently.