Good evening everybody, and welcome to the latest webinar in the management series on the webinar vet. My name is Andy Mee. I currently work at Manchester Business School, and as a senior lecturer in healthcare management.

For this evening's presentation, we have James Cronin, and I'll introduce him in a little while, but firstly, I'd just like to thank the sponsors, for this evening's webinar. That's 8 Legal Limited, Simply Health Professionals, and the Saint Francis Group. So as I said, our speaker tonight is James Cronin.

And having taken his first degree, he, James took up a postgraduate diploma in law, followed by a master's in law at the University of Leicester. And he's been advising vets on employment law and team performance since 1998. He set up a legal limited with his wife Kay, a veterinary surgeon.

His focus is on providing practical business focused solutions to keep practises running smoothly and profitably. And he's also a guest speaker on the MBA course at the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge. So it's my great pleasure to let James take over and to talk to us this evening about employment tribunals.

Over to you, James. Hi, thanks very much for that. As you can see from my.

Photo that that it has been slightly airbrushed. I can assure you it actually, it, it actually is me. There is, there has been some slight airbrushing, as you can see, but I want to talk, I want, I want to talk this evening about the problems that I see.

With employment law for vets over the next 5 or 6 or 7 years, and what I've seen, what I've witnessed and experienced over the last, I don't know, I guess 15 years of, of working with vets. And I think I want to have a look at the challenges that we're going to face in, in 2018. One of the main challenges, I, I, I should say, which I guess is fairly obvious, is staying independent and, not, not selling out to corporates, and maybe we'll deal with that a bit later.

But, looking at some of the challenges that we have for the year ahead, one of the major ones is in July 2017, the Supreme Court rules, the employment tribunal fees that were introduced. In 2013 were actually not not lawful, which is a major development because the introduction of the fees for people wanting to go to an employment tribunal in 2013, resulted in a 79% drop in claims to employment tribunals, and employment lawyers were twiddling their thumbs and wondering if they had gone into the right area of law. As you can see, I've mentioned there, between September and December, 2017, there's been a 100% increase in in claims being brought.

And why wouldn't there be, really, because what we're saying now is there is no disincentive for somebody to, for want of a better word, have a go, have their day in court, because it's completely free. One of the things that I've noticed quite a lot, is that employees are very, very aware of, of their rights or what they think their rights are, and they, they certainly seem to be, maybe it's just me being very old at 54, but they certainly seem to be. Very keen not to let anything drop and to have a go, and we're dealing with this all the time, every day, and, and, and, and every week.

We also have a link between the British Veterinary Association, who have a legal helpline, and their legal helpline, links with a trade union called Prospect Trade Union. I don't want to say that. That, that this is something that is actually wrong, but I think there needs to be a debate as to whether or not there's a, a possible, whether or not there's a possible conflict of conflict of interest there with, the British Veterinary Association linking with the trade union.

Now, one of the things I've mentioned, and I, I, I, I've put it, I've put on the screen, you know, in front of us, one of the things that has always been one of my concerns dealing with any small or medium sized enterprise is the employment law, and I personally find it very frustrating, although I should, I guess, yeah, I should celebrate it. It's been written for. Large companies, not for small businesses.

So if you're Sainsbury's or Tesco's or Waitrose, and you have a, a, a staff of 4, you know, 4 or 5000 HR professionals, it's probably OK for you to deal with. The people who have written it and introduced it, I think, have absolutely no business. Reality, if you're running a small or medium sized business, it's written basically for the big boys and it's something that I find, I find very, very frustrating.

The other thing I've mentioned here is, when I, when this slide says, will you be sued in 2018, the important point I need to make, especially with the the removal of tribunal fees now, is you cannot completely protect yourself. If somebody wants their day in court, they have an absolute right to, to have their day in court, but as I put here, as I mentioned here, there are steps you can take to minimise your risk. Now my contention is that employment law for vets is a sub-sector of .

Employment law for small businesses in general, and I hope the, I, I hope that the talk will explain why. We have many clients who are, have contracts that some contracts roll them over continuously, who have contracts with, with large non-veterinary specific HR providers. One of the questions we're often asked is about tribunal insurance and why we wouldn't offer tribunal.

Insurance. So if you come to us and say, you know, we could be sued for X amount of money, why don't you offer us insurance? The difficulty I have with that is, if you offer, if I offer you a million pounds, if you get taken to an employment tribunal, I'm going to then do, in general, everything in my power to make sure you don't get taken to an employment tribunal.

I think there's a potential, there is, there is a potential conflict of interest there. Now, now, I think that means, that. Some people say, many, many of our clients say, and they have joined, some of the large general HR providers, and they've joined us as well, and they're they're paying twice, which I think is a bit unfortunate, and one of the reasons that they do that is because they say, They don't really get anywhere with the large HR providers, because they don't seem to want to take a risk, and they tend to, maybe I'm generalising slightly here, take a very cautious line because they'd rather not pay out the insurance that they offer you.

So, one of the things I'm going to ask, coming in, I'm going to ask you a question, having a quick look at employment tribunal awards, and I've put the period there from the 1st of April 2016. To the 31st of March 2017. And the question that I want to ask you, the question that I, I want to pose, is what, what was the highest sum awarded in a tribunal claim during that period?

And I'm going to give you some options here. That's the first option, 750,0678 pounds. The second option is 250,0366 pounds.

Third is 1,744,575 pounds, and the final is 132,909 pounds. So, the question I'm going to ask you to vote on is which of those is the correct figure. So, over to you for a second.

OK, so if you see that poll in front of you, if you can answer what you think is the correct number, we'll just leave it open a little bit longer. There's about 1/3 so far have voted. OK, so we're gonna close the pole in about 10 seconds.

OK, so we've had 2/3 voted. So if we close that poll then, we'll see that the vast majority of people, nearly half, think that it's 750, 678. Then equal second is either 250,000 or 1.7 million, and then in last place, 132,000.

The, yeah, I actually the correct answer there is, is 1744,575 pounds. I decided it wasn't worth going into the pence there, but as you can see, that is a, an extremely, substantial award, and one that we need to make sure doesn't happen, for you, and one of the. Things I want to do now is move on to how can you as much as possible, and you can't ever 100%, but how can you as much as possible, stop yourself from appearing in front of a tribunal judge?

And one of the things that I've mentioned here is, it's really important for me, and this happens every day in my working life, to make sure you have the proper documentation. And ensure your contracts, handbook, and policies are carefully drafted, poorly drafted documents can make you more vulnerable to a claim. And we see some, I have to say, We see some quite, quite bizarre, contracts.

This morning I was talking to a practise who we needed to pretty urgently get rid of a vet who had been employed for only about 2 months, and when we looked through the contract, the practise actually had to pay that person, 6 weeks of full salary in, in lieu of notice to remove them. Now, the thing that surprises me about that is that's not a, a, a legal requirement in the sense that that's not a statutory. Requirement, that's not something parliament says, in actual fact, the way we draught our our contract, they would have been entitled to one week.

And there is this sort of myth that you have to give the same amount that you're asking for in, in, in notice, and that's actually not, not true. So, it's very important to know the difference between what statute says, which is what parliament says as a minimum. Have to do for, for an employee, and what you put in your own contracts can actually tie you up in knots in a way that is much more than Parliament ever intended as a minimum.

So, as I've mentioned there, don't don't attempt to draught contracts yourself. That would be like me operating on my own dog. And as I own a Dalmatian that regularly eats socks and needs the next lap, that really wouldn't be a good idea.

It's very important looking at well-written vets specific contracts and handbooks, can save you many headaches later on as you progress, and I'm going to now move on on the sense of talking about. Looking at contracts to another question which I'm asked quite, quite a lot is on probationary periods in, in, in contracts. And the question I've posed here is, does including a probationary period in your contract offer you any any legal protection?

And the really important thing that I would like to mention about, about the use of probationary periods and the use of fixed term contracts, as I've I've mentioned, they may, might be useful for a, from a management point of view. But they offer absolutely no legal protection whatsoever. So if you decide to put a person on a contract for 13 months, for example, if you decide to have a probationary period in a contract, that might be absolutely fine from Apologies for a second, they might be absolutely fine from a management point of view.

Legally, they're, they're absolutely meaningless and non-renewal of a fixed term contract, or, extending a probationary period has absolutely no meaning in law whatsoever. So even though they're often in contracts and we have them in our own contracts, you must rely on them in a legal sense. One of the things we spend a lot of our time dealing with are areas of discrimination under the Equality Act of 2010, and I'd like to say a bit as to why, but before I do that, I would like to have a, have a quick look at the protected characteristics under the Equality Act itself, and I'm going to start with age.

Now I'm, I'm then going to go on and look at disability, and depression and mental health issues in the veterinary profession are what we spend so much of our, our time on. It can be 80% of our calls in a week are on, looking at, looking at the areas of disability and looking at depression in particular, and I want to come back and say a bit more about that. Gender reassignment is another category.

Marriage and civil partnership. Pregnancy and maternity, it's something we deal with occasionally race, something we hardly ever see or have to deal with. I've mentioned here religion and belief, sex and sexual orientation.

And when I wrote these slides, it was interesting for me because number 2 is the one that we spend almost all of our time on. And that, and that's very important, because under the act, a person who suffers from depression. Anxiety and depression, which seem to be incredibly prevalent in, in the profession, mean that you have all sorts of statutory duties to make reasonable adjustments to accommodate people who, who suffer from these issues, but they would have to be.

Severe enough to have a substantial and adverse impact on their, on, on people's normal day to day activities of life, not of work, in order to, in order to class in that category, the second one down. This is a massive problem for small. Or medium sized employers, and the reason for that is because, and I'll, I'll make this very brief, when the Disability Act, was first introduced, any employer under 20 that employed under 20 people wasn't included, because it was felt that they actually couldn't deal with.

That they, that they couldn't deal with the, the, the requirement, the statutory requirement to make reasonable adjustment. Now it was then dropped to 15. And then it's been dropped to, there is no, you know, the 0, there is no limit at all.

And I'm going to come back and mention this because it's one of the issues that we see so much is in some ways lack of resilience, and people, mentioning depression, mentioning extreme anxiety, and that, that, . Really that gives you a lot of, a a huge legal headache and I'll come back and I'll say. More, more about that.

Now, let's have a look quickly at . Some basic questions in employment law, and the questions that I've asked you there is, the, the, the first one I've mentioned is how long in general, does a person have to have worked for you before they can bring a claim of unfair dismissal. Now it's important to remember here, we're talking about unfair dismissal, we're not talking about any category of of discrimination, so we have to separate unfair dismissal from discrimination.

And the possible answers in your multiple choice question here is no time limit. 3 months, 1 year, or 2 years. So what I'd like you to do is have a vote on that, if you, if you could.

I don't know if people have. Had a chance to vote on that yet. Yeah, so, so far we've got roughly 2/3 of people who voted, so give you just maybe 5 more seconds.

Sure, no problem at all. OK, so if we Close the poll. Again, we've got, joint first is people think there's either no time limit, or it's 2 years.

And then same again, joint 2nd, 3 months or 1 year. So either there's no time limit or 2 years came up top there, James. OK, yeah, thanks very much for that.

The answer is 2 years. There are categories, there are exemptions and there are quite a few exemptions, and, and the exemptions would include. Whistleblowing, being, being a member of a, you know, a trade union, obviously I can to deal with health, health and safety.

But this is a really important point of employment law that if you have to deal with, with, with an issue with an employee or, or, or a worker, in general, the most important thing and the question that I will ask every day when people phone me, is how long has the person been working for you for? And the two year rule for unfair dismissal, which is a rule that applies most of the time, is absolutely crucial, and it's one that we really need to, we really need to bear in mind. Now, what I'm going to do is contrast that by, I'm going to ask you your next multiple choice question, which is how long does a person have to have to work for you to bring a claim for discrimination.

And the potential answers here are. 2 years 6 months. One day And there is no qualifying time limit.

So once again, I'm going to ask you for your opinion on that if I can, please. OK, so the polls open again, if you'd like to answer that please. OK, so again, 2/3 have voted, we'll give it, leave it another few 5 seconds or so.

Sure. OK, so if we close that one now, thanks, Katherine. So clear winner this time, they're obviously getting the message, James.

There's no there's no qualifying time limit to come out with 2/3 of the vote there, followed. Very lagging behind is 6 months, 2 years, and then 1 day. So no qualifying time limits come out the tops.

OK, and congratulations, you're absolutely right. There is no qualifying time limit, and that's why when I was writing the question, I've, I've, I've actually changed the word employee to person because it, it would be wrong of me to say how long does the person have to be employed. To, bring a claim for discrimination.

And the answer, of course, is they don't have to be employed at all. They don't have to ever have entered your practise, the recruitment process itself can be discriminatory, so, they don't, they don't have to ever be, have been an employee or a worker. Now, one of the reasons that I want to spend a little bit of time on discrimination is because, If a person hasn't worked for 2 years and.

In general, they then, as we've mentioned, won't have a chance or won't be able to qualified to bring a unfair dismissal claim. I tend to think that the advice, I have to choose my words carefully here, that their advisers then have to look as to there's any way they can bring a claim that won't require them, having worked for, for two years, and that will include things like . Post-traumatic stress disorder, whistle blowing, depression, and I think that in general, when we have a, Labour government, the amount of time is reduced to 1 year, and in general, whenever we have a Conservative government, it's increased to 2 years.

Now sometimes that just makes the adviser. More inventive. OK, now I have I have another question for you, which is a different question, which is .

How long does a person have, if they wish to bring a claim against you for unfair dismissal or discrimination? And the potential answers that we've got here are 6 weeks. 6 years 3 months and, and 28 days.

So, just to reiterate, the question that I'm asking now is a person who has been employed or had some relationship with you, they decide they want to sue you, either for unfair dismissal or discrimination. How long does Parliament allow them to decide whether they're going to bring a claim or not? There has to be some period of time where you can relax and say, well, they haven't brought it within that, that time period.

So I'm going to ask you to vote again now if you would please. OK, so slightly different emphasis on this one then. If you could please vote.

That was quite quickly, we're up to 2/3, we'll just give it another 5 seconds. OK, I don't think any more voting now, so if we can close that, please. So again, a clear winner this time, 2/3 of people think it's 3 months, roughly 25% think it's 6 years, and just over 10% think 28 days.

Nobody's gone for 6 weeks. Well, I'm I'm quite right, so these people are are extremely good. 3 months is the right answer.

And I have to say, unless there is a, a just and equitable reason to extend that, which is rare, that would be a person was so ill that they couldn't have brought a claim in the 3 month period, then, 99% of the time, you know, you have to wait, 3 months to see if they're going to bring a claim for unfair dismissal or discrimination. If they haven't, then, their time is up. OK.

So, one of the things I want to have a look at now, which is a huge area, and I can only mention it very briefly, is, dealing with performance management, and one of the questions that I get asked once a week. And I pose this question here is, do you have to allow an accompanying person to be present during an investigation meeting? An investigatory meeting will always take place if you're planning on conducting a, or having any disciplinary procedure or disciplinary process against a person.

So it's not the disciplinary process itself, it's not a grievance hearing. It's the investigation to decide whether there's enough evidence to conduct a disciplinary hearing. And, .

The very imaginative answers I've given you here are yes. No. Only if the contract or handbook allows it or only if they're disabled.

So, off you go again, please. OK, so we're slowly creeping up in numbers. If just give you a little bit longer to get up to 2/3 of people voting, please.

OK, we seem to have stalled it. Oh no, another one now. Give it 5 more seconds and then we'll go over it.

OK, so if we close it now then. So, Over just over half think yes, you have to allow an accompanying person. Roughly 20% think no.

Another 20% think only if the contract allows it, and only 7% think it's if they're disabled. Well, thanks very much for that. The correct answer is only if the contract or handbook allows it.

So it's actually, it's not a statutory right. And that's very important because you often get the . Person turning up with a, a, a slightly, Zealous family member, a dad or a mom or a husband or a husband or or a wife, and they're simply not allowed into the meeting unless you have a, a, a contract or a handbook that allows it, which is extremely rare.

So I will usually coach a person through and say, you know, they're actually not allowed to have. Anybody else present unless you specifically say that they can in your handbook or in, in your contract. I want to have a quick look now at what's considered a disability, and I think I've probably mentioned this already, that when disability protection was first introduced in English law, most people thought of, most people considered a disability as being a physical disability, and most of us, and I'm sure I was guilty of that too, think of a person in a wheelchair, .

And I mentioned earlier on, I refer to this earlier on, that depression and other mental health problems can sometimes be classed as dis as disabilities. And as I mentioned that, also, earlier on, it's surprising up to 80% of our calls in a week can be dealing with these sorts of issues that are very. Very complicated issues to deal with.

Now, again, I mentioned earlier on, and I suppose I'm, I'm, I'm sticking my neck out, here, I've mentioned over half of our calls involve mental health issues such as anxiety and depression. And I've, I've said here, beware the employee who is, who is, is disciplined or faces some sort of disciplinary action and then gets signed off with stress or depression. I think we need to make a distinction between people who genuinely suffer from depression and severe anxiety, and battle on, on with it, and I think they deserve everyone's support and help and sympathy.

What concerns me slightly is legal advice people get who haven't worked for two years, sometimes tends to. Coach them or ask them or invite them to consider whether they're so stressed, that they could be suffering from anxiety or depression. Now, This is a completely different webinar, of course, but I think that we are dealing with sometimes with people in the veterinary veterinary profession, men and women who are, are perfectionists, often, not always, are very resilient, and sometimes, not always, of course, .

When they hit a problem at work, it's the first time in their life they've ever faced being told that they've got they've got something wrong, and a lot, a lot of them, and I have sympathy with them, actually can't cope with that. That then makes it a very difficult legal problem to deal with because the two-year rule won't, won't apply, that only applies for unfair dismissal, as we mentioned earlier on, so. If we're dealing with a person who is so stressed or depressed that they actually, it has a substantial adverse impact on their normal day to day life, then, you really need to take specialist legal advice, and I've mentioned, I've mentioned that there.

It's a very complex area of law. And when it was originally introduced, and I mentioned this earlier on, and, and apologies if I'm repeating myself, it was never meant for the small business. If you employed less than 20 people, it didn't even apply to you because it was felt that you, you couldn't, you didn't have resources to actually manage that and cope with it.

OK. Now, one of the things I've been involved in, very recently is a real life case that settled within the last. 6 weeks We had a vet who was under the age of 30, who had spent a year trying to sue a practise for 150,000 pounds.

She claimed post-traumatic stress disorder, whistleblowing, many, many, many other grounds. And I think one of the reasons that she probably claimed the, the, the things that were mentioned here legally, she couldn't have claimed unfair dismissal, because she'd only been there for as far as, well, as far as I remember, it was 8 or 9 months. It was certainly well under 2 years, so.

It wasn't, it wasn't open to her to bring a claim for unfair dismissal. So she put in a claim for 150,000 pounds, and as I mentioned here, the claim involved post-traumatic stress disorder, whistleblowing, and many, many other things. She didn't work for, I, I would think about 13 months because she spent her time full time bringing this claim against a client of ours who are, who are a vet, a veterinary practise.

So the first thing she did was to phone the BVA legal helpline. She'd paid the, her, her membership to the BVA legal helpline, and she was put immediately through to Prospect, Prospect Trade Union linked with the BVA who provided her with the initial advice. When we turned up in tribunal, we were quite surprised to find that she had a legal team of three.

Plus a barrister, and that was at a preliminary hearing, and it was in, it was funded by insurance. Now, sometimes people have on their home insurance, legal insurance, it is, is included. That was quite remarkable because the barrister that I was with had mentioned that he had never seen in his entire career at a preliminary hearing, and remember, this is, wasn't even the main hearing, which, which was about to turn into a five day, full, full hearing, somebody turning up with such a remarkably robust legal team.

Now, what happened with this case. That was the the result. So 13 months after the beginning of the action, the claim was settled for 7000 pounds as a goodwill gesture with no admission of liability by the practise.

And the reason that I'm mentioning this is because a, if a person is is determined enough, they can always try to sue, even if their case is incredibly weak. And if we go back to the fact that the employment tribunal fees. Have now been removed, and there is a, a, a feeling perhaps of what have I got to lose?

It's very unusual for a claimant to recover costs. I, I, sorry for responding to recover costs against the claimant. So, If it, it costs no money at all, if it's backed by insurance, and they want their, their day or 5 days, and this has been going on with the practise for about 13 months in, in court, there's, there's very little you can do about it.

My concern is that . I see so much more these days, a desire, a willingness, and I mentioned earlier on, maybe it's just my age, to have a go. I, it's, it's rare for me to see people who are even in their twenties, who are prepared to say, maybe I got that wrong, or maybe I just have to accept that, or maybe I have to be robust enough to be given a good, a good telling off and live with it.

And I, I'm slightly confused. I'm not a, a a psychologist, but everybody. And everybody's probably a strong word because I don't see the ones that just, you know, take it and get on with it.

It seems that so many people these days are running to their lawyers, which I think it, I should be, you know, celebrating it, but I find it a bit, I find it a bit depressing, and, and there's there's no pun intended there. One of the difficulties we have with veterinary employment law is there is always a recruitment crisis going on, so. If I say to people, look, I really think this person should, you know, I think this person needs to go with the person who's damaging their reputation, the person's being rude to clients.

They say, well, we don't, you know, we've been advertising in the vet record or whatever for 6 months. We, we, we actually can't get rid of this person because there's nobody else to fill their, to, to actually fill their shoes, which concerns me because, one of the things I, I spent time teaching at Cambridge is reputational damage. And.

I think that this can lead to, you recruit anyone who who is. I, I think one of my clients described it as that, looking to employ a night vet is, is basically their qualification, for, for, for having a night vet is they have to have a pulse. If they have a pulse, they'll be given a job as a night vet.

And I think in this particular case, as far as I, I remember, the person was, the day before was sectioned under the Mental Health Act, and the question my client contacted me with is . Not, should we not hire them because they've been sectioned to the Mental Health Act. It, it was basically, can we still go ahead and hire them, even though they had been section of the Mental Health Act, and I, and I think they've been temporarily released.

That obviously causes me some concern. So one of the questions I wanted to ask is, Have you ever employed someone out of desperation, and you know in your heart, they, they didn't fit in your practise and will probably never fit in your practise? And I think that, that, that's, I think most vets have.

I think most practises have. I can't really blame them because they will say we just do not have the vets and the vet nurses queuing up there to take the job. So we would really rather not employ this person, including a person who, One of our clients, who, who, who stole considerable amounts of money from one of our clients, and, when we were dealing with the issue, we're dealing with the case, they said, well, we, we sort of blame, blame ourselves, really.

And I, I said, well, how can you, how on earth can you blame yourself? I mean, how could you have known that this was, this was gonna happen? And they said, well, she did confess to us at interview that she had a criminal record for theft.

From a veterinary practise, which is one of the things in the week that make me, head but my desk, but I can, I, I can understand the desperation. So one of the things I've mentioned here is listen to your, to your to your instinct. And if your gut says no, please listen to it.

I think the best thing you can possibly do is to work with somebody for a fortnight, for, for 2 or 3 weeks. And if it doesn't work, then you get rid of them. But I think you've got to, you've got to listen closely to what your gut says.

And the really important thing that I've said here, and I really can't emphasise this enough, is higher for attitude. And I know some of you will be listening to this and thinking, I'd just like to hire anybody at all. One of the, one of the things we spend most of our week working on is attitude, and you can train for skills, you can't train for attitude, so please, as much as possible, hire for attitude.

And manage the problems within the first, you know, couple of months. You can have the best recruitment process in the world that you can have, you can do psychometric testing, you can have the best interviews, system, the best interviews in the world. They're not gonna know until you've worked with someone for a couple of months, whether they're the right person for you or not.

If your contracts and handbooks are pro are correctly drafted. you will know within the first couple of months, and we can manage that, and if it doesn't work out, the person needs to go. Whether or not that is called a probationary period is completely irrelevant in law, so don't worry too much about that.

I've also put fire for, attitude as well as hire for attitude, because one of my favourite quotes was from this guy, Clive Schlee. Which is if our employees are not fired with enthusiasm, they'll be fired with enthusiasm, and that's from Clavishly, the CEO of. Pretomania.

I think that's such an important thing is to, if, if things aren't working out. Please, please, deal with it and deal with it immediately or as quickly as you can, which takes me to tip 5, which is take action against. Bad behaviour.

One of the things that, that, that, that concerns me is that people will, will consider always, if we're talking about dealing with a problem, How much it costs them to get rid of a bad employee and what people almost never do is that they have a, a column on the left-hand side of the page, which is how much this is going to cost us to get rid of this person. They never seem to have a column on the right hand side of the page, which is, what does it cost us to keep this person, not just financially, not just in some people will pay a salary for a year of up to 50,000 pounds rather than deal with it. But a reputational, reputational damage, which is something that really, really concerns me, and one of my favourite quotes from Warren Buffett is, it takes 20 years to establish a good reputation and 10 minutes to lose it.

So, The other thing I wanted to say is, if you keep that person who is causing problems, and I apologise, I'm only focusing at the moment by this presentation on bad employees, and lots of extremely good employees. What starts happening is your other employees start looking around for other jobs. So, you can end up keeping the two people who are the bad apples and the good people going.

Oh, I, when I say be prepared to take a hit, what I mean by that is if you want to deal with it, in a, a fast way, then it's gonna cost you. It's, it's going to cost you, let's say for argument's sake, people always say, what will it cost? .

6 months of salary would be. You know, I would be trying to get it for less than that, but, 6 months of of salary isn't really unacceptable. If you think, and a lot of vets, and I hope you don't mind me saying this, are not good at adding up what their hourly rate is and how much it costs them to manage the problem.

The record was a client of ours who, got rid of two nurses. And he admitted that it, he, he, he had kept a diary of how long it took him to go through. We went through an appeal, investigation and appeal, hearing and appeal for, for both of them, and it took 220 hours of his time.

Now my question to him was, what does 220 hours of your time cost? And it's really important to remove the emotion. It's not a principle thing.

It's not about you failing as a person, and they want it to take me a long time to realise when talking to clients, is they're asking me for legal advice, but so much more than that, they're asking me for permission. To get rid of them, to, to remove a person. And every time I give advice, I have to ask myself, what would I do if it were my company, if it were my money, and only when I can pass that test will I pass that on to a client.

Now, I, I use a lot of settlement agreement and protected conversations, that could be a very fast, effective way of removing problem employees, and the reason I do that is because As I've mentioned earlier on, because employment law, I think, is written for Sainsbury's and, and Waitrose, I think if you go through the disciplinary procedure, the full, performance management procedure, the full being invited, having investigation, being invited to a for a hearing, and then having an automatic right to appeal, and that's assuming that we're dealing with gross misconduct. If we're dealing with something less than that and they end up with a written warning or final written warning only, then they're just twice as toxic and they're still employed by you and you haven't got rid of the problem. So I do what I would do with my own company, which is relying as much as possible on having a protected conversation and reaching a settlement agreement with their solicitor to remove a person.

Which usually can be done within about 5 to 6 weeks rather than 5 to 6 months or years. If there's any possibility of discrimination, then the conversation can lose its protected status, and what we're dealing with all the time, when, when we're dealing with employment law. Is we're dealing with risk, and I say to each of my clients, how much risk are you prepared to take to solve this problem?

And vets are very good at dealing with the risk because every time you pick up a scalpel, you're taking a risk. And I'm doing exactly the same. I'm saying we can do this by the book, and it's going to take a long time, and it's going to cost you a lot of money.

And if it's anything less than gross misconduct, it's not gonna solve the problem. You, you're still gonna have the really toxic employee. What I've mentioned here on tip 8, don't be afraid to suspend, is where I wouldn't be offering any amount of money to pay to a person is if there's been any, for example, if they committed theft, I just, not yet, I don't have it in my nature, I wouldn't do it myself to be paying a person who has committed theft to.

Get rid of them, I think that I would go through a, a disciplinary procedure. A person will be suspended on full pay, while the investigations is carried out. I really don't see why in a situation like that a person should, should benefit twice.

So, I want to have a quick look through the disciplinary procedure. And here it is in Or it's, it, it's glory. The reason I mentioned this, I mean, there are two, there are two reasons I mentioned this.

The first is because people often don't understand that, people often phone me and say, can I give, can I give this person a written warning because this is the, this is the 4th time this month they've been. Late, and the answer is no, you can't do, the only way you can give a, a, a written warning is to go through a full disciplinary procedure where a person is invited to, to an investigation. They then, you write to them, you accompany them to, to a, a disciplinary hearing with a trade union rep or a fellow employee.

They have an automatic right of appeal, which I think is slightly daft. They have an automatic right to appeal, and again, they have a right to be accompanied to an appeal hearing by a trade union rep or a fellow employee. In my view, for most small or medium sized enterprises, and let's leave out theft, for example, this is complete nonsense.

You do not have the time, you, you, you do not have the resources to go through the full, investigation, hearing. With an accompanying person or a trade union rep there who's trained to represent them, and then if they don't like that, they have the right to make you go through the entire thing again, automatic right to appeal with a accompanying person being there, trade union rep being there again. And the appeal should be to a different person, than, than her, the original hearing, or was involved in the investigation.

Now, isn't this a great example of employment laws written for Sainsbury's and Waitrose? If you have a team of lawyers, if you have a full-time, you know, if you employ 900 HR people full time, you can do that. Would I do that in my business?

No, I just don't have the time or the resources to go through this. And again, me and my soapbox, it's what happens when we get employment law written by people who have never run or own their own business. So on tip 10, I've put get legal advice, and I wanted to make this point particularly.

If you get a call from an employee's trade union rep, you don't have to talk to them, and I mentioned this because a client recently had a call from. A vet or, or vet nurse, I can't remember which phone the, the BBA legal helpline were put through to Prospect Trade Union, a trade union rep from Prospect Trade Union then phoned the owner of of the practise and invited them to have a without prejudice conversation with them, looking towards a settlement for that person. And my Very simple advice on this is do not talk to them.

That we have no legal duty to take any call from, from any legal adviser or any trade union rep. I simply wouldn't talk to them. I would get advice first, and you are under no legal duty.

So, Having a look in summary, I've mentioned, have well drafted vets specific contracts and and handbooks, and one of the other things I'd like to put my neck on the line and say is there are a lot of, large companies out there who say they are vet specific. They're not. They'll take anyone.

So, have, well after effects legal limitations I've mentioned of probationary periods and fixed term contracts, and that's just to say that they don't give you the protection that you think they do. So I put them in, in contracts, but I know the limitation of doing so. No qualifying period for, for discrimination claims, as I've mentioned.

Person doesn't have to be employed. Mental health issues, huge, huge area in the veterinary profession, if they are severe enough to qualify, and not all of them are, not automatically, as being a disability. Then we get into the whole area of having a legal duty to make a a a reasonable adjustment to accommodate them, to not treat them less favourably because they have a disability.

I've mentioned here, higher for attitude, fire for attitude, and do it quickly, and I think that's really important because The 2 months, I, I apologise, the 2 years for unfair dismissal only, not for discrimination, you've been given that by parliament. That's your probationary period. That's the only probationary period that matters.

It's a statutory probationary period that Parliament has given you. So, manage it fast, and if you can manage it in under the first year, it makes my job certainly a lot easier. .

Tackle problem behaviour quickly and that's such an important one and. I, I think, I think I'm gonna come back, to the word attitude again, and maybe it, maybe it's because I keep mentioning my age, my wife, who is a bear too, isn't a practising vet anymore, is 52. I am, 54, although I probably don't look any older than 53.5.

And I think that the conversations we have between us is, it's amazing. The things people will do these days that she would not have dared to do or challenge or get legal advice or go and see a lawyer as a young, ambitious veterinary surgeon. I think the, I think the climate has changed so much, and I, again, I should be celebrating, but I find it slightly depressing.

Get professional advice early, I think is really important, otherwise it's a bit like me trying to do an ex-lap on my Dalmatian who regularly socks, and they get stuck, where it doesn't work, then I go and see a vet. I've been doing quite a lot of that recently, actually. In summary, keeping a bad employee costs you a lot of money.

And it costs you a lot of damage to reputation as, as well. So please don't just look at the what it costs to, to, to get rid of a person. Let's say it costs for argument's sake, 3 months of, you know, of salary.

That's what I would do with my own company. I would call it a bargain. You'd need to have necessary advice for protected conversations or certain agreement route.

Again, what would I, I do, I always ask myself, I think that's probably usually, not always, and certainly not if someone's been stealing money from you, it's probably the only sensible way of dealing with things like this, . Considered use of suspension on full pay while investigating serious issues which could constitute gross misconduct, and I'm again, I'm thinking of things like theft, is a very important thing, a very important clause to to have in a contract. I wanted to mention what what what what a formal disciplinary process it involves.

I've gone through that. I think in general, it's probably not workable for a small business. I'm probably not allowed to say this, but I have.

Don't rush to speak to trade union reps or anyone who contacts you, get advice first. You have no legal duty to answer a phone, answer a letter, talk to anybody, even if you get legal advice, but certainly without getting legal advice first, and often in law, the best advice we can give is to say nothing. And I, and I think that's a really important thing.

And on a, hopefully ending on a slightly positive note, despite everything I've said and despite everything we've gone through, including the removal of tribunal fees, and we're gonna see a rush for for tribunal claims being, being made. Try not to let it worry you. Don't let the theory of employment law run your business, because it's been written by people who have no business experience, who have, who have never run a business, do what you need to do.

And my job is to ask you. If there was no such thing as employment law, what would you want the outcome to be, and then we need to work backwards to see how you achieve that. You cannot run a business if you're constantly worrying about the judge looking over your shoulder.

It is, it isn't risk free. Removing a person or dealing with these situations, but as I mentioned earlier on, neither is surgery and you and you guys do it every day, . So dealing with problem employees effectively will not only make your practise happier, but, you know, believe me on this.

It'll also make it more profitable, and you'll probably find that you get the money back, you have to pay out to solve the problem within certainly 6 to 6 to 7 months. One of the things I want to very quickly mention is one of the, one of the only positive things about veterinary specific employment law is in employment law, people have a duty to, well, people have a duty to mitigate their loss. Now that means, how long will it take me to find another job.

Now, as you guys know, with vet nurses and and vets, what are we talking about a week, a few days. They, and, and they're supposed to phone agencies and look look for work. Now that in this whole presentation is probably the only ray of sunshine with the subspecialty of veterinary specific employment law, is the duty to mitigate their loss.

There's a massive shortage of vets and vet nurses, so they should be, the tribunal should be saying, why did it take you so long to get another job? Hence this employee I mentioned earlier, not working when she tried to. Sue for at least 1 year, or probably 3 years, and never be able to work again, because she was so traumatised.

I want to end by saying most employees are fantastic, and I don't say this often enough, because people don't tend to get me into their practise to present in a, in a trophy and clap. They tend to contact me when they have a problem, when they have something that is on fire, that we need to, we, we need to, need to deal with and put out. And that's it from me.

So I think we're at an hour exactly now, and whether or not we have time for questions, I don't know. I shall hand over to the great brains in the sky who are controlling the webinar, who know much more than me, but thank you very much for your time. OK, well, thank you very much for that, James.

That was a very comprehensive webinar, filled with lots of information. We've had a few questions come through already. So if we try and deal with those, the first one then, well, if somebody said, is it appropriate?

Can they have a chat with you after the webinar about some specific cases? And also do you offer help with drafting employee handbooks? Yes, to both of those.

OK, brilliant. And I, Catherine has posted your website in the chat box, so. Whoever that was to ask the question, if you contact you via the website, is that the best?

Yeah, I think what we've done is we've put some some diary dates for mine, because I think we're offering, I'm offering free half an hour for anyone who wants to talk to me after the webinar. So, if they could book in one of those slots, that would be absolutely fantastic. Brilliant.

OK, and again, Catherine's just put a link up there in the chat box, for anybody. Had another interesting one here, just as I had kept a bad employee and ended up losing an entire team. Exactly.

They are now gone, but still continued to influence people. I have found this out on Facebook through careless security by one of their friends. Do I need to get legal advice and what do I do as really the information I have was a private conversation that I have in effect overheard.

Could you contact me about that, please? Because I think that's gonna be a detailed consultation. Can, can you.

Perhaps give a more generic answer if if people are bad mouthing you on Facebook. Any generic advice? If someone is badmouthing bad mouthing you on Facebook, and this is something that we see quite a lot of the time, they need to receive a cease and desist letter through which, which basically, as the title says, you need to cease and desist, or we will take legal action against you.

It gets into the area of of libel and slander. And, and it certainly can be robustly dealt with with a letter being sent to them, you know, pointing out that, that, as I say, it's called the cease and desist. OK.

So right, somebody's asked, do I book a 30 minute consult and how do I do this? I think that there was that link that Catherine's posted, is that correct? Yes, I, I mean, please, please do.

The 30 minute consults are entirely free and without any obligation, and I think there is now a link to my diary for you to go ahead and do that, that I think yeah, that one's been answered then. Mandy has asked where's the Dalmatian. This is Mandy, a client of ours, I think.

I'm not giving the surname, just in case. I shouldn't have said that I, that's OK. So.

A couple more questions then. Again, this is perhaps just a more generic ones. You mentioned that in terms of employment tribunals, now they're completely free and that the fees have been removed.

What if somebody who brings, you bring a case against, they lose, who ends up paying, and obviously if they win, if the employee wins, who, who pays them, is there any payment or is it all. That's a very good question. I think it's unfortunate that, it's unfortunate.

I think it's unfortunate that the play. You are the respondent, they are the claimant, almost never does an employment tribunal award costs against the person who's who who's bringing the claim. And I think that, I think that's very unfortunate, but it would have to be, an, an extremely unusual.

And extremely unusual situation for an employer ever to get costs against an employee bringing an action against them, which I think is sad. But basically, they have, it, it's a free, you know, it's free for them to, to have a go and almost never, not entirely, but almost never would they suffer a penalty of having to pay your legal costs. But then obviously then the counter to that is if they win the case, do you as the employer have to pay costs?

What would happen is that would probably be included as, as part of a damage award would would be legal fees, yes. OK, right. OK, right, thank you for that.

You mentioned another question this one on respect to discrimination. Obviously, what you talked about was the protected characteristics. Yes.

What if somebody says I'm being picked on, I'm being discriminated against because I, you know, have children or something like that, or whatever it is, but if they're just saying I'm being discriminated against, but it's not one of the protected characteristics, is it that same time limit or rather lack of time limit? No, it, it, it's very important here because there is a big difference in law between being discriminated against, which means that you're being treated less favourably under the Equality Act because of one of the protected characteristics. There's a big difference between that and you, you feel you're being unfairly treated.

Now, if a, if a person just has a moan or feels they're being unfairly treated and it's not because of one of the protected characteristics, and if it's because they have children, it could be, but if it isn't, then I would say, you know, the way I deal with this is to have an informal chat with them, and if the informal chat doesn't resolve it, then you tell them to raise a formal grievance and put it in writing. But, but the word discrimination is used much too commonly and too loosely. OK, so it is just the protected characteristics in terms of that then.

If far as discrimination goes, it, it's just less favourable treatment because of the protected characteristics of the Equality Act. Brilliant, thank you. And then one final question, you mentioned, you know, that disputes can be resolved with a sum of money and a reference.

Is there any kind of risk or liability if you give a good reference to get rid of somebody and then when they go on to a new employer. They're a nightmare. Does that new employer, do they have?

Yes, that's an extremely good question, and, and, and it's, it's, it's something I deal with every week. I think I'll have to be careful and say the references have to be very carefully drafted. OK.

And, and they're sometimes what I call, a, a keen cyclist reference. That, we can always say that someone's a keen cyclist and, and, and loves, and loves animals. Sometimes if there is a particularly nasty dispute, we would just give a, we, we would just give a factual reference, which means they're employed between those dates, and that, you know, what their job title was and what the dates they were employed were, and we're actually not prepared to go any further than that.

But, but it, it's a very good point because you probably do owe a duty of care to somebody else who can be damaged by you giving a negligent reference that's, for example, is too positive. OK, brilliant. Thank you for clearing that up then.

So, as far as I can see, that's it in terms of questions. So again, I'd just like to finish very much thanking you, James, for that. It was a fantastic talk.

Just to reiterate and remind you, our sponsors have been a Legal Limited, Simply Health Professionals, and the Saint Francis Group. There is a link there for you to have a free, free half hour, I beg your pardon, almost an hour there. A free half hour consultation with James if you do have any specific employment questions.

So thanks again. If I could just remind all the attendees, if you would please fill out the questionnaire, that you'll be sent, and gives us some feedback about how you found the presentation and, and, and obviously helps us plan. For future webinars and I look forward to seeing you on the future management webinars that are coming up in the next few months.

So thanks again James and thank you everybody for attending. Thanks very much.