Associates' Corner: Penny Macmillan
This month we asked Penny Macmillan, one of JSB’s top trainers to give us the run down on an average week in her life in the fascinating and complex area of workplace investigations.
Penny is a practising solicitor specialising in employment law with over twelve years’ experience of contentious and non-contentious legal work in the employment field, including TUPE, unfair dismissal, discrimination, whistle blowing and drafting employment contracts, policies, procedures and handbooks. Penny is also Head of the Legal Department at The Race Equality Centre and delivers workshops and seminars on a wide range of employment law and best practice subjects.
A week in the life of me…
Penny Macmillan
This week has been a mixed bag so far. I have been involved in employment law training at introductory and expert level for JSB, advising and drafting.
Codes on dress and personal appearance are often tricky to draft and apply. This week I advised an NHS Trust on how to strike a balance between its interests and the freedom of employees, and of course avoid discriminatory provisions.
A fair amount of the week so far has been spent drafting. This has included recruitment documentation for a blue chip company, including a complex bonus scheme and a grievance about sex and race discrimination, together with the Claim Form and questionnaires.
Current client concerns seem to focus on investigations, managing capability issues and redundancy. I have advised on all of these this week. For instance, after interviewing witnesses, looking at documents (including counter grievances and emails between the complainants) I completed an investigation report into allegations of bullying, sex, race and disability discrimination for an organisation. Without a fair and reasonable investigation, subsequent action would be unlikely to be fair. The framework and approach I follow is the one that features in the JSB Conducting Workplace Investigations and Hearings seminar. Another one of which runs in a couple of weeks’ time.
And still a day to go…
