Achieving a balance between maintaining the rights of your staff and protecting your business is a demanding and complex task. With increasing regulation and the cost of disputes continually rising, it is beneficial to have legal support early on with expert advice tailored to suit your requirements. By Complying with employment law from the outset, could save you the cost and stress of employment tribunal claims.
What does an employment solicitor do?
Taking a commercial and pragmatic approach, our dedicated employment solicitors at B P Collins can provide support and comprehensive advice to businesses across all areas of employment law. We have successfully represented businesses at Employment Tribunals in all types of claims, from discrimination and unfair dismissal to unlawful deduction of wages and breach of contract.
Our employment services
We can help you comply with illegal working legislation, gain sponsorship licences, certificates of sponsorship and visa applications for your employees, plus right to work checks and any other issues relating to business immigration law.
We are here to protect you and your business as you grow and ensure you build and deliver best practice in employment policies and procedures, contracts and training.
We provide support and advice on the steps you need to take to investigate and respond to an employee misconduct or grievance, as well as handle any appeal. Effective processes are critical for all employers, both for setting standards of behaviour and for encouraging improvement where necessary.
Our team is experienced in advising and supporting employers on various types of workplace discrimination and unlawful conduct that are typically governed by the Equality Act 2010 and can help minimise your risk of exposure to discrimination claims.
Sometimes you will need to make tough decisions about your employees, including dismissals. Our solicitors can advise on the procedural and legal processes to consider before dismissing an employee.
We are here to help you protect some of your company’s most valuable assets – your people, IP, data and clients. We can assist with wording for post-termination restrictions and restrictive covenants in employment contracts, that can be held up in court.
We can advise and support you with employee requests, and often claims, that subsequently arise in the workplace. We help companies put in place procedures, policies and managerial training for dealing with these types of requests.
Our team of experienced solicitors can help build strong employment contracts and agreements to help reduce the risk of disputes arising later.
The first step is to assess the merits of the case from the discontented employee and the grounds on which the claim is being made. Our employment lawyers can work with you to decide your approach to the case and associated risks, as well as reviewing whether a settlement agreement or mediation could resolve the matter instead.
The right to make a request is now a day one right and employees no longer have to provide a reason. Our solicitors can assist with a well-drafted flexible working policy, which gives employees and managers clarity on how to handle requests and mitigate future claims.
When employees become parents, they acquire a variety of enhanced rights and protections. Our experienced team of employment solicitors can advise on employment contracts and handbooks containing policies and procedures dealing with parental rights, leave and pay. We can provide support when negotiating with your employees to resolve disputes informally, and also defend tribunal claims.
Employment legislation and regulation are subject to frequent amendments, meaning your policies must be regularly updated. To reduce this burden, our employment lawyers have developed a suite of up-to-date precedents for you to easily customise to suit your business, making them clear and effective.
- Preventing sexual harassment
Employers have a duty to prevent sexual harassment. We provide training and support to ensure you meet your obligation to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment in your workplace and third party harassment [Employment team to confirm]. We will work with you to identify what steps are reasonable for your organisation and not only ensure you have a safe, respectful and inclusive work environment but are also protected from the 25% uplift in the event of a claim.
Our solicitors can help you design a redundancy process which is fair, suits the needs of your business and helps mitigate risk from later claims. We can also support and guide you through each stage of a redundancy process.
We can provide you with clear, practical advice to ensure your settlement agreements are legally robust and align with your business’ objectives. Whether part of a strategic workforce change or a one-off issue, we can guide you through the process efficiently and pragmatically.
- Training
We have developed a series of training courses to suit the development needs of your management and leadership teams. The courses are led by employment lawyers with assistance from our HR2Help consultants.
TUPE is in place to protect employees if the business in which they are employed changes hands. These regulations effectively move employees and any liabilities associated with them from the old employer to the new employer. Our employment lawyers are on hand to talk you through the process if you think a commercial transaction you are involved in might be covered by TUPE.
We deliver high quality investigations to achieve essential, fair outcomes, helping you avoid future litigation and reputational damage. Whether an investigation may be required as part of a disciplinary or grievance process or because concerns have been raised, our team is here to help.
We can advise on policies and reporting practices that you can implement in your business, as well as staff training. If an employee has made a whistleblowing complaint, our lawyers can advise you on how to proceed to mitigate risk and deal with the complexities of staff arrangements should further action be needed.
We offer a specialist service in which trained human resources consultants can work with your business on a very flexible basis, to manage your HR needs, from benefits and compensation frameworks to talent management, learning and development and much more.
Our expert team can advise on breaches of partnership agreements, expelling, excluding and retiring partners, business protection and partner competition, misuse of partnership assets and partner misconduct.
- IR35
IR35 (also known as the “off-payroll working rules”) is a set of regulations that are intended to make sure that employment taxes are paid where a consultant provides their services via an intermediary (usually their own personal services company) and is considered, for tax purposes, to be an employee of the end user business. Our employment law team have considerable experience in advising on IR35. If you are unsure about making a CEST Application or are considering a CEST Outcome and need an expert opinion, B P Collins can help.
HR Cabinet
This is a free online event for those with HR responsibilities within their organisation to come together to share, collaborate and learn.
Our HR Cabinet runs on the last Thursday of every month. Find out more information and the date for the next session.
Why choose B P Collins as your employment solicitors?
With 60+ years of experience and extensive knowledge, many of our practice groups maintain a top-tier ranking in legal directories such as Chambers UK and The Legal 500, with individual lawyers recognised as either leaders in their field. The firm has been named in The Times Best Law Firms from 2022-2024.
The employment solicitors at B P Collins LLP are a very strong team who are knowledgeable and approachable. They are also members of the member of the Employment Lawyers Association.
Price and service transparency (Click here)
We pride ourselves on achieving the best possible and most cost effective outcomes for our clients, be that through pursuing a strike out of some or all of a claim or defence or negotiating an appropriate settlement.
View our price and service transparency here.
Contact our employment lawyers today
For further information or advice please contact our employment lawyers, who are based in London, Thame and Gerrards Cross, on 01753 889995 or enquiries@bpcollins.co.uk.
