When most people think of employment law their thoughts are almost always directed towards the rights of employees. There has been so much publicity recently about these rights – whether it is for their right to be paid the minimum wage, get their statutory holiday pay or to work in complete safety – that the rights of employers have been largely ignored.
Now I’m not suggesting that any of the rights that employees now enjoy are a bad thing, far from it. Thanks to these laws the UK is now one of the fairest, safest and secure places in the world to work. There does however seem to be an unnatural shift in favour of employees to the disadvantage of many employers.
Employers also have a number of rights that they should be able to enforce without fear of legal action. For example, an employee should have the right to dismiss one of their workers if they feel that they have a fair reason for doing so.
These days we hear about cases involving employment law crop up more and more. This is largely due to the recession and the large number of people being made redundant. In every case however, there are two sides to the story. In a lot of cases, despite finding themselves in very difficult situations, employers have done nothing wrong. People sometimes do things, or conduct themselves in a certain way, which puts employers well within their rights to terminate employment.
Ensuring that the human resource component is functioning as required requires well defined and properly enforced labour guidelines. Most companies today realize that simply having a human resource department as a hiring and firing function in the overall company structure is not enough. This has led most to retain the services of employment law solicitors. However, what do employment solicitors do?
Employment solicitors provide legal counsel to organizations as pertaining to labour or human resource matters. This may be when recruiting new staff members or letting go of existing ones. Due to the complex labour laws instituted, hiring and firing is not as simple as it used to be. The solicitor will give advice to the company on the best employment law solicitors terms to protect both their interests as well as the interests of the employee.
Additionally, in the event of mergers and acquisitions and other such inter-organizational executions, ensuring that the executive management makes all the right decisions is crucial. This is because if a particular aspect of the law is missed, the whole process could be scuttled and vital resources lost.
On the other side of the spectrum, employment solicitors act in a curative capacity. In the event that some form of litigation proceedings have been moved against a company by an employee or based on labour laws, these experts provide the best line of defence. Experts well versed in labour laws will be at hand to adequately argue whatever case is on the table.