EZHR Weekly Round Up 4th November 2022

On this week’s EZHR weekly update we talk about the new carer's leave support and World Cup preparations

A new change that seems to have appeared somewhat under the radar is the introduction of Carer’s Leave. This will be available to all employees, from day-one right, who have caring responsibilities for those with long-term health conditions.

This unpaid leave allows people to take up to one week of unpaid leave per year taken either as a week, or as single days or half days. They must have be acting as a carer and for most employers this will be an established relationship. You are duty-bound to consider these requests and make sure that you do this. The reality is that you will need to have very clear and justifiable reasons to reject these requests, if you think you need to reject them, please get in contact.

Don’t forget the World Cup kicks off on the 20th of November and runs through to the 18th of December. The time difference from Qatar will cause some issues for some employers with games kicking off at 10 am, 1 pm, 4 pm and 7 pm in the UK.

How companies manage this is down to them but we’d suggest that you start planning out what you will do and communicate this to your teams.

Finally, there are some changes on the horizon to keep an eye on. A bill is being read in parliament on extending the Flexible Working obligations for employers with two requests in a year and a heavier emphasis on communicating the reasons why a flexible working request has been rejected. Additionally, the Retained EU Law Bill is starting to take shape and define what laws the government is going to sunset. The details aren’t confirmed but we’ll update you as soon as we can.