HR and employment law support for retail businesses 

For every retail business, people are one of the most important and valuable assets, but can also be one of the most complicated and time consuming to manage effectively.

As a result of our sector expertise, we are fully aware of the demands of a fast moving and rapidly expanding retail operation, and our team is set up to meet those demands. With genuine sector experts across all key practice areas, we are well placed to provide a full service offering to retail businesses.

We help our clients with every aspect of the management of their workforce, adding value to their HR function and helping them achieve consistently better outcomes. We provide employment law and immigration advisory services for clients that have a combination of centralised HR advice plus multiple site operations. We advise on the full spectrum of HR issues and provide pragmatic solutions, not just legal opinions, and can work as part of an HR department, act as an HR consultant or advise senior management directly.

We invest time to understand a client’s policies, procedures, its business objectives and culture to ensure that the advice that we give works for their operational context. We can help to keep risk under control, while coming up with effective commercial solutions that work for our clients’ organisations.

We offer support and advice on the full employment lifecycle, including:

• recruitment and on-boarding
• immigration and mobility
• pay – reward and benefits
• policies and procedures
• developing and training employees
• exit and severances.

Employment tribunal experts

We also advise on disputes across all aspects of the employee/ employer relationship including:

• unfair dismissal (actual and constructive) or wrongful dismissal
• workforce restructuring, outsourcing and redundancy
• diversity, discrimination & equal pay
• pay & reward
• discipline & grievance
• whistleblowing
• breach of contract.

We regularly advise our clients on what to do to avoid issues escalating, including clearer communication and delivering training to line managers and operational teams. But if the situation does not improve or you receive a formal Employment Tribunal claim, we can support you at each stage of the dispute process.

Experience

• Peacocks Stores – Retained to advise Peacocks Stores on all employment-related matters following the purchase of the business out of administration by Edinburgh Woollen Mill. Our work has included employment tribunals, TUPE issues arising out of the administration and all related employment advice.
• Major high street retailer – Representing this client with almost 400 stores nationwide, and a significant online presence on all of their employment-related matters. This includes day-to-day helpline support, contractual reviews and employment tribunals. Our recent work for them has included the management and defence of two employment tribunal claims which were brought by a former and a current employee, citing disability discrimination due to type 2 diabetes and, in the case of the former employee, constructive unfair dismissal. We supported this client with these claims at each stage of the process, ensuring that we achieved the best possible commercial outcome for them. This was only possible through the in-depth nature of our relationship with this client, which ensured that we had a genuine understanding of the commercial realities of the situation.