Employment

With responsiveness as a priority, our award-winning employment lawyers offer straightforward, pragmatic and commercial advice on all employment issues from day to day advice through to largescale projects.

Overview

We understand that employment law advice is often business critical and urgent in nature. Choosing our team to advise you, means you will work with friendly, approachable lawyers who know you and your organisation. With responsiveness as a priority, we deliver clear, straightforward, pragmatic advice which aligns to your business’ values and appetite for risk.

Acting for many different clients across a wide range of sectors means we are able to apply market insight as well as our legal expertise to your particular situation. This means we can head off potential issues before they arise and identify solutions that we know will work on the ground.

We advise clients throughout all UK jurisdictions, and across the world through an international network of leading independent law firms. We work for FTSE 100 and 250 listed companies and major public sector employers as well as smaller companies, those in the not for profit sector and for senior executives. We regularly advise on high profile and business critical projects for these clients, including identifying and managing ESG risks and opportunities.

As one of the largest teams of employment lawyers in the UK, we are active in helping to shape UK employment law and participate actively in numerous employment law organisations and committees. As a firm, ESG sits at the heart of our business philosophy and we enjoy advising and collaborating with our clients on ESG initiatives to help them achieve ambitions for their people, wider community and business.

We are contributing authors for leading online HR resource, XpertHR in a number of areas including TUPE and business immigration and are also responsible for the drafting and maintaining their model restrictive covenant clause bank suite.

We keep our clients and contacts up to date with the latest news and updates in digestible and user-friendly formats including our fortnightly e-bulletin, Passle blogs, videocasts, webinars and roundtable events. If you would like to receive our regular employment updates please sign up to our mailing list. We can also deliver employment law training for clients to upskill line managers and HR teams on UK employment law and ESG issues.

Areas of focus

Our primary services include the following:

Strategic employment law advice– on complex HR project work, such as TUPE and restructuring and redundancy projects. We add value by shaping our advice to take account of upcoming regulation, trends and market insights to deliver solutions that we know will work on the ground.
Employment helplines– offering immediate access to a team of employment lawyers who know you and your business. Regular reports on usage and trends are also included in the service.
Employment grievances and disputes– advising on grievances and workplace disputes (including advising on related DSARs) and running tribunal and High Court claims to ensure they are both cost-effective and managed to a high standard.
International and cross-border employment law advice– providing high quality advice on international employment issues for our UK and international clients.
Investigations, regulatory compliance and whistleblowing–advising on and carrying out workplace investigations and offering expertise on whistleblowing law and ESG reporting and compliance.
Immigration for businesses – specialist advice to enable organisations recruit from overseas

Experience

Providing day to day advice to Thomson Reuters including a fixed cost telephone and email helpline service. Also advising on specific projects such as outsourcing arrangements in the Asia Pacific and Europe regions, and on a range of complex employment tribunal claims, including claims in the Employment Appeal Tribunal, an age discrimination claim by a senior executive and a number of multi-jurisdictional cases.

Advising FirstGroup plc on complex employment tribunal claims, including advising successfully on a Working Time case at the Employment Appeal Tribunal and large scale, strategic HR projects such as holiday pay and gender pay reporting. Also advising on industrial action, senior executive severance, settlement agreements, and the employment aspects, including TUPE, of various mobilisations and demobilisations of rail franchises.

Advising Bank of Ireland on general employment matters including unfair dismissal, wrongful dismissal, redundancy, disciplinary matters (including misconduct and poor performance), discrimination, settlement agreements, equal pay and ill-health. Advising on the implementation of the Senior Managers Regime and FCA/PRA compliance. Providing a wide range of employment training to the HR and legal teams.

Advising Babcock International Group plc on collective agreements, collective consultation (both for redundancy and TUPE purposes) and dealing with disputes with trade unions. Also advising on a number of complex HR projects (including holiday pay) and employment tribunal cases, including successfully defending a multi-party discrimination claim listed for a ten day hearing and managing collective TUPE claims brought by 600 former employees following Babcock Rail's assumption of maintenance activities following the incumbent provider going into administration.

Providing day to day employment advice to BAE Systems including a fixed fee helpline service and a fixed fee employment tribunal service. Also advising on more complex matters including high profile restructurings and successfully defending employment tribunal claims and appeals to the EAT.

Advising John Lewis Partnership and Waitrose in defending a wide range of employment tribunal claims including discrimination and unfair dismissal. Support has included preparation of defences, conduct of preliminary hearings and strategic advice on the conduct of claims.

Advising Office for Students on day to day employment law issues, including internal grievance and disciplinary procedures, complex employment tribunal proceedings, successfully conducting a three-day judicial mediation, drafting contracts of employment, secondment agreements and contractor agreements, and advising on the implications of TUPE in various wider public sector restructures.

Advising the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on TUPE and the conduct of internal grievances and resolution of workplace disputes. Also advising on complex matters such as a major outsourcing project across 12 jurisdictions in Europe.

Advising the Department for Education on the creation of the Doncaster Children's Services Trust (the first of its kind) and on the TUPE transfer of c.450 employees from Doncaster Council to the Trust.

Advising WEX Europe on the HR and employment issues arising following the acquisition of a fuel services and credit card company across nine European jurisdictions.

Advising Ascent Flight Management on the TUPE and employment aspects of the Ministry of Defence's 25 year £6 billion procurement of the UK Military Flying Training System (UKMFTS).

Advising the European Space Agency as part of a pan-European legal project reviewing the employment status of, and the contractual arrangements governing, the ESA’s atypical workforce.

Providing day to day advice to the University of Bristol's in-house legal and HR teams, including a major review of the University’s Statutes and Ordinances, defending complex discrimination cases, supporting major restructuring projects and providing training on HR related topics including age and disability discrimination and the conduct of internal investigations.

Advising The Crown Estate on a restructuring of the HR team, the impact of Scottish devolution on employee rights and provision of a helpline covering the full range of employment queries across the client and throughout the UK.