When staff refuse to work…
“Help! My employee told me he wouldn’t work his notice. What do I do?”
Don’t pay him. If he refuses to work it, he’s breaching his contract of employment with your business.
If he can’t work his notice period because he’s on planned holiday leave or off sick, you must pay him as normal.
But if there’s been a fundamental breach of contract or you both agree to waive the notice period, you can bring forward the end date of his employment.
“Does my pregnant employee get maternity rights even though she’s still an apprentice?”
From day one of your apprentice’s employment with you, she has the right to 52 weeks’ maternity leave.
She doesn’t have an automatic right to get Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP). Like any standard employee, she has to qualify for it—starting with giving you the right amount of notice of her pregnancy.
By the end of the 15th week before the expected week of childbirth, she needs to have worked for you for 26 weeks and earned an average of £113 per week in the previous eight weeks.
“My business plans to make around five redundancies. How long should our consultation process last?”
As long or as short as is necessary—there’s no minimum or maximum consultation period when you propose to make fewer than 20 people redundant.
Instead, you must consult meaningfully. The number of meetings in a meaningful process depends on several factors, including:
The number of people you’re consulting with; whether anyone raises alternatives to redundancy during the consultation, and whether you and your employees consider them.