What are my legal responsibilities as an employer?

Employers have a number of duties and responsibilities to ensure compliance with various employment and health & safety laws including the following:

• You are required to provide a written employment contract within 8 weeks of the employment commencing;
• You must provide a safe place and systems of work, ensuring that workers receive necessary training to perform their role;
• You must pay workers a minimum rate of pay;
• You must not discriminate against workers and take all reasonable steps to ensure that others do not discriminate against your workers in the course of their employment;
• You are required to make reasonable adjustments for disabled workers;
• You must allow paid time off work in certain situations, e.g. to look for other work if notice of redundancy is served and to attend reasonable antenatal and adoption appointments; and
• You must not unfairly or wrongfully dismiss employees.