Skip to main content
Practical employment law information to support your business, from Clover HR

Search

Establishing a successful recruitment process and clear written employment contracts for new employees can have a major impact on your business.

Every business needs to be aware of its obligations under minimum wage and equal pay laws, as well as recent pensions auto-enrolment changes.

You must comply with legal restrictions on employees' working hours and time off, or risk claims, enforcement action and even prosecution.

The right employment policies are an essential part of effective staff management. Make sure any policy is clear and well communicated to employees.

While sick employees need to be treated fairly, you need to ensure that 'sickness' is not being used as cover for unauthorised absence.

Most pregnant employees are entitled to maternity leave and maternity pay, while new fathers are entitled to paternity leave and paternity pay.

As well as undermining morale, illegal discrimination can lead to workplace grievances. Employee discrimination is covered by the Equality Act 2010.

Home, remote and lone workers are becoming increasingly commonplace. Key issues include communication and how to manage and motivate people remotely.

The right approach to consulting with and providing information to your employees can improve employee motivation and performance.

Disciplinary and grievance issues can be a major burden to employers. Putting in place and following the right procedures is essential.

Following the right dismissal and redundancy procedures helps protect your business and minimise the risk of a legal dispute at tribunal.

Employment tribunal claims are a worrying prospect for any employer. A tribunal case is a no-win situation – even if the claim is unjustified.

New SME threshold reduces red tape for UK firms

4 October 2022

The government has announced that more businesses are to be categorised as SMEs, releasing thousands of UK firms from some reporting requirements as well as future regulations.

From this week, the UK government definition of an SME has changed. Until now, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) were categorised as firms with fewer than 250 employees. On Sunday 2 October, prime minister Liz Truss announced plans to widen this business category to firms with fewer than 500 employees for future and reviewed regulations. It means that an additional 40,000 businesses could have less red tape to deal with, saving them time and money and helping them to grow.

Government research has found that medium-sized businesses - with between 50 and 249 employees - report that they are spending over 22 staff days per month on average dealing with regulation; and over half say that regulations are a burden to their operation.

The government says the exemption will be applied in a proportionate way to ensure workers' rights and other standards will be protected, while at the same time reducing the burden for growing businesses.

The new threshold came into force on Monday this week for all new regulations under development as well as those under current and future review, including retained EU laws. The government will also look at plans to consult in the future on potentially extending the threshold to businesses with 1,000 employees, once the impact on the current extension is known.

The government says this is "the first step in a package of reforms to ensure UK business regulation works for the UK economy". As part of its commitment to reducing red tape, the government's starting assumption when developing new policy is that businesses with less than 50 employees should be exempt from certain regulations. It is now amending this assumption to businesses with less than 500 employees.

Written by Rachel Miller.

Stay up-to-date with business advice and news

Sign up to this lively and colourful newsletter for new and more established small businesses.