Employment Law

• Betsyn McHardy, Director & Solicitor
• Kailey Northcott, Solicitor
• Sam Wood, Intermediate Solicitor
• Tom Speight, Solicitor

Getting it right when it comes to your staff isn’t always simple. Even great employers get caught out by the complexities of employment law. We’re here to help.

If you’re an employer, you will know that creating a great place to work is like a puzzle with a thousand pieces. Every workplace has its own puzzle and its own pieces – what works for one, does not work for all.

We can help make your particular puzzle a bit simpler by ensuring you have employment agreements and policies in place that are tailored to your business and the people who work in it. Most importantly, we speak your language, so will make sure it’s all easy for everyone to understand and not filled with complicated employment law jargon.

Don’t get yourself into trouble by using DIY employment agreements and policies made using online tools, downloads or outdated templates. Getting the paperwork right is so important to set a good foundation for employment success. We have a range of plain-English agreement and policy templates, which we can adapt to meet your specific needs. This is our speciality, so let us help you. It’s well worth the investment.

A good performance management process involves making sure your expectations are both reasonable and clearly understood by the employee and then giving the employee both support and time to improve.

If you have an employee who isn’t performing and you’re not seeing any improvement after discussing it with them informally, we can help guide you through a performance management process, including drafting letters of expectation and performance improvement plans.

Most importantly, if you are considering ending someone’s employment due to poor performance, we can give you advice as to whether this step could be fair and reasonable or whether they need to be given a bit more time/support first.

Making people redundant can be a high-risk area. You must have a genuine business reason and follow a fair process.

Even if you can prove your business is losing money fast, you cannot just pull people into your office for a “chat” or hand them a letter to make them redundant. Likewise, even if you follow a perfect process, you cannot use a “redundancy” to get rid of someone you don’t get on with or who isn’t performing well.

Don’t find out the hard way that getting legal advice about how to make people redundant is almost always significantly cheaper in the long term than going it alone and getting it wrong. Call us today and let us help you keep yourself safe by doing it the right way.

Bad behaviour is one of the hardest things an employer has to deal with. The process must be fair and in working out what did/didn’t happen you have to get your head around a “standard of proof” that is different to, and much less well known than, the criminal one we’re all familiar with. Then, you must make a decision a “fair and reasonable employer could have made in all the circumstances”. We can help you with disciplinary procedures. Having us involved will make the process less stressful for you, give you confidence in your actions and reduce the risk of getting it wrong.

If you’ve got an allegation of employee misconduct that needs investigating, we can come in and run a robust and completely independent fact-finding investigation. We pride ourselves on making the complex simple, so the report you receive at the end of the investigation to help you make your decisions won’t be filled with legal jargon and complex theories; it will be well-reasoned, straightforward and easy to understand by everyone involved.

Got an employee who seems to be away sick all the time? Or a worker that’s been off for months due to sickness or injury? These are common issues and dealing with them, and other employee wellness issues, can be a real challenge.

We can guide you through a process to understand what’s going on with an employee’s health, if/when they will be ready to work at full capacity and what support they need to get there.

Most importantly, if you are considering ending someone’s employment on the grounds of medical incapacity, we can give you advice as to whether this step could be fair and reasonable in the circumstances.

Confused about the Holidays Act? You’re not alone. It’s one of the most complex pieces of legislation out there. We pride ourselves on making the complex simple, so don’t go it alone, ask us any questions you have about leave and we’ll give you advice that’s straight-forward, practical and easy to apply to your particular situation.

You can also ask us any questions you have about the minimum wage and deductions from wages.

If an employee has raised a personal grievance or other dispute, don’t bury your head in the sand and hope it will go away; get some legal advice.

We are expert problem-solvers and negotiators and have experience advocating for both employers and employees at mediation, the Employment Relations Authority, Employment Court, Office of the Privacy Commissioner and the Human Rights Review Tribunal.

Whether you run an HR practice or work in-house, if you are an HR Professional, we can support you in a range of ways. We can act as a sounding board or review your advice on particularly complex matters before you send it off to your client. We are also particularly good at taking on those messy personal grievances you’d rather not be dealing with, attending mediations and defending proceedings in the Employment Relations Authority.

Issues arising in relation to your employment can sometimes lead to a professional body investigation. We have experience helping people through investigations by the Teacher’s Council, Nursing Council and the Law Society. We know it can be incredibly stressful to face an investigation that could lead to the end of not only your job, but your career, so don’t go it alone. Let us help.