Rank: Super forum user 
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Noting the various rules etc. with regards to TUPE I have noted that employees moving from company A to company B bring with them their terms and conditions [for a period] and in many cases their policies; policies that are 'tougher' than their new employers policies so in fact there are two policies covering the same subject/s in the one [new] employer?
What are people thoughts about TUPE and the possibility of having two policies for the same thing in the same company?
I cannot find any comments/ guidance re this area via the HSE
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Rank: Forum user
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Bob,
As I understand it TUPE protects terms and conditions of employment such as pay and terms and condutions as opposed to safety. ACAS might shed more light than the HSE website.
regards
Yul
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Rank: Super forum user
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Surely they only TUPE across terms and conditions not company policies. The terms and conditions (of the contract of employment) will probably include (explicitly or implicitly) a requirement for employees to follow company policies on things like H&S.
It would be impractical to have a situation where different staff in the same organisation follow different H&S policies They might not like it (we had this experience when we took on staff from another agency) but they have to follow the new organisations policies.
Is there any examples where staff might feel entitled to being treated differently because they have been TUPE’d across?
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Rank: Super forum user
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The new employer may not necessarliy be equipped to manage the new staff and possibly new skills, areas of work, sectors, services etc. that they have bought (acquisitions).
The new employer may cherry pick the best components of each organisations management arrangements and merge them at a later date.
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Rank: Super forum user 
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Bob,
You are saying "policy" but I suspect you mean arrangements (or what most describe as procedures)
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Rank: Super forum user
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thanks for the thoughts etc.
The new employer [company B] was the origional employer where they TUPE'd their staff a number of years ago to a company [company A] and have now TUPE'd them back again so they know all that they need to know about the day to day working situations
In the mean time the employee's terms and conditions have been changed along with the policies and procedures that they took with them and they have brought back into the new [was the origional] company new conditions of employment and new policies and procedures etc. that are different to what they had before the origional TUPE situation
Yep it is confusing, complacted and not really logicial. However company B now want their staff to convert to the new staff's [company A] terms and conditions and policies and procedures
Thanks again
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Rank: Forum user
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Bob - Tupe really is for terms and conditions, although some HR people may suggest that policies need to transition with the trensferring people, this isnt entirely correct.
There might be some situations where, for example, employees have access to certain medical services, maybe access to certain suppliers of PPE, homeworking arrangements or arrangements about smoking, breaks, eating in vehicles and these areas are more problematic as where do you draw the line between a condition of service, and a means to achieving compliance with legal or company requirement?
The devil is in the detail and it usually requires a lot of reading through policies to identify aspects that might be more like personal T&C's. Unfortunately some organisations also have policies on TUPE, where they (foolishly in my opinion) commit to transferring all policies and procedures without defining what policies and procedures are.
Good luck.
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Rank: Super forum user
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I mentioned we have been through this ourselves- about 200 people from another agency joined us brining along their own terms and conditions of employment (Contrary to what some people think the terms and conditions of service do vary across the Civil Service).
They had to adopt our policies and procedures for example on incident reporting. Previously they had used a paper based system and had left it for local managers to investigate the reports and then pass them onto H&S when they had( or had not) done so. We had a system of electronic incident reporting which automatically notified the main SHE team about incidents as they got reported. We then contact the local manager and got them to investigate. Some of the new staff didn’t like the system- but they had no choice but to adopt it as this was the system.
It’s really important that new staff are integrated into an organisation’s H&S systems quickly and efficiently. I know of one agency where a number of mergers have not yet gelled ( after more than 4 years) and they have essentially 3 H&S systems running alongside each other. Madness.
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Rank: Super forum user
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Hi Bob
My interpretation of TUPE is very similar to the previous posts.
I do agree with your point about working procedures and policies; but as I see it, it is the explicit duty of the new employer to ensure that ALL employess are suitably informed, instructed, trained and supervised so that there are no safety-critical variations or differences in the joint ways of working - all before they start working!!!
This means that the "new" employer must ensure that any safety-critical variations are identified during the TUPE process [although not actually relevant to TUPE] and addressed so that the "new" employees are up-to-speed before commited to the work.
Frank Hallett
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