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The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) has, for the first time, considered the scope of an employee’s entitlement to take time off work to care for a dependant.

Under the Employment Rights Act 1996 (ERA), an employee has the right to take a reasonable amount of time off to take necessary action if certain events take place which affect their dependents. One example entitling an employee to take time off is where it is necessary “because of the unexpected disruption or termination of arrangements for the care of a dependant”.

In this case, Royal Bank of Scotland plc v Harrison, the employee discovered on 8 December that her child minder would be unavailable on 22 December. After she failed to find a replacement, she asked her employer on 13 December to have 22 December off. The following week, she was informed that her employer could not cover her absence on that day, that she could not take the day off and that, if she did so, her absence would be treated as unauthorised. The employee had no alternative and stayed at home on 22 December. She subsequently received a verbal warning and her appeal against that warning failed.

The EAT upheld the tribunal’s decision that when the employee found out that her child minder would be unavailable, this constituted an unexpected disruption of arrangements under ERA. It also confirmed that when the employer issued the warning, it had subjected the employee to a detriment contrary to ERA.

The employer argued, amongst other things, that the relevant statutory provisions only applied in situations that arose suddenly or in an emergency and that the tribunal must consider the time which passed between the employee’s learning of the disruption and the disruption taking effect.

The EAT disagreed. “Unexpected” was an ordinary word to be construed according to its natural meaning and did not involve any time element. It noted that when deciding whether an employee is entitled to take time off, the tribunal is entitled to take into account the time which passes between the employee becoming aware of the risk of disruption and that risk becoming fact – but that element of time is primarily relevant to, and part of the question of, whether it was necessary for the employee to take that time off. If the time period is very short, then it will be easier for the employee to establish that it was necessary to take time.

However, the EAT emphasised that there can be no hard and fast rules. Many factors will need to be considered and these include the nature of the disruption, the availability of alternatives, finance and time.

Cabinet Office – removal of mandatory retirement age

The Cabinet Office has announced plans to remove the mandatory retirement age across the junior ranks of the civil service. Department permanent secretaries have agreed with the Council of Civil Service Unions to remove the mandatory retirement age for junior civil servants by 2010. Separate work is being undertaken by the Cabinet Office to review the potential for extending this change to the senior civil service.

A number of Government departments, including the Department for Work and Pensions, have already introduced a no mandatory retirement age policy after anti-age discrimination legislation came into force in 2006.

This announcement was timed to coincide with National Older People’s Day last week. Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell said “Older People's Day recognises the important contribution that older workers make in the workplace…The new commitment by all departments to a no mandatory retirement age policy across the Civil Service by 2010, for those below the Senior Civil Service, is an important change to our workforce policy. It is a practical demonstration of our commitment to providing greater flexibility for our people.”

Mediation – new guide 

Acas and CIPD have jointly produced an employer’s guide on mediation, offering an insight into employers' experience of mediation.

The guide draws on a survey of CIPD members, a commissioned survey of 500 small/medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and a series of in-depth case studies with companies with mediation schemes.

According to the survey of SMEs, the respondent organisations that use the mediation process indicated that it is successful: almost half said that the last mediation had resolved the issue completely (49%), and more than four in five (82%) said it had resolved the issues either completely or partly.

Poorly managed conflicts affecting business

Poorly managed conflicts in the workplace are crippling British business, according to a recent report authored by business psychology firm OPP and the CIPD.

The average UK employee spends over two hours a week dealing with conflict, which means in total more than 370 million working days were lost last year at a cost to British employers of more than £24 billion.

The report surveyed thousands of employees in nine countries across three continents, in businesses of all sizes and in all sectors. A second survey revealed the opinions of 660 HR professionals in the UK. The figures reveal that stress and heavy workloads are cited as causes by 34% and 33% of employees respectively, although almost half (49%) feel that personality clashes and warring egos are the number one cause (49%).  Significantly, over half of employees (54%) and many more HR professionals (80%) want managers to address underlying tensions before they escalate into conflict.