Staying compliant with evolving employment laws across different jurisdictions is essential for any global business. From new legislation on the right to disconnect in Australia to enhanced protections against workplace stress in Italy, understanding these changes can be challenging.
This update will provide you with a brief overview of the recent employment law changes in Australia, Italy, Poland, Singapore, and the United Kingdom, along with practical steps your organization can take to ensure compliance and foster a supportive work environment.
Employment Law Updates
Australia
From 26 August 2024 employees working for companies with 15 or more employees in Australia have the legal right to disconnect from work outside of their contracted working hours. This legal right is set to extend to employees working for companies with less than 15 employees on 26 August 2025. The new legislation essentially means that employees can refuse to monitor, read, or respond to their employer or a third party outside of work. There are limited circumstances where the right to disconnect would be considered unreasonable but essentially this legislation moves towards ensuring that employees in Australia maintain a healthy work/life balance and address growing incidences of mental health related sickness absence issues.
In response to this new legislation, it is recommended that employers have a right to disconnect policy in place which covers the employee and employer obligations in this regard. HSP can support clients by providing a best practice right to disconnect policy.
Italy
The Italian Supreme Court has made several judgements over recent months that reinforce the employer’s responsibilities and obligations to protect employee’s health and well-being at work. These recent judgements go further as they specifically emphasize the employers’ obligations towards employee’s mental well-being and avoiding employee work related stress.
The Court determined that employers should refrain from any behavior or actions that could harm employee’s mental well-being by creating a stressful working environment. The recent judgements determine that employers are required to refrain and prevent harassment and imposes further obligations on the employer to ensure that they do not make any choices or put in place any initiatives that could cause work related stress.
These recent judgements re-emphasize the importance of employers ensuring they have carried out appropriate risk assessments in Italy, which include any risks associated with mental health and stress and address any actions required on the back of these risk assessments. It is also important that managers continue to regularly check-in with employees and ensure performance management and sickness absence processes are in place that foster a culture of open communication, so employees have opportunity to raise any stress related issues and ensure any issues are dealt with fairly and consistently.
HSP can support clients in ensuring they are meeting with legal obligations in Italy with regards to health and safety and develop locally compliant performance management and sickness absence policies and processes.
Poland
Poland has adopted the EU Whistleblowing Directive into domestic legislation. The new legislation requires employers to have a Whistleblowing policy and process in place. The process must provide whistleblowers with a clearly defined internal and external channel for reporting whistleblowing issues and outline what the subsequent actions the company would take. The policy also should protect whistleblowers from any retaliation.
HSP can support clients by developing locally compliant Whistleblowing policies and procedures.
Singapore
From December 2024, the Singapore tripartite guidelines for flexible working arrangements will come into effect. The guidelines set out the formal process employers must follow when an employee submits a formal flexible working request. Typically, these requests will fall into one of the below categories:
Flexi-place- where employees request to work from a different location (e.g. hybrid or home working arrangement).
Flexi-time- where employee look to carry out their existing duties and working hours flexibly (e.g. compressed hours, flexi hours).
Flexi-load- where employees work flexible hours and change their working pattern and workload (e.g. part time working, job share).
Employers should establish a clear, uniform policy and process for employees to submit any flexible working requests and ensure that they meet their obligations as an employer to approve or refuse a request in line with the tripartite guidelines.
HSP can support employers drafting flexible working policies that are compliant with these new guidelines.
United Kingdom
From 1 October 2024, the Workers Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) imposes additional duties on employers to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of their employees. Key actions that employers will need to put in place include:
Sexual Harassment Policies and procedures.
Regular training sessions for employees and managers.
Appropriate reporting channels.
HSP can support in reviewing any current harassment policies employers have in place as well as provide new policies and procedures and support in developing and rolling out training sessions for employees and managers.
Employment Rights Bill
As outlined in our previous employment law update, the UK Employment Rights Bill was announced during the Kings Speech in July 2024. The new Labour Government states that the Bill will be put into law within the first 100 days in office. The Bill has not yet been passed into legislation, but it is proposed that the following Bill will impose the following:
Ban on ‘zero hours’ contracts.
Day 1 Unfair Dismissal Rights (currently unfair dismissal rights only apply to employees after two years’ service).
Day-one rights on parental leave, sick pay, and protection from unfair dismissal.
Unlawful to dismiss a woman who has had a baby for six months after her return to work.
Flexible working a right from first day of employment.
Should the Bill pass as expected, employers will be required to make changes to employment contracts, policies, and procedures. Once the changes are confirmed, HSP will be able to support employers through all these changes to ensure future compliance.
