Starting and managing a business is a venture full of complexities. This is especially true when considering the legalities involved behind the scenes.
Navigating these employment laws can be a daunting task for any business owner or HR professional. From drafting employee contracts to handling disputes and ensuring compliance, the spectrum of responsibilities is vast and full of possible legal pitfalls that could disrupt the functioning of your company.
In this blog, we’ll explore the many benefits of hiring an employment law solicitor to aid your business. From assistance with policies to managing employee grievances, a legal professional can help you optimise and improve your business across the board.
To demonstrate this, we’ll cover some common problems that businesses find themselves facing, and how employing the assistance of a legal specialist can help you come up with solutions that will overall better your business.
Ensuring Regulatory Compliance and Effective Governance
Ensuring that a business complies with relevant laws, adheres to best governance practices, and can adapt to structural changes is crucial.
Effective governance is the cornerstone of any great business. It facilitates strong decision-making between directors and generally helps your business run smoothly and meet key targets more consistently. Furthermore, in the event of an accusation of malpractice, a well-governed business can remain unshaken and confident in its operations.
It is also crucial that a business remain compliant and up-to-date with all relevant regulations. Businesses must adhere to a variety of laws, covering areas such as:
- Health and safety
- Pay and working hours
- Bullying and discrimination
- Taxes
- Data protection
- Waste and waste disposal
Remaining compliant protects everyone involved in your business and shows the wider community that you consider the ethical and social impact of your organisation.
Employment solicitors recognise how much directors and owners go through to ensure that their business is being governed in an effective and ethical manner. As a result it can be easy to feel overwhelmed. Consulting an employment solicitor allows business owners and managers to access advice on how they can govern their enterprises according to best practices.
In the same vein, an employment solicitor can aid you in understanding the regulations your business must adhere to. Whether that is ensuring environmental compliance or assessing whether data protection and privacy regulations are being followed correctly, a legal professional’s comprehensive knowledge means that nothing will be overlooked.
This will result in a business with strong leadership and direction. With proper governance, every individual at every level will fully understand their place in the business, leaving less space for confusion and more for focus and growth. Even in the event of restructuring, your business will retain it’s clarity and strength. With the addition of airtight compliance with all relevant regulations, you will see your business operating with a new level of efficiency and confidence, knowing that all actions taken are in accordance with the law.
Streamlining Company Secretarial Services
Once a solid foundation of governance is established, your business then requires a meticulous approach to maintaining a high level of compliance and organisation.
This is where the role of a company secretary comes in. An effective secretary will ensure that records are maintained and filed accurately and that your meticulously created governance frameworks are implemented thoroughly.
Company secretarial services are designed to alleviate the administrative burdens associated with your corporate responsibilities. Our team here at Tann Law, for example, can help your business by ensuring that important documents and statutory returns are prepared and filed where necessary. We also provide maintenance and storage solutions for statutory books.
Much like hiring a legal professional to help with governance and regulations, doing the same for your business’s secretarial services is beneficial because it gives you peace of mind. You can be sure that you’ve left your business’s administrative tasks in the hands of an individual with a thorough knowledge of what is required to keep a business running smoothly. As a result, you can focus more on growing your business and feel confident that while you do so, the administrative work is taken care of.
Reinforcing Human Resources Departments
A business’s human resources department can make or break a workplace’s culture.
A high-performing HR department will correctly and professionally conduct hiring and termination procedures, draft and manage valuable HR documents, and manage employee disputes with the least amount of disruption possible.
Employing the assistance of employment law solicitors can help a struggling HR department flourish. Often, they will handle the policies and documents relating to the hiring of new employees, such as drafting an employee handbook that will help keep employees up to date with the policies surrounding their employment and their rights within your business. They can also help your company in regards to compliance with benefits, PTO and payroll regulations.
A solicitor’s vast knowledge of hiring, termination and redundancy procedures also means that they will be able to carry out these processes effectively when necessary. They will bring in promising new talent and handle terminations with professionalism and compassion.
At Tann Law, we like to take a step further to ensure existing staff are able to thrive. We invest in employee training and development, with the aim of seeing your team become even more skilled and engaged in the workplace.
A legal professional might not be the first person that comes to mind when you require assistance with your HR department. However, there are an incredible number of ways one can help strengthen this vital aspect of your business.
A business’s success is determined largely by the team of employees that work there. This is why making sure your HR department is fully compliant, effective, and efficient is the key to achieving the success you need. When you hire an employment solicitor to manage this aspect of your business, you can be sure their understanding of HR policies and procedures will put you in the best possible position for success.
Safeguarding Against Corporate Disputes
Corporate disputes can pose significant risks to a business’s operations, reputation, and financial standing.
With an often diverse range of individuals collaborating to ensure a business’s success, it is no surprise that disputes do occur. Often, these can be handled internally by diplomatic business leaders and your effective HR department. However, if a dispute escalates or the subject matter of the dispute is particularly difficult, you may consider consulting with an employment law solicitor.
Often, this process begins with attempts to understand the nuances of a conflict. At Tann Law specifically, we will then try to resolve the issue as amicably as possible through mediation and additional services provided by ACAS.
Being able to solve disputes without the need for litigation is ideal, as it gives all parties involved much more control over how they will settle the dispute – and is often more cost effective. It also tends to much better preserve workplace relationships in the aftermath of the dispute.
Furthermore, as a preventative measure, employment solicitors will also assist you in revising existing policies or creating new ones. This is done in the hopes that the dispute will be less likely to repeat itself in the future. Tann Law also offers management training which can assist in creating a more harmonious workplace, and therefore will leave much less room for recurring conflict.
In the event that mediation is not enough to resolve this dispute, an employment solicitor will be able to represent you, steadfastly advocating for the most favourable outcome possible. While litigation is often not the preferred outcome, you can trust that an employment solicitor will do all they can to protect your rights and interests.
Support With Business Immigration
It is becoming more and more common for businesses to seek talent abroad; brilliant employees willing to immigrate are an exciting prospect for directors and managers.
The process of these potential employees immigrating for work, whether they are skilled workers or students brimming with potential can, however, require a lot of consideration.
Businesses wishing to hire migrant workers with no pre-existing UK work rights must ensure that they hold a valid sponsorship licence. This must be the correct type of licence for the type of worker they would like to hire; once the employer knows this and meets the eligibility and job suitability criteria, they can apply for their sponsorship licence.
This work doesn’t end once the licence is attained and a business is able to hire migrant workers. They must ensure that their business is consistently compliant with regulations pertaining to the employment of these workers, at risk of compromising this licence.
Hiring an employment solicitor can take much of the pressure off the business’s shoulders. The solicitor can ensure that your sponsorship application is airtight, giving you the best chance of getting that A-rated licence. They will also help your prospective employee or student acquire their visas, so both the employer and employee will be organised and prepared for the process.
An employment solicitor will ensure you remain compliant with the policies and regulations surrounding hiring a migrant worker. They can conduct audits of your current policies and even carry out a home office mock compliance audit so you can be completely sure that you are compliant with these regulations in preparation for your new member to join the team.
Conclusion
Seeking the expertise of employment law solicitors can offer a myriad of advantages for your business. Not only do they help fortify your legal defences, but they also play a critical role in crafting a work environment that is both compliant and conducive to growth.
Ultimately, hiring an employment solicitor to aid your business is an amazing choice because it gives you two invaluable resources: time and peace of mind.
When you don’t have to spend as much time running through lengthy policies and regulations and handling your business’s administrative work alone, you will find yourself with much more time on your hands. This time can be used to simply alleviate some stress and let you breathe. It can also be invested back into your business in a manner that you enjoy and that allows it to thrive.
At Tann Law, seeing our clients feel the peace of mind that comes with knowing their business is in good hands is invaluable. We offer these services and many more in an effort to help you realise your goals without the stress associated with the legalities surrounding the ownership of a business.
If you own or manage a business and you feel that you’re struggling with any of these problems, don’t hesitate to get in touch with our team at Tann Law today. You can find our contact page by clicking here!