An introduction to employment law

As an employer, you’ll need to understand UK employment law and the responsibilities you have towards your employees. In this guide, we’ve summarised some of the most important things you need to know.

Health and safety

You are responsible for managing health and safety in your business. This includes managing risks and taking practical steps to protect your team and others from harm.

Managing risk is just one part of health and safety management. You must also have arrangements in place to:

• make the right plans
• implement those plans
• check they are working
• act if they are not

By doing this, you should be able to ensure:

• your risks stay controlled
• you provide a safe working environment for your team and others

The measures you put in place should be part of your everyday processes for managing your business.

You can find more information about relevant regulations on the Health and Safety Executive website.

Fire safety

You’re also responsible for fire safety in your workplace. In order to do this, you’ll need to nominate a ‘responsible person’, who must:

• carry out regular risk assessments
• tell staff about the risks they’ve identified
• put in place appropriate fire safety measures
• make a plan in case of emergency
• provide staff with relevant information, fire safety instruction and training

If there’s more than one responsible person (for example, if you rent an office but there is a separate facilities manager), you have to work together to meet your responsibilities.

If you are based in England or Wales, you can find more information about your fire safety responsibilities as an employer from the Home Office.

Fire safety rules may be different in Scotland and Northern Ireland, so be sure to familiarise yourself with the applicable rules.

As well as putting your employees’ lives at risk, you could be fined or go to prison if you do not follow fire safety regulations.

Discrimination

It is against the law for employers to treat someone less favourably than another employee as a result of a protected personal characteristic. Below is a full list of protected characteristics as stated on the government website at time of publication:

• age
• gender reassignment
• being married (or in a civil partnership)
• being pregnant (or on maternity leave)
• disability
• race (including colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin)
• religion or belief
• sex
• sexual orientation

Types of discrimination based on personal characteristics may include not hiring someone for a role, selecting a particular person for redundancy or paying someone less than another worker.

Not all discrimination is deliberate. For example, you may discriminate against someone indirectly by offering working conditions or rules that disadvantage them more than another worker.

You can find more information about discrimination in the workplace and discrimination during recruitment on the government website.

Accessibility

If you have employees with disabilities or health conditions, you must make ‘reasonable adjustments’ to make sure that they’re not substantially disadvantaged when doing their jobs. Failing to make reasonable adjustments for an employee may be seen as discrimination.

A few examples of reasonable adjustments include:

• making changes to your workplace, such as putting in a ramp for a wheelchair user or an audio-visual fire alarm for a deaf person
• allowing your employee to work somewhere else, such as on the ground floor for a wheelchair user
• changing equipment, for instance providing a special keyboard to an employee with arthritis
• adjusting working arrangements, such as offering flexible hours or part-time working
• reviewing tasks or deadlines to help an employee who is managing their mental health

You can find more information about employers’ duties to protect workers with disabilities on the Health and Safety Executive website.

Keeping your employees’ information safe

Data protection is a critical consideration for employers. While you’ll need to keep some information about your employees on record, you need to make sure you only keep necessary information and you comply with data protection legislation.

While you can keep a record of a range of information about your employees, certain information can only be kept with their express permission. You can find more details about what records you can keep - and whether you need permission from the employee - below:

Information requiring employee permission

• Race and/or ethnicity
• Religion
• Political views or memberships
• Trade union memberships
• Genetic information
• Biometric information (e.g. fingerprints)
• Health records
• Sexual orientation

Information NOT requiring employee permission

• Name
• Address
• Sex
• Date of birth
• Education and qualifications
• Work experience
• National Insurance number
• Tax code
• Emergency contact details
• Employment history (with your business)
• Terms of employment (with your business)
• Training received
• Record of disciplinary action
• Record of work-related accidents

You can find more information about what employee information you can keep on the government website.

If your business is storing personal information, you’ll have to follow strict rules around data protection. Your business must make sure that the information is:

• used fairly, lawfully and transparently
• used for specified, explicit purposes
• used in a way that is relevant and necessary
• accurate and kept up to date
• kept for no longer than is necessary
• stored in a secure manner, including protection against unauthorised processing, access, loss or damage

The more sensitive the information, the stronger the legal protection around it. For serious breaches of the data protection principles, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has the power to issue fines of up to £17.5 million or 4% of your annual worldwide turnover, whichever is higher. You can find more information around data protection on the government website.