Employment Law & HR

HR key is designed to provide your business with instant and pragmatic advice – managing your employment law risks for a fixed monthly fee.

Advice you can trust
Our employment team are all experienced solicitors trusted to advise on all aspects of employment law. They will get to know your business needs in order to provide the best possible solutions no matter how simple or complex they may be - there are options for all.

An everyday righthand
From unlimited telephone advice to readily available HR documents, you can be rest assured that you have everything you need should any issues arise. By having a dedicated solicitor to handle your queries, we hope to work with you to build a long-lasting partnership.

A focus on what matters
Once you have HR Key in place you can be confident that your business is compliant, and our annual audit guarantees that you’re never caught out! With these processes in place, you can and focus on other aspects of your business.

Contact us for a quote and to find out how we can help you business.

Whether you have just hired a key employee, or are wary of aggressive competitors, ensuring your employment contracts have clear, up to date and legally compliant business protection clauses is key to safeguarding your business and protecting your workforce.

Many issues arise with departing employees due to a lack of clarity and precision in employment contracts, or due to a lack of the necessary protection altogether. Litigation with ex-employees or competitors can extremely costly and time consuming; hence our ethos ‘prevention is better than cure’!

For a fixed fee of £750 (+VAT) we will conduct an in-depth review of your existing clauses or provide fresh, up to date wording, tailored specifically to your business needs including confidentiality provisions and restrictive covenants.

Get in touch to find out more.

HR Showcase is our dedicated fixed-fee training service available to all sizes and types of employers.

The service has been designed by our employment team to provide practical guidance for making stronger decisions and reduce risk in the HR environment.

Some of our popular sessions include:

• dealing with disciplinary procedures
• managing grievance issues
• equal opportunities
• performance management
• sickness absence management

We have vast experience of pro-actively managing claims in Employment Tribunals across the UK. This often leads to them being withdrawn or settled on a commercial basis.. We offer insurance protection against tribunal claims – either sitting alongside our monthly retainer products or stand-alone insurance. Alternatively we can conduct claims on a pre-agreed, fixed fee basis.

We will:

• Prepare and submit the ET3 Response and Grounds of Resistance
• Prepare all necessary documentation and representation for a preliminary hearing
• Comply with all directions set by the employment tribunal
• Make and respond to appropriate applications during the process
• Compile and finalise the bundle of documents to be used as evidence by the tribunal
• Speak with witnesses, draft all statements and exchange them with the employee/their representative
• Continue to progress settlement discussions if required via ACAS and the employee/their representative
• Prepare for the full hearing of the issues

As we strive to be as open and honest as possible about fees, you can find further information on how much this work may cost you costs-for-employment-tribunals.pdf.

We regularly advise on the employment law aspects of outsourcing/insourcing and business acquisitions/disposals.

We will manage the full scope of employment related transactional work, including due diligence, drafting employment provisions, calculating employment related liabilities, and advising on benefits, incentives and bonus arrangements. We can also successfully navigate the post transactional period, including managing redundancies, restructurings and dismissals, helping you avoid any employment liabilities and costly claims.

It is more important than ever that you take steps to safeguard your confidential information and protect your intellectual property. We can advise on:

• The use of non-disclosure agreements and confidentiality clauses
• Protecting your intellectual property
• Restrictive covenants
• Injunctions and breach of contract claims
• Policies you can introduce to help regulate the use of email, devices and social media.

When you take our employment insurance you can also access insurance for the pursuit and defence of restrictive covenants. This will cover:

• A dispute with your employee, ex-employee or another party which arises from your employee or ex-employee’s breach of a restrictive covenant where you are seeking
• financial remedy or damages provided that the restrictive covenant:
• is designed to protect your legitimate business interests, and
• is evidenced in writing and signed by your employee or ex-employee and
• extends no further than is reasonably necessary to protect the business interests and
• does not contain restrictions in excess of 12 months.
• A dispute with another party who alleges that you have breached their legal rights protected by a restrictive covenant.

Find out more about restrictive covenants.

We have vast experience of working alongside senior executives to remedy issues such as bonus disputes, settlement agreements and the terms of service agreements including restrictive covenants, notice and garden leave periods. Our corporate team can also advise on a director’s share options and shareholdings.

We have also pursued claims in the employment tribunals on behalf of senior executives and helped them defend injunction proceedings where it is alleged that they are in breach of their restrictive covenants.

We will complete a free check your HR policies and procedures to check adequacy. For a fixed fee, we can then draft any documents that need updating, including:

• Terms and conditions of employment
• Staff handbook
• Director’s service agreements
• Settlement agreements
• Consultancy agreements
• The documents needed to navigate ‘tricky’ employment issues i.e. grievances, disciplinary procedures, performance management, flexible working requests, redundancy consultations
• Apprentice agreements

Our Employment Team have devised a suite of products, including HR Key and HR Key Plus, HR Showcase and HR Secure giving you easy access to expert advice when you need it. This includes the right documents and training to keep you and your organisation on the right side of the law, whilst managing your employment risks for a fixed cost. Click here to read more.