What are the most common issues Practices face?

We deal with a huge diversity of issues from Practices, and no issue is the same. Just to give you an insight into what we assist Practices with and how we can help you, here are just a few examples:

TUPE/Practice Mergers

There is a lot of complex law surrounding TUPE and ensuring the correct process and deadlines are followed. We are here to guide you through each step, ensuring 1) that TUPE applies in the first place and 2) that a fair and thorough process is followed that complies with TUPE regulations. We are also happy to support with consultations and if desired we can lead on any meetings. We have a plethora of letter templates that can assist you and make the administration within the process much easier.

Redundancies

We are happy to support you through a redundancy process, ensuring that there is a true redundancy situation, assisting you with a fair selection process and guiding you through the consultation process to making the redundancies. We can assist is calculating redundancy pay and providing letter templates, removing the administration burden from you.

Staff Handbooks and Contracts of Employment

We have developed a template staff handbook and contract of employment, which our member Practices are eligible to access and use in their Practice. Each document has been developed ensuring best practice and up to date employment law is taken into account. We update both of the templates on an annual basis and any Practice who uses the templates is automatically sent the up to date version, ensuring their contracts and staff handbooks remain current and up to date legally as well as with what is deemed best practice.

As well as providing templates, we also help guide and support Practices in implementing new contracts and staff handbooks into their Practice, ensuring that they follow a fair and legal process with all their employees. If this process throws up any issues, we support Practices in handling these in an appropriate manner.

Probationary Reviews

We do get a high level of queries in relation to what Practices can do if an employee isn’t performing in their probation. There are also ever more queries emerging about what to do if an employee isn’t performing in their probation but they also have a protected characteristic, such as a disability. It becomes ever more complicated on how to manage an underperforming employee as soon as a protected characteristic is introduced. It is important that the correct steps are taken to reach the Practices desired goal.

Sickness and Absence Management

Sickness and absence causes Practices a huge amount of strain and money if not managed appropriately. We guide Practices on processes that they can implement to help stay on top of sickness and absence levels, how they can reduce them and how to manage employees with excessive sickness and absence levels.

Disciplinary and Grievances

When handling a disciplinary or grievance it is essential you follow a robust process. We are here to ensure that Practices not only follows their disciplinary or grievance policy to the letter, but also to ensure their process is water tight in the eyes of an employment tribunal as well as providing letter templates to go hand in hand with the meetings and outcomes part of the process.

Performance Management

Performance issues can be a very tough matter to deal with, whether it is a number of small things or a number of high impact performance issues. We will guide you through how to manage an employee’s performance, what a robust and fair process looks like and what actions you can take if the required improvements are not made.

Maternity, Paternity, Adoption and Shared Parental Leave

Handling such leave has an intricate dating process to follow to ensure you calculate their pay and date when they can commence their leave correctly. We are happy to provide assistance or just to be there to double check your calculations for you.

Managing employee issues has become ever trickier, especially since the abolition of the tribunal fees. That is why it is important that Practices follow robust processes that will hold up when questioned. We are happy to help Practices in whatever way they want us to, whether it is just to provide telephone advice or to be more involved in the process, attend meetings right through to writing letters on their behalf. If you need any guidance or support on any of the issues mentioned in this article, or with any other issues that crop up, please do contact the team at 0117 970 2755.