HR Articles

The year 2020 will always be a stand-out year in our personal and professional lives. COVID-19 brought so much suffering to so many across the globe and created a level of uncertainty that we had never experienced before. Businesses were forced to adapt at breakneck speed.

The coronavirus pandemic resulted in the postponement of many employment law changes due to take place in 2020. This article investigates some of the key developments anticipated over the next 12 months.

Again, employers and employees are facing the difficult balancing act of managing work and childcare through this third national lockdown. The three main options for employers to manage such leave are to place affected parents/guardians on furlough, have parents use their annual leave to take time off or take unpaid leave.

Now that the UK is past its first week of the COVID-19 vaccination rollout, employers are starting to consider what 2021 will look like and whether there is hope of the workplace returning to some form of normality. The question on many employers’ minds is - can we require our staff to get vaccinated?

The Government’s CEST tool, designed to help determine whether a worker will be caught by the changes to the off payroll working rules (IR35) was unable to reach a conclusion in 19% of cases checked in the last year.

Festivities will be very different this year. Despite exiting a national Lockdown this week, 98.7% of the population in England find themselves in tiers 2 or 3 in the run up to Christmas.

As it’s December Clarkslegal employment associate, Deborah Scales, injects some rhyming couplets into her seasonal related employment advice.  

Protection from health and safety detriments and the right to PPE should cover ‘workers’ as well as employees, High Court rules.

Less than one week ago, the government announced that the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (the furlough scheme) would be extended for 1 month, to the end of November 2020, with government support for 80% of wages up to a cap of £2,500 per month and employers only having to pay pension and National Insurance Contributions.

This month in California, ride-sharing and delivery platforms succeeded in their campaign - supported with $30million each from DoorDash, Lyft, and Uber - to win a public ballot exempting their drivers...