Frequently Asked Questions and Answers

We hope that the following Questions & Answers will give you a little more insight in to what makes us so special:

Q. What's so different about Tenon Employer Protect?

A. Tenon Employer Protect is an exclusive and different service in the UK market place. It provides an extremely high quality, professional, practical and pragmatic service. It stands head and shoulders above its nearest "regulatory consultancy" competitors in terms of quality of service. Don't just take our word for it...

...every year, our strategic partner, The Employment Services Partnership (ESP) carries out a client satisfaction survey. Their last survey was conducted in Spring 2007 and hundreds of clients responded. The results speak for themselves:

97% of clients/respondents rate the QUALITY OF ADVICE given by the Legal/HR team as GOOD or VERY GOOD.

97% of clients/respondents rate the EFFECTIVENESS OF ADVICE given by the Legal/HR team as GOOD or VERY GOOD.

91% of clients/respondents report that if their contract was to be up for renewal in the next 3 months they ARE LIKELY or WILL renew their contract with us.

94% of clients/respondents report that they would recommend another business to ourselves.

92% of clients/respondents describe the COST of the service as either FAIR, GOOD or EXCELLENT value for money.

Overall 93% of clients/respondents report that they are either SATISFIED or VERY SATISFIED with the overall product.

The quality of the Tenon Employer Protect service is as good (or better)than that provided by the best firms of UK solicitors - but with the advantages of fixed fees, payment of compensation/defence costs, training, provision of precedent documents and much, much more.

Q. How can I be sure that I will receive the best quality advice?

A. With Tenon Employer Protect, your dedicated lawyers will either be UK solicitors or be otherwise qualified by legal examination, with a minimum qualification of a law degree (LLB) and more than 2 years (normally much more!) relevant experience. We are pro-active and (if you do not contact us) we will contact you on a regular basis.

Q. If there is an employment dispute, who will represent me at Employment Tribunal?

A. If you end up at Employment Tribunal you want to have the best possible representation. Most of our competitors will send inexperienced lawyers and/or non-qualified 'consultants' to represent you! With Tenon Employer Protect, if there is an employment dispute, your dedicated lawyer will fight the case for you. He/she is the best possible person to do so having been involved with the dispute from the outset. Your file will not be passed on from a faceless telephone adviser to a factory advocacy team. With Tenon Employer Protect, if your case proceeds to an Employment Tribunal your lawyer will either deal with the hearing him/herself or instruct an expert employment law barrister to represent you.

Q. If I lose an Employment Tribunal Claim, how good is the legal expenses insurance policy? Will it pay out?

A. Some of our competitors do not put in place an independent insurance policy in your name. Some have a very high excess! Others have very close commercial ties to their “insurers”. Beware those that offer a "guarantee" and bend over backwards to avoid reference to the word "insurance" at all! Tenon Employer Protect is provided by ESP, our strategic employment law partner. ESP is directly authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority and has extensive relationships with many of the UK’s leading providers of commercial employment protection insurance. ESP can also 'place' insurance cover with ANY leading insurer they feel meets the needs and best interests of our clients. When you sign up for Tenon Employer Protect, as part of our standard service, ESP will put in place a professional employment protection insurance policy to cover your costs of legal representation and compensation. Provided you seek and follow our advice, claims against you will always be covered and paid!

Q. Who will be my main point of contact for day to day advice?

A. Many of our competitors provide call centre advice. With Tenon Employer Protect, you are allocated to a team of 7 lawyers to look after your business and you are free to choose whom out of that team you best get on with and can request this person(s) at all times. That person(s) is, of course, supported by others in your team but you will build a close working relationship with your lawyer and he/she will quickly learn to understand your business, its challenges and objectives.

Q. What sort of help and advice will I get?

A. Many of our competitors offer telephone advice only. With Tenon Employer Protect, as well as giving you telephone advice and support, we will email advice to you and we will draft relevant letters and documents for you. We do everything that you would expect a leading firm of employment law solicitors to do for you – and much more.

Q. Is advice that you give restrictive, negative or unnecessarily cautious?

A. Such accusations are regularly made against most of our competitors! We are different. We don’t simply recite the law to you. Our aim is to understand your business objectives and to give you the right advice to achieve your specific objectives.

Q. How will I access precedent letters, your contracts of employment and Employee Handbook documents?

A. When you sign up with Tenon employer Protect, we will give you access to a secure section of our website from which you can read, amend and print out all of your employment documents, contracts of employment and employee handbook.

Q. How do you keep your templates of contracts of employment, employee handbook, etc, up to date?

A. We review and update these as necessary in March and September every year, to reflect changes in law and best practice. We then upload the latest versions to your section of our website! This means no more clumsy exchanges of hard copy drafts or costly reviews and rewrites of inflexible documents by your solicitor. Your contracts and handbook will always be up to date!

Q. I currently use a firm of solicitors for your employment law and HR issues. Why should I use Tenon Employer Protect?

A. We provide at least the same (but usually better!) fast, practical and pragmatic advice that you might reasonably expect to receive from a leading firm of specialist employment law solicitors. However, unlike most firms of solicitors:

• You can call us as often as you want and we will not charge you a penny extra. No ticking clock every time you pick up the phone! You pay the same fixed price every month.
• If an Employment Tribunal claim is made against you the claim is defended as part of our standard service. You will not get an extra bill for several thousand pounds (win or lose) just for defending the claim.
• If compensation is awarded against you, as part of our standard service, it is paid on your behalf - up to £100,000 per claim or £1,000,000 per client per annum!
• We provide you with a bank of employment/HR related letters and forms for your day to day use as part of our standard service.
• We will provide you with practical updates every month, by email.

Q. What sort of training and support do you provide?

A. We are in the business of risk management. It is in both our best interests to make sure that you and your staff keep up to date with relevant law and that key staff know how to implement it. As part of our standard service we will provide you with regular plain English updates. Additionally, we provide a full range of HR and Legal Consultancy Services. Please do request a copy of our Consultancy rate card for further information.