What should I be mindful of in relation to pregnant workers? Is there a right to suspend?
Yes, but as a last resort. In summary, the law requires employers:
- to assess the workplace risks posed to new or expectant mothers or their babies;
- to alter the employee’s working conditions or hours of work to avoid any significant risk to them;
- where it is not reasonable to alter working conditions or hours, or would not avoid the risk, to offer suitable alternative work on terms that are not “substantially less favourable”;
- where suitable alternative work is not available, or the employee reasonably refuses it, the employer should consider whether it is appropriate to suspend the employee on full pay.
Related FAQs
Residents will be obliged to:
- Not act in a way that creates a significant risk of a building safety risk materialising
- Not interfere with building safety equipment in the common parts
- Comply with an Accountable Person’s request for information in relation to the assessment and management of building safety risks.
The Accountable Person then has powers in relation to these duties, including:
- Issuing a contravention notice, requiring a resident to pay for replacement or repair of safety equipment which they have interfered with
- Applying for court orders in certain situations
- Requesting access at a reasonable time (in writing with at least 48 hours’ notice) to a resident’s property for the purposes of assessing or managing building safety risks, or checking compliance with the resident’s duties as above.
Secondary legislation is still awaited to bring these provisions into force, so the timing is unknown, but it will likely be within the next 12 months in line with the anticipated timetable for the remainder of the Act.
The Flexible Furlough Scheme was introduced from 1 July 2020 and is due to come to an end on 30 September 2021.
Details of your MHFAs should be posted somewhere that everyone can access easily – a specific area on an intranet or whatever alternative exists. Regular comms involving the MHFAs, webinar sessions, Q&A sessions and mental wellbeing drop in sessions are all ideas that may work well.
- It is important to have a clear paper trail for any agreed reduction in salary, and hence any reduction in the amount of contributions. However, the contribution rates (as opposed to the amounts) should be the same as normal, and hence all processes and software should function as per normal and, amongst other things, remain compliant with auto-enrolment employer duties.
- However, if the period of affected contributions does not overlap precisely with the period of reduced salary, for example because of different cut-off dates, there may well be instances of non-compliance with auto-enrolment employer duties at the beginning as well as at the end of the period covered by the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme.
- Accordingly, where an employer takes advantage of the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, good communication with the persons responsible for pensions administration and detailed record-keeping are essential to prevent non-compliances in the short-term and confusion in the long term.
This is a concern for many businesses at the moment.
Firstly, the directors need to be mindful of their duties to creditors . Click here for further information on those duties and the measures introduced by the government to help support directors during these difficult times.
There is also a raft of funding and grants as well as commercial finance that might be available to you. Click here for further information or contact us if you would like to discuss further.
If you are coming under increasing creditor pressure, there are other options to explore like the new “moratorium” procedure, which allows viable businesses in financial difficulty to work with an insolvency practitioner to obtain at least 20 business days’ breathing space from creditors to allow the business to formulate a plan to deal with its financial problems.
If you have any concerns about the viability of your business you should speak to your advisors, whether that is your lawyers, accountants or an insolvency practitioner who should be able to help you.