ASSIGNMENT INSTRUCTIONS

Module Title: Fundamentals of Employment Law

Module Code: BD315003S Level: 3

Academic Year: 2010/11 Semester: One

Module Leader: Joan Hewlett

Instructions: Answer any TWO of the following THREE scenarios.

Word Limit: 3,000 words

Written assignments must not exceed the specified maximum number of words. All
assignments which do so will be penalised. The penalty will be the deduction of 10% of
the maximum marks available (i.e. 10%). Assignments will not be accepted without a word
count on the cover sheet.

Submission Date: This assignment must be received by no later than 5pm on

Wednesday 15th December 2010

Work submitted after this date will receive a mark of 0 unless an extension has been
approved in advance of this deadline.

Requests for short-term extensions will only be considered in the case of illness or other
cause considered valid by the Student Adviser. These must normally be received and
agreed by Student Adviser in writing at least twenty four hours prior to the deadline.

Please refer to the Academic Regulations or your Student Handbook for full details.

Further details: This assignment must be completed individually.

This assignment must be attached to a completed University

Assignment Cover Sheet and accompanied by a completed University
Assignment Receipt before submission.

Any attachments (such as computer discs) must be marked with your

SID number(s) and securely attached to your assignment before
submission.

Do not submit your work in a plastic sleeve.

Guidance Note: you should write this in the form of a Memorandum or Report giving the
advice as from a HR/Employment Law professional to the owner of this business. Headings
should be used to organise your answers. The following are the minimum headings required:

1) Introduction should VERY briefly set out the key HR/LEGAL ISSUES of the
scenarios
2) Analysis of the legal position, using Statute and Case law to define the strengths and
weaknesses on both sides
3) Recommendations: Provide advice on what actions the employer should take and
should include matters such as whether to “fight” the case in Tribunal or settle out of
court and how, and other HR related policies and practices that need to be developed
4) Conclusions: a brief summary of the key points
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You may find it best to do a separate Memorandum (or Report) on each Scenario
particularly regarding points 1) 2) and 3) above

THE THREE ASSIGNMENT TASK SCENARIOS:

Trouble at ST Solutions:

Sally Trent runs a small business (ST Solutions) from an industrial unit in the village of
Haddenham just outside Cambridge. Her business has been operating for over 6 years and
involves IT solutions for the printing trade. Seven people plus Sally work at this office, plus since
2006 in nearby St Ives she had opened a very small photo and camera shop down an arcade with
three staff offering photo development and printing to the general public, this shop really operates
completely separately to Sally’s main business and is run by a shop manager assisted by two others.
The main office in Haddenham has been the main focus of Sally’s attention, and has been doing
largely rather well even through the recent tough times in the economy. The first person Sally had
employed at Haddenham (Tom) was originally employed on a short-term contract, but he has been
working on that arrangement for over 5 years, other staff have joined the company since that time.
Up to the current date (October 21st) a further 2 salespeople who generally work from home cover
different sales areas, these are respectively Gina Sparks who lives in King’s Lynn covers Norfolk
and Cambridgeshire and John Black who lives in Grantham covers Lincolnshire and the East
Midlands. A friend of Sally’s, Brian Alsop who is a freelance website designer who works mostly
from his home in Cottenham, comes into the Haddenham office at least every Monday and does
some work for Sally on those contracts which demand a website design element in the contract.
Brian has a desk and a computer provided for him for this work.

All the workforce are generally committed to their work, and many have been with the company
for some time, often putting in late hours when deadlines approach, both Tom and Brian do this
too.

Reminder: It is compulsory to answer TWO out of the THREE Scenarios below and each
scenario is worth 50% of the mark.

Scenario One:

Trish Dodge worked as the Secretary/Administrator for Sally at Haddenham. She had worked for
Sally for 18 months, Sally believed that she was competent, and Trish had got on well with all the
staff except for Sally’s friend Brian, who seemed to “find fault” with Trish on a regular basis, in
recent months most Monday’s has seen some friction between them. During the past 2 months
Brian has been in on more days than his usual 1 day a week as a result of a large joint contract that
he and Sally had obtained with a large local company. As a result there has been quite a bit of
friction between Brian and Trish with a regular exchange of cross words between them. He had
been heard on two or three occasions shouting at Trish. Trish had told Sally a couple of times that
she was unhappy about his behaviour and Sally had after Trish’s last complaint about him, when
she and Brian went for a drink after work, asked Brian informally, to avoid contact with Trish, but
he did not seem to be able to resist. Finally three weeks ago, during the afternoon of his normal
Monday time in the office, he had loudly accused Trish of incompetence over some figures she had
produced on the new contract, and the whole office heard his accusation and the discussion. Trish
resigned on the spot and has now submitted an ET1 claim form to the Employment Tribunal
claiming constructive (unfair) dismissal. The employers response form ET3 has arrived with Sally
a week ago. Since Trish left, Sally has employed a “temp” from an Agency and has been going
through her work with that agency worker while she advertises for a replacement. They have

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discovered that Trish had been making some very fundamental mistakes and that in particular the
banking records are inaccurate and the recorded money in and out for the petty cash appears to be
short by some £200.

Question:

Advise Sally on whether she has a case to answer in regards to Trish’s claim and on what grounds,
if any, she may be able to resist the claim. Provide advice to Sally as to what she needs to do now.

Scenario Two

As Sally’s business has been growing and contracts have been coming in from the West Midlands
and also Suffolk, Essex and Hertfordshire she has now decided to recruit another sales person, and
after putting out an advertisement and carrying out the recruitment process she wants to offer the
new job to David Epstein who lives in Newmarket. Looking at the areas to be covered she has
decided to change the areas that the representatives cover as follows:
She want s to expand Gina’s area to include Suffolk, the upper half of Cambridgeshire plus the
lower part of Lincolnshire up to Boston, but not the part of Cambridgeshire south of Huntingdon.

John Black’s area to be widened to cover the remaining part of North Lincolnshire, as well as East
and West Midlands, and the new person David to take over South Cambridgeshire (ie south from
Huntingdon) Essex, Hertfordshire and London.

She also wants to change the pay structure for sales staff. Each of the two sales staff currently
bring in approx £130,000 worth of business each year, (John had originally brought in less on
average than Gina as he has only been recruited 14 months ago and had to build the business in his
area). He has now reached the same levels of sales as Gina. Sally wants to make basic salary for all
three at a basic rate of £14,000. (John is currently on £14,700 and Gina on 14,500) but increasing
the commission on sales generated by the individual representatives from the current rate of 5% up
to 6%, with 7% payable on repeat (new) business secured with existing customers. All
representatives will have new lease cars to start the new arrangements.

A further innovation that she wishes to introduce is an extra 2% “profit” share bonus available for
all staff depending on customer satisfaction surveys showing and average 98% customer
satisfaction with product and service. About 50% of work comes to the business direct from
advertising, and word of mouth. With the sales brought in by the sales team this can mean a good
bonus for all staff. The aim is to reward all the workforce to reflect the success of the business and
to encourage team working to improve customer service.

She has already offered the above to David (the new representative) and he has accepted.

A second change she wishes to introduce is to get some clarity regarding working hours and so she
proposes changes to the current working hours of 9-5.30 to introduce an earlier start for all office
based staff to 8.30 to miss the traffic, with up to 1 hour “optional” lunch break – which can be
taken flexibly between 12 and 2.30 with a finish time of 5.30, however, along with the above to
provide some limited flexibility she will, by agreement, give staff the opportunity to opt to come in
half an hour earlier and/or leave up to an hour later and “bank” any extra hours they accumulate to
take days off as and when they have a “banked” at least 8 hours with the agreement of Sally, to be
withheld if this would leave the office under staffed, or there is an important/urgent customer
service need. Any hours worked before 8.00 or after 6.30 cannot be “banked” however, and are at
the discretion of the employee if they wish to work them.

Finally she wants to introduce a Monthly meeting for all staff on a Friday afternoon (from 1.00pm
until 4.30 followed by a social event with wine and nibbles of a further hour after that). She feels
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this will enable everyone to know what is going on, and also to engage team spirit if they have an
opportunity to socialise.

She has put the changes in sales areas and pay to both Gina and John and neither are very happy, as
although IF they can maintain sales they will be better off, it will mean longer journey times for
them (as they put it more time on the road and less time to devote to clients), and they each feel that
at least in the short term their sales will take a dip as they will need to cultivate their new client
base, and also get to know their areas. In effect they both argue that they will be passing on to
another Representative, customers who they have worked hard to get and already have a good
relationship with. Gina is particularly unhappy as she has a child of school age and longer
journey’s may be difficult to “fit in” around the arrangements she currently has for dropping off
and picking up her daughter from school. She is saying that she may have to resign if she cannot
manage the changes.

Other staff have been told about the work time changes, and the Friday afternoon idea, and, in
particular the Friday meeting proposal has not met with a good response with particular objections
raised by Gina (this relates to her child care issues), the new recruit David who does not want to be
away from home after 4 on a Friday, but also Mohammad a technician based in the Haddenham
office (he has expressed unhappiness with the idea but has not said why). A couple of other staff
have made comments about getting the kids to school being a problem for them.

Question: Advise Sally please on the legal issues and implications that relate to her proposals, what
will be required to ensure that employees do not have any legal claims, but also on how to get
agreement and engagement to changes along the line suggested.

Scenario Three - St Ives Shop

The company has largely been doing very well, but the shop in St Ives has not been so successful.
Sales have dropped to the point where salaries, rent and machinery costs mean the business hardly
breaks even. Sally had originally started the shop as a photoshop/design studio, but most of the
business has been “walk in” digital photo processing and now Sally has lost interest in keeping this
going. Sales have dropped as more and more shops such as Tesco’s have installed self-service
photo processing machines. From the time when Sally had originally opened the shop/studio she
gradually recruited the current team of three people. The first was Greg, the son of another
employee who’d approached her with the idea for the shop. Greg had been working for a similar
shop in Ely and wanted to run a shop for himself. Sally had a bit of spare cash at the time, and
therefore found the shop premises and appointed Greg as Shop Manager. He has been running the
shop ever since, along with a young man (Tony) who Greg introduced to the business. Tony has
skills in Graphic Design and computer photo processing. The final employee who joined the team
is a young part-time assistant (Gale) who had “photoshop” skills and now works 4 days a week
(Wed-Saturday. Greg has been employed from the start in July 2007, Tony was recruited in
November 2007. Gale in March 2008, originally as a Saturday only worker whilst she was at
College, but she has done more and more hours since the summer of 2008.

After some thought Sally has decided to close the shop when the lease is up for renewal on 1st
November 2010 and aims to bring just one member of the St Ives shop team back in house to join
the team at Haddenham. She believes that someone with existing skills in using digital imaging,
and photography would be a useful addition to the staff skills mix at Haddenham, but that the
person would also have to be willing to get to grips with a wider IT skill set to be more adaptable to
assist on projects across all the business. The position she has in mind offering is “project
assistant” at about £13,000.00 a year. She says she cannot afford to offer work at Haddenham for
all three staff. The employment contract for Greg as Shop Manager gives him a salary of
£20,000.00 a year, and contains a clause providing that he can be asked to work in any local office.
Such clauses do not appear in either of Gale or Tony’s contracts of employment, both of these
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contracts are permanent, open-ended ones, Tony’s job title is Assistant Manager, on an annual
salary of £14,500.00 and Gale’s job title is Sales and Photoshop Assistant her annual salary
averaged approx £10,000.00 last year based on the hours she has been working as her hourly rate is
at £6.75 an hour.

Advise Sally on what are her legal responsibilities regarding these employees if she goes ahead and
closes the Shop in St Ives.

Question: Sally has specifically asked to know what the legal situation is here and how she should
handle the issues arising from closing this shop, and whether she can selectively transfer one of
these staff to the proposed new job at Haddenham.

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