Anna Byford

Anna is a Partner in the Employment department, and leads the Employment Innovate practice. Anna offers a unique perspective, having spent her career working alongside some of the most well-known global institutions at Deloitte, and supporting fast growth and small-medium sized enterprises at digital media and tech-focused legal boutique Kemp Little. She now leads the Mishcon Employment Innovate practice, to provide full service employment law and employee relations support to innovative businesses at all stages of maturity.

Anna supports her clients on a broad range of contentious and non-contentious employment law matters – whether they are establishing themselves, scaling or  entering a period of change. From set-up (contracts, policies, recruitment and talent models), ongoing compliance in a fast paced legal landscape, change management (M&A, TUPE transfers, outsourcing, collective redundancies), through to contentious exits, staff disputes (disciplinaries, grievances, investigations) and protecting businesses in the Employment Tribunal.  Anna has worked as an independent investigator for over a decade, and has particular experience in this area.

Key Experience

• Designing and delivering fully outsourced investigation services of all workplace complaints across grievances, disciplinaries and speak-up cases for a Japanese-owned global investment bank, including creating an investigation portal to provide real-time data driven insights and reporting across all cases. Acting as lead- HR investigator for the service
• A number of secondments into an FS sector business to advise on, project manage and facilitate large scale TUPE transfers, both as a result of intra-group reorganisation and acquisition
• Advising on the employment law and employee relations implications of the merger of two global insurance businesses and working closely with the legal and HR teams on the practical implementation, including setting up a new employee forum, collective redundancy and TUPE. consultation, and preparing for  the TUPE transfer of 650+ staff
• Driven in part by changes in the off-payroll working rules and in order to streamline the commercial contracting process, supporting a global staffing and recruitment company to restructure, redraft, simplify and globalise its commercial and staffing documentation for use across its business, and introduce adjusted staffing structures. This was a particularly complex project by virtue of the highly regulated environment, employment status and tax issues, and ambition to move away from ‘legalese’ and use standard terms across jurisdictions where possible
• Working with several app-based clients to determine the best staffing models for their businesses and implement those strategies (from a small start-up mobile beauty platform to an app based healthcare provider with over 7,000 staff nationwide – including moving all staff to app-based working and corresponding wholesale changes to employment terms and conditions)
• Acting as the go-to advisor for an independent audio-visual media agency, including day-to-day advisory support (advising on mental health in the workforce, occupational health, staff processes, updating its suits of contracts and policies) and advising on the dismissal of its Sales Director and co-founder
• Defending a hospital trust in the Employment Tribunal against claims of whistleblowing detriment, gender-based discrimination, equal pay, breach of contract, wrongful and unfair dismissal by a departing legal adviser
• Secondment into the employee relations team at a leading London-based insurance market to update and globalise its suite of policies, and acting as temporary in-house employment counsel for day-to-day HR issues, such as bonus and performance disputes and settlement negotiations, and supporting the business as it prepared for reorganisation
• For a period, partnering with BIMA (the British interactive Media Association) to present regular employment law updates to its HR community of media agencies and in-house brands

Career History

Partner, Mishcon de Reya LLP
Director, Deloitte Legal LLP
Associate Director, Deloitte Legal LLP
Senior Associate, Kemp Little LLP
Associate, Kemp Little LLP
Trainee solicitor, Faegre & Benson
University of Nottingham, Law with German