3 minute read
Methodology
economic fallout. It’s no wonder, then, that phones at employment law firms were ringing off the hook with constant queries about what could and couldn’t be done during the crisis. Whether their litigation services actually went into play was another thing, but lawyers had to be on hand to dole out accurate and relevant advice by the minute. Legal firms that much more destructive – use social media as a modern-day megaphone to call you out on your behaviour. It doesn’t take long for these cases to go viral and, once they do, MOM or TAFEP (the Tripartite Alliance for Fair and Progressive Employment Practices) may just come knocking on your door.
Some employers, advisably, decided to play
Goh Seow Hui, partner, Bird & Bird ATMD
METHODOLOGY
Over the past few months HRD Asia’s research team have surveyed and conducted in-depth phone interviews with hundreds of HR professionals and employment lawyers regionwide to compile this list. HR professionals were asked to rate employment law firms and lawyers they had worked with in the past 12 months.
In addition, the team sourced recommendations from employers by asking them which firms they would be most likely to recommend. The law firms and lawyers that are rated highest for the quality of their work, specialist expertise and client service are recognised as winners of the 5-Star Awards.
were quick on their feet and were able to relate to employers’ evolving challenges were therefore highly rated in HRD’s inaugural 5-Star Employment Law Firms list. Business leaders appreciated that lawyers helped them mitigate legal risks as they figured out how to retain a semblance of normalcy for employees following the overnight transition into a virtual nightmare.
COVID-19 and employee rights It goes without saying, then, that since organisations transitioned into a fully remote or hybrid way of working, many aspects of HR practice were plunged into legal grey areas. Investigating misconduct may not be as common an experience for business leaders, but terminations, retrenchments, hiring and onboarding are. When you’re forced to carry out those tasks through a screen, the lack of human touch isn’t only cold and jarring, it can lead to misunderstandings that may result in a spurned employee. And if they don’t go straight to MOM to file a complaint against you, they can do something it safe by contacting their lawyers before exercising their legal right to implement cost-cutting measures like pay cuts or terminating staff.
“During the peak of COVID-19 and lockdown, I’d say almost every couple of hours we’d get a new query from employers on whether they could reduce salary without consent and by how much they could reduce it by,” says Thomas Choo, partner at Clyde & Co Classis Singapore. “They asked, ‘Can we furlough this employee? Can we put them on unpaid leave? Can we change permanent staff to a contract term? Can we not pay retrenchment benefits?’ So [top queries were] everything around cost-cutting, retrenchments, or looking towards termination rights.”
Sometimes the queries required less legal expertise but were nonetheless important in mitigating risks to the employer, Goh explains. At Bird & Bird, the most common enquiry received at the start of the ‘circuit breaker’ was around navigating pay cuts. In anticipation of cash flow issues or a business shutdown, business leaders approached Goh’s team to find out how to manage pay cuts in a way that presented the least risk to their companies.
Later in the year, when businesses resorted to retrenchments to keep their operations running, Goh found herself becoming more of a communications consultant.
“When retrenchments were a big topic for us, we found that most employers generally wanted to work out reasonable severance packages,” she says. “And we worked with them on the communications to explain to employees why [there were layoffs]. Because sometimes it’s not so straightforward. If the whole company is shutting down, it’s easy to say that ‘you’ve been let go’, but if the business is continuing and only certain people have been singled out for retrenchment, communicating that piece of bad news requires thought and some finesse.”
Legal implications of remote work While issues like cost-cutting and retrenchments are likely to be a temporary issue for most
