COVID 19: Guidance and Support Hub
COVID 19: Guidance and Support Hub
Employment
& Business Immigration Solicitors
Our employment solicitors can help protect your business and can handle all types of staff and restructuring issues.
With Brexit, immigration is a much broader topic especially with businesses employing foreign nationals. With our knowledge, skill, and expertise, our immigration solicitors can also provide a range of services to start-ups, entrepreneurs, SMEs, employers, and employees.
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Hiring an employee
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Managing employee performance
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HR Policies and Procedures
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Reorganisations and Redundancies
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Nurturing employee relationships
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Settlement agreements & references
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Business immigration
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Help for employees
Please see below for more details:
Hiring an employee
When you employ staff, it is important that you respect their statutory rights and treat them in accordance with employment law. Our employment solicitors will ensure that you are following the right procedures in relation to hiring an employee:
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You must pay at least the National Minimum Wage
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Carry out employment checks/DBS check
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Obtain employers' liability insurance
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Prepare employment contracts, consultancy agreements, service contracts.
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Prepare a Staff Handbook and staff policies and procedures.
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Register as an employer with HMRC
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Be aware of Health and Safety obligations
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Enrol staff into a workplace pension scheme.
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Be aware of holiday, sick pay, maternity and paternity pay rules
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Treat your staff fairly and in accordance with the law.
HR
Policies
Your business should have HR policies in place to set out the standard of conduct required of employees and provide employees with a guide on hot things should be done. Key employment policies and procedures that our employment solicitors recommend employers adopt include:
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Disciplinary and grievance policies
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Capability procedure
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Anti-bribery and corruption
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Equal opportunities policy
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Maternity, adoption, parental leave, paternity leave, time off for dependants policy
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Anti-harassment and bullying policy
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Social media, data protection, communications system and information policy
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Expenses policy
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Flexible working policy
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Health and safety policy
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Grievance procedure
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Redundancy policy
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Sickness absence policy
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Maternity policy
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Whistleblowing policy
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Preventing illegal working policy
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We would be happy to provide you with template policies on all of these areas.
Nurturing employee relationships
Managing staff and their requests appropriately can make all the difference. Our expert employment solicitors are ready and waiting to offer you expert advice with your staff and employment law issues.
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Pre-empt problems: day-to-day employment support.
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Staff inductions, contracts and policies.
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Employing foreign workers.
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Training your managers in employment law.
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Helping you comply with pension auto-enrolment rules.
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Handling staff problems eg grievances, disciplinary problems, sickness absence, variation of contracts etc.
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Tackling disciplinary problems.
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Tackling capability problems.
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Dealing with bullying and harassment claims.
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Handling discrimination claims.
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Handling family rights, flexible working requests.
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Handling pay and pension claims.
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Managing holiday and working time requests.
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Buying or selling a business.
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Ending employment: dismissing staff, redundancies, settlement agreements.
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Employment Tribunal claims.
Help for Employees - Defending your interests as an Employee
Our clients include employees, entrepreneurs, managers, directors, and more. Our employment solicitors regularly represent and win cases for employers and employees. We can help you with:
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Your Constructive dismissal, Redundancy, Discrimination and Unfair dismissal claims.
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Advice on your grievance and appeal hearings.
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Advice on your disciplinary and appeal hearings.
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Getting a fair deal when leaving your employment by negotiating a settlement exit package.
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Advice on the strengths and weaknesses of your claim.
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Advice on the value of your claim.
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Reviewing and signing your settlement agreement.
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Issuing an employment tribunal claim.
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Advising and representing you at the Employment Tribunal.
Managing employee performance
Disciplinary action is sometimes unavoidable, but you must take the right steps to ensure that your employees are treated fairly at all times. Our employment solicitors will ensure that you do the following:
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Base the process on well written job descriptions and job-related activities.
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Set performance objectives with the employee
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Provide ongoing monitoring and feedback on performance to the employee
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When problems are identified provide support (training, coaching etc) and adequate time for the employee to improve.
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Ensure that the performance appraisal form accurately documents performance - if performance is poor say so.
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Periodically review the performance management process to ensure that it is being applied consistently and fairly.
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Establish an appeals process.
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Carry out supervision sessions and performance appraisals.
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Investigate grievances by employees
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Follow your Company's procedures on disciplinaries and grievances or the ACAS Code for the Conduct of disciplinary hearing and grievances if your business does not have its own procedures.
Reorganisation
& redundancies
Our Employment Solicitors help businesses save time and money by advising, supporting and managing their redundancy processes as part of our fixed-fee Employment Law and HR Packages.
We can advise you on the issues that employers need to consider when contemplating redundancies or a business reorganization, including:
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whether there is in fact a redundancy situation or whether the nub of the issue is a performance or capability issue
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when the obligations to inform and consult collectively arises and how to comply
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how to deal with individual employee consultation and manage the risk of claims such as unfair dismissal based on unfair selection or failure to follow a fair process
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calculating an employee's entitlement to a statutory or contractual redundancy payment
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TUPE advice
Settlement agreements & references
By entering a settlement agreement, the two parties can settle any claims made by the employee after they leave; the employee waives their right to make any claims, such as unfair dismissal.
Employers:
Our settlement agreement solicitors have extensive experience in:
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Drafting Settlement agreements for employers
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Negotiating on the employer's behalf in a cost-effective way.
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At the employer's request in large scale redundancies providing independent and commercially sensible advice to their employees.
Employees:
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Providing employees with advice on the terms and implications of the agreement.
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Negotiating on the employee's behalf in a cost-effective way.
Business Immigration
Our business immigration solicitors can help your business comply with complex immigration laws :
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Entrepreneur/ investor & innovator Visas.
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Skilled Worker Visas and sponsors.
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Student Visas.
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Temporary Worker Visas.
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Sole Representative.
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Short Term visit Visas.
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Visas for relatives & spouses
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International special agreements.
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Applications for entry clearance or leave to enter or remain in the UK.
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Immigration employment documents.
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Nationality.
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British Citizenship.
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Residence.