Archive for the ‘HR’ Category
Looking into the future – pensions style!
A very short post today for Halloween!
We are obliged to those nice legal people at Hogan Lovells for their Monthly Pension Planner. Click here and by a spooky coincidence you’ll be taken to the full document.
If you’re involved in pensions either as a Trustee or someone that has to make key decisions regarding pensions and benefits this will be useful. Hogan Lovells have set out the short, medium and long term issues that you may need to keep on your pensions radar.
If you want to avoid a pensions nightmare having a quick scan through to check what’s on the horizon would be well worth it.
More of a treat than a trick really.
Steve Clark
Sick leave is no holiday!
This issue of holiday entitlements and sick leave is a perennial favourite. It’s a classic case of playing catch up with fast moving (at least for Europe) changes in employment law. We seem to be unable to get any clarity in the UK legal system and progress is very much a zig zag rather than a straight line.
Those kind legal types at Wedlake Bell LLP have issued a useful article on a recent Tribunal case regarding the ability to “roll over” unused holiday entitlements when an employee is off sick. You can click through to the article here.
You’ll see it’s all still a bit of a muddle. Let caution be your watchword and take appropriate advice.
Steve Clark
Cause for concern in German DRA case?
It’s been rather quiet over the summer months in relation to developments on the various legislative issues that are likely to affect our clients’ employee benefit arrangements.
However, now that everyone is back from their holidays we’re beginning to see some interesting stuff appearing. The latest is in relation to the current grey area of the impact of the Default Retirement Age. Our friends at Mills & Reeve have issued one of their hr Law Live bulletins regarding a case heard by our old chums at the European Court of Justice.
You can click through to the original article here.
Although the judgement majors on the case of the German pilots being forced to retire at 60 there is one worrying aspect to it. For those of us regular flyers its worrying that air traffic safety doesn’t seem to be a legitimate reason to force a pilot to retire. The judgement seems to rest on the fact that safety considerations are not similar to the examples of legitimate aims listed in the original European Directive. These are things like employment policy, the labour market, or vocational training objectives.
As Mills & Reeve put it:
“(It) suggests a stricter reading of the Directive on this point than has been adopted by our domestic courts, which will be a worry for employers wishing to use a broad range of aims to justify age discrimination.”
It’s very likely that this is how Default Retirement Age legislation will evolve – by case law and precedent. It’s worth therefore keeping an eye on the stuff being issued by the UK and European courts when you’re framing your own policies.
For my part, my main concern is that the next time I get to the bottom of the aircraft steps at the airport there may be a stair lift installed for the pilot!
Steve Clark
If FTSE 100 employers can mess up pensions this badly what hope is there for us?
My wife Sue has recently been made redundant by the drug company AstraZeneca. This morning we got a letter from AstraZeneca letting us know that they had not paid enough into Sue’s pension while she was on maternity leave. It seems they had only paid their contributions based on her reduced maternity pay rather than her full pay before her leave. All in all it seems that over 900 people like Sue were affected.
When you take into account the internal cost of reviewing the mistake and the cost of compensation I’m sure it’ll run into hundreds of thousands of pounds.
The reaso
n that the AstraZeneca letter struck a chord is that I’ve spent the last couple of weeks advising employers about their duties under the new pension rules. Re-reading the detailed guidance issued by The Pensions Regulator has driven home the scale of the work that’s going to be required for employers to comply.
Take for example the task of identifying your workers. Not as easy as it sounds if you use self-employed contractors, agency workers or have non-executive directors, volunteers or Trustees.
Then you have to split your workforce between three categories of “jobholder” as the civil servants have called them. Then you’ve got make sure that you know when one of your jobholders moves category so you can make sure you do the right thing. I have included a graphic below from the The Pensions Regulator guidance just to give you a flavour:
It’s going to take a major change not only to HR and Payroll systems but also an Employer’s internal processes to track all these coming and goings. So, in essence, the new Rules are as much about compliance as they are the headline extra pension costs.
And that brings me nicely back to the AstraZeneca letter. Whilst it’s nice to get the compensatory payment they’ve made; it shows how badly wrong one of the top 100 quoted companies can get a simple change in process so badly wrong.
The changes required for the new pension rules dwarf the changes that AstraZeneca 
should have made to their maternity policy back in 2003. For smaller employers with limited resources it’s a daunting task. A survey of HR and Finance Directors in June 2011 found that over 40% of those questioned had no idea of the deadline for complying with the new rules.
In the words of the author of the report “It’s heading for a car crash”.
That’s why we’ve already started to plan out the compliance project with our clients. For some the start date is just over a couple of years away.
It’s not too late if you haven’t done anything yet. Click here to contact us set up a meeting as soon as possible.
Steve Clark
Employment Law Round Up
In our day to day work we have to read a huge amount of technical information to stay up to date with the latest developments. We like to share anything that we find useful with our clients, connections and followers.
The latest bulletin that we have received is from those very nice people at the law firm Herbert Smith LLP. It’s their Round Up of Employment Law Developments for June 2011. You can click through to the bulletin here.
There is a useful slant on the Default Retirement Age and some useful catch up on the Bribery Act that’s just come into force.
It’s well worth a read as a quick catch up for issues that you may need to know about.
If you need any help after you’ve read the bulletin please contact us here.