Setting up a business involves complying with a range of legal requirements. Find out which ones apply to you and your new enterprise.
Every business needs to be aware of its obligations under minimum wage and equal pay laws, as well as recent pensions auto-enrolment changes.
What particular regulations do specific types of business (such as a hotel, or a printer, or a taxi firm) need to follow? We explain some of the key legal issues to consider for 200 types of business.
While poor governance can bring serious legal consequences, the law can also protect business owners and managers and help to prevent conflict.
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.
Whether you want to raise finance, join forces with someone else, buy or sell a business, it pays to be aware of the legal implications.
While sick employees need to be treated fairly, you need to ensure that 'sickness' is not being used as cover for unauthorised absence.
Marketing matters. Marketing drives sales for businesses of all sizes by ensuring that customers think of their brand when they want to buy.
Most pregnant employees are entitled to maternity leave and maternity pay, while new fathers are entitled to paternity leave and paternity pay.
Commercial disputes can prove time-consuming, stressful and expensive, but having robust legal agreements can help to prevent them from occurring.
As well as undermining morale, illegal discrimination can lead to workplace grievances. Employee discrimination is covered by the Equality Act 2010.
Whether your business owns or rents premises, your legal liabilities can be substantial. Commercial property law is complex, but you can avoid common pitfalls.
Home, remote and lone workers are becoming increasingly commonplace. Key issues include communication and how to manage and motivate people remotely.
With information and sound advice, living up to your legal responsibilities to safeguard your employees, customers and visitors need not be difficult or costly.
The right approach to consulting with and providing information to your employees can improve employee motivation and performance.
As information technology continues to evolve, legislation must also change. It affects everything from data protection and online selling to internet policies for employees.
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.
Intellectual property (IP) isn't solely relevant to larger businesses or those involved in developing innovative new products: all products have IP.
Employment tribunal claims are a worrying prospect for any employer. A tribunal case is a no-win situation – even if the claim is unjustified.
Knowing how and when you plan to sell or relinquish control of your business can help you to make better decisions and achieve the best possible outcome.
From bereavement, wills, inheritance, separation and divorce to selling a house, personal injury and traffic offences, learn more about your personal legal rights.
Carrying out a health and safety risk assessment is the most critical part of managing health and safety. The risk assessment helps you identify - and control - the main health and safety risks in your business.
Unless you are genuinely self-employed and your work poses no risks to others, your business must carry out a suitable health and safety risk assessment. You must keep a written record of your risk assessment, unless you employ fewer than five people.
For most businesses, a health and safety risk assessment is relatively straightforward. However, you may need external help for any specific hazards that need special expertise to evaluate and control.
Every business also needs to carry out a fire risk assessment. It makes sense to combine this with your health and safety risk assessment. You'll need to review the risk assessments periodically or when circumstances change.
Identifying hazards is the first step in carrying out a health and safety risk assessment. Look around your premises, ask employees and suppliers, and check records of any health and safety incidents. Typical hazards include potential causes of accidents (such as trailing wires) or long-term health problems (such as poorly-designed workstations) as well as obvious hazards such as machinery, dangerous substances and so on.
At the same time, you need to consider who could be affected by the hazard. Bear in mind the extra risks to people who are not familiar with your premises or are particularly vulnerable.
In each case, evaluate the scale of the risk and how effective any existing precautions are. As a minimum, you should be complying with any specific health and safety regulations and meeting industry norms.
It may be possible to eliminate hazards altogether for example, by replacing dangerous machinery with an alternative.
Remaining health and safety risks can often be controlled with appropriate health and safety procedures, backed up by training. You may also be able to reduce health and safety risks by preventing or minimising employees' exposure to hazards: for example, by using guard rails to prevent falls from height, or by ensuring hazardous substances are stored securely. Health and safety risks can be further reduced through the use of personal protective equipment such as protective clothing and headgear.
You must reduce health and safety risks to acceptable levels. But you can take into account factors such as cost in deciding what steps are reasonably practicable, bearing in mind the scale of the health and safety risks involved.
Read further guidance on carrying out a health and safety risk assessment and how to control risks in the workplace on the HSE website.
The Health and Safety Executive has created these exposure calculators and ready-reckoners to help you to work out your daily or weekly noise exposure, and estimate the performance of any hearing protection you and your employees are wearing.