HR compliance

Most businesses do not break employment rules on purpose. They grow, hire quickly, take on a contractor here and an agency worker there, and keep their staff files the way the first office manager set them up. Nothing seems wrong until an inspection, a claim or a buyer’s review asks for a document nobody can find, or a practice that was always done a certain way turns out to have needed a permit, a notification or a register.

HR compliance is the work of checking those practices before someone else does. An audit looks at what the business actually does, not only at what its policies say, and usually covers:

• the rules on registering staff with the social security authorities before they start, and on the declarations that follow each pay period;
• the rules on the personal data held about employees and applicants — what may be collected, how long it is kept, and who may see it;
• the rules on equal pay and pay transparency, and on the information a business may have to report or disclose;
• the rules on non-discrimination in recruitment, promotion and pay decisions, and on the records that show those decisions to be fair;
• the rules on health and safety at work — risk assessments, prevention duties, and the documents an inspector will ask to see;
• the rules on employing foreign nationals and posted workers — work permits, prior notifications and right-to-work checks;
• the rules on agency workers and subcontracted staff, and on the liability a business can carry for their wages and contributions;
• the rules on labour inspections — what inspectors may request and do, and how a finding can be answered.

Our lawyers can support you with this.