Employment

Creating a happy and engaged workforce is vital to the success of your business. 

We work closely and proactively with our clients to identify and address potential workforce problems before they arise, enabling you to optimise the performance of your people – and your organisation.

Employment law and HR best practices are constantly changing. This creates additional risk and potential claims for organisations that aren’t up to speed with the latest developments.

That’s where we can help

With Stephens Scown, our experienced and proactive team of employment law specialists works alongside you, guiding, advising and helping you find the right solution for your circumstances.

Not only do we ensure your employment practices are legally watertight, we can also help you get the most from your employees. This means taking the time to understand your organisation, identifying and explaining the best routes to success, and sharing practical advice that will ultimately make life easier and more profitable.

Market-leading expertise from people you can relate to

We offer support on both contentious and non-contentious matters, with an expert, pragmatic and commercially savvy approach to your queries. We can also talk with real first-hand experience about the value and benefits of employee engagement, as Stephens Scown itself has consistently featured in the Best Companies to Work For.

Confidence and confidentiality

Our ever-expanding team of legal and HR specialists has the knowledge, skills and experience to help you achieve your objectives. Based in the South West, but with a customer base across the whole of the UK, we offer a truly national service, with one of the largest multi-discipline HR and employment law teams in the region. Our work is ranked as Tier One by Legal 500 and recognised by Chambers, while a number of our expert employment lawyers are recognised as leaders in their fields.

We can support your organisation with its purpose and impact:

Our Employment and Immigration team is renowned for its approach to ethical HR people management. This approach ensures that you are not only complying with the required standards to not infringe employment law but are also looking for the best ways to maintain your culture and values while doing so.

It is being alive to the ripple effect and open to new ways of balancing what the organisation needs, with what works for your people. It can sometimes mean tackling hard situations in different ways, while still being prepared to have challenging conversations or resolve issues when they arise.

If you would like inspiration on how to get a happy and engaged workforce, you can read more here, this also details what ethical HR is and what’s in it for employers.

Examples of work the team have done include:

• Implementing hybrid and flexible working policies that work for both parties.
• Approaching restructure or redundancy processes with a people-centred approach.
• Managing strong feelings on moral issues within a charity team, in a way that kept the team working together and avoiding a costly dispute.
• Ensuring fair and supportive treatment of those coming from overseas to work in the UK under sponsor licenses.

Equality, diversity and inclusion

Most organisations have policies to avoid discrimination, victimisation and harassment. Many have training to seek to ensure colleagues act appropriately in the workplace. Our Employment Team support organisations with both of these mandatory requirements, as well as:

• Reviewing and formulating bespoke EDI programmes.
• Advising on potential EDI risks arising in new policies, practices and procedures in organisations.
• Investigating allegations of discrimination and guiding on how to manage disputes and Employment Tribunal cases on the Equality Act.
• Supporting on trickier aspects that arise, where there are competing views or interests.

To find out more about what we do as a firm to support organisations with their purpose and impact click here.