Stephanie qualified as a solicitor in 2001. She previously worked for Knights plc for over 7 years where she was the partner and head of the employment team in Oxford until she opted for a slight career change with the broadening of her remit to include Human Resources. She joined Bower Bailey in 2022 as the firm’s Director of HR while continuing to practice as a specialist in employment law.
Areas of Experience – Employment Law
Stephanie has over 21 years of experience dealing with all aspects of employment law advising both individuals and employers in a wide range of sectors. Her experience includes supporting clients in the areas of:
- Risk Management – contracts, confidentiality, business protection, director/partner exits.
- Tricky People issues – disciplinary & grievance issues, ill-health & absence management, poor performance, working time & holidays.
- Change Management – changing terms & conditions, withdrawing from defined benefit pension schemes, collective redundancies, transfer of undertakings (TUPE) & outsourcing.
- Disputes – resolution strategy, settlement agreements, employment tribunal claims.
Areas of Experience – Human Resources
As an employment lawyer, Stephanie provides advice and guidance to the firm to ensure legal compliance and good employment practices. Together with the Practice Manager, she also ensures the smooth running of all personnel activities from recruitment, employee relations, supporting employee development to designing and implementing HR strategies that support the firm’s vision and values.
Areas of Experience – Training
Stephanie designs and delivers bespoke in-house training to HR professionals, senior executives and line managers. She uses different training methods to encourage employee engagement and maximise on learning takeaways. She is also recognised for her public speaking and will deliver seminars to clients and contacts and will guest speak at events.
Recent Work highlights
- Successfully assisted a company to manage the smooth exit of a long-standing director employee from the business with minimal disruption
- Enabled an education provider to carry out a withdrawal from a defined benefit pension scheme necessitating collective consultation without any dismissals or claims
- Advised a company on a complicated sexual harassment grievance and facilitated a conclusion without any settlements, dismissals or claims
- Designed a bespoke interactive training session on equality, diversity and inclusion for a global business services company and delivered this in collaboration with their L&D team to their UK line managers in different locations over the course of a few weeks
- Successfully navigated an employee absence process involving underlying mental health problems while mitigating the risks of a potential claim for disability discrimination
Personal Interests
Outside of work Stephanie enjoys keeping fit and is known for the odd Zumba class here and there. She also enjoys singing and is a member of the West Oxfordshire Academy of Performing Arts’ Adult choir.
