It’s hard enough to govern the financial and practical challenges running a business every day without having to worry about dealing with the legal battle too. However, it seems to be common these days for business owners to land in hot water by breaking the law, albeit unknowingly. The best way to avoid such stressful situations is to ensure that you are clued up when it comes to insurance and employment law, in particular, and of course to keep up with changes in the law each year.
First of all you need to make sure you’re covered in all the right places. You may already have thought about or implementing office contents insurance, professional indemnity and public liability insurance but what about the liability of the employer?
If you do not know already, this insurance basically protects the employer from claims made against them by current or former employees. These requirements could be because workers get sick or injured areas of work activities. Now, you may think that this will never happen and maybe it will not but when it comes to protecting yourself in this situation you have no choice but to oblige. Why? To be straight, if you do not take out this type of insurance you will actually be breaking the law. It does not matter if you only have one employee or more, unless they are family you risk a hefty fine and leaving yourself vulnerable to all requirements.
Shocking, a recent survey your insurance found that 47% of people surveyed had no idea not to have employers liability insurance meant that they were breaking the law leaving them open to be fined up to £ 2,500 for each day without it!
Even if you think you know the ‘stuff’ when it comes to hiring others, not keeping up to date with changes in the law could mean that you end up breaking it. For example, how many of you are aware of changes in the law that are coming in for the illness at work in 2014 and for maternity leave in 2015?
Regarding employee illness, it is important to note that there has been a government response that will change the way sickness absence system is working and needs to be treated. Also, due to changes in maternity leave it means more workers will be eligible to have time off work and will no doubt be sure to embrace the changes in their favor. To survive, companies being created to deal with these situations.
Do not know about and therefore not in accordance with these new systems could spell big trouble. Of course, even if you know of changes, when faced with dealing with the actual situation that you need to be sure what the correct procedures are and get ACAS advice to be sure you are following the best practices in the difficult areas of business.