February 2016 #167 – Law Journals

Employee Monitoring: No green light to read employees’ private messages

Helen Hall examines a recent European Court of Human Rights ruling on whether it was lawful for an employer to access a worker’s personal correspondence ‘To avoid liabilities, employers must, as a minimum, have comprehensive, bespoke internet policies in place, clearly setting out employees’ rights and obligations, how monitoring is conducted and how data is …

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Constructive Dismissal: How a resignation can trigger collective redundancy rules

Christopher Mordue analyses the impact for UK employers of the ECJ’s decision in Rivera ‘Employers seeking to force changes to terms and conditions cannot escape from a duty to collectively consult simply by breaching the employee’s contract.’ Constructive dismissals can be ‘collective redundancies’, requiring prior consultation with union or employee representatives before the employee resigns. …

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Disability Discrimination: Do not adjust your sickness policy

It was not reasonable to expect an employer to make adjustments to its absence management policy to remove disadvantage to a disabled employee, reports Jo Broadbent ‘The duty to make reasonable adjustments was found to apply to trigger points in absence management procedures.’ Absence management policies often contain a so-called ‘trigger point’. This usually means …

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Race Discrimination: What can I say?

Charlie Rae reviews a recent case on whether an employer’s instruction to an employee not to speak her native language at work was unlawful ‘To be lawful, any obligation to speak English would need to be proportionate. It will, for example, be difficult to demonstrate that requiring English to be spoken in personal conversations during …

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Unfair Dismissal: Are tribunals being consistent about consistency?

Phil Allen looks at three recent cases in which the claimants argued their dismissal was unfair because they were treated more harshly than a colleague involved in the same incident ‘In practice, it can be very difficult to identify circumstances that are sufficiently comparable to require the same sanction, as opposed to those where slightly …

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References: Banking on a new code

Important aspects of proposed new rules for the financial sector on providing job references could be unworkable as they currently stand, warns Stephen Levinson ‘On the one hand, the proposed rules say any information that may be relevant to whether an individual is fit and proper should be disclosed but, on the other, suggest that …

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Litigation: How to win an employment case

Natasha Adom gives her top five tips for how in-house lawyers can improve their company’s chances of success in court or at the employment tribunal ‘It is crucial that everyone concerned understands the importance of investing time early on in recalling the relevant details and locating the necessary documents to ensure the company presents a …

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Workplace Investigations: Fraud focus

Aarti Jagpal considers the legal and practical issues faced by employers investigating allegations of internal fraud ‘As long as the interception has a genuine aim, goes no further than is needed and ultimately balances the rights of the employer against the rights of the worker, it can be justified.’Fraud poses a substantial threat to businesses …

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