From 6th April 2008, statutory maternity, paternity and adoption pay will increase from £112.75 per week to £117.18, and statutory sick pay will increase from £72.55 per week to £75.40.

The budget brought in a number of other changes:

• Changes to tax rates as follows:
  • the 10% starting rate is removed
  • the 22% basic rate is reduced to 20%

• The thresholds from which the rates apply are confirmed as:
  • basic rate (20%) for £0 - £36,000
  • higher rate (40%) - for earnings over £36,000

• The personal allowance for those under 65 increases to £5,435. For those aged 65 -74 it is £9,030 and for those aged 75 and over it is £9,180.

• There are no changes to the rates of NICs, but the upper earnings limit increases by £75 per week above indexation.

• From 6 April 2008, the car fuel benefit charge multiplier is increased from £14,400 to £16,900.

• There are no changes in the rates and thresholds for mileage allowance payments for 2008/09.

• The Lifetime Allowance (the upper limit of the value of an individual's 'pension pot') rose by £50,000 to £1.65 million. The annual allowance (the total amount that can be paid into an individual's pension before a tax penalty is incurred) rose by £10,000 to £235,000.

We've covered the forthcoming changes to harassment law in past newsletters, but this is just to confirm that, as from 6 April, employers who know that a client or customer is sexually harassing one of their female employees and who fail to take such steps as would have been "reasonably practicable" to protect the employee will be breaking the law. This means that employers are required to protect female staff from unwanted advances from customers and clients as well as colleagues. Those most likely to benefit are women working in hotels, restaurants, estate agencies, bars and shops and other jobs where there is regular contact with members of the public. The employer has to be aware of the harassment and this provision will only apply if the employer knows that the woman has been subject to harassment in the course of her employment on at least two other occasions by a third party (though it is immaterial whether the third party is the same or a different person on each occasion).

The definition of sex-related harassment under the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 is also broadened: to "unwanted conduct related to the complainant's sex or that of another person". So individuals who are not subjected to the unwanted conduct themselves will also receive protection - a male or female who works in an environment where sexist banter is commonplace and which, although not directed at that person or caused by their presence, creates an offensive environment for them, is protected.

Action to take:

• read our guide to harassment - /docs/legal/harassment.html
• ensure that you have a robust policy for reporting/dealing with allegations of harassment and that this covers harassment by any party, not just by colleagues
• provide training for staff including equipping managers with the skills to have potentially difficult conversations with customers/clients
• where practicable, inform clients, customers and commercial contacts of your policy (eg this could be done via a notice in appropriate cases).

In addition, a woman is protected if she is not consulted about a change to her job while on maternity leave or if promotion is delayed because her maternity leave is excluded from length of service. And as from 6 April, the Sex Discrimination Act will be amended so that pregnant women do not need a comparator in cases of alleged pregnancy or maternity discrimination - the woman will instead only have to show that she has been treated less favourably on the grounds of her pregnancy or the fact that she has taken, or sought to take, statutory maternity leave.

And changes to terms and conditions during Additional Maternity Leave, originally planned to take effect on 6 April 2008, will now apply to women whose Expected Week of Childbirth (EWC) is on or after 5 October 2008.

At the moment, a woman's employment continues throughout the 12-month maternity leave period, however women are only entitled to benefit from their contractual terms and conditions (other than pay) during the first 26 weeks - the "Ordinary Maternity Leave" period. Some benefits continue during the period of paid maternity leave (39 weeks) - these include pension contributions (which must be based on the full pay the employee would receive if working), life and private health insurance, medical cover, and childcare vouchers. And only limited contractual terms and conditions remain in place during the final 13 weeks (notice provisions, the implied term of trust and confidence, disciplinary and grievance procedures, any enhanced redundancy terms, accrual of statutory holiday).

As from 5 October 2008 women will be entitled to benefit from all non-pay benefits during the entire maternity leave period - so all terms and conditions which would have applied had they been at work, except for the terms providing for remuneration (wages or salary). This covers all contractual benefits such as contractual holiday entitlement, health club membership, private use of a company car etc. Employers will also have to include any period of additional maternity leave taken by employees when calculating their length of service for the purpose of contractual benefits. Currently, when calculating contractual bonuses, any period spent on compulsory maternity leave (ie the two week period immediately following childbirth) must be included as though the employee had been at work and working normally - the 2008 Regulations amend the Sex Discrimination Act so that the same principle is applied to non-contractual bonuses.

Action to take:

• review all non-pay benefits, if necessary, revise your policies and your budgets to allow for the increase from October
• change your leave records so that full contractual leave accrues during the entire maternity leave period
• review any bonus schemes to ensure that the period of compulsory maternity leave attracts such bonuses
• update your maternity policy, or employee handbook, accordingly.

As from 6 April 2008, the scope of the Information and Consultation of Employees Regulations 2004, and also of the Occupational and Personal Pension Schemes (Consultation by Employers and Miscellaneous Amendment) Regulations 2006 is extended to undertakings with 50 or more employees.

For more details re the former, see /docs/legal/consult.html

And on the same date, the Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses (Amendment) Regulations 2007 take effect - these will give all agency workers the right to withdraw from services provided by an agency, such as accommodation and transport, without suffering any disadvantage. Agencies will no longer be required to provide written information to workers regarding assignments of less than five days.

See: /docs/legal/agency.html

Also with effect from 6 April 2008 there are some minor changes to the age discrimination regulations, dealing with continuity of service for the service-related benefit exception; and closing a loophole in connection with time limits (the original Regulations did not properly provide for the three month extension of time under the dispute resolution regulations).

A previous loophole, which allowed HMRC to charge an employer full tax and NI under the PAYE regulations, where the parties have wrongly viewed the employee as self-employed, and without giving credit for the tax and national insurance already paid directly by the 'employee', is now closed. So HMRC can no longer charge tax twice!

Not until October, but advance warning that that the new rates of the National Minimum Wage, applicable from 1 October 2008, will be as follows:

• for workers aged 22 and over - an increase from £5.52 per hour to £5.73
• for workers aged 18-21 - an increase from £4.60 to £4.77 and
• for workers aged 16 and 17 (provided they are above compulsory school age) - an increase from £3.40 to £3.53.

The increase in the adult rate is 3.8 per cent so just above inflation and is expected to benefit more than a million low paid workers, the majority (two thirds) of which are women.

The figure for accommodation to be offset will rise from £4.30 per day to £4.46 per day (equivalent to £31.22 for a 7-day period).

The Low Pay Commission's remit for 2008/09 is to:

• monitor, evaluate and review the NMW and its impact
• review the levels of each of the different minimum wage rates and make recommendations for October 2009 and provisional rate recommendations for October 2010
• review the current apprentice exemptions, bearing in mind the Government's target to increase apprenticeships
• report to the Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform by the end of February 2009.

And in the meantime, the government proposes to strengthen the enforcement of the National Minimum Wage and introduce tougher penalties, including unlimited fines, for employers who fail to pay at the correct rates. The Bill is currently progressing through Parliament and is expected to come into force on 1 October 2008 to coincide with the rate increase.

See: /docs/legal/minimumwage.html

The Home Office has announced that ID cards will be introduced this year for foreign nationals and then for British citizens in 2009. British citizens enrolled on the National Identity Register will also eventually have the choice of having a passport or an ID card or both. Consultation on various aspects of the proposals will run until 30 June.

See: www.bia.homeoffice.gov.uk/sitecontent/newsarticles/identityschemeplan

Another age discrimination claim from a young employee

We reported the case of Megan Thomas, aged 20, who was dismissed from her post at the Eight Member Club in London, after six months employment, as her employer felt that she was too young. Compensation in her case was limited, as she obtained another (better paid) job immediately - so the damages were restricted to a small amount of compensation for injury to feelings and unpaid notice.

In a second, similar case, an 18 year old administrator has won more than £16,000 for age discrimination - a much higher award! In Wilkinson v Springwell Engineering Limited, Miss Wilkinson was employed as an office administrator. During her probationary period, the employer decided that she was not performing sufficiently well and she was therefore told that her performance must improve over the following few months. Another, older, office administrator was asked to assist with her work load. After two months' employment, Miss Wilkinson was dismissed and she alleged that her line manager said that this was because she was too young for the job.

Her claim was successful as the employer failed to provide evidence that she lacked capability to do the job satisfactorily. The tribunal stated that Springwell had relied on a "stereotypical" assumption that capability equals experience and experience equals older age. Miss Wilkinson's award included compensation for future loss of earnings for six months and £5,000 for injury to feelings, plus a 50% increase in the award due to her employer's failure to follow the statutory dismissal and disciplinary procedures.

Note: prior to dismissing a probationary employee, check that you properly document his/her shortcomings, so that you can provide evidence if necessary, of lack of capability. Where appropriate, keep work samples on file for a while (eg where there are excessive errors, poor grammar or punctuation, excessive time taken to do certain jobs etc.)

Changing contracts

In Robinson v Tescom Corporation, the employee may have been confused about the action he should take when faced with an employer who wanted to change his contract. The employee, Mr Robinson, was a sales manager who objected to an extension to his sales area. He agreed to the changes 'under protest' but then refused to work under the new terms and insisted on working under his original terms. Following a disciplinary hearing he was dismissed for gross misconduct.

The EAT said that his choices were either to

• accept the variation
• resign and claim constructive dismissal
• refuse to work under the new terms and force the employer to take what steps it thinks appropriate or,
• work under protest and seek damages (for breach of contract).

Since he had agreed to the new terms, under protest, Mr Robinson's contract of employment continued and he could not therefore then renege on this agreement, so the decision to dismiss him was deemed fair as Mr Robinson was refusing to follow a reasonable management instruction.

A final reminder that this new piece of legislation, which creates a criminal offence of "corporate manslaughter" and allows companies to be prosecuted for any death in the workplace, takes effect on 6 April 2008. For further details see our February hot topic or see /docs/hasaw/manslaughter.html

From 6 April. all workplace deaths will be investigated by the police with input from the Health and Safety Executive, which will play a supporting role. This will bring major changes as the workplace will be a crime scene, and may be sealed off. So given that the police would also want to be able to contact witnesses, do ensure that you keep contact details of all staff somewhere secure but accessible off site, together with any data required to keep the business functioning (this is good practice anyway in terms of dealing with emergencies such as fire, flood, electricity failure, etc).

As you are aware the fines for corporate manslaughter are unlimited, they are criminal fines, and a recent government consultation recommended that they should be based on turnover - between 2.5% -10% of gross annual turnover, averaged over the preceding three year period. If adopted, this would lead to much larger fines than we've been used to - the highest fine to date for a safety breach was £15M imposed on Transco - if based on turnover, it could have been £45M.

When the Control of Noise at Work Regulations 2005 came into force, an initial exemption applied to work in the music and entertainment sector. This exemption ceases on 6 April 2008.

Under the 2005 Regulations, the level at which employers must provide hearing protection and hearing protection zones is 85 decibels (daily or weekly average exposure) and the level at which employers must assess the risk to workers' health and provide them with information and training is 80 decibels. There is also an exposure limit value of 87 decibels, taking account of any reduction in exposure provided by hearing protection, above which workers must not be exposed.

The HSE has promised practical guidelines specific to the music and entertainment industry - these should be available by 6 April 2008.

The Health and Safety Executive has a new section on its website dedicated to offering advice on display screen equipment (DSE), which includes computer monitors. It includes guidance on safe working with monitors, case studies, how to carry out a DSE assessment, and advice for call centre working practices.

See: www.hse.gov.uk/msd/dse/index.htm

We've added three new letters - two regarding the right of appeal against a flexible working request which has been denied (the first invites the employee to an appeal meeting; the second confirms the outcome) and a letter warning an employee who is about to run out of either company or statutory sick pay.

See: /docs/lf/flex/index.html and /docs/lf/sickpay/index.html

How effective are your recruitment procedures?

Recent research found that almost 9 in 10 respondents admitted to giving jobs to the most attractive candidate and 92% said that a candidate's appearance during the interview can influence their decision. Not only does this not necessarily get you the best person for the job, but it could be discrimination - if for example, an applicant's weight problem is due to illness. DO ensure that your interviewers are trained to conduct interviews effectively (using the job description as their starting point) and that they know how to avoid discriminatory questions. A poll by T-Mobile found that more than 50% of potential recruits who left an interview with a bad impression of the company cited the interviewer as the reason. Being asked questions completely unrelated to the job, or facing an unprepared interviewer were common, but there were also findings suggesting 16% of interviewees experienced sexism, and 7% experienced racism when being interviewed for a role.

And whilst employers might be putting off potential employees as a result of bad interview techniques, this seems to work both ways! A poll of interviewers reveals that 78% felt that swearing during an interview is not likely to get you a job, answering a mobile phone is not a good idea (76% cited this), wearing inappropriate clothing such as jeans or scruffy clothes put off 50% and 49% would not give a job to a candidate who arrived more than 10 minutes late.

So some lessons for both sides here!

The winter CIPD/KPMG Labour Market Outlook (LMO) survey shows a sharp increase in the proportion of employers expecting to make at least some staff redundant in the coming months - almost 38% intended to make some redundancies this quarter. This is borne out by our helpline and by our PAYG sales - where redundancy sadly, is a favourite topic.

Over 70 per cent of senior management in another survey of 200 businesses (Pentacle, The Virtual Business School) admit UK bosses have little or no experience of how to deal with a downturn and over two-thirds (69 per cent) of executives believe the UK is now heading into a recession or serious downturn. 74 per cent of junior staff confess that insecurity, distraction and "fear of the chop" may damage struggling businesses further, as workers vie to impress those at the top.

If your business is facing redundancies, do be aware of the procedures which should be followed: these are usually quite straightforward, but failure to comply with the detail may make a dismissal unfair. So read our guides on redundancy and use the template forms: /docs/TPend.html

There has been a marked increase in the use of networking websites, both professional and social. The social ones, the best known being MySpace and Facebook, were set up as extensions to the use of blogs and chat rooms so people can interact and exchange thoughts and ideas over the internet. These in particular are aimed mostly at a young clientele, who happen to have a casual or familiar attitude to the internet. Even the TUC is warning employers via its website that the UK's Facebook users are "3.5 million accidents waiting to happen."

Many organisations (rightly) updated their IT policies in light of the popularity and sometimes inappropriate or excessive personal use of the internet at work - (mis)use of company property and time etc. Now additional problems are occurring relating to the content of these exchanges. What might have previously have been a moan amongst workmates face to face, can now be noted on line on a networking website, opening up all the negative vibes for anyone who logs on to see! This is potentially very damaging to reputation and may even reveal/disclose confidential information (possibly even a breach of contract).

If you want to protect your business you should consider what you would do if there was negative chat on a social network site - then be proactive and address this to hopefully prevent it occurring.

Action to take:

• Check that either your contracts or your disciplinary procedure cites 'bringing the company into disrepute' amongst the disciplinary offences. This may allow you to nip any offences in the bud, thereby showing a serious stance.
• Check your IT policy and ensure that it specifies what private use of the internet is permitted, including the use of social networking sites (if you permit this - some employers ban these altogether).
• Check any confidentiality agreements to ensure that you can take action on comments which criticise your organisation. Include in your handbook that employees must obtain consent before making public comments about you or your organisation and encourage greater use of your internal grievance procedures to allow employees to vent any negative opinions.
• Recent case law has tended to protect personal privacy re use of email etc at work. However, in this situation the internet use may well be in personal rather than work time but cannot anyway be regarded as private if posted on a public ie accessible site. So set out your stance on this issue - many breaches are probably due to naivety or lack of thought - such breaches would be prevented by telling your employees in advance what you will and will not condone and putting in place some sensible guidelines.There is a mutual duty of care between employer and employee and it might be an idea to remind employees of this (they tend to remember only one side).
• Dealing with ex-employees may be more difficult and rely on post-employment confidential clauses which are of course more difficult to enforce.
• Be wary yourself of using such sites to check out details of candidates whom you may be interested in recruiting. As only a minority of potential recruits will have public profiles on social networks, using information from these sources can give an unfair advantage or disadvantage to certain candidates - and therefore probably does not sit well with your equal opportunities policy!

For further guidance refer to the disciplinary section of our website: /docs/TPduringdiscipline.html and also the template IT policy and disciplinary procedure - /docs/TPcontract.html

We were interested to read about a Japanese marketing firm which offers "heartbreak leave". Designed for those who need to take paid time off following a break up with a partner, the amount of leave also caught our eye as it would potentially contravene our age discrimination legislation! Staff in their twenties are given up to 2 days off per year, older staff have three. Somehow we don't see this catching on in the UK but you never know!