Jury service gives someone an active role in the criminal justice system as one of twelve people on a jury who get to decide a defendant’s fate. About a third of people manage to excuse themselves from it, but it is very difficult.

If someone is summoned for jury service, it is usually for two weeks, however, in practice it usually amounts to less than this as long, complicated, grisly murders are, thankfully, few and far between.

To be honest, there is only one positive to a member of your staff being called to do jury service – that your employees are seen as good and conscientious citizens, and that it adds to the collective experience pool of your staff. This could mean extra motivation and interest.

On the other hand, you must make sure you have some sort of contingency plan in place. They may cost you money, but they give you time to prepare for the extra hit and guard against unwanted surprises.

Pillar Of The Community or Publicity Stunt?

In order to portray yourself and your company as a pillar of the community and good citizen and take as many opportunities as you can to promote that within your business, you may allow an employee to take a day or so off in order to raise money for some kind of charity – it makes good PR sense.

However, the Government plans to make changes to the criminal justice system. They want juries to be more representative of society, especially the professional element of it. Therefore, if you or an important employee are one of the 250,000 summoned each year, it will become much harder to find a loophole to get yourself out.

This could cause some major problems for small businesses which relies on a small team of individuals being available to build up a young business. If one of these employees has to be away for the allocated fortnight, this could cause major problems in your company.

Therefore you should think carefully about what you are going to do if you or an employee are called to do your civil duty.

What Do You Think?

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