Employment Intelligence

Living in the UK, you're more likely to overhear someone complaining that an employee who suffered discrimination in the workplace received an excessive or ridiculous pay out than someone bemoaning the absence of discrimination laws in the workplace. And it's difficult to imagine a place that fails to protect employees against less favourable treatment because of the colour of their skin, their sex or because they have a disability. However, you don't actually have to travel that far to get to a place where there is next to no protection against discrimination in the workplace. In fact, if you hop on a plane you can be there in a little over an hour.

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Faster than a speeding stenographer. More powerful than aromas from the cafeteria microwave. Able to solve employee problems in a single day. 

Look over in that cubicle! It's a salesman! It's an administrator! It's...an HR professional?

Believe it or not, in HR, we all have the opportunity to be heroes in the workplace. We can be heroes to the employees who come to us with problems. We can be heroes to in-house or outside counsel when it comes to defending the employer against wrongful termination or discrimination claims. We can even be heroes to upper management when we identify wasteful or problematic business practices. 

But in order to be heroes, we must develop certain skills. Superpowers, if you will. And luckily enough, developing those skills doesn't require a tryst with a radioactive spider, decades of training in ninjitsu or a stroll through the nearest intrinsic field subtractor.  

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The Government’s consultation on how the proposed system of shared parental leave and pay will work closes on Friday 17 May 2013.

From 2015, mothers will be able to come back to work early and share the untaken balance of their maternity leave and pay with their partner as shared parental leave and pay. Both parents will need to meet the qualifying conditions for the right to apply. The right will also apply to adopters and surrogate parents. Additional paternity leave and additional statutory paternity pay will be abolished. The Government has been seeking views on some of the detail around its proposals.

Six important issues to consider:

• The Government wants to allow women who have given notice that they want to end their maternity leave and enter a period of shared parental leave, the right to revoke that notice if they gave it before they had the baby. The Government has asked if the period to revoke the notice should be four or six weeks from the birth.
• How much information should employees have to give to be able to take shared parental leave? The Government anticipates similar requirements to current additional paternity leave and pay, as well as information about how parents will divide leave and pay between them.
• The Government proposes that there should be no limit to how many times leave and pay can transfer between parents and that parents should to be able to change the way that they divide up the leave and pay, giving eight weeks’ notice. It is asking if parents should be able to tell their employer about their intentions, as needed.
• Whether the cut-off point (after which parents will no longer be able to use any outstanding shared parental leave or pay entitlement) should be 52 weeks from the start of the employee’s maternity leave or 52 weeks from birth.
• Should both parents get up to 10 keeping-in-touch days while on shared parental leave (as well as 10 days for the mother on maternity leave)?
• Whether the right to return to the same job should apply to returning from the first continuous block of leave up to 26 weeks, or when returning from leave that cumulatively totals up to 26 weeks.

To download the consultation document and for details of how to respond see the UK Government website.

Find out employees’ existing rights to family-friendly leave and pay.

Photo: andrellv

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Digital recruitment would appear to be thoroughly embedded at UK organisations in 2013. But the mix of digital recruitment methods used is constantly evolving.

This is according to latest XpertHR benchmarking research on the state of digital recruitment in 2013. The survey suggests that:

• The vast majority of UK employers use some form of digital recruitment in 2013, with use of social recruitment showing strong growth.
• The most popular digital recruitment method is posting job ads on the corporate website. But growth in social recruitment is strong.
  

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How easy is it to terminate an employee's employment contract in Brazil? When are employees entitled to paid annual leave? Does Brazilian law permit positive action? HR professionals working for global organisations with interests in Brazil can find the answers to these questions and more in the new guide to employment law in Brazil that has been added to XpertHR International.

We have set out below seven interesting features of Brazilian employment law:

1. Employers with 100 or more employees must employ a minimum mandatory quota of employees who have disabilities or have undergone rehabilitation by the social security authorities (see Employment quota for people with disabilities).
2. Employees are entitled each year to be paid a "13th month" of salary by their employer, also known as the Christmas bonus (see 13th month payment).
3. Employees are entitled to paid annual leave after 12 months' service with the same employer. Except in cases of "collective" holidays, employees have no paid annual leave entitlement at all during the first 12 months of service (see Holiday and holiday pay).
4. The law specifically permits (though does not require) employers to adopt temporary measures aimed at establishing equality for women and men, where these seek to correct "distortions" that affect women's vocational training, access to employment and general working conditions (see Positive action).
5. In general, the employer or employee can terminate an employment contract at any time and without any particular reason, by giving proper notice. However, employees are temporarily protected against such dismissal "without cause" while certain circumstances apply, such as pregnancy or maternity (see Termination of employment - general, Termination without cause and Dismissal protection).
6. All employees have an individual account with the statutory Service Guarantee Fund (Fundo de Garantia do Tempo de Serviço, FGTS), into which the employer must pay the equivalent of 8% of the employee's pay per month. Employees are entitled to withdraw the balance of their FGTS account as a severance payment in certain circumstances (see Severance payments).
7. There is no legal concept or definition of redundancy (see Redundancy).

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