Healthcare and Social Care Sector – Useful Empoyment Law &
HR information
RBS
Mentor can help your
healthcare and social care organisation with its Employment Law
compliance and HR needs.
Your organisation might be a GP surgery, a care home, or provide
care in the community, but you’ll rely on your staff to provide
safety and continuous care, often in the face of demanding service
users and constant cost challenges. Your staff are your greatest
asset, but getting the most out of them presents severe challenges.
RBS
Mentor can help.
You’ll need to ensure you recruit the right staff
In health and social care, employee vetting and compliance with
safeguarding requirements is paramount. Failing to do the correct
checks could have very serious consequences, particularly for any
victim of abuse, and could be devastating for your
organisation.
You should:
- Operate strict policies at the recruitment stage to vet and
verify the identity and qualifications of all new starters
- Ensure all staff have up-to-date CRB / Disclosure Scotland
checks
- Comply with any requirements for ongoing updating of these
checks.
RBS
Mentor can provide:
- Up-to-date guidance on all employee vetting and verification
requirements
- Appropriate documentation, including application forms
- 24/7 telephone advice.
On-call and overnight working come with the
territory
You’re likely to have to cover shifts 24/7, to ensure care is
provided at all times. You might have staff on-call, or operate a
sleepover system; perhaps you rely on casual workers to cover some
shifts. Whatever you do, with working time and minimum wage
obligations, you’ll constantly be juggling rota requirements and
trying to stay the right side of the law. Although prosecutions for
working time breaches are rare, the Inland Revenue aims to target
sectors where breaches are common – and worse, service users can be
put at risk by over-tired staff.
You should:
- Ensure your rota requirements don’t leave you exposed to claims
for breach of the National Minimum Wage laws
- Take care to keep a record of the working hours of all staff,
and take particular care with casual staff who may work for more
than one employer.
RBS
Mentor can provide:
- Contracts of employment tailored to the needs of your
business
- Regular updates on these complex areas of law
- 24/7 Advice and support on matters such as the operation of the
Working Time Directive and National Minimum Wage Regulations.
With frequent re-tendering exercises, and now the
abolition of the Primary Care Trusts in England, your organisation
might find itself taking on a whole new workforce.
Community care services have long been contracted out by health
authorities; care homes frequently change hands and now the GP
sector is likely to find itself taking on additional staff as the
PCTs are abolished and their functions distributed amongst the new
clinical commissioning groups. All of this means that your
organisation is likely to inherit staff with long periods of
continuous service and terms and conditions of employment that are
not of your making.
You’ll need help getting to grips with everyone’s employment
rights. You’ll probably need to create your own disciplinary,
grievance and public interest disclosure (whistleblowing)
procedures. You might want to re-issue contracts of employment or
in the longer term, you might even consider making changes to suit
your business or harmonise terms. If you don’t act, you could be
left with procedures that are unduly complex and onerous for your
organisation and a lack of clarity about employees’ terms of
employment.
You should:
- Ensure all staff have appropriate written contracts of
employment
- Ensure you understand your legal obligations to any staff who
have transferred-in to your organisation, for example from a
previous contractor or NHS Trust
- Set up procedures, such as disciplinary and grievance
procedures, that are appropriate to your organisation.
RBS
Mentor can provide:
- Appropriate terms and conditions of employment and contract
documentation
- An Employee Handbook containing procedures appropriate to your
organisation
- 24 / 7 telephone advice to help you deal with things such as
disciplinary issues and staff grievances.