Member Article

Free employment law lunch answers vital questions

The latest in a series of expert employment law lunches cleared up a number of challenging questions for Shropshire businesses.

Thirteen businesses attended Shrewsbury firm Aaron & Partners’ HR Lunch Club at the Lion and Pheasant to discuss the thorny issue of peformance management. The event was free, with lunch provided by Aaron’s.

“As you’d expect, people came along with some complex real-life examples of difficulties they had experienced in managing employee performance within their business,” said Ben Mason, an Associate with Aaron’s Employment team.

“Whether your turnover is £250,000 or £25 million, there are always points where you need to take advice or where taking action seems difficult. Hopefully people went away from our event with a better understanding of how to work within the law to get the best out of their workforce.”

Questions included – ‘can you restart performance management discussions when an employee has returned from sick leave as a result of stress’, ‘how do you draw a distinction between poor performance and misconduct’ and ‘when is it appropriate to offer settlement rather than following a performance process’.

“Sometimes, particularly if you are just starting a business or you are employed within a business, it is easy to assume that dealing with performance management is straightforward,” said Ben.

“However there is a lot of legislation out there to protect employees that can make taking measures to tackle poor performance difficult. It is not impossible however, and if you get it right it can be the difference between having a thriving business or one which struggles.

According to HR Lunch Club rules, those who attended the Performance Management lunch got to choose the next theme, which is Redundancy and Restructuring on Thursday, September 8.

To register for a place at the HR Lunch Club, visit www.aaronandpartners.com/event/hr-lunch-club

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Mike Stephenson .