Understanding the Lawfulness of Digital Signatures for Human Resources in the United Kingdom

How to eSign a document: digital signature lawfulness for Human Resources in United Kingdom

[Music] Welcome to our latest employment law and HR newsletter as has become customer I'm making this in video form but it's also available on our website in written format if you'd rather have a read of it so it's nearly April 2024 and while we've covered some of the material that I'm going to touch on before it is customary at this time of year to take a look at the various employment law changes coming our way in a matter of days before looking at the more immediate changes let's remember that it's election year and virtually everybody is predicting a labor win so what will a labor government mean for employers well Angela rer published a green paper outlining Labor's intentions in precisely this area and they include the ability for employees to bring an unfair dismissal claim from day one of employment the law currently requires two years for a claim to be brought they will also harmonize worker and employee status they'll ban zero hours agreements and they'll create sector by sector Fair pay agreements these are European style agreements that will set minimum terms and conditions and dismissal compensation Arrangements by sector and that also promote the influence of trade unions I can't overstate the significance some of these policies if implemented will have for employers and these are just a few of the changes proposed if you want to read more about Labor's plans for employment law just follow the link on screen which will take you to the minr department news Pages before looking forwards let's take a little look back because January saw the new preventing illegal working code of practice which comes with increased fines up to £45,000 now for a first offense of employing an illegal worker and up to £60,000 for repeat offenders employees should employers rather should review their policies procedures to ensure compliance with these changes now last time I talked about this the uh the draft code wasn't available it is now and the link is on screen so you can uh go and see the code if you want to let's move ahead to the employment law changes coming in just a few days in April 2024 so from April we'll see changes in holiday pay calculations the way holiday pay is calculated and we'll see the legalization of rolled up holiday pay for workers with ir regular hours or who work just part of the year so employers will will be permitted to roll up holiday pay into wages paying a supplement to reflect the acred holiday and those employers uh who provide only the minimum holiday entitlement equivalent to 5.6 weeks per anom can calculate holiday pay for those workers at 12.07% a very simple calcul culation now these changes largely stem from a case law decision that previously resulted in peculiarly some part year workers receiving proportionately more holiday pay than their full-time counterparts and many employment and HR advisers encouraged their clients to adopt convoluted formula to accommodate the impact of that case now at my child Department we took a different track and we made a policy decision to recommend clients to continue to use 12.07% of calculator we predicted correctly as it happened that the legislators would fix the problem and in just a few days time it would indeed be fixed rolled up holiday pay has been unlawfully used by many employers for Years anyway so this is a case of case law of law rather catching up with practice but do bear in mind that one of the labor party stated employment policies is to ban Zero Hour contract and if they actually Implement that and I have to be honest I don't really see how they can in practice but if they do then these changes will become largely obsolete so also in April the national living wage and the national minimum wage will see significant increases and for the first time the top rate will apply to workers age 21 and over this year it applies to workers age 23 and over last year it was 25 and over um but we'll also see a headline increase in that rate of 99.8% it will go up to £144 an hour some of the other rates increase by up to 21% for employers who pay minimum wage for in particular a young Workforce 2024 is going to prove an expensive year to see all of the new rates please see our earlier article or watch the video by following the link on screen now before we leave this slide let's have a look at some of the other rates guarantee pay which is a statutory payment employers have to make for workless periods well that's going to increase by3 a day to a whopping £ 38 statutory sick pay is up to 11675 per week and all of the various forms of statutory Paid Family Leave increase to a maximum of £184 and 3 per week also in April is a new right for employees with dependent care responsibility for one week unpaid leave each year to provide or to arrange care for a dependent the leave is unpaid and it can be postponed by employers at the timing of the requested dates would cause operational difficulty currently women on maternity leave are given special protection from being made redundant while they're on maternity leave but from April this will be extended to include the period of pregnancy and for 6 months following their return to work after maternity and similar rights will extend to adoptive parents and those taking six or more consecutive weeks of shared parental leave and lastly on this uh busy slide we mention the uh changes to the right to request flexible working Arrangements which include the right for employees to apply for flexible working from day one of employment the right to make two requests at each 12-month period currently it's just one request in 12 months and the requirement for employers to consult with employees if they're thinking of rejecting the request also the reduction uh there's a reduction in the period required for the employer to respond to the request from 3 months to two and the definition of respond to the request includes an appeal which is allowed under the process also the changes will remove the requirement for the employee to set out their request information in a particular form so it can be done much more flexibly from a few days time now later in July in fact we're expecting chupy to be amended to allow for employees who have less than 50 staff or employeers of any size who are proposing to transfer less than 10 staff to consult with employees directly under existing regulations employers often have to elect representatives for this purpose although again at my child Department we've always adopted a more pragmatic approach when advising clients on small scale or low impact chy transfers also in July and one to uh watch for our licensed retail clients is the uh the employment allocation of tips act and that act aims to ensure that 100% of tips are distributed fairly and transparently among workers again last time I spoke about this the draft code wasn't available now it is and the link is there on screen for you to have a look at around September we're expecting a new right for employees with unpredictable terms and conditions so many zero hours workers would be included there we're expecting a new right for them to be able to apply for greater predictability of in particular working hours and in October there will be a new Duty on employers to prevent sexual harassment the national press and and indeed us at my Char Department have featured numerous articles concerning sexual harassment and um and so this new Duty will actually place an obligation on employers to try and do their best to prevent it and if they don't then any tribunal award may be uplifted by 25% throughout the year throughout last year and going into this year we've released training and communication materials to help my HR department and jcr clients to quickly and easily help raise the awareness of sexual harassment in the workplace and our videos and resources have been access thousands of times and they'll remain free for our clients to use and we'll be issuing refes fresh versions of those as we go through the year we don't have a date yet but we are expecting a 3mon statutory cap on non-compete clauses to appear uh at some point as we go through the year now those Clauses often featuring restrictive covenants contained in employment contracts and so already we've been advising clients um over recent times to tend towards shorter restricted periods which are more likely to be enforcable long ones anyway going back to April the annual increase in compensation limits in employment tribunals comes into play and this year's numbers are a bit more memorable with the cap on a week's pay increasing to a nice round number of 700 a week that's the cap on a week's pay for statutory redundancy calculations the minimum unfair dismissal award increases to £ 115,116 which our good friend and employment barister Daniel Barnett pointed out looks very much like a telephone number for directory inquiries it is easy to remember though isn't it now the weekly cap on a week's pay at £700 means the maximum statutory redundancy payment which is capped at 20year service is raised to £21,000 and that would be for someone who's worked for 20 years all beond the age of 41 when statutory redundancy pay compensation increases to one and a half weeks per year of service so effectively 30 weeks in total now I talked about the uh minimum wage uh a few moments ago and to date hmrc have Unearthed 524 employers who failed to pay the uh the minimum wage or at least it was 524 uh when the article was published a few weeks ago it's probably gone up a bit by now the most common reason for for short was the effect of salary sacrifice schemes where employees sacrifice some of their gross pay in exchange for benefit like an electric car perhaps many employers have fallen into the Trap of allowing employees to sacrifice too much pay resulting in their gross pay falling below the national minimums just something to be aware of if you're considering offering or you you already offer salary sacrifice schemes on the slide is the link to the myr department article which looks at this and other employers have missed their minimum wage obligations and is worth a read now finally I was somewhat amused to read that the GMB are suffering a dose of their own medicine their own staff are on strike now there'd be a sort of poetic justice wouldn't there if their staff was represented by an employer body like a chamber of commerce but in reality they're represented by another Union in this case it's unite on a serious note gmbb staff will say rightly this is no laughing matter and and in fact it concerns an alleged toxic misogynistic culture within the gmbb it was Unearthed a few years ago by an independent inquiry but say GMB staff it's never effectively been dealt with to this day if you want to read more about that the link is on the screen I hope that was useful as ever remember that myr department is an independent family run business we are not a franchise we provide HR payroll employment law and health and safety Services we also recruit for HR and other vacancies so if any or all of these services are of Interest please contact us telephone us on 01628 82515 email inquiries aty hd.co or visit our websites while we do offer payroll and other services it's worth remembering before I go that as well as fully outsourced HR we also support inhouse HR our teams most usually by helping with their employee relations cases and with their employment law needs for a no obligation assessment of how partial or full Outsourcing could help your organization or indeed for any other HR matter please contact us we'll be happy to arrange a teams meeting or attend an inperson meeting if you prefer thank you for taking the time to watch this video I hope to see you again very soon