Are business owners liable?

By : Business Start Up
Published 25th November 2013 |
Read latest comment - 18th September 2014

Following on from my previous post regarding insurance for delivery drivers, one of the comments that was past back to me by my employers is that they are not liable if we do not give our insurance details the correct details.

Before giving up my job to become a full time dad (not sure what is harder), we always had corporate responsibility drummed into us. If we (as managers) did not make the correct checks or give the correct training, then in the event of an incident, the company could be found guilty of corporate neglect.

For Example;
If a member of staff that drives all the time is involved in a serious accident due to using the phone whilst driving, who would be responsible in the event of a claim by a third party? My thoughts are either

The driver if...
... they have had the correct training - made aware of the law (although we all know it) - been told of any disciplinary that may occur should they not follow procedure - all of the previous mentioned is recorded on their training record card.

OR

The Employer if...
...no training has been given or recorded - no disciplinary action has been taken on repeat offenders.

Is this not a example of corporate responsibility?

Now back to my point.

When a new member of staff starts at our place, the following checks are made because in my eyes, it is the companies responsibility to do so.

Passports are photo copied, checked (name, gender etc) to ensure I am a legal worker and put on file.
Driving Licencees are checked to make sure drivers are legal to drive.
MOT's are checked to ensure the car is road worthy.
Insurance is checked to make sure the car we are using is insured. However, the occupation details are ignored because only three out of ten drivers have declared what they do.

Do companies not have the corporate responsibility to ensure that these details are correct? After all, if my passport photo showed a lady, name Mrs Mandy Smith - occupation, stripper, I'm sure they would have something to say.

Opinions or answers on this matter would be appreciated.

Please leave your answer as an opinion or as a Yes, they do need to do...

Thank you.


The Happy Camper
Comments

You should perform every checks that are necessary to make sure you're on the right side of the law. It depends on your area of work, e.g. a webdesign company doesn't need to check their employees' MOT or Car Insurance Certificates, whereas a delivery company, may want to ensure that the potential driver has a valid driving licence for the vehicles they will drive as a part of their job.

The pre-employment checks should, as a bare minimum, include the right of an individual to work in the UK (this will include visas, passports/ID cards/work permits etc.) and their tax data (P45/NINo, etc.) to process the payroll correctly.

However, you may want to check the references, perform a DBS check, verify any licences/certificates needed to use machines, work in special environment.

The list is long, and can include a number of documents and checks involved. This can obviously slow down the recruitment processes (NHS, for example use avg. of 6-8 weeks for these checks), but is vital, if you want to avoid situations like employing an illegal immigrant, or letting a convicted offender look after your children.

In many cases, the responsibility is on the company's side, as far as the law is concerned, but I think it's within the company's interest to maintain the integrity of their employees.

I hope that helps!

 

Btw. if you've got questions like these, we've got a free Q&A on Twitter, why don't you join in with #LegalFriday (on Friday, every Friday), we're experienced UK solicitors, so you can get a professional answer every time.


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I think it depends on business partner nature, Business.. terms & conditions, Criteria to divide loss n profit ratio..


Christinejoe322

We have a proper written policy which is supplied to everyone joins the company which covers this. Doesn't everyone?

We also ask for a passport to ensure that the person has a right to work in the country and a driving licence to ensure that if they are legal if they drive on our behalf.

Better safe than sorry.

 

 


Thanks,
NB @ Zipzap

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