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Employment Act 2008 17 December 2008

The Employment Act will introduce a number of changes. Amongst these will be the repeal of the current provisions that employers are required to follow to deal with disputes in the work place.

 Both the grievance procedures (GP) and dismissal and disciplinary procedure (DDP) will be done away with. Currently if an employer dismisses an employee without following the DDP, the dismissal will be deemed to be automatically unfair, regardless of the reason for dismissal, meaning that the employee can claim compensation. In place of these procedures, employers can instead look to follow guidance set out in the ACAS statutory Code of Practice which covers both disciplinary and grievance procedures. Where an employer (or employee) has not followed these, an Employment Tribunal will have scope to adjust compensation by up to 25% (up or down). The ACAS Code of Practice is currently in draft form – but can be viewed at http://www.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=2114