Lauren Harkin
Partner
Employment | Employment & Immigration | Directors and Snr Execs | Settlement agreements
About Lauren:
Lauren is a Partner in our Employment & Immigration team, based out of our Swindon & Oxford offices.
Lauren has extensive experience across a wide range of employment law matters and is a trusted advisor to many local, national and international businesses as well as individual employees particularly at senior executive level. She qualified as a solicitor in 2007 and joined RWK Goodman’s employment and immigration team in May 2013.
Lauren’s work includes advising businesses on discrimination issues, complex disciplinaries and grievances, employment tribunal claims, business re-organisations, large scale redundancy exercises and business transfers.
Lauren is an ambassador for training HR professionals and the wider workforce, most recently focusing on the prevention of sexual harassment and the anticipated reforms in the Employment Rights Bill. Lauren is a committee member for the Swindon and North Wiltshire CIPD branch and regularly organises and speaks at local events.
Lauren is also particularly experienced in negotiating exit packages for employees and advising on settlement agreements. Lauren is well known for, and works closely with in-house legal teams and HR teams, successfully leading a team of solicitors to provide employees with settlement agreement advice when significant numbers of employees are given settlement agreements due to large scale restructuring.
“Lauren provides excellent, practical and comprehensive advice in what can often seem like an employment law minefield”.
“Lauren is a fantastic partner to our business and truly feels like an extended member of our HR function. Her pragmatic advice, responsiveness and calm approach are hugely valued.”
Lauren’s recent work includes:
- Successfully enforcing post termination restrictive covenants for a client.
- Advising a US headquartered international business on a major restructuring project which included site closures in the UK.
- Devising and presenting widescale training on the prevention of sexual harassment.
- Leading a team of solicitors to provide settlement agreement advice to over 500 employees of a large UK business as part of ongoing restructuring.
"I have always had a passion for helping businesses navigate their way through complicated issues. I am straight talking and ensure my advice is clear and understandable. It is really important for me to get to know my clients, and their businesses, always understanding their culture and values, and of course their approach to risk. Employment law can often prove somewhat of a headache for businesses, and my aim is to remove that pain by providing advice in a balanced way that is easy to understand."
