Distinctions between Self-Employed, Employee, Worker, and Agency Worker

Introduction

Activity 2.1.1

Identify the employment legislation affecting employers and employees.

Employment policies do not necessarily cover each singular aspect of employment. Employer and employee relationships can involve different aspects of mutual trust and respect. which is where law dissertation help becomes the most valuable. Now, specific legislation that affects employers and employees is identified as the contract of employment. In a contract of employment, a job offer letter and conditions of the offer are essential in the management of legislation and appropriately organize the selection process (Bodie, 2019). There should be significant discussion made on what offers are exactly given to the employees along with the context of employment continuation and termination. Statutory legislation indulges in the following rights such as:

Redundancy pay

Maternity and paternity leave

Working time regulations

Protection against discrimination and harassment

Unfair dismissal protection

Statutory legislation requires certain qualifying conditions that are subject to be changed and they require regular monitoring. Health and safety legislation that is going to affect both employee and employer in the workplace is associated with the following:

Workplace regulations 1992: Theses process is indulged with adequate lighting, heating, and ventilation providing to the employees working day and night. Providing them with refreshments is also associated with this law

Personal protective equipment at work regulation of 1992: Employees must be given personal protection equipment throughout so that instructions of they can work safely during this global pandemic.

National labor relations act: Rights of employees are preserved through bargaining collectively and improve the terms and conditions of employment (Culotta, 2018).

Fair credit reporting act: This is identified as a complex law that protects the fairness and privacy of consumers and their credit information and credit history. Waiver of liability is exchanged in terms of employment termination acts. Employees that are of age 40 or older need bona fide occupational qualification.

Anti-discrimination legislation is associated with the legislative diversity improvisation and organizing each required item of parliament's regulations. The main ones are identified as:

Equal pay act of 1970

Employment equality of regulation 2006

Sex discrimination act of 1975

Race relations act of 1976

Disability discrimination act of 1976

Sex discrimination of act of 1975

The equality act came into enforcement in the year of 2010. This also covered the legislation and discrimination of age, disability, and sexual orientation. There is marriage and civil partnership alignment observed in this context. National minimum wage is identified as 1,598.69 EUR per month in UK, $19.84 per hour in Australia.

Activity 2.1.2

Describe the enforcement systems for individual employment rights.

Three basic employment rights of workers are associated with working under secure and toxic-free conditions. There is a certain right-aligned with filing a complaint against the employer. The right to fair wages is also concerned as a part of three basic facilities provided to the laborers. There is a complete need for a single enforcement body for managing employment rights, as the current employment system is not working (Hayes, 2018). An employment tribunal is identified as a judicial body theta from the tribunal's service and resolve disputes between employers and employees for managing the employment rights issues. Tribunal is identified to the same as a court and it is less formal. The employment rights are subject to be reviewed as is part of updating new legislation (Cziraki, and Groen-Xu, 2020).

Making a claim for problem, this has not been solved at work. Employment rights are individually managed through the enforcement systems for individual rights i.e. ACAS, tribunals, ICO for data issues, H&S executive process. The employee in front of employment tribunal is identified as a part of ACAS imposing employment rights. Under the data protection act of 1998, all organizations are asked to process personal information that has been registered with the ICO. Names and address of data controllers should be published in a controlled manner. In case of processing information, the organization should not fail in registering with ICO as it is against the law (Jäckering et al. 2020). The health and safety executive is a UK based government agency responsible for regulation of workplace health and safety concerns. The concerns are associated with occupational risk in Great Britain and sponsor the departments of work and pension. Encouragement of health and safety concerns inside an organization is associated with this group.

Britain’s national regulator for workplace health and safety is associated with H&S executives. Work related death along with ill health and injuries are dealt with this process. A non-departmental public body sponsors department of work and pensions. Giving advice on health and safety guidance along with regulating risks at work is important. This H&S works in association with controlling substance use hazardous to health such chemicals and fumes and dust. Site safety along with an identification of working height is associated with this process. Scaffolding and construction design management is applicable within these rules. Workplace accidents and diseases require to be reported (Bodie, 2019). Health and safety act at work comes with total management of employee health and staying protected from explosives and dangerous substances. Moreover, the ACAS is working closely to monitor employment risks and it suggests with non-disclosure of agreements to stop an employee from sharing worker information.

Termination of employment is also focused with concerned attributes of resignation, dismissal and redundancy. There are practical needs that are assessed with knowledge of employment status and how the resignation, dismissal and redundancy are optimized. ACAS also works with changing of employment contract and hence it associates with employment right properly.

Activity 2.1.3

Employment status is associated with three different types such as self-employed, employee, worker. There are agency workers that add on to the categories of employment status. Agency worker is someone that woks under an employer temporarily and working within a condition of employment. This person is bound to follow employment rules and abide by the timing of work consulted. Employers need to have some control over the employees to carry out work.

Worker status is associated with “halfway house” between employee and self-employed status. Workers are entitled to fewer statutory rights than all employees. They are having some key legal rights such as:

Discrimination protection

Unlawful deduction of wages (Jäckering et al. 2020)

National minimum wage rule fowling

The self-employed status is associated with statutory employment rights and those are protected by discrimination laws. Self-employment people and the HMRC consider the number of factors such as:

Written agreement: A written agreement is something that gives a legitimate process of being hired by an organization. There are all facilities mentioned along with laws applicable for a person working inside that organization.

Control: self-employed people need to take self-control, they should be determined when, and how they are going to complete their work.

Integration: Self-employed individuals need to become integrated within a practice of medical cases and self-employment tactics. Employment tribunal requires managing the high-risk factors of claiming hygiene practices.

Taxation and financial risk: in the case of self-employment, the process of taxation should be well maintained. This helps in gaining overall control of financial risk over the investments made by people of a certain organization (Mgweba, 2019). Employment status matters as workers need to essentially compose the larger aspects of employment concern management.

Activity 2.1.4

Explain the requirements for an organisation for equality and diversity.

Equality can be defined as the elimination of discrimination factors inside the workplace. Equal access and opportunities are engaged within this process of law engagement. Diversity is found out to be recognizing the differences between a specific workplace culture development. The main three components of organizational management are associated equality, diversity, and inclusion. In the case of organizational equality analysis, legal compliance on public sector management and best practice optimization is seen (Nicolescu, 2021). Equality is identified as a legal requirement that is governed by legislation. Equality can be understood by protecting from the situation where discrimination happens to be. Situations are being at workplace, being at public healthcare or association, participating in meeting and business cases. Equality and diversity are achieved through the factors such as:

Age

Disability

Race

Sex

Pregnancy and maternity

Marriage and civil partnership

Gender reassignment

Religion of belief

Sexual Orientation

The legal requirements of equality and diversity are associated with the legal components:

Ensuring equal pay legislation for men and women and all registered employees

Prevention of discrimination and harassment of staff by others (Hayes, 2018)

Discrimination against applicants and staff for giving the adequate benefits

Unfair dismissal and discrimination claim is associated with defending the employment concepts and policy management inside an organization. It is also important to report a gender pay gap in the particular domain of work. Ethnicity along with pay gap management is associated with public-sector employee equality. Organizational equality and diversity are managed through a componential analysis of:

Culture of fairness and inclusion

Appropriate diversity management and inclusion training

Sending clear message

Becoming aware of indirect discrimination

Staff should be given diverse learning and income opportunities

Prevention of unconscious biases

Equality act 2010 is indulged with preventing age-based discrimination against adults in a specific set of organizations. Unlawful discrimination of age is covered in this particular act. There is a diversity requirement observed that observes internal, external, and organizational concepts (Payne, and Payne, 2017). Diversity promotion can be identified as a crucial part of:

Acknowledging differences

Encourage personal evaluation

Offering implicit bias training to each involved person

Valuing ethnic, cultural diversity to a large extent

Diversity is identified as a moral one that recognizes and embraces benefits. Diversity explains higher adjustments qualities and better employee engagement. Learning and understanding each other is done through diverse recognition programs. Unique distribution of work process is seen in diverse organization 87% times.

Activity 2.1.5

Explain the importance of employee background checks.

Conditions of Job Offer include the following aspects and these are:

Confirmation of eligibility to work checks such as work permits

Satisfactory reference/s that may be outstanding

Confirmation of any qualification that might be required

However, if a job offer is subject to any conditions or checks, then this must be clearly stated both when the job offer is verbally made and in any job offer correspondence. Background checks are going to reduce the company’s liability and save the organization from a bad hiring decision. “Company can lower insurance costs and avoid unnecessary lawsuits by only hiring people who clear a pre-employment screening.” Hiring an incompatible person is frustrating and hence it required a background check to be conducted to the earliest possible.

Checking for references and the attitude towards work in previous work is mandatory. Moreover, there is checking done whether the person satisfies UK employment laws or not. Any specific detail that violated employment laws is justified. Some valid documentation checks include

GB or EU passport

Birth certificate with official confirmation of NI number

Home office residence permit

Biometric residence permit indicating infinite leave to stay in UK

It is observed that if a worker is British citizen a Swiss national then there is practically no requirement of generating work permit for UK. Document that provides information on whether the person is a permanent resident or that of a relative is important (Stone, 2018). Biometric immigration document along with certificate of registration is important as important background checks for UK. Official letter that grants permission for staying inside UK as a worker indefinitely is also important.

Activity 2.1.6

Describe the requirements for the handling of personal and sensitive information.

Sensitive handling of data is associated with the total development of an organization and gain maximum support from employees. The general data protection regulation is associated with measuring the compliance of the legislation. According to Stone (2018), all organizations are seen to be managing the possible breach of generalized data to be engaged in associative learning. How data is used for fair legislation should be taken into consideration. The employee consent letter should be filled up to get access to the storage of personal data. Specific needs are incorporated within process actualization and holding the place for appropriate security modules. Unlawful competitive advantages are accessed within system optimization and placing required amounts of information handling. There is associative channelling done by people that engage in selling important organizational data to others in the black market. Access should be provided to specific people that require total development of security inside the organization. The GDPR is associated with security compliance in terms of data protection. Key components of security are indulged with long-term device protection management and organizational programs. Antivirus software and regular system backup are the processes of effective management of software.

Sensitive personal data should be protected well from mass media and organizations should pay more focus on administrative handling of personal data. Personal data can be both of the organizational employees and the customers (Suwannasichon, 2019). The GDPR is engaged with data protection principle and these are:

Lawfulness, fairness and transparency

Accuracy

Data minimization

Storage limitation

Purpose limitation

Integrity and confidentiality

GDPR explains the process of personal data safety and unlawful processing of data and causing damage is explained under the laws. Management of integrity should be the core of data processing as people’s important data should be in secure hands. Information is required to be kept up-to-date and fair storage of data is important. The data should be kept under the name of secure files to maintain trust.

Activity 2.1.7

An employer needs to follow a fair process so that there are less likely a case is generated that goes for judgment under the ACAS. This process is accompanied by though investigation of a compromised incident. The process is to be accompanied by disciplinary rights and gaining further investigation to be done through holding a meeting. There should be a conciliation given by ACAS if the issue is not resolved and it goes for employment tribunal. Individual rights are required to be understood before appealing any sanction related to financial compensation. According to Stone (2018), this process is legal and complaints can be lodged against the employer. “A disciplinary procedure is used by an employer to address an employee's conduct or performance. A grievance procedure is used to deal with a problem or complaint that an employee raises”. ACAS arbitration is usually considered in case of unfair dismissal. The voluntary agreement of both parties is taken into consideration. The independent and legal optimization of issues is indulged within the legal decision management of each party. Fairness and transparency are promoted by developing and using rules and procedures for handling disciplinary and grievance situations. These should be set down in writing, be specific and clear. Employees and, where appropriate, their representatives should be involved in the development of rules and procedures. It is also important to help employees and managers understand what the rules and procedures are, where they can be found and how they are to be used. It has been observed “ACAS arbitration requires the voluntary agreement of both parties. The independent and impartial arbitrator will consider the issues and will deliver a legally binding decision”. Automatic unfair dismissal of an employee comes under the following parts such as:

being pregnant or on maternity leave

wanting to take family leave, for example parental, paternity or adoption leave

being a trade union member or representative

asking for a legal right, for example to be paid the National Minimum Wage

doing jury service

taking action, or proposing to take action, over a health and safety issue

Activity 2.2.1

The different types of workers identified inside a workplace are identified as full-time employees that are working 30 to 40 hours a week. Part-time employees that are typically working less are getting less payment. There is also existence of temporary employees. Some organizations are opting for seasonal employees and freelancers along with independent contractual workers. Consultants are coming up within this category of employee type. Full-time employees follow fair labor standard acts and they do fulfil their duties on time. It has its definition of working under fruitful conditions and offering health care is seen. Shared responsibility payments are managed through this process of employability. The part-time employees are working 30 hours a week and they are not qualifying for all benefits as the full-timers. Temporary employees are taken into consideration to fulfill the requirements of a project in a certain period. These employees are hired directly and their employment is valid to a specific task or project (Suwannasichon, 2019). Moreover, some contingent workers are under the tax payment process of raining $400 in a year. All employees are therefore background checked and their behavioral analysis is processed through relationship components. Workers need to retain their compositional behavioral techniques for compliance management and emerging change organization.

Different types of the employment contract are associated with legal requirement analysis and beneficial understanding providing to both employer and employee. Employment contracts in any country underlie the alignment of the sources of communication between employee and employer. These laws and benefits will be offered to each employee. The task responsibility along with salary information will be provided in this contract. Terms and occurrence of payments are also discussed in the context of developing employment contracts. Fixed-term contracts are quite popular between freelancers and contractors of particular groups. Salary improvisation as well as the right decision management is indulged within the improvised processing of hourly or weekly contact. A person might get all benefits of being employed if the laws mentioned in the contract are appropriate (De Cuyper, and Isaksson, 2017). The contracts are identified to be casual employment, permanent, fixed-term, and zero hour contract types in this context. This is important to give staff their legitimate leaves, sick pay, and benefits.

Contract of service is either identified as an agreement that can be in the form of verbal or written agreement, which binds a person with service of specific set of work and that too in return of salary or compensation. Both employee and employer are enforceable under this law and agreement is valid on both sides. Some important entities mentioned in this contract are:

In this case, the ACAS code of practice can be indulged that retrieves information on improving the working relationships with employers along with employers that want to improve their procedure. Discipline and grievances are supposed to be managed in the workplace. Employer and employee code of conduct along with an addressing common concerns are associated with a deal of practical guidance and managing core competency model of employment.

Appendix 1 provides two useful additional questions to assist in understanding legislation. These questions are self-assessment questions and do not need to be handed in to your tutor/assessor.

Dig deeper into Deciphering Employment Status with our selection of articles.

References

Book

De Cuyper, N. and Isaksson, K., 2017. Employment contracts and well-being among European workers. Routledge.

Journals

Bodie, M.T., 2019. Taking Employment Contracts Seriously. Seton Hall L. Rev., 50, p.1261.

Culotta, F., 2018. Flexible Employment Contracts and Pension Systems.

Cziraki, P. and Groen-Xu, M., 2020. CEO turnover and volatility under long-term employment contracts. Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, 55(6), pp.1757-1791.

Hayes, L., 2018. Work-time technology and unpaid labour in paid care work: A socio-legal analysis of employment contracts and electronic monitoring.

Jäckering, L., Meemken, E.M., Sellare, J. and Qaim, M., 2020. Spoken words fly away, written words remain: Employment contracts between farmers and farm workers (No. 143). GlobalFood Discussion Papers.

Mgweba, A., 2019. A revised role of good faith in the law of contract and employment contracts.

Nicolescu, A., 2021. PARTICULARITIES REGARDING SPECIAL ROMANIAN INDIVIDUAL EMPLOYMENT CONTRACTS. Research and Science Today, 21(1), pp.7-13.

Payne, J. and Payne, N.O.B., 2017. Employment Contracts-How to Lay a Solid Foundation. Nelligan O Brien Payne Ont Can, 28, p.31.

Stone, K.V., 2018. Policing Employment Contracts within the Nexus-of-Contracts Firm.

Suwannasichon, R., 2019. Liquidated Damages in Airline Business Employment Contracts. Thammasat Business Law Journal, 9, pp.46-62.