Wurkplace Limited

02/09/2026

Employing Someone Under 18 years old -

Additional legal requirements apply when employing anyone under 18.

If you are thinking of doing this or already do this as an Employer, you should first confirm the individual’s age and whether they have reached compulsory school-leaving age.

Those aged 16 or 17 are generally treated as “young workers”, while stricter child-employment rules may apply to anyone who has not yet reached compulsory school-leaving age. This can include some 16-year-olds.

Before employment begins, the employer should ideally -

- Review its risk assessment to consider the young person’s age, experience, maturity and physical development.
- Confirm that the proposed duties and equipment are appropriate.
- Put suitable induction, training and supervision arrangements in place.
- Ensure working hours, rest breaks and shift patterns comply with the special rules for young workers.
- Consider restrictions on night work, lone working and hazardous activities.
- Check whether local authority permission or a child-employment permit is required.

Young workers generally have shorter maximum working hours, longer rest requirements and greater protection from night work than adult employees. These rights cannot usually be waived.

Children below compulsory school-leaving age are subject to significantly tighter restrictions concerning the work they may undertake and when they may work. Local authority rules may also apply.

Employer should contact Wurkplace before appointing anyone under 18 or changing their duties or shift pattern so that the appropriate checks, risk assessment and safeguards can be put in place.

[email protected]
03304005490

26/08/2026

Even in what continues to be a challenging climate for businesses, we are delighted to say that Wurkplace continues to grow.

Running a business is never easy, but we’ve always believed that hard work, good people and looking after your clients properly eventually pays off.

And right now, the support businesses need is changing rapidly.

Employment law is becoming increasingly complex, tribunal claims are rising and employers are facing a significant amount of new legislation over the coming months. Whether you employ one person or more than a thousand, getting things wrong can be costly.

That’s why we continue to invest in and strengthen our team and the expertise available to our clients across HR, Employment Law, Health & Safety, Occupational Health, Training and Wurkplace Hub.

We’ve recently welcomed some fantastic additional expertise into the business, strengthened a number of our teams and celebrated internal progression too — something we’re particularly pleased about.

Wurkplace isn’t a huge corporate organisation. We’re an SME ourselves and we’ve been supporting businesses locally and throughout the UK since 2010. We understand the pressures that come with employing people because we deal with those realities every day too.

We’re proud to be growing, but growth for us isn’t simply about becoming bigger.

It’s about being able to help more businesses, offer greater expertise and be there when our clients need us.

With the amount of change coming for UK employers, having the right support around you has arguably never been more important.

[email protected]
03304005490

HR | Employment Law | Health & Safety | Occupational Health | Training | Wurkplace Hub

26/08/2026

Manual Handling Training Alone Isn't Enough

When an employee suffers a back, shoulder or musculoskeletal injury at work, employers will often say “but they have had manual handling training.”
Training is important, but on its own, it is not enough.

Employers have a duty to avoid hazardous manual handling where reasonably practicable and, where it can't be avoided, to properly assess and reduce the risk.

Contrary to a common misconception, there isn't one legal maximum weight that an employee can lift. The risk depends on much more than the number on the box.

Employers should consider the task itself, the weight and shape of the load, how frequently it's being handled, the working environment, the employee's individual capabilities and whether lifting equipment or a different way of working could reduce the risk.

It's also important to look at what employees actually do in practice.
Your risk assessment might say that two people carry a particular item, for example, but is that really happening every day?

If employees are reporting recurring back pain, strains or other musculoskeletal problems, don't simply treat these as isolated sickness absences. They could be an early warning that something about the work needs reviewing.

How can Wurkplace help?
At Wurkplace, we can help businesses make sure their manual handling arrangements are both compliant and practical.
Our Health & Safety and Occupational Health team can support you with -
- Manual handling risk assessments
- Workplace and task assessments
- Safe systems of work
- Manual handling training
- Accident and near-miss investigations
- Review of existing policies and procedures

Where an employee is experiencing health problems, our HR and Occupational Health services can work alongside your Health & Safety support to consider fitness for work, workplace adjustments and ongoing absence.

We also provide in house, on-line or remote training should you require us for this too.

Don't wait for an injury to discover that your controls weren't working.

If you are unsure whether your current manual handling arrangements are sufficient, speak to the Wurkplace team.

www.wurkplace.co.uk
[email protected]
0330 400 5490 option 3 H&S

We take great pride in providing excellent customer service and ensuring a healthy work-life balance. Get a competitively priced, customised HR, H&S and employment law service with Wurkplace.

16/08/2026

Zero-hours contracts are NOT being banned - but the way employers use them is changing.

There seems to be a lot of confusion around the forthcoming changes to zero-hours contracts.

The Employment Rights Act 2025 introduces significant new protections aimed at ending what the Government describes as “one-sided flexibility”.

The new requirements include the following -
- A right to be offered guaranteed hours which reflect the hours a qualifying
worker has actually been working over a reference period.
- A right to reasonable notice of shifts, including changes to those shifts.
- A right to payment where shifts are cancelled, moved or cut short at short notice.
- Similar protections for agency workers, although some of the rules will
operate differently because of the relationship between the worker, agency and hirer.

However, here's the important point for employers - this doesn't mean every zero-hours worker suddenly has to be given a permanent fixed-hours contract.
The intention is to tackle situations where the flexibility effectively works only one way e.g. where somebody is routinely working regular hours but continues to have no corresponding certainty over their hours or income.

There is also still a lot of detail to yet be decided in the regulations. In fact, the Government's consultation on how these rights should operate remains open until 25 August 2026.

So what should employers be doing now?

It would be sensible to start looking at your workforce and possibly asking the following questions -
- Who is currently engaged on a zero or low-hours contract?
- What hours are they actually working in practice?
- Are there workers whose hours have become regular and predictable despite what their contract says?
- How much notice do you currently give when issuing or changing rotas?
- What happens when you cancel a shift at short notice?

The legislation isn't about removing genuine flexibility from the workplace.
Employers who have historically relied on contractual flexibility while operating very different working arrangements in practice may have some work to do.

This is one change where reviewing working practices now could make the eventual transition considerably easier.

For advice on Zero Hours contracts contact us on 03304005490 or email [email protected]

13/08/2026

Could the UK follow Australia’s lead on AI-generated grievances and disciplinaries?

Anyone working in HR or employment law will recognise the growing frustration - a grievance arrives, it is 10, 15 or sometimes 20 pages long. It is repetitive, overly legalistic, full of accusations, references to legislation and sweeping statements - and it is fairly obvious that much of it has been generated by an AI tool.

The difficulty is that buried somewhere amongst all of that wording may be a perfectly genuine grievance that absolutely deserves to be investigated properly.

Sadly, not the UK, but an interesting case from Australia last week highlighted exactly this problem.

The Fair Work Commission considered a bullying complaint brought by a caretaker working for a company on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast.
Importantly, she (the caretaker) did have a genuine complaint.

The Commission found that defamatory emails had been circulated about her and that the company chair had even been keeping a diary commenting on her appearance.

However, the Commission was highly critical of the caretakers correspondence, which it considered appeared to have been prepared using AI. The Commission described it as lengthy, wide-ranging, repetitive, full of generalisations and often accusatory in tone.

The volume and nature of the correspondence had become so difficult that the Commission found it unsurprising that the employer eventually stopped responding.

This, for us, is the important point - AI hadn't strengthened the caretaker's grievance, it had almost buried it.

We are increasingly seeing the same problem in UK workplaces.
HR teams and managers are receiving extremely lengthy AI-generated grievances, grievance appeals, disciplinary responses and correspondence which can take hours - sometimes days - to properly work through.
Employers cannot simply ignore them. Every allegation still needs to be identified, considered and responded to appropriately.

However, the sheer volume can make an already difficult employee relations process unnecessarily adversarial, expensive and time-consuming.
It can also be counterproductive for the employee as a genuine allegation risks becoming lost amongst pages of repetitive wording, unnecessary legal terminology and allegations which the employee may not even fully understand or be able to substantiate.

We have already seen judicial comment on this issue in the UK. In 'CX v Secretary of State for Justice', an Employment Tribunal judge commented on the tendency for AI-generated documents to be lengthy, difficult to follow and highly repetitive.

Australia has now gone considerably further.

The Fair Work Commission ordered that future communication between the parties should be brief, accurate and respectful - and prepared without the use of AI tools.

Hopefully we will see UK tribunals and ACAS taking an increasingly pragmatic approach to this.

12/08/2026

The next phase of the Employment Rights Act 2025 comes into effect on 30 October 2026, bringing with it some of the biggest changes to trade union rights in a generation.

Whether your business currently works with trade unions or not, these reforms could have a significant impact on how you manage employee relations.

From 30 October, employers should be aware of changes including -
🔹 New rights for trade unions to request access to workplaces to meet, support, represent, recruit and organise workers, subject to the statutory process.
🔹 Reforms to the statutory recognition and derecognition process, including strengthened rules around unfair practices.
🔹 New rights and protections for trade union representatives.
🔹 Enhanced protection for workers against detriment for taking protected industrial action.
🔹 New obligations on employers to inform workers of their right to join a trade union.

These reforms form part of the Government's wider ‘Plan to Make Work Pay’ and are designed to strengthen collective employment rights across the UK.

For employers, this means now is the time to -
• Review your employee
relations strategy.
• Ensure managers
understand the new legal
requirements and know
what to do if a union
representative turns up at
the front desk
unannounced.
• Update HR policies and
procedures where required.
• Train managers on
handling trade union
requests lawfully and
confidently.
• Seek advice before issues
arise, rather than when
disputes have already
escalated.

Many SMEs have never had to deal with trade unions before. However, these changes mean employers need to understand both their rights and their obligations before the legislation takes effect.

At Wurkplace, we're already helping employers prepare for the upcoming changes through practical HR advice, employment law support, management training and compliance support.

If you'd like to review your current HR practices ahead of these changes, get in touch with our team:
📞 0330 400 5490
📧 [email protected]

Preparation now could save significant time, cost and disruption later.

06/08/2026

A recent interesting case was that of University of Bristol v Miller in relation to Protected Beliefs and Workplace Conduct.

In this case the Employment Appeal Tribunal has reinforced an important distinction for employers.

Dr David Miller's anti-Zionist beliefs were found to be protected philosophical beliefs under the Equality Act 2010. The tribunal concluded that the University dismissed him largely because he expressed those protected beliefs, making the dismissal discriminatory, unfair and wrongful. It found that a lesser sanction would have been appropriate.
However, the tribunal also held that some of Dr Miller's comments, particularly those directed at named student groups, went beyond the protected expression of his beliefs and amounted to misconduct. As a result, his unfair dismissal compensation was reduced by 50%.
The EAT upheld those findings, with the only issue being remitted back to the tribunal to reconsider whether Dr Miller would likely have been fairly dismissed at a later date due to subsequent social media posts.

A key takeaway for employers here is having a protected belief does not provide immunity from disciplinary action. The crucial question is whether an employer is responding to the protected belief itself, or to the way it has been expressed.

It is advisable for employers to distinguish between protected beliefs and misconduct arising from the manner of their expression.

04/08/2026

The Employment Rights Act 2025 marks one of the biggest changes to UK employment law in decades.

As the Government begins implementing the reforms, the newly established Fair Work Agency (FWA) is set to become the UK's single enforcement body for employment rights, bringing together enforcement powers that were previously spread across several organisations.

Combined with the existing powers of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), businesses are entering a new era of workplace regulation where proactive enforcement is expected to become the norm rather than the exception.

The Fair Work Agency will have extensive powers to -
- Investigate businesses without first receiving an employee complaint.
- Require employers to produce employment records and payroll
information.
- Enforce compliance with statutory employment rights, including holiday
pay, statutory sick pay and National Minimum Wage obligations.
- Recover sums owed to workers on their behalf.
- Issue financial penalties where employers fail to comply with employment
legislation.

At the same time, the HSE continues to carry out inspections and investigations into health and safety compliance, with inspectors having powers to enter premises, examine documentation, interview employees and directors, issue Improvement and Prohibition Notices and prosecute serious breaches.

For employers, this means that maintaining compliant HR documentation is no longer simply best practice - it's becoming an essential business requirement.

Ask yourself -
- Are your contracts of employment legally compliant?
- Are your policies up to date with the latest legislative changes?
- Can you evidence holiday pay calculations and payroll records?
- Have your managers been trained in employment law?
- Are your health and safety procedures fully compliant?

The cost of getting it wrong is increasing. Financial penalties, legal claims, reputational damage and business disruption can all result from failing to implement what is required. Gone are the days where employers can get away with a badly drafted contract of employment and a couple of policies inherited from who knows where.

Now is the time to carry out a full HR and Health & Safety audit before an inspector asks you to.

At Wurkplace, we help businesses stay compliant through practical HR support, employment law advice, health & safety consultancy and our own HR software, Wurkplace Hub, giving employers confidence that they're ready for whatever inspection or legislative change comes next.

Call us on 0330 400 5490 or email [email protected]

04/08/2026

Sixteen years ago, our Managing Director Karen Owen took what was meant to be a temporary break from her legal career and helping to set up her family business to build something she believed businesses genuinely needed.

In 2010 she founded Wurkplace (formally OSM consultants) with a simple vision - to provide SME’s with commercially focussed Employment Law, HR and H&S support, delivered by people who take the time to understand their clients and become a trusted extension of their business.

Back then she never imagined where the journey would lead.

Over the years Wurkplace have had the privilege of supporting businesses across the UK through growth, restructures, difficult employment issues, H&S challenges and constant changes in legislation. We’ve built long lasting relationships with clients who continue to put their trust in us every day.

One of Karen’s biggest ambitions going back as far as 2012 was always to create our own HR platform. Initially Wurkplace white labelled a HR system for clients. However, white labelling is no longer a requirement and after years of investment, development and determination, we are incredibly proud that Wurkplace Hub is now a reality.
Unlike many providers, we own 100% of our software and IP, with our platform developed by our own UK based software development team. It’s been built from real life experience, listening to clients and understanding what businesses actually need from a HR system.

We work hard every day to continually improve and develop the system and are always open to liaising with our clients who are on the system to continually improve and adapt.

As employment law continues to evolve, our focus remains exactly the same as it was on day one - providing practical, commercially sound advice with exceptional personal service.

Thank you to every client, colleague and business owner who has been part of the Wurkplace journey over the last 16 years. Your support has helped us grow into the business we are today, and now we enter a period of growth in all areas of our business we are genuinely excited about what comes next.

Here’s to the next chapter.