In the chaos that has engulfed employment law in the past few weeks and months with coronavirus, the date of the 6th April may have slipped your mind. So, that’s why are giving you a quick refresher on what you need to know about the Good Work Plan to ensure you put in place the necessary changes now:
- You need to provide a statement of main terms and conditions of employment to every employee from day 1 of their employment;
- You have to tell employees if they are subject to a probationary period and if there are any conditions of successfully completing the probation;
- If an employee’s hours of work will be variable, you need to explain how they will vary. This will be most important for shift workers;
- You will need to provide details of paid leave such as maternity, paternity and shared parental leave;
- You will need to make employees aware of any benefits they will receive such as health insurance and additional holiday entitlements;
- You will have to confirm any training that employees are required to undertake and who will pay for this;
- The holiday reference period will be changed from 12 weeks to 52 weeks. This is likely to create an administrative burden on the employer, especially as the calculations should include commission payments;
- Employees will have the right to switch to a ‘predictable and stable’ working pattern after 26 weeks’ service, which reflects their normal working hours;
- The gap in employment required to break someone’s continuous service is increased from 1 week to 4 weeks;
- Tips and services charges will have to be passed to employees and cannot be taken by the employer.
There are also plans to clarify the test for employment status for both statutory employment status and tax purposes, although as of yet there is no clear guidance on how this is going to be established.
Feeling like you have some work to do in order to comply with the Good Work Plan? We can help; we’re working from home and can be contacted by email.
