The new U.K. Labour government is bringing with it a new employment bill which, by any standards, represents one of the biggest shake-ups in the way people are employed for some time. Arguably, employment law over the past decade has been a slowmoving beast, offering gradual and—for the most part—disconnected offerings to sure up the way people work and the administration around this, adapting to organisational trends and the impact of technology on the workplace along the way.
The current government proposition has been recognised as a shift in emphasis to favour employees rather than employers, giving them more rights earlier in their job with an employer. The devil will always be in the detail, but there are reports of organisations frantically carrying out employee audits to assess their risk in this forthcoming new world of work.
Any change can be disorientating and when it comes to new ideas and rules which influence how people work, it is particularly so. There is always a difficult balance to strike between legislation which governs employment on the one hand and the freedom to choose how to work on the other. The employment relationship is rarely cut and dried—as we know what works for one person simply doesn’t for another.
In some employment scenarios, the key question is whether an arrangement is exploitative or not, and the answer to that frequently rests with the opinion of the employees themselves. Perhaps the best HR can do, therefore, is to be sure to listen and understand what their workforce thinks.
Simon Kent
Editor-at-Large
