Employment & Immigration

We advise on all aspects of the employment relationship, from day-to-day HR advice (such as disciplinaries, grievances and workforce management) to strategic advice (including in respect of redundancies, restructures and the transfer of employees in transactions/acquisitions and outsourcing).  When things don’t go to plan in the employment relationship, we find solutions: we have significant expertise in conducting employment litigation and advising on complex exits.

We will work with you to grow our understanding of your business and its values in order to get results which align with your business’ preferred approach to employee relations.

It’s personal

We hope you’ll think of us as your first port of call when encountering a tricky employment issue and we understand not just the commercial sensitivities when dealing with a workforce, but the personal ones too: we know that an ill-timed comment or unnecessary gesture can not only destroy the trust and understanding that’s taken years to build, but also lead to costly litigation and lost revenue/business value.

We’ll work tirelessly to support your business needs and protect your relationships with your employees and wider stakeholders – a careful balancing act that will minimise the risk of anything going wrong.

How we can help

We can help you manage complex transactions, (we regularly advise on the employment considerations of multi-discipline and multi-jurisdictional acquisitions in a wide range of sectors) and we provide comprehensive, focussed advice to help you navigate the challenging waters of an ever-changing legislative landscape.

Our recommendations are clear and logical and our no-nonsense, cost-effective service will make sure you avoid unnecessary risk.

Our expertise includes:

Equality & discrimination

Equality, diversity & inclusion and preventing discrimination should be at the forefront of a business’s approach to their employees and stakeholders. Our job is to help you understand what you should be doing; advise you how to prevent unlawful behaviour, and to help you deal with problems when they arise. Unfortunately, bias and discrimination does still occur in the workplace, but it’s your job as an employer to take steps to prevent it – that’s why we can also provide bespoke training to businesses on these important matters.

Atypical working

With the traditional 9-5 working model no longer being the way most people want or need to work, there are a lot of additional factors for employers to consider and potentially accommodate. We regularly advise our clients on the implications and opportunities of:

• fixed-term contracts
• part-time working
• job shares
• agency workers
• consultancy arrangements and self-employment
• secondments
• apprenticeships
• requests for flexible working
• working from home and flexible working policies
• volunteering
• family rights

Policies, procedures and training

We help our clients to draft and implement policies to ensure their employees are treated consistently and fairly. We are regularly asked to review clients’ proposed approaches on matters such as flexible working, and equality and inclusion, to make sure they are fit for purpose and comply with the latest developments in the law, as well as suiting our clients’ needs from a practical and operational perspective.

We are on hand to guide clients when conducting HR processes, such as grievance investigations and disciplinary matters, with as much or as little support as you require. We also have a network of HR consultants who can conduct investigations for you when internal options are not appropriate.

We keep our finger on the pulse of legislative and cultural developments and work with other departments across the firm so that you get the best possible advice. We’ve recently helped many clients to put in place anti-Bribery, anti-Corruption and Social Media policies, together with updated family rights and agency worker policies.

We also provide bespoke in-house training and seminars on the full range of employment issues, whether that be a refresher session on HR policies and their practical application, an interactive session on running a disciplinary or grievance investigation, or a look at what’s on the horizon in terms of legal developments.

Business protection

We recognise that our clients need to protect the essence of their businesses – that thing which makes them stand out from the crowd – and that some employees may try to use information, ideas and inventions that don’t belong to them for their own ends.

So, we advise our clients from the outset of any new working relationship (in whatever guise) on the steps they can take to protect their interests. Our work regularly includes drafting contract clauses relating to intellectual property rights, confidentiality and restrictive covenants.

Our detailed knowledge of current legal principles and high-level debate in these fields helps us to craft bespoke provisions that will fit any situation. It goes without saying that we’ll also advise on what can and cannot work.

Our Employment Team also has a great deal of experience helping clients enforce their business protection rights when someone has tried to flout them.  Together with our colleagues in our Commercial, Commercial Dispute Resolution and Intellectual Property Teams, we’ve brought actions for damages and injunctions before the Courts, to prevent the disclosure and misuse of sensitive information and breach of covenants.

We have strong track record of successfully obtaining undertakings, injunctions and damages for our clients and our network of contacts extends across Europe and further afield; meaning that however and wherever your business interests need protecting, we’ll be able to help.

Redundancy & reorganisations

We provide advice and support to employers who are seeking to reorganise their businesses, whether through “traditional” redundancies (for example, site closures and reduction in headcount) or through changes to employees’ terms, conditions and working patterns.  We’re on-hand to provide assistance on meeting the legal requirements in respect of informing and consulting with employees and their representatives and guidance on the strategic approach to the process.

If redundancies can’t be avoided, we take our clients through the selection process from start to finish, advising on the various criteria that should be taken into account, helping them to break the news sensitively to those whose jobs are to go and helping them to consider suitable alternative roles within the organisation. We do everything we can make this difficult process run smoothly and fairly for all everyone involved – protecting our clients’ interests in the event of any subsequent legal actions.

We regularly act with colleagues in other departments at Walker Morris, (for example our Insolvency and Pensions teams), to ensure that they are fully prepared in situations where redundancies might arise.

Termination of employment

Sometimes things don’t work out – whether that be because the business needs a different direction, an employee can no longer fulfil their role, or something has happened which makes the relationship untenable. We advise our clients when they are presented with the difficult task of disciplining employees who will not or cannot abide by their rules. We help our clients remedy these issues if possible, or we’ll help them bring the relationship to an end.

Clients turn to us for advice in negotiating a sensible, amicable and commercial separation. We provide frank and sensible advice on the implications of any given strategy, for example in respect of payments that are owed to departing employees, the impact of termination on restrictive covenants, other protective measures and the wording of references. We also regularly deal with unravelling complex remuneration packages involving shares, share options and bonuses.

Where a clean break does not prove possible, we have many years of experience in handling a wide variety of claims through the Employment Tribunals, the High Courts and the appellate divisions. Our approach can be as hand on or off as our clients want, from assisting in the background to taking ownership and control over the entire litigation process, including arranging or conducting advocacy.

Employment disputes

With years of experience dealing with a wide range of disputes across a vast array of sectors and industries, we can help you prevent disagreements, misunderstandings and injustices in the workplace. We’ll fight your corner and do all we can to preserve good relationships.

Clients come to us from organisations of all shapes and sizes so that we can help them put in place and implement tailor-made disciplinary and grievance procedures.  We also provide bespoke training to in-house teams so that they have the knowledge to get things right from the outset.

When disputes do arise, we try and lighten the load for our clients, using mediations and other forms of dispute resolution (including via ACAS and judicial mediation) when it’s appropriate to do so.  We’ll also advise on the pros and cons of settlement agreements and without prejudice/protected discussions.

If a dispute can’t be resolved, we will robustly defend proceedings, taking a pragmatic and commercial approach.

TUPE in both transactions and outsourcing

Working with teams across the firm, including our Commercial, Corporate, Insolvency, Pensions and Property teams, we provide focused and easy to understand advice to ensure our clients know exactly what they are buying or selling. When it becomes clear that TUPE will apply and that employees will transfer as a result, we can conduct expert due diligence to flag any potential headaches or claims that our client may inherit, and advise on the commercial implications.  We also draft and negotiate the TUPE provisions of commercial services agreements, putting our clients in the best possible position on the entry into and exit of significant commercial contracts.

We’ll help you minimise risk, drive transactions forward (including advising re consultation obligations) and bring clarity to a complex situation.

Business immigration

In an increasingly globalised world of work in which the competition for talent is higher than ever before and skills shortages are impacting many sectors in the UK, we understand the business imperative of being able to move existing overseas staff to the UK on a permanent or temporary basis and recruit overseas workers into UK roles. We have a specialist team of experts to deal with your business’ immigration needs and advise on compliance with all aspects of the UK’s employment based immigration requirements.  Please see our dedicated Business Immigration page for more details.