ARAG Legal Services - The easy way to keep your customers up to date on the latest legislation

If your client is a commercial policy holder they can get access to our ARAG Legal Services website. Through this site we publish a regular newsletter produced by Epoq with relevant updates to legislation that could affect your clients. Here’s a sample from the latest newsletter:

Ignorance isn't always an excuse for disability discrimination

There are several types of unlawful disability discrimination. One type is unfavourable treatment because of 'something' arising from a disability. This type of discrimination requires that the employer knows about the disability, and it's only unlawful if it can't be justified.

The question in a recent case was whether the employer, in addition to knowing about the disability, has to know that the something arose from the disability in order to be found guilty of this type of disability discrimination. The Court of Appeal has recently given the answer: no – if the employer knows about the disability, they might be found to have discriminated even if they don't know about that disability's effects.

The claimant, a teacher, had cystic fibrosis, which the school was aware of when they appointed him. This condition causes mucus to build up in the lungs, and to counter that the teacher spent many hours each day in rigorous exercise. This meant he had less time to work than others, and so he had to get a lot done in a short time. When a new headteacher started, his workload increased. All things together meant he struggled to cope with the demands and became stressed.

In this state of stress, he made the mistake of showing Halloween, an 18-rated film, to 15-16 year-olds. He was dismissed for that error of judgment.

The school didn't know of the link between the teacher's condition and his actions – the medical evidence available at the time of the dismissal didn't demonstrate a link. The tribunal therefore found the teacher's dismissal not to be unfair, so his unfair dismissal claim failed.

However, they upheld the claim for discrimination arising from a disability. Knowledge of the consequences of the disability weren't needed for that claim to succeed. Given that the tribunal didn't find the dismissal unfair, how could they also agree that there'd been discrimination?

The answer is that different tests are applied. For unfair dismissal, employers are given a lot of discretion. Tribunals take care not to ask what decision they would have made, but rather whether the employer's decision was within a range of reasonable responses. For this type of discrimination, on the other hand, the courts consider objectively whether an employer's action was a proportionate response to the claimant's actions. They noted, in particular, that if the school had made reasonable adjustments the teacher would not have been in that position.

What this means for you

This shows that you should consider all the consequences of your actions and, especially if an employee has a disability, you should actively consider reasonable adjustments. If you can justify all your actions you shouldn't be found guilty of any type of discrimination.

How we can help

If you need further information about an employee's health conditions, you may wish to use our Letter to an employee seeking consent to a medical examination*.

To get access to the ARAG Legal Services website all your customers need to do is go to www.araglegal.co.uk and register, using the voucher code printed on their policy wording. Once there they will be able to sign up for the newsletter, read old issues and access the library of form letters and other helpful resources.

*This letter is also available on the ARAG Legal Services site to commercial policy holders. 

Have you and your clients registered with our Business Legal services website to receive free monthly business law bulletins?

This month’s bulletin is out. Subscribers can read about “last straw” resignations – which can expose businesses to claims for unfair dismissal, get practical advice and brush up on disability discrimination law and there’s also an item on planning law.

To receive our monthly business law bulletins, you will need to opt-in when prompted at the time you register to use the site for the first time. Registration is simple and will give you/your clients access to the law guide and a comprehensive range of sophisticated legal documents which can be customised to meet circumstances. The result is far superior to using flat template documents that have to be amended to meet business needs and our documents can be relied upon in court without seeking further legal guidance.

If you’ve already registered to use the Business Legal Services web site but didn’t opt-in to receive our business bulletins, you can change your preferences by clicking through to “My Account”.

D-ARAG-ON RACERS!

On Sunday the 10th of June our team of Viking warriors, the D-ARAG-ON RACERS, took part in the Bristol Dragon Boat Festival. This festival is an annual event organised by the Rotary Club of Bristol in order to raise money for Caring in Bristol, a charity to benefit the homeless.

After weeks of training an elite team of 20 D-ARAG-ONS took to the high seas (well, the Bristol harbour) and raced against 29 other teams to see who could cover 200m in as short a time as possible. We had three attempts at this and got better with every run. Our final round we were over 5 seconds faster than the first!

Whilst we came 27^th out of 30 we still had a great time on the day, raising money for Caring in Bristol and our charity of the year Focus. We managed to raise £1,182.50 (including Gift Aid) in advance and even more on the day in cash donations from fans and supporters.

We also had an ARAG yellow gazebo set up by the water all day with our Head of Sales, Andy Talbot, flipping burgers for hours on end to keep the hungry D-ARAG-ONS and their friends and family fuelled up for the races.

It was a really great day, with fantastic weather and a lot of fun had by all. And we were watching the techniques of the best teams, so we’ll do much better next time!

If you'd like to donate towards this great cause you can do so by clicking here to go to our Virgin Money Giving page.

Click here to watch the team warming up!

What has legal protection got to offer the insurtechs?

ARAG has done a succession of deals with new partners in the insurtech sector, but what does the legal expenses provider have to offer these innovative start-ups that is so attractive?

It’s hard to open a magazine (well… email) these days, without seeing the word ‘insurtech’. 

There’s certainly a buzz around the term. Even just the names of some of the businesses have the air of innovation about them: Neos, Homelyfe, Cuvva, Dinghy et al.

But, as is so often the case, the term 'insurtech' covers a multitude of innovations. Some are more concerned with how insurance is bought and sold. For others, technology offers a key to managing risk or reducing the impact of claims.

So, how does ARAG fit into all of this, and why are we doing so many deals with insurtech businesses.

First and foremost, ARAG offers flexibility. The legal expenses sector never used to be known for it’s innovation, with providers competing largely on price to deliver a one-size-fits-all, take-it-or-leave-it solution.

The stack-it-high-sell-it-cheap proposition still dominates the market, but it simply doesn’t work for most insurtech businesses, that need legal expenses and assistance solutions that fit perfectly with their products, policyholders and business models.

For Neos, the insurer that uses “smart home” technology to help either prevent claims or reduce their impact, the flexibility needed was all around the claims process and how ARAG’s home assistance service could integrate seamlessly into their operations to help lessen the cost of claims by minimising the damage that incidents might cause.

Another quality that insurtech business often look far is agility. It’s one thing to be able to tailor our products to the needs of our clients but, if it took us 12 months to get our operational or IT ducks in a row, then most start-ups will have long since walked away.

Our products have their own technological innovations too. Many brokers and their clients have been surprised by the sophistication of our ARAG Legal Services website with its digital legal document building tools for personal policyholders and businesses.

But ARAG’s recent successes in the insurtech sector are actually the product of something we’ve been doing since day one, which is building products that work for our partners and their clients and not trying to sell them a product that just works for us.