Employment Law Birmingham News

A raft of reforms have been announced after the Red Tape Challenge looked at how to simplify the Equality Act and remove unnecessary legislation.

Businesses and the wider public will be able to have their say on the reforms in a series of consultations. These will look at proposals to streamline the employment tribunal process and to scrap the Third Party Harassment law, which makes bosses liable if a member of staff is harassed by a customer.

The government will also clarify disability law for employers and remove the Socio-Economic Duty – which would have forced public bodies to consider class-based inequality when developing policy.

And it will review the Public Sector Equality Duty to establish whether this is the best way to ensure public bodies consider the impact of their decisions on different groups.

Employees who don't get deeply involved with their work are more likely to suffer burn out or emotional exhaustion and have lower levels of well-being, according to a new study.

Researchers from Kingston University's Business School gave 227 British workers, mostly in their 30s, standard tests used to measure engagement and motivation. They found that the 15% who were watching the clock and felt the most withdrawn from their work also reported the highest levels of burn out. Feeling alienated at work caused feelings of frustration and apathy, often leading to lower levels of well-being, the study found.

"You might expect someone who is withdrawn from their work to be more balanced and less emotionally-drained because they have time for other things in their life," Dr Kerstin Alfes from Kingston Business School said.  "But actually we found that it's these people who are having severe problems with stress-related exhaustion.”

The study also found that individuals are less likely to feel withdrawn from work when they derive meaning from it and feel that their skills, knowledge and experience are being fully utilised.  "If people are given ownership of their work, see the impact it has on beneficiaries and understand how they fit into the bigger picture, they feel much more positive about work," Dr Alfes said.

In the Queen's Speech at the official state opening of Parliament, the Government has outlined its priorities for the coming Parliamentary year.

With regards to employment, the Government intends to introduce an Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill, which will:

• Overhaul the employment tribunal system.
• Transform the dispute resolution landscape.
• Strengthen the framework for setting directors’ pay by introducing binding votes.
• Extend the Primary Authority scheme, reduce inspection burdens on business and strengthen the legal framework for sunset clauses on regulation.
• Cut the burden on business and citizens by repealing unnecessary legislation.

The Chartered Management Institute welcomed the announcement. Petra Wilton, Director of Policy and Research, commented:

“These welcome measures should provide greater freedom for managers and leaders to create working environments that can fully engage employees and help drive UK economic growth. CMI’s member surveys show that more flexible working arrangements and shared parental leave have been demanded for many years by the majority of managers. The new Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill which promises to repeal unnecessary legislation and limit state inspections of companies is also very welcome, but businesses leaders will need to see the detail to see how much of the regulatory burden will be lifted in practice.” 

In advance of announcements on legislative change to maternity and paternity leave, a new study for Working Families and Netmums has found overwhelming opposition to plans to reduce maternity leave to 18 weeks.

The Government has proposed in its Modern Workplaces consultation that maternity leave be reduced to 18 weeks, and the remaining leave currently available to women becomes “flexible parental leave” available to either parent.

Netmums surveyed 1,500 mothers and found that:

• Around 60% said they would find it hard to ask their employers for additional maternity leave after 18 weeks, with 24% of these saying their employer would have made it clear that they wanted them back at that time.
• Around 17% said they would be keen to take advantage of the provision allowing their partners to take “shared leave”. However, 28% said their partner might want to but it wouldn’t happen in practice; while a further 41% said the family could not afford for the father to take the time off.

Netmums founder Sally Russell said: ”Women are very strongly saying that 18 weeks of maternity leave is not enough. It is possible to have a system that works for mums and dads but this isn’t it.

”The findings show that an 18 week limit may well push women out of employment and the result will be the opposite of what the Government are trying to achieve”

Working Families also asked eleven leading employers what they thought of the 18 week maternity leave proposal. Nine of the eleven said they’d prefer a default of 26 weeks’ maternity leave to the 18 week proposal. Employers concerns included likely higher absenteeism among women returning before they were ready, costs of rearranging leave cover if plans change, and the importance of retaining women’s workplace talent.

The Government has announced the next steps in its comprehensive review of employment laws.

New plans to improve the way in which workplace disputes are resolved have been published alongside an “Employer’s Charter” – the measures are designed to give businesses more confidence to take on workers and support growth.

The TUC has published the first in a series of newsletters to help vulnerable workers find out more about their basic employment rights at work.