When you hear the term employment law you might think that’s a bit boring, but it’s so important that you understand it as it impacts businesses, you, me, and everybody who’s employed or employs people is impacted by employment law.
In this article, I’m going to tell you lots about employment law and how it impacts you and your businesses. Now, employment law can be complex as it’s made up of lots of little pieces of government legislation, but it’s designed to protect employees from exploitation in the workplace. When it’s broken down employment law is based on four key areas which form the basis of employee rights in the UK.
These are recruitment, pay, discrimination, and health and safety and in this article, I’m going to give you an overview of all four of these key areas and how legislation around employment impacts both employers and employees in the UK.
Recruitment
So first up it’s recruitment, when businesses are looking to recruit, employment law sets the standard, it guides businesses on what they can and cannot do when they’re looking to recruit new employees and what they can and cannot do with their current employees.
The key pieces of legislation that are involved in recruitment are the Equality Act (2010), which ensures that businesses treat all potential applicants and current employees fairly and do not discriminate.
This applies to the whole recruitment process right from the way that the job advert is written to the way that the job advert is publicized, so who and who cannot access and apply through to the interview and selection process.
The Data Protection Act (2018) is also very important as it guides businesses on the types of personal information that they can and cannot collect from candidates and employees. And the third key piece of legislation that impacts recruitment is the Employment Rights Act (1996) which is in place to ensure that all successful applicants receive a formal written document or statement which contains all the key information about their new role and their responsibilities.
This includes information such as the job title, the job description, the rates of pay, and who they might report to. In addition to this employment law also guides businesses on how to treat employees who are going to be absent from the workplace whether this is through sickness or having a child.
For example, employment law guides the business and sets the minimum standard of treatment for that employee and once the business has been successful in its recruitment process, employment law then guides it on the types of checks that it must carry out on this successful applicant.
For example, if the role involved working with young children let’s say a teacher, then the school is required to complete a DBS check to ensure the successful candidate has got no criminal convictions and they are safe to work with children.
Pay
So we’ve talked a lot about recruitment so far but that’s just one of the four key areas of employment law, so we’re going to move on now to pay and when it comes to paying, employment law plays a huge role in the amount that you are paid in your role.
This is because a piece of legislation named the national minimum wage act 1998 sets the minimum amount of money that any employee should be paid. When working in the UK this minimum amount of money acts as a benchmark that’s the minimum that any business has got to pay its employees in the UK there are three key strands to this piece of legislation that impact how much you and anybody else will be paid.
These are the apprenticeship wage which applies to apprentices and currently, in 2022 this is four pounds eight to one an hour the national minimum wage which applies to anybody up to the age of 22 and ranges from £4.81 to 9.18 per hour depending on the age of the employee and then you’ve got the national living wage which applies to anybody who’s 23 and above. But importantly these rates of pay are reviewed yearly by the government so it’s crucial that businesses don’t miss any changes to these minimum wage requirements and find themselves breaking the law.
Now while we’re on the topic of pay the Equality Act (2010) comes into play again, making it illegal to pay employees who are deemed to be in the same or similar role different rates of pay which is just another key point that businesses and employers need to be aware of when deciding how much they’re going to pay their employees to ensure that they don’t get in trouble, they don’t upset their employees, and ultimately don’t end up in court.
For example, if a man and a woman were doing exactly the same role they should be on the same pay scales it’s as simple as that.
Discrimination
We now move on to discrimination which I’ve already mentioned quite a few times but that’s because it’s a pivotal part of employment law.
Essentially employment law is designed to make sure that everybody is treated fairly and nobody is discriminated against and to make it clear how employees are typically discriminated against. There are nine protected characteristics that employers should be aware of and they should be very careful not to discriminate or treat someone unfairly because of any one of these nine protected characteristics.
These nine protected characteristics are
- age,
- gender reassignment
- being married or in a civil partnership
- being pregnant or on maternity leave
- disability
- race
- religion or belief
- sex
- sexual orientation
For example, a business cannot refuse to give a job to a candidate because they find out that they are pregnant nor can a business discriminate against an employee or an applicant because they’ve got a disability.
In fact, businesses have a legal requirement to ensure that they’ve got adequate provisions in place to support candidates or employees who are disabled to ensure that all employees have equal access to employment regardless of their disability.
Health And Safety
We now move on to the final key area of employment law which centers around health and safety. So another reason why employment law exists is to ensure that the workplace is safe and to ensure employees are safe in the workplace.
A number of key legislations are there to guide businesses to prepare a safe working environment for all of their employees. One of the most important pieces of legislation when it comes to health and safety is the health and safety work act (1974).
This act sets out the general duties employers have to members of the general public and to their employees but it also sets out the general duties that employees have to themselves and to each other.
For example to provide a safe working environment employers are expected to deliver staff training around health and safety in the workplace, provide and maintain suitable tools for the job and PPE to protect employees, report any serious accidents to the HSE, and even go as far as providing employees with the basics such as toilets, running water, and washing facilities.
Then if we switch this on its head and look at what employees are expected to do they are expected to complete all mandatory training set by their employer, ensure they are using the PPE and safety equipment provided at all times, as well as use the correct tools for the job and employees should also take responsibility for their own safety in the workplace and if they identify any risk whatsoever they should report it straight away to their employer.
And the final key piece of legislation that I’m going to cover in this video is working time regulations (1998). Now, this is a key part of employment law and is designed to keep the workplace as safe as possible and to reduce risk.
This is essentially achieved by ensuring that workers aren’t overworked by providing strict guidelines around working hours, breaks, and paid leave that employers must follow. For example, the working time regulation states the maximum amount of hours that an employee can work in most circumstances is currently an average of 48 hours a week, employees are legally entitled to a 20-minute break if they’re working more than six hours, and employees are entitled to a minimum of 5 or 6 weeks of paid leave per year.
Now imagine if this regulation wasn’t in place, now I’m not saying every employer would do it and every business would do it but do you think you would get as many breaks? Would you get as much paid leave? Would you get sick pay? Would you have to work more than 48 hours? It’s a good question to ask and imagine if you did work 70 hours you didn’t get sick leave, you didn’t get holiday pay, you didn’t get breaks while you’re on shift, what would happen to you? You are likely to get very tired, and very overworked, you’ll lose your focus, the quality would go down, and risk would go up and most likely so would accidents.
Conclusion
And that’s it, a quick guide to employment law and its purpose in business. I hope that’s helped you understand how it impacts businesses as employers and also people as employees.