Posted: Monday 2 April 2012
The Top Ten Regulations That Deter Employers From Hiring
Further to my recent blog on the increased qualifying period for unfair dismissal, an e-bulletin from Daniel Barnett drew my attention to an interesting piece of research tucked away in BIS’s Call for Evidence on Dismissal and Compensated No-Fault Dismissals. It shows that, in contrast with some of the recent justifications for the increase of the qualifying period, unfair dismissal law does not make the list of the top ten regulations which deter businesses from taking on staff, with only 1% saying that unfair dismissal rules are the regulation which most put them off hiring.
So, what were the top ten reasons? Here is the list according to BIS’s research (figure in brackets denotes the percentage of businesses who picked it out as their top concern):
1 Health & Safety (13%)
2 Maternity/Paternity Leave (10%)
3 Tax (8%)
4 National Minimum Wage (6%)
5 National Insurance (6%)
6 Employer’s Liability Insurance (5%)
7 Working Time Regulations (5%)
8 Sickness Absence (5%)
9 Time Off to Train (4%)
10 Discrimination (3%)
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the response varied significantly depending on the size of the organisation in question: for firms with over 251 employees, discrimination was their main concern, whilst micro businesses were more worried about health & safety and taxation. Nevertheless, these results make for intriguing reading, and it will be interesting to see whether this information informs any future employment law reforms.
