Understanding Employment Law for Employers
Employment law for employers should do more than help CEOs, Business Owners and HR Managers to deal with problems when they arise. The right legal support gives you the confidence to make informed decisions, manage your people effectively and protect your business from unnecessary risk.
At Winston Solicitors, our business employment law experts work alongside employers across the UK to provide clear, commercially focused advice that helps you navigate difficult situations, strengthen your processes and stay ahead of changing employment law.
Whether you are managing a senior exit, dealing with a performance or disciplinary issue, reviewing your employment policies or facing a potential claim, our employment law experts advise and defend you from the employer’s perspective. Every piece of advice is tailored to your business, your objectives and your risk appetite.
The need for robust employment law advice is particularly important as employment legislation continues to change. The Employment Rights Act 2025 is reshaping employer duties throughout 2026, including new day-one rights and changes affecting how employers manage performance. For businesses, understanding these changes and putting the right processes in place can help prevent a small mistake from becoming a costly dispute.
If a tribunal claim has already arrived, the clock is running. You have 28 days from the date the tribunal sends you the claim (the ET1 is the form an employee uses to start a tribunal claim) to file your ET3 (your formal response). Miss it and you can lose the right to defend at all.
What We Do for our Business Employment Law Clients
When an employment issue arises, you need more than a legal answer. That’s where employment law for employers comes in. You need to know what your options are, understand the risks and have a clear plan for what happens next. Our employment lawyers work with employers to resolve issues early where possible. We provide robust representation when matters become more serious.
From day-to-day employee issues to complex disputes and tribunal claims, we provide practical, commercially focused advice designed to protect your business and help you make confident decisions.
- Defend tribunal claims from the ET1 landing through to the hearing and any appeal
- Advise on unfair and constructive dismissal, discrimination and harassment
- Handle settlement agreements, executive exits, redundancy and restructuring
- Run disciplinaries, grievances and TUPE transfers (the rules protecting staff when a business changes hands) so the process holds up later
- Keep your contracts, handbooks and policies compliant with the Employment Rights Act 2025
We hold over 4,000 five-star reviews, and our clients keep the same specialist solicitor from the first call to the tribunal door.
Does Winston Solicitors Act for Employers Outside Leeds?
Yes. Winston Solicitors acts for employers across the UK, not just in Yorkshire. Leeds is our head office, not the limit of our work. We advise and defend businesses nationally by phone, video and in person, and we represent employers at tribunals wherever the claim is heard.
The Employment Rights Act 1996, the Equality Act 2010 and the ACAS Code of Practice (the statutory guidance a tribunal expects you to follow before dismissing or disciplining anyone) apply the same way in Manchester, Bristol or Newcastle as they do here. What you are buying is specialist defence experience, not a postcode. We bring that wherever your business sits.
Why Choose a Solicitor Over an HR consultancy?
For many businesses, an HR consultancy can provide useful day-to-day support. But when an employment issue becomes contentious or there is a risk of legal proceedings, having access to a solicitor can provide an important additional layer of protection.
One key difference is legal advice privilege. Where the legal requirements for privilege are met, confidential communications between a client and their solicitor for the purpose of giving or obtaining legal advice can be protected from disclosure in legal proceedings. This can be particularly important when you are dealing with a potential tribunal claim or another contentious employment matter.
By contrast, communications with an HR consultant or an unregulated HR advice service will not generally attract legal advice privilege simply because they relate to an employment issue. That means businesses need to think carefully about who they turn to when a routine HR problem starts to develop into a legal dispute.
With Winston Solicitors, you get practical support with the day-to-day employment issues affecting your business, backed by advice from qualified, SRA-regulated employment solicitors. If a matter escalates, you already have a legal team that understands your business, your people and the steps that have been taken. It is more than an HR helpline. It is employment support with legal expertise at its core.
One of the biggest advantages of having a solicitor involved early is understanding not just what you can do, but the legal risks associated with each option. When a workplace issue has the potential to become a claim, getting the right advice at the right time can make a significant difference.
There is the added advantage that the associated correspondence is protected by privilege therefore is not subject to disclosure during the inevitable data subject access request.
Samira Cakali, Head of Employment
Samira leads the Winston Solicitors employment team and advises employers on a wide range of contentious and non-contentious employment matters. Read more about Samira and her experience.
Where Do You Need Us? Choose Your Route
Issues with employment law for employers arrive as a specific document or a specific person. Identify the issues closest to yours and we will take you straight to the detail.
A claim has landed. Defending an employment tribunal claim (ET1 and ET3) walks you through the 28-day response deadline, disclosure, witness statements and the hearing itself. This is the page to open first if a claim is already in your inbox.
Someone is leaving, or you want them to. Settlement agreements from the employer side, executive and senior exits, and redundancy and restructuring cover the negotiated, clean and lawful ways to part company.
A dismissal is being challenged. Unfair and constructive dismissal defence sets out the band of reasonable responses (the legal test of whether your decision was one a reasonable employer could make) and how a fair process protects you.
A complaint or investigation is live. Discrimination and harassment defence, and disciplinaries and grievances, show how to run the process so it holds up if it is later tested at tribunal.
A business is changing hands. TUPE and business transfers covers your duty to share employee liability information and to consult, so a deal does not import a claim.
The law itself has changed. The UK employment landscape is undergoing its biggest shake-up in a generation. The implementation of the Employment Rights Act 2025 brings sweeping reforms taking effect throughout 2026 and into 2027.
For employers, this isn't just a policy refresh - it requires immediate, proactive adjustments to employment contracts, handbook policies, and payroll systems.
You want to stop the problem before it starts. Our myHR retainer gives you an external HR partner on call, and our 24-Month HR & Policy Guarantee keeps your handbooks and contracts compliant so a policy gap never becomes the claim.
Who We Work For
We act for two kinds of employer, and the entry point differs for each.
Businesses with an in-house HR function, roughly 50 to 500 staff, come to us for the contentious work their HR team is not built to run alone: defending claims, tribunal advocacy, senior exits and restructures. You get a specialist litigator alongside your existing team.
Smaller businesses with no HR function, roughly 5 to 50 staff, come to us for the safety net: compliant contracts and handbooks, and someone to call the day something goes wrong. The myHR retainer is built for exactly that gap.
Both meet us at the same moment. Something has gone wrong, there is no one in-house to own it, and getting it wrong means a tribunal.
To discuss employment law for employers and how we can help you to secure your business, speak to the employment law team today.
Call 0113 320 5000 or send an email to employment@winstonsolicitors.co.uk. Your first conversation is always free.
Yes. The ACAS Code sets the standard a tribunal expects you to meet when you handle a disciplinary, a grievance or a dismissal, and a tribunal could increase a claimant’s award by up to 25% if you unreasonably failed to follow it. Running the process to the Code is one of the strongest defences you can build, and Winston Solicitors helps employers across the UK get it right.
Yes. It gives a business without an in-house HR function ongoing access to an employment solicitor, so you always have somewhere to turn the moment something goes wrong, and your contracts and policies stay compliant as the law changes. Winston Solicitors sizes the retainer to your business rather than a one-size package.
Not always. Many employer claims settle before a full hearing, through negotiation or a settlement agreement, and some are resolved at an earlier preliminary hearing. Where a hearing is unavoidable, Winston Solicitors prepares your witnesses and represents you at tribunals across the UK, wherever the claim is heard. We advise on the commercial call of whether to settle or defend well before you reach that point.
You have 28 days from the date the tribunal sends you the claim to file your ET3 response. That deadline is strict and missing it can cost you the right to defend the claim at all. Contact Winston Solicitors the day a claim lands, so we can protect the response before the clock runs down.
We work alongside your team and your policies, not over them. You keep ownership of day-to-day HR, and we take the specialist legal load when it matters: the tribunal defence, the senior exit, the high-risk decision, then hand back. Winston Solicitors supports in-house HR teams across the UK without taking the relationship off them.
myHR is our retainer service that acts as your external HR partner and legal counsel. It audits your policies, gives real-time advice on employee relations, and puts a solicitor within a regulated, privileged relationship at the end of the phone. It is built to stop problems becoming tribunal claims, and it sits alongside our 24-Month HR & Policy Guarantee for full policy cover.
Yes. We defend employers against discrimination and harassment claims under the Equality Act 2010, including claims tied to the positive duty to prevent harassment now in force. We build the defence around your process and evidence, and we advise on the commercial call of when to defend and when to settle.
