44 . Glasgow Business June 2015
Continued from previous page> ADOPTION LEAVE
Te family-friendly changes in the law are also applicable to couples adopting children in terms of eligibility of adoption leave and pay and include new allowances to atend adoption appointments. Employees who are classed as the primary adopter can take paid time off to atend up to five adoption appointments and the secondary adopter can take unpaid time off to atend up to two appointments.
ANTENATAL APPOINTMENTS
Te right to take time off for antenatal appointments has been extended. Previously this has only been available to employees in maternity situations, however, intended parents in a surrogacy arrangement who intend to apply for a Parental Order can now take unpaid time off work to accompany the surrogate mother to up to two antenatal appointments.
PARENTAL LEAVE
Something that might have more impact on smaller firms is the new law around parental leave which now gives employees the statutory right, subject to their qualifying service with an employer, to take up to 18 weeks’ unpaid parental leave to be with their children up until they are 18 years old. Previously this was restricted to children up to five years old. Alan Price, Managing Director of Peninsula
Business Services in Scotland, a leading provider of employment law and health & safety services in the UK, said this request is becoming more common among employees. He added: “In the past, employees used to
request parental leave to be around for their children during the first few weeks of school or to be there when their children were experiencing difficulties at school, but now employers need to be aware that employees can request unpaid leave to take breaks for older children.”
FIT FOR WORK
Te Government has introduced a free advice and assessment service to help get employees back to work who have been absent for four weeks or more. Te assessment service provides employers, and GPs, with a referral route to access a supportive occupational health work-focused assessment for employees. Currently, over 130 million days are lost to
sickness absence in the UK every year at a cost to the economy of around £15 billion. Employers face an annual bill of around £9 billion for loss of production and sick pay costs, and individuals face a loss of earnings of £4 billion. While this is a welcome service for smaller
companies, Alan believes the assessments may throw up problems for employers if the occupational health specialists highlight work-related issues that are an obstacle to an employee returning to work. He said: “While geting valued employees
back to work is a good outcome it may not be the answer some employers are looking for as a lot of occupational health work is about
adjusting the working environment, and that could involve changes in work paterns that may require flexibility or additional investment.”
HOLIDAY PAY
Te European Court of Justice’s (ECJ) decision to find in favour of the employee in the case of Lock v British Gas Trading Ltd has caused many employers to reconsider how they calculate holiday pay. Lock was a salesperson on a low basic salary
who regularly earned up to 60 per cent of his earning from commissions on sales, and he argued that his holiday pay should reflect this regular income, rather than be based solely on his basic salary. Following this, a number of holiday
entitlement appeals came before UK employment tribunals involving employees from Bear Scotland, Amec and Hertel. Tese tribunals also agreed that holiday pay should be based on the employees’ average earnings, which were higher when overtime and commission was taken into account. Donald explained the general principle
behind the judgement: “Tere have been a number of European cases that have questioned this assumption that holiday pay should be based purely on basic salary. “Te ECJ argues that the purpose of the
Working Time Directive is to give people proper rest, and if you are geting paid less money when you go on holiday than working then this would deter people from taking holidays. “So this has been deemed unlawful and employers must pay their employees the same
amount of money they expected had they been at work. “Tis has the potential to affect those
companies that employ people on sales- commission contracts, but also those that offer other regular payments such as overtime and atendance allowances.” Also, holiday pay only applies to the
minimum four weeks’ holiday required by EU law, and not the additional 1.6 weeks provided by UK regulations or any discretionary holiday on top of that. Donald said there are still some grey areas
to work out, such as what constitutes ‘regular’ payments and how such payments are derived if people are on monthly, quarterly or six-monthly commission arrangements. He added: “Te law is still fluid around this
area and there is still some uncertainty but if employees are earning regular commission then they should get an average of the commission earned in the 12 weeks prior to the holiday.”
EQUAL PAY
Another issue on the horizon is equal pay and the requirement for larger companies (250 or more employees) to publish the pay differential between male and female employees. Alan said: “Tis is definitely coming in the
next 12 months but as yet it is still not clear how the employer publishes this information. It also raises a number of issues such as revealing commercially sensitive information about levels of pay, and where there is evidence of pay differentials this could not only lead to reputational damage but also a spate of equal pay claims from female employees.”
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