"Employment law is too important to be left to employment lawyers." This is according to director of In-Company Training Services and XpertHR contributor Darren Newman, in an interesting blog comment on how employers might help themselves avoid unnecessary expense by ensuring that "spurious claims [...] be resisted, whether that is internally in a grievance or externally in the employment tribunal."
He argues that "it is up to employers to control their legal costs in
this sort of case and impose limits on how much work their lawyers
should do".
But in order for this approach to be viable, "the employer needs to know a bit about employment law so they can challenge the advice they are receiving and make appropriate decisions."
Newman's comment was posted in response to a post on the Flip Chart Fairy Tales blog, in which the author, Rick, considers press reports that:
See also:
But in order for this approach to be viable, "the employer needs to know a bit about employment law so they can challenge the advice they are receiving and make appropriate decisions."
Newman's comment was posted in response to a post on the Flip Chart Fairy Tales blog, in which the author, Rick, considers press reports that:
St Andrews University spent £204,000 fighting a constructive dismissal claim and a subsequent appeal. It won the case but the employee concerned would probably only have received £20,000 if the university had lost.Both Rick's original blog post and Newman's comment are well worth reading in full, and I'd urge any Employment Intelligence readers with an opinion on this topic to join in the debate via the comments field on Flip Chart Fairy Tales.
See also:
- Good practice guide: Handling grievances (subscription required) This section of the XpertHR good practice manual discusses handling grievances, both formally and informally, and includes information on the structure of a grievance procedure, who should handle grievances, attitudes towards grievances and conducting grievance hearings.
- In the employment tribunals (subscription required) XpertHR provides summaries of recent employment tribunal rulings, as well as the full transcripts of the decisions.
- Employment tribunals
and Grievances
Read more on these topics, from XpertHR Employment Intelligence.
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