Carer’s leave is time off for employees during the event of a family emergency. Our guide explains your staff member’s rights—as well as your business’.
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What is Time Off for Dependents?
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HR management outsourcing is when a team of experts manage your HR by looking after your contracts, policies, and procedures.
These are the HR essentials every business needs. Without them, your staff could bring successful claims against you, you could lose thousands in legal fines, and even face prosecution. Never underestimate the benefits of HR support for a small business.
We have years of experience in providing HR for SMEs and HR management outsourcing. Contact us to see how we can support you, including HR advice for small businesses - as well as medium and large companies.
Good human resource management is having round the clock support when you need it the most.
Whenever there’s a staff challenge or an important legal update, you just pick up the phone and get the help you need – no matter the time or place.
The main benefits of HR outsourcing are:
- Cost saving: Reduces the expenses for such things are hiring, training and employing an in-house HR team.
- Time saving: Saves time for staff members away from HR tasks.
- Improves expertise and compliance: Provides ongoing advice and support to ensure complete and total compliance.
- Reduces risk: Reduces the risk of any payroll and compliance failures.
Outsourcing HR is cheaper than hiring internal staff and saves you money overall when it comes to your HR service. Plus, you avoid making mistakes that could cost you heavily in claims and legal fines down the line. Every business should consider HR support as a way to avoid claims.
Peninsula is one of the leading HR outsourcing services in the UK, and by working with us you get access to our HR advisory service. Contact us for your outsourced SME HR today.
The key functions of HR outsourcing services are:
- Payroll and benefits: Helps a business to manage employee wages, tax processing, and employee enrolment.
- Recruitment and onboarding: Helps with job descriptions, sourcing new candidates, interviewing, and ensuring a smooth onboarding process.
- Compliance with employment law: Helps to ensure compliance with ever-changing employment legislation.
- Employee relations: Helps to manage grievance and disciplinary procedures, and any ongoing support that's required.
- HR admin: Helps to handle and manage daily tasks, such as employee records, sorting employment contracts, and processing any leave requests.
- Training and development: Helps to create and deliver staff training programs to improve employees' skills.
In this guide, we'll discuss what garden leave is, employee rights during this type of leave, and the benefits it can bring.
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Leave & Absence
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From time to time, your employees may need to take time away from work to support a member of their immediate family.
This is in the event they have an injury or sickness—or if there’s an emergency.
What’s your business’ rights in this situation—along with your employees’?
You can also read our guide for essential insights into how to approach this issue in your business.
What is time off for dependants in the UK?
It’s where an employee or worker takes time off to deal with an emergency involving one or more of their family members.
It sometimes has the name “compassionate leave”.
Recent figures released by the Carers Trust have revealed that one in eight UK employees juggles their work with unpaid care commitments.
Caring for a friend or family member outside of working hours can be particularly taxing for workers and, perhaps unsurprisingly, one in five have to give up their job due to these commitments.
As a result, there are calls to introduce extended leave specifically for carers.
Dependants leave entitlements in the UK
Employees can claim time away from work (often without pay—depending on your business policies) to support family members.
When it comes to dependants leave entitlements in the UK, there are no legal requirements to provide staff with any specific leave.
, this isn’t available when it comes to caring.
However, employees often feel they can claim time off for dependants for a sick child.
This isn’t necessarily the case. Although the right to a “reasonable” amount of time off for dependants represents a type of unpaid leave for carers, this is only in the event of emergencies.
It typically lasts between one to two days.
Peninsula Business Services
Time off for dependants can be a contentious issue for employees. If your policies mean staff aren’t able to assist with unwell loved ones, it can have a negative relationship on your workforce.
Although your focus may be on ensuring business productivity on a daily basis, you should also consider long-term staff retention.
With the right policy for your business, you can support your employees to make sure they can deal with difficult life situations.
Get in touch with us and we’ll talk you through the right procedure for your industry.
The future for carer’s leave
The government has recently announced its plans to introduce the automatic right to a week off work for unpaid carers.
That’s in recognition of the difficulties employees often face when hoping to look after family members.
Employees are set to get one working week (up to 5 days) of unpaid leave per year as part of the new statutory carer’s leave entitlement.
There is no date yet for when this will come into effect but it will be introduced as soon as parliamentary time allows.
Can an employer refuse time off for dependants?
Yes, you can tell employees to offer family support outside of working hours. However, you should consider employee relations before making a decision.
Although it isn’t a legal requirement, you may choose to introduce occupational primary carer leave as part of a competitive staff benefits programme.
When doing so, you’ll be free to decide on your approach—such as whether it’s paid carer’s leave.
But it remains important to .
Well-constructed policies should answer any staff questions about your procedure. As well as how long the leave will last—and whether staff will receive pay for the time away from work.
You can also decide on the eligibility requirements and reserve the right to refuse requests from individuals who fail to meet these.
It’s also common for some businesses to restrict this right to those with over two years’ service—or require staff to provide sufficient notice before they grant a period of leave.
Need our help?
Get in touch and we’ll talk your business through any issue relating to employees taking time off. Call us today: 0800 028 2420.
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