Employment Law Update

Welcome

Employment law headline of the year so far goes to the Daily Mail:

“The monkey girl at London Zoo scent-marked my boyfriend and behaved like an animal: Meerkat handler speaks out over spat with a love rival that cost her job, her reputation and her boyfriend”

To be honest, it’s difficult to see how this will be beaten in the rest of 2016 – please don’t spoil it by reading the story – everything you need to know is right there.

Employees often fall out with each other in the workplace and, as the first case below illustrates, bust-ups can result in discrimination claims. Also in this edition we have a round-up of all the activity DC Employment Solicitors has been engaged in over the last month, plus a couple of interesting developments:

Age Discrimination banter: “Gramps”

An employment tribunal has awarded £63,000 to a salesperson as compensation for age discrimination (Dove v Brown & Newirth Ltd). A younger colleague nicknamed him “Gramps” but Mr Dove (who was 60) did not complain about this and had referred to himself as “Gramps” in an email. Customers complained about him being “long in the tooth” and “old fashioned” which eventually led to him being dismissed.

The employment tribunal upheld Mr Dove’s age discrimination claim, deciding that Mr Dove’s dismissal was influenced by customers’ stereotypical views which were adopted without making further enquiry. It took into account that younger colleagues referred to Mr Dove as “Gramps”, which suggested that ageist attitudes were tolerated in this workplace.

On the ‘banter’ defence, the Tribunal said: “we have accepted that the claimant found it disrespectful and hurtful. Such a comment made once or twice might not cause offence but, if used more often, could lead, with justification, to a real detriment. The fact that it was banter does not really assist the respondent.”

‘The Cost to Businesses of ‘Presenteeism’

DC Employment Solicitors has teamed up with Portsmouth City Council to promote the management and improvement of mental wellbeing in the workplace, in support of the Workplace Wellbeing Charter’s National Award for England. As part of this programme Laurence Dunn recently gave a talk at a Healthy Workforce Breakfast which included the problem of ‘presenteeism’ (i.e. the practice of being present at the place of work for more hours than is required).

It is estimated that the cost to businesses in the UK of mental-ill health amongst the workforce is £30 billion per annum, half of which is attributable to ‘presenteeism’. This is the loss of productivity that occurs when employees come to work but function at less than full capacity because of ill health.

Read more about the cost of ‘presenteeism’ here.

ACAS investigation interview

We’re asked fairly regularly whether employees have to be allowed to be accompanied at investigatory meetings (as opposed to disciplinary or grievance hearings). The short answer is ‘no’, but ACAS have now released some guidance on the issue. ACAS say that although it’s not a statutory requirement to do so, there are some very good reasons why employers should allow interviewees to be accompanied to an investigation meeting into a disciplinary or grievance matter. We say that there may also be good reasons why you might not want to allow employees to be accompanied. It depends on the case and careful consideration (preferably with your legal advisers) should be given to the matter before deciding.

The guidance can be found here.

Employment Law Snapshot – Issue 8

If you haven’t already watched Darren Tibble’s most recent Employment Law Snapshot, you can watch it here. In Issue 8, Darren explores the case of Barbulescu v Romania.

And Finally…

The ACAS guidance on interviewing employees in disciplinary situations, referred to above, reminded me of satirical website The Poke’s very different advice for job applicants in interviews. Articles from The Poke are often circulated as if they are real news so keep an eye out for applicants using its advice:

• When they say ‘How are you?’ reply ‘Goal-orientated, thank you’;
• Tell them you’re not an applicant, you’re an appliCAN;
• Make a point of mentioning you failed Religious Studies and say ‘The only thing I worship is productivity’;
• Bring a box to the interview, point at it and say ‘I do all my thinking outside of that’;
• When asked why you’re leaving your current job, say ‘They caught me stealing…the initiative!’

Well, with that nausea-inducing nonsense out of the way, until next time…