Breakfast briefing a success

An early start this morning – it was the annual Employment Law Breakfast Briefing which we run with Hegarty LLP Solicitors.

With an incredible 40 per cent increase in the cases of unfair dismissal filed since April – the majority of which were related to redundancy procedures – and the continuing difficult times for a lot of companies, redundancy had to be at the top of the list of subjects for discussion.

Around 200 delegates – mainly HR professionals and business people – gathered to listen to employment law experts Martin Bloom and Tim Thompson. As ever, they did an admirable job of updating us with current thinking, procedures and the law – this year in regard to redundancy and fair selection.

One of the key points I came away with was ‘Polkey’ – a House of Lords precedent which dates back to 1988. Polkey has been resurrected over recent years and often comes into play at tribunals, according to Martin. Basically even if an employer has engaged in a redundancy process which a tribunal finds to be procedurally unfair the tribunal can rule in favour of the employee but not make an award if it believes the same redundancy decision would have been made anyway. I thought that was an interesting point for employees to bear in mind when deciding whether to take a former employer to tribunal.

Besides that, there was all sorts of useful information about redundancy procedures and also some positive thoughts about how companies can change terms of contract to try and stave off the threat of redundancy, while staying within the law.

A useful couple of hours, as always.