This Employment Law Update will cover recent changes to legislation, and why you might need to consider an update to your contracts of employment. If you would like to discuss any of the points raised in this email, please get in touch.
April Changes to Employment Legislation
As you will know, the National Minimum Wage was increased at the start of this month, but you might not have heard about other changes made by the Government for the new financial year.
From April 3rd, statutory maternity/paternity/adoption/shared parental leave pay increased to £156.66 per week, up from £151.97.
From April 6th, Statutory Sick Pay increased to £99.35 per week, up from £96.35.
It is important that you are mindful of these changes and make sure that adjustments are applied for relevant employees.
The cap on a week's pay for calculating redundancy pay has also increased up to £571.00 per week, meaning that the maximum statutory redundancy payment is now £17,130.00.
A further change made is that the temporary rules around carrying out remote right to work checks for new employees has been extended until the end of September this year, as it was due to end in April.
There have been rumours that the Government are hoping to develop an online checking service for British employees, that will work in a similar way to share code checking, for once this adjustment ends. This is something we will be following closely and will hope to update you on soon.
Finally, alongside the Government's plans for 'Living with COVID-19', it is now no longer a requirement for employers to explicitly consider the virus in risk assessments, unless working directly with it. However this does not mean that you should stop controlling health and safety risks, including taking steps to prevent the spread.
Spring Cleaning - Should You Refresh Your Employment Documents?
With the new financial year, now is the time that employers often begin to think about reviewing and refreshing their contracts of employment, policies and employee handbook, to begin the new year with a fresh start.
Although it might not be seen as the most important task, updating documents is time well spent as it can help to iron out issues and prevent future disputes.
As your organisation is likely to have grown and changed since you put original contracts and policies in place, they may not reflect how your business actually operates now.
There have been some changes to contracts of employment in recent years too. From April 2020, employees are now entitled to their written statement of terms and conditions on their first day. There are also new sections that must be included, covering training, benefits, and paid leave entitlements amongst other things.
If you would like us to review your contract of employment template, policies or your employee handbook, please get in touch. We can also help you to develop a bespoke suite of documents from scratch, if you don't already have these in place.
Thank You Once Again!
To end this Employment Law Update, we would like to say thank you again to everybody who donated to our JustGiving page in aid of Alzheimer's Society last month.
The final total was an incredible £1,160 raised - we really appreciate your support.
If you have any HR queries please give a member of the team a call today, on 01926 853388, or email angela.roberts@arhrconsult.com. Visit www.arhrconsult.com for more information.