Small business owners spend more time dealing with employment law issues than any other administrative task, according to the Forum of Private Business (FPB).The FPB's cost of compliance survey found that employment law outranked health and safety and tax when it came to time-consuming administration, with small business owners spending an average of 37 hours per month dealing with employment-related legal concerns. According to the study, small businesses spend £259 million per year on work associated with dismissals and redundancy. A further £391 million is spent on absence control and management, £237 million is spent on maternity, £333 million on disciplinary issues and £1,175 million on holidays and any other remaining aspects of employment legislation.
"Like the FPB, we are lobbying government to create a regulatory environment better suited to stability and growth for small businesses and employment legislation is definitely one area needing significant attention," said APA Director General Gareth Osborne. “Over regulation has stifled employment rather than enabled it and businesses are far less likely to employ additional staff and solider-on with existing resources. We need to ease these burdens as the market improves or small business will remain recruitment phobic.”
According to a study by employment law firm Peninsula, almost half of the UK's small and medium-sized enterprises were afraid of disciplining staff for fear of being sued.
Gareth, APA
3 comments:
My PA and I were just talking about this issue - after she read it on the site - and it inflamed me to write.
The worst thing we ever did was create a business specialisation around staffing - sorry Human Resources!!!! My PA and I used to do it all and we usually flex without any stress to people who worked for us. Staffing is all about angst these days; on both sides and usually fuelled by lawyers; that other well known shower of super egos!
I fully support your efforts to educate Government but don't hold out to much hope - they don't really care, as long as we keep paying tax.
I'm all in favour of employees being protected but why in the process did the powers that be make it so difficult for the employer, especially small business. It's like the 'sue them' culture - I fell down a staircase in the office a few months ago (a silly 'accident') and someone immediately suggested I sue! A little bit of good old fashioned common sense please.
Don't you think that some small busineses spend too much time moaning about these issues (usually branded as Red Tape)? They really aren't that difficult to administer and legislation protects more people than it diadvantages. On balance I'm in support of responsible social legislation and any measure that can cut down on the commercial abuse of employees. It still happens and will continue to happen unless we impose even tougher constraints.
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