Welcome to the first edition of our quarterly HR Privacy newsletter brought to you by the London employment team designed to keep you updated with key cases, legal developments, trends and news relating to UK and EU-wide employment / HR data privacy matters.
Several new employment measures have become law, dealing with redundancy protection for mothers and those returning from family leave, as well as creating new rights to carer’s and neonatal leave. There is also a new right to the allocation of tips. However, the rights might not come into force for a year or two, and some of the detail of the rights remains to be confirmed.
In an article for Compliance and Risk Journal, John Bracken considers the ever-changing employment law environment, highlighting recent and upcoming court decisions and legislative developments.
In an article for PLC Magazine, Kim Sartin, Zelander Gray and Sam Rayner look at how employers that are considering venturing into the metaverse will need to address new challenges that arise out of employees working in a virtual environment.
After a long period in which the UK government has promised several employment law changes contained in an Employment Bill without bringing forward such a Bill, it has now announced it is supporting certain private members’ bills which include developments in these areas. These include expanding the right to request flexible working, a new right to request more predictable working conditions, a number of changes to family leave entitlements, and protection for those facing harassment by third parties such as customers at work.
The European Parliament adopted a proposal on 2 February seeking potentially far-reaching changes to the current European Works Council (EWC) Directive. These include strengthening the information and consultation rights of EWCs and improving enforcement by introducing GDPR-level fines for non-compliance and a risk of injunctions for failure to inform and consult.
A recent EAT decision has held that an employee cannot settle statutory employment claims arising from events that have not yet happened. In doing so, it departed from existing case law that indicated it was possible to settle such claims in some circumstances.
The Employment Appeal Tribunal has held that an original version of a grievance investigation report that did not attract legal advice or litigation privilege when it was drafted could not acquire privilege status retrospectively.
In an article for Compliance & Risk Journal, Kim Sartin and Rachel Farr discuss the tricky course employers have to navigate in a shifting compliance landscape and explain what to focus on in 2022.
Companies are facing critical business challenges in regard to their most important asset – their people. While workforce transformation is not a new concept for global organizations, the pandemic has forced us to rapidly adapt our standard ways of working and how we engage with employees to ensure the long-term…