Employment Law Updates

Workplace conflict is an ugly topic but one that employers need to tackle head on to maintain a healthy working environment. Resolving workplace conflicts often requires carefully thought-out strategies to prepare for, identify, mediate, and prevent them from occurring in the future.

Employment legislation is a vital part of the working lives of most people across the UK, it ensures both employers and employees are treated fairly and understand what is expected of them during their working relationship with one another. This is true across many sectors including healthcare, which is particularly challenging.

All employers should seek to avoid employment tribunals by following HR best practices and staying organised. However, sometimes mistakes are unavoidable and problems employees have cannot be resolved due to certain circumstances. When this leads to an employment tribunal, employers must make preparations in order to get the best result for both parties.

2023 saw multiple announcements from the government in relation to new employment laws that will be coming into effect this year. This means that it’s looking to be a busy year in the world of new employment law that businesses should be aware of. Therefore, in this guide, we’ll be exploring the key employment law changes that are coming in 2024 and how employers can effectively prepare for them. 

The ‘anti strike’ bill passed into law in the UK on July 20th 2023. Officially called the Strikes (Minimum Service Level) Act, the legislation received royal assent with significant controversy. Nevertheless, the rules set out in the act affect a number of key sectors and the relationship between employers and employees within those sectors as a result.

The healthcare sector is, at the time of writing, under a significant amount of pressure as it still tries to recover from the coronavirus pandemic and a backlog of patients needing treatment. This has led to employment and HR challenges as employees are being absent more frequently, especially at key patient touchpoints like GP practices.

As a UK employer, you’ll likely have many questions around zero hours contracts if you haven’t used them before. While they offer benefits for employers by allowing specific pieces of work to get done efficiently, it is important they understand how these contracts interact with things like holiday pay.