HR law: legal issues affecting human resource management

9 of March, 2021

When your government introduces labour standards and other legislation affecting your company, you need your HR team to be completely updated about the situation. It is part of their function to be on top of what your company needs to adhere to in the law of the jurisdiction they operate in.

Legislation regarding the time keeping of employees for example is important; If you need to submit time clocking reports then Sesame might be the answer!

What HR laws affect human resources?

Legislation in business affect your HR policies when it comes to Employment law or intellectual property law. Employment law acts as the obvious sector where your HR team will be the most heavily involved. It is your HR team’s job to be always up to date with the debates about employment laws happening, and crucially the legislative updates being made to employment law regularly.

Recently, the intellectual property of the company and its employees is under scrutiny. It is now easier than ever to reveal trade secrets, or gather data on your colleagues. Now it is more and more the responsibility of HR to

3 common legal issues in human resources management

The reality is that an HR team’s remit can be diverse. They have to adapt to all sorts of problems related to the company’s employees and the recruitment process. As such you should not limit yourself to thinking your HR team should just focus on one or two specialised problems. Nevertheless, there are three types of problems relating to legislation that are extremely relevant :

• Harassment complaints from employees : If employees are harassed at the workplace, in many countries they are protected by government legislation and can hold the company as well as the individuals concerned responsible for this harassment. It is thus your responsibility to stay up to date with legislation on work place harassment and engage in prevention measures so that harassment
• Addressing the thorny issue of workplace discrimination with regards to pay is also important in your HR sector.
• Lastly, your HR team have to deal with data protection rules when storing information about employees and how their data is stored in their company. In the EU for example the GDPR regulations relating to how you store your employee’s personal details is really important.

Ethical issues in human resource management

The difference between ethical issues and legal issues can actually sometimes be wider than you think. Whilst the law covers a great deal of the injustices and modern issues an HR team is likely to face, they also have to have good ethical judgement.

Ethical issues are often determined by what your company culture is. Your company culture needs to be laid down in print thanks to an onboarding process that makes the new recruit understand what your company regards as ethical and what it doesn’t.