Business Travel Tips; Reduce Stress and Enjoy Yourself Traveling for Business is Less Stressful When You Take Time to Prepare and Organize.Here are a few tips for your business travel that will make that time away from home just a bit more enjoyable. Let’s start with packing for business travel. Start with the purchase of a good carry one bag. Any seasoned business traveler will tell you carry on is the only way to travel. It will keep you out of baggage claim and you will never have to worry about lost luggage. Buy a couple of good quality pieces constructed of polyurethane-treated fabric that have nylon zippers. The polyurethane will keep the moisture out and the nylon zippers are far less likely to snag.Consider keeping a duplicate of as much as possible when it comes to those things that you use on a daily basis such as your toiletries. This way you won’t have to worry about unpacking them when you return home. They can just stay in your business travel bags. You may also think about going to your local drugstore to purchase trial sizes of your toiletries. Try to pack your bag with space saving in mind. Cut down on the number of business suits for example by packing alternate shirts and ties that will go with the same suit.Women can change the look of a suit with different blouses, scarves, sweaters or jewelry. Pack socks and underwear inside your shoes. Not only does this save space but it will also help keep the shape of your shoes. Pack your belts around the edge of your suitcase. When considering the items to pack think of those things that are necessities and those items that may make your business travel just a little more comfortable.Here is a business travel tip when choosing your mode of transportation. When choosing transportation for business travel the distance that you will be traveling should be considered. Although air travel is the first choice when it comes to long journeys for a shorter trip that is only a couple of hundred miles away a train or automobile may be the better choice. Take into account the time you would spend traveling to and from the airport. Also, don’t forget to consider the amount of time taken at the airport to check in, board, disembark and then find transportation to your final destination etc.If you do choose to fly consider alternative airports just outside your departure and destination city. Typically these airports may have fewer flights but also will have less chance for overbooking and delays.Always try to stay in hotels that cater to business travel. Most of these hotels will have high- speed internet access and will offer access to business machines. For unbiased reviews from other business travelers just like you we recommend that you research
hotel reviews at TravelPost.comOne of the more important business travel tips is to check your cellular service prior to leaving for another city. Check with your cell phone service provider. You may find that they don’t provide service where your business travel takes you and therefore you will need to find an alternate carrier for this trip.Can you imagine not finding out until you’re there!Hope that you will find these business travel tips helpful and may all of your business travel bring further success!
Business Travel Tips
Will a Tribunal Scrutinise an Employer’s Decision As to the Composition of a Redundancy Pool?
An employer who dismisses an employee without good reason and without following a fair procedure lays itself open to a claim for unfair dismissal. When such a claim is brought, the employer has to establish the reason for the dismissal. Redundancy is a potentially fair reason for dismissal pursuant to Section 98 of the Employment Rights Act 1996.Redundancy situations can come about if an employer intends to cease to carry on the business for the purposes of which the employee was employed by him or the requirements of the business for employers to carry out work of a particular kind have ceased or diminished. It is important to remember that a redundancy situation can occur when there is no downturn in trade. An employer is perfectly at liberty to consider reducing the number of staff if he needs fewer people to do the same work.Once redundancy has been established, a Tribunal will consider whether the dismissal was fair or unfair, depending on whether in all the circumstances (including the size and administrative resources of the employer’s undertaking), the employer acted reasonably or unreasonably in treating it as a sufficient reason for dismissing the employee (s.98(4) Employment Rights Act 1996). If an employer wants to avoid a successful unfair dismissal claim by reason of redundancy, this essentially means that he will need to ensure that a fair procedure has been adopted, including defining the pool of potentially redundant employees.The courts have recently been considering the extent of their own capacity to interfere with an employer’s decision as to the composition of a pool. In Capita Hartshead Ltd v Byard, the Employment Appeal Tribunal (“EAT”) handed down a judgment on the principles to be applied by Employment Tribunals in cases challenging the decisions of employers on selecting the pool from which employees are to be dismissed for redundancy. Mr. Byard was an actuary. The ‘pool’ was limited to just Mr. Byard, despite the fact that there were other actuaries doing similar work. The employer argued that the actuaries built up a personal relationship with their clients and that the firm would lose clients if any of the other actuaries were made redundant. The firm believed that the bulk of the work that had diminished was identifiable to Mr. Byard. The original tribunal found that the dismissal was unfair as the other actuaries should have been included in the pool. On appeal, the EAT found that the tribunal had wrongly substituted its own view of what would be a fair pool for selection for that of the employer.The EAT placed particular reliance on this quote from the 1994 case of Taymech v Ryan where the judge said that “there is no legal requirement that a pool should be limited to employees doing the same or similar work. The question of how the pool should be defined is primarily a matter for the employer to determine. It would be difficult for the employee to challenge it where the employer has genuinely applied his mind [to] the problem”. However, the EAT in Capita went on to hold that the appropriate test was to apply the statutory language, i.e. to consider whether the employer acted reasonably. In applying this test, it concluded that, because the original tribunal had found on the facts that the risk of losing clients because of a change of actuary was slight, the employer had not genuinely applied its mind to the selection of the pool. As such, the tribunal were entitled to scrutinise the employer’s decision as to the composition of the pool and were similarly entitled to find that the employer did not act reasonably in restricting the pool to one. As a consequence, the original finding of unfair dismissal was upheld and the appeal by the employer failed.This case should not, however, be seen as opening a door to tribunal scrutiny of an employer’s decision as to the composition of a pool. Whilst employers would be well advised to give logical, genuine and transparent thought as to who should be in the ‘pool’, as long as they can satisfy the test of reasonableness, a tribunal is unlikely to examine them further on this point.