Employment law advice: How can a solicitor help you?
As a business owner, there are plenty of reasons to ensure that you always have access to strong, experience-based legal advice – and in the overwhelming majority of cases, an employment law specialist will be your best port of call.
Read more about employment law advice below.
Contracts and documentation
The time you dedicate to drawing up contracts when taking on new employees will represent pivotal moments for your company. Not only do you need to ensure that all necessary information is included, but you also need to be able to scrutinise every section in order to ensure that the wording is as clear and watertight as you imagine it to be.
Doing so does, of course, call for a strong level of fluency with legal jargon – and a keen eye for potential pitfalls or misunderstandings –with a view to avoiding legal difficulties further down the line.
Don’t leave it up to chance, blind hope, or, conversely, an outdated or inexpert understanding of employment law.
Obligations and responsibilities
As an employer, have a number of responsibilities and obligations toward your employees.
From establishing and maintaining a safe and fair environment in which your employees will work each day, to meeting legal requirements for holiday, maternity/paternity, sickness and minimum wage, the ramifications for overlooking these responsibilities (even accidentally) could be very costly for your business, and its reputation.
Employment law is, however, an incredibly vast branch of law, and it is unrealistic to imagine that you will be in a position to catch every mistake before it happens. This is why solicitors well-versed in employment law prove so vital to businesses.
Representation
Should an employment dispute occur, the best thing you can do in order to protect the business’s interests is get specialist legal advice as soon as possible. Everything you do that pertains to the case will need to be handled carefully, and a lawyer will be able to advise on everything that should and should not happen from the moment the dispute opens up.
Failing to do so could reflect poorly on you, and your company’s reputation, and potentially lead to an undesirable outcome. This is why so many business owners opt to keep a local firm on retainer, in order to ensure that legal advice is never more than a stone’s throw away. If you are based in Gloucestershire, for instance, then working with experienced solicitors in Cheltenham who hold years’ worth of experience in this complex branch of law is the best way to ensure that representation is always on hand.
Restructures, transfers and redundancies
Some business decisions are far more sensitive and trickier to handle than others. Events like redundancies and restructures within the company are not only emotionally taxing – both for you, and your workforce – but they can also have significant ramifications for the business further down the line if they are not handled correctly.
Speaking with an employment law specialist before, during and after events such as restructures, transfers and redundancies will ensure your employees are treated fairly, and that the business is protected as far as possible.
Business immigration
Hiring new employees from overseas is far more complex than hiring someone already living and working within the country. Not only that, but failure to adhere to the many UK immigration rules and regulations in place could render you vulnerable to fines, or legal complications.
Much like the wider discipline of employment law, business immigration is something that cannot be managed successfully, ad hoc. Working with an experienced lawyer is the only way to feel sure that you are doing everything by the book, and that expanding your workforce will prove to be a positive move for the company.
