First published on Tuesday, April 1, 2025
Last updated on Tuesday, April 1, 2025
Welcome to HR Heartbeat, where we take a look at the week’s most pressing HR and employment law stories. With over a decade of experience as a solicitor working in employment law, I give my opinion on current trends impacting your business, as well as my own personal commentary on all things HR and legal.
AI tech advances drove staff cuts at TikTok’s Irish office
Redundancy’s a tough business—but it’s even tougher when AI is calling the shots and HR is left dealing with the fallout. Well, that’s the story behind a recent equality case where a maternity-leave employee challenged her dismissal amid sweeping job cuts, which her employer said were due to “vastly improving” AI tech reducing the need for language support roles.
Whether or not the claim of discrimination sticks is up to the adjudicator. But here’s the takeaway for businesses: if you’re restructuring due to automation, make sure your redundancy process is fair, consistent, and well documented. This is especially important if you have staff on maternity or other forms of protected leave.
Our redundancy navigator tools can help you stay compliant and avoid messy disputes. Even if you’re not at that stage yet, always seek expert employment law advice before committing to any large-scale restructuring efforts to ensure you remain compliant.
Security firm dodging paying wages hit with €60k fine
Unbelievable I have to say this in 2025—but paying your staff isn’t optional. A security firm in Dublin just learned that lesson the hard way, after being hit with over €60,000 in compensation for persistently failing to pay a guard anything close to what he was actually owed. And this wasn’t a one-off either: the firm’s now racked up over €90,000 in wage-related rulings.
The kicker? The company was undercutting competitors by not paying the legally mandated rates specified in the Employment Regulation Order (ERO), giving themselves an “obvious unfair advantage” while leaving staff unpaid and unsupported on the frontlines.
If you’re a business owner, I won’t presume to think you’d be as reckless as to deliberately avoid paying wages. But even if it happens on a technicality, you could face severe legal punishment and financial penalties. Keep your payroll systems up-to-date, and maintain precise information to stay compliant and keep everyone happy.
Withholding commission as leverage? That’s not how contracts work
One employer has recently learned the consequences of dangling unpaid wages to strongarm someone into signing an NDA. A sales lead was awarded over €64k in unpaid commission after his employer tried to use the money as leverage during redundancy talks—despite having no signed NDA on file.
The case highlights one of the oldest lessons in the book: verbal agreements are not a replacement for written ones, poor record-keeping can unravel your entire operations, and commission is not optional if it’s contractually agreed.
Using final pay to negotiate legal waivers or hush terms isn’t just bad form—it’s needlessly risky. The tribunal didn’t buy it, and neither will future claimants. (What is it with unpaid wages this week?)
Moral of the story? Outline fair and compliant documentation and contracts, and keep everything securely online. This should be the bare minimum for every employer.
And that’s a wrap from me. Tune in next time for my take on the latest headlines and employment law stories, helping keep your business ahead!
