Learning in Small Bites

General
Extra
Technical

General

Extra

Technical

Key Legislation Underpinning Employment Contracts

The Employment Rights Act 1996 underpins contracts of employment in the United Kingdom.

The terminolgy to use is a written statement of particulars of employment. This summarises the main particulars of the employment relationship and must according to the legislation be given within two months of the person's first day of service.

Whilst the law states two months it would actually be poor form to encourage a person to give up an existing job or prior state of affairs without actually presenting them with the contractual terms of their new role until two months after it has started. The law is quite flexible but if we are truly focused on the quality of the engagement with the prospective member of staff the written statement of particulars really should be issued as soon as possible after the decision to appoint has been made.

Issuing the written statement of particulars at the earliest point means the person is aware of what they being contracted to and can clarify any uncertainties before accepting. Starting a relationship in this manner where possible helps ensure a more harmonious contract.

The key aspects of a written statement of particulars are as follows:

The names of the employer and employee.
The title of the job which the employee is employed to do or a brief description of the work for which they are employed.
Where the employment is not intended to be permanent, the period for which it is expected to continue.
Either the place of work or, where the employee is required or permitted to work at various places, an indication of that and of the address of the employer.
The date when the employment began.
The date on which the employee’s period of continuous employment began (taking into account any employment with a previous employer which counts towards that period). The continuous employment date is often the same as the start date. Where it is earlier this may give the new starter certain employment rights that come with longer service.
The scale or rate of remuneration/pay or the method of calculating this.
The intervals at which remuneration is paid (that is, weekly, monthly or other specified intervals).
Any terms and conditions relating to hours of work.
Entitlement to holidays, including public holidays, and holiday pay.
How incapacity for work due to sickness or injury will be handled, including any provision for sick pay.
Pensions and pension schemes.
The length of notice which the employee is obliged to give and entitled to receive to terminate his contract of employment.
Any collective agreements which directly affect the terms and conditions of the employment. In large organisations trade unions negotiate with the employer on behalf of staff, the agreements they reach with the employer are called collective agreements.

Key to the Organisation Chart

An explanation of the symbols used

	This icon represents a unit that has child units. Click it to see the child units.
	This icon means that a unit has its child units visible. Click to close the child units.
Unit name	Click on a unit to get more information on it. If the unit has child units it will open a page showing them too.
	Clicking this icon takes you to some basic theory on organisation charts and structure.
	This button is Collapse All and when clicked closes all units that have been opened up.
	This button is Expand All and when clicked opens all units so you will see every aspect of the tree.

Welcome to Learning in Small Bites

Welcome to the free website for people who want to learn about the technology used for keeping staffing details in offices. Using this site you can learn as much from the comfort of your arm chair as you could in two years at work. Here is your chance to practice with systems that you may only have heard about. Get a behind the scenes view of what happens with your information and how it is stored.

This site is aimed at people from school leaving age and above who may be interested in working with what are known as Human Resources (HR) information systems.

If we can help even one person to secure a job in HR or specialise in HR systems as a result of using our free development site then the creators of HRMISolutions and Learning in Small Bites will have achieved what we set out to do.

Prerequisites

You will get the best out of this site if you have:

A little experience of using a computer, a tablet or a smart phone.
A desire to help people to use less effort to achieve more.
An interest in office systems (don't worry if you are not sure at the start).

About

About

Case Management Tools

Here we start to look at the systems that might be used in the administration of the types of cases that occur during the employment relationships. Administrators will get a chance here to look at the workings of a case monitoring system.

Types of cases that might be dealt with include:

complaints (an individual or group are not happy)
disciplinary (the organisation is concerned about an employee's action and needs to investigate them)
sickness (the person is unwell a lot, what can be done?)

and so on.

Why bother with systems?
In truth there is no rule that says any system should be used. That said anyone going through a process in an organisation has a right to know that they are being treated in the same manner that other staff have been treated. Staff need to be comfortable that any decisions made are based on the facts of the matter and importantly not dispropostionately different from how other people have been treated in similar circumstances. Imagine how upsetting it would be if people in an organisation felt that for example staff from the south were more likely to be treated more favourably than staff from the north or men were always treated better than women.

The anonymised data stored in systems help large organisations to show that they treat all staff fairly.

In Development Coming Soon. This is one of the more difficult HR tools to build a demo of. We need to do a lot of thinking on this.