Employee Rewards

If you thought your employees special rewards as an incentive to offer with good attendance records, then you must read. In fact, the employers offer that participation bonus, you can fall foul of the law itself.

The Royal Mail has a bonus program for employees who were not sick time to take. Under the scheme, Royal Mail, who were working at full attendance in the draw to win Ford Focus cars or holiday voucher to the value added£ 2,000. As a staff incentive, it seemed to work. The Royal Mail says its overall sickness absence levels fell during a period of nine months (August-April) by 11%.

However, such systems could also serious ramifications from a legal point of view have, and leave employers vulnerable to a variety of legal claims.

Discrimination

Employees could bring discrimination claims on the basis of disability and gender. The success of these claims would depend on each employee'sparticular circumstances and needs, be it in relation to their family, religion or health.
Alternatively, qualifying employees can bring claims to the detriment of the treatment as a result of enforcing their legal rights, for example, subject to: —

Exemption for family members and prenatal care;
Time off for study or training, or leisure time for jurors
Maternity leave;
Adoption leave, or
Paternity or parental leave;

Disability discrimination canoccur if, for example, had an employee time off to connected disability which was not taken into account, were taken into account by the employer under the reward. The employee could claim that the failure of the employer was the removal of his absence for disability reasons, a less favorable treatment.
How can employers protect themselves from such claims?

Employers can avoid these pitfalls by using a list of exceptions in the reward scheme, for example, juryFor service or study leave, taking into account all legal claims for compensatory time or
Pay bonuses to employees connected to performance in their profession and not the implementation of a reward participation.
Employers should make a visit any bonus scheme without legal advice on their guard.

If you need further information, please contact us.

E-mail: enquiries@rtcoopers.com

© RT Coopers, 2005. This briefing note provides no comprehensive or complete statement of the lawrelated to the topics discussed nor constitute legal advice. It will deal only with general issues. Specialist legal advice should always be sought in relation to the particular situation.