Day One Employee Rights: What It Means for Probation

Roly Walter is the original founder of Appraisd, the online employee performance management system. As a self-declared accidental manager himself, he wanted to create a system that would help managers and their team-members get the best from each other through the media of performance check-ins, goals, feedback and recognition. And now with Talos360, he's bringing to market a unique system that provides an exceptional experience for individuals from the moment they see a job ad, through hiring, onboarding, development and progression.

Stuart is head of Shoosmiths' Solent Employment Team and has nearly 20 years of experience in providing employment law support to HR team sand senior executives.

Stuart advises a broad range of clients, local and national, on all aspects of employment law, both contentious and non-contentious. He is an experienced and successful Tribunal advocate where he has successfully defended claims, including the obtaining of costs awards, brought against employers. He has also successfully brought claims on behalf of employees.

Stuart has a particular interest and expertise advising clients in the retail sector and has a wealth of experience advising and supporting clients with HMRC national minimum wage investigations.

He prides himself in giving commercial, practical and “no-nonsense” advice. Stuart regularly deals with knotty disciplinary and grievance issues often involving senior employees and claims of discrimination. On a more strategic level he has much experience advising on restructures, senior executive terminations, large scale redundancies and the employment aspects arising out of corporate transactions including TUPE.

Recent advice has included:

• advising in relation to a complex outsourcing scenario involving multiple contractors. The project involved advising on the application of TUPE and the drafting of bespoke employee provision for the commercial contract;
• advising on the employment issues arising when a client went into a property led CVA;
• providing strategic advice ahead of a complicated national restructure of a key client which included advising on the need to collectively consult;
• advising and dealing with a particularly complex data subject access request brought by an in-house lawyer involving over 280,000 documents. The project required the documents to be reviewed for both the purposes of the DSAR but also for the purposes of disclosure relating to satellite litigation;
• successfully pursing a claim for unfair dismissal on behalf of a senior manager against a city council, the claim being worth circa £300,000 to the individual as a result of the pension element;
• advising on a complex Tribunal claim brought by a Head of HR. The claim included claims of unfair dismissal, sex discrimination and equal pay. Stuart advised throughout and represented the client at Judicial Mediation where the claim was settled; and
• advising three clients in the retail sector in relation to HMRC national minimum wage investigations.

In addition to his advice work, Stuart is a keen and passionate trainer in employment law and best business practice. He has designed and delivered bespoke courses for both managers and HR professionals on topics ranging from practical investigation training, employee representative training (collective consultation) to various courses on GDPR (including how to deal with data subject requests). Stuart speaks regularly at internal and external seminars and conferences on employment law and best business practice.

Stuart graduated from Leicester University in 1996 having studied law and later completed the LPC at Oxford Law School. Stuart joined Shoosmiths as a legal adviser working in the firm's Personal Injury Department in 1998. Since September 2001 Stuart has specialised in employment law and was made partner in 2013.

Stuart is ranked as a "Leading Lawyer" in the Legal 500.