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Five surprising ways your business might be breaking the law

Any business owner or HR professional will know that employment laws are constantly evolving, in fact as recently as the beginning of October a number of new laws were introduced. As such is can be hard for business owners to keep up-to-date with all the laws and regulations that will impact on their companies.

While most business owners are fully aware of the most obvious employment laws and regulations, there are a number of important laws that many are not aware of. Here are five surprising ways your business might be breaking the law:

Recruitment

Are you using social media as part of your recruitment drive? If so you might find yourself unwittingly breaking discrimination laws. By looking at candidate’s social media profiles you will be gaining access to information that you wouldn’t have through traditional recruitment methods, such as people’s marriage status, religion and sexual orientation. A candidate’s Facebook posts and tweets could even enable you to find out if they are pregnant or have a history of illness, which might give you second thoughts about offering them a job. By doing this you would be breaking discrimination laws and if the candidate didn’t get a job offer and suspected you of this they could take you to court, which would mean you proving that no discrimination took place.

Waste disposal

The majority of business owners know if their companies are producing a large amount of hazardous waste they need to ensure that it is disposed of safely or they will fall foul of the law. Not as many business owners know that they are legally obliged to dispose of smaller hazardous waste safely as well. Everyday items like aerosols, batteries and WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) are all classed as hazardous waste and as such it is up to business owners to ensure they are disposed of legally.

Pensions

The government is currently rolling out its new auto enrolment pension scheme, which will impact every UK business that has employees. Unless you make sure that your business is following all the government’s guidelines and by its set dates, you will find that your business will be breaking important employment laws.

Advertising

We all know that there are strict advertising laws, however how many of us know what they all are and, more importantly, follow them. For example when describing a product’s price you must include all associated costs including VAT or else it will be considered false advertising. You must also be able to back up your claims, so if you’re claiming to provide the cheapest service within your industry you must be able to prove that you are.

Surveillance and privacy

While as an employer you are legally allowed to monitor your employee’s communication there are still laws regulating how this is done. If you do want to monitor your staff’s postal communications, telephone calls, faxes, emails, or internet use it is illegal to do so without first warning your workers first. In truth monitoring staff’s communication should be a last resort and you should initially try to find alternatives, but if this is the only course of action available remember that secret monitoring is very rarely legal.

Written by Derin Clark, a writer, editor and blogger with many years’ experience of writing for business magazines and websites.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Derin Clark .