As your business evolves, it’s wise to incorporate an annual “spring clean” to review and update policies and contracts to keep pace with current laws, technological changes, and operational changes to your business. This can also highlight areas where your employees may need further training.
Your business will most likely have several commercial contracts in place with suppliers, staff and contractors. Now is a good time to take a note and diarise the date you must provide written notice to terminate any supplier contracts, especially if you are considering an alternative supplier due to the changing needs of your business or because you need to save on operating costs.
You may need legal advice on service provision changes, such as changing suppliers or bringing services in-house, such as changing the supplier of your outsourced IT support. Your existing contract with your current supplier may contain provisions confirming whether TUPE applies, but if you are unsure or need to learn more about this, you should seek legal advice.
It’s important that you understand the consequences of terminating supplier contracts, including managing confidential information and personal data to limit your risks and ensure your business is adhering to its legal and regulatory obligations.
Data protection policies and procedures
It’s also important to review your data protection policies and procedures, especially with the upcoming Data (Use and Access) Bill (DUAB) changes. The change which is likely to impact many businesses will be changes to UK GDPR in relation to automated decision-making, particularly if a business is using AI. Plan ahead for how these changes may impact your business. You may have to carry out a data protection impact assessment to document the implications of using new technology within your business against the rights of data subjects and what measures need to be put in place to ensure protection of personal data.
Given the way that regulation and use of personal data will increasingly evolve over the next few years, it is important that you consider how the implementation of new technologies or processes within your business will impact your legal duties on data protection law and seek legal advice if necessary.
Employment contracts and policies
Your business should periodically review employment contracts and policies, especially given the change in government last year. There may need to be changes to your employee privacy notices to comply with data protection law, or additional consent obtained for any new processing of special category personal data.
If you need to make changes to staffing levels, remuneration, benefits offered, or working patterns it is often worth getting legal advice to avoid exposing your business to claims by considering the contractual and statutory rights of current staff, as well any protections those individuals may have. For example, if your business is considering making redundancies, you may need advice about potential exits under a settlement agreement, or advice on following a fair redundancy process. Your business may be able to avoid redundancies by exploring alternatives such as restructuring or reducing/changing working hours. An employment lawyer will make sure any changes are handled carefully to prevent any unfair dismissal claims or discrimination complaints.
Use of AI by businesses
Generally, the use of AI is a useful tool for many businesses, making tasks faster and allowing staff to work more efficiently, but its use should be part of a careful strategy.
Whilst there will undoubtedly be cost savings, there can be pitfalls your business needs to be aware of to avoid breaches of copyright and confidentiality obligations. As a decision maker, currently, it would not be advisable to rely on AI completely without staff carrying out independent checks.
If you do plan on using AI within your business, or increasing its use, you should introduce an AI policy to ensure your staff are clear about how it may or may not be used as part of their day to day work responsibilities, and so you can build in appropriate checks and test its use and ensure that such use aligns with your business’s overall strategy.
The above points are just a selection of the areas you may want to consider in your business spring clean and can be incorporated into annual reviews, or your existing auditing to ensure that your business continues to comply with current law, regulations and best practices.
The contents of this article are intended for general information purposes only and shall not be deemed to be, or constitute legal advice. We cannot accept responsibility for any loss as a result of acts or omissions taken in respect of this article.