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Joanne Hyde

Partner
Head of Employment Law
Head of Commercial department

Joanne is a Partner and Head of Employment Law.  She is also Head of our Commerical department.

Joanne is a pragmatic and business-focused employment lawyer. Her experience as an in-house employment lawyer for Intel Corporation, one of Ireland’s leading multi-national employers has given her a strong insight into the HR concerns and complexities facing clients. In addition, Joanne has many years of experience advising both international and indigenous clients on a wide range of employment and industrial relations issues. Her comprehensive experience includes advising on employment law challenges arising from commercial transactions, employment disputes and litigation as well as providing strategic and proactive advice on HR issues.

Joanne has worked as a dedicated employment lawyer since 1996 and joined our employment team in 2007.  Joanne has headed up our Dublin and Belfast employment teams since 2010 and took on the role of Head of our Commercial department in 2021.

Joanne helps businesses like yours devise and implement strategies to both mitigate employment law risks and to solve potential issues.  She sees her role as a commercial problem solver and uses her knowledge of employment law to enable businesses meet their objectives.

Joanne has been a member of the Employment and Equality Law Committee of the Incorporated Law Society of Ireland since 2007 and was chair of the committee in 2015 and 2016.  Joanne has also had a longstanding relationship with the American Chamber of Commerce in Ireland, acting as both its advisor on employment law issues and also a regular contributor to its member updates and conferences, speaking on matters of relevance to members ranging from updates in legislation to cutting edge topics such as changing work models and remote working.  

Joanne is also a frequent commentator and contributor to Irish media on employment law issues.  She writes a regular business column in the Sunday Business post and has been invited to talk on radio programmes across all the Irish media channels.

Joanne’s recent experience includes:

  • Advising HR professionals and senior management (both in Ireland and across Europe) on contentious and non-contentious employment issues, including recruitment, dismissals, redundancies, transfers of business, industrial relations, contingent workers, privacy, equality, contractual issues, performance and absentee management and terms and conditions of employment
  • Developing HR policies, procedures and guidelines, devising redundancy strategies and managing large-scale redundancies across Europe
  • Defending employment litigation actions, including equality claims, stress at work actions and unfair dismissal claims
  • Devising and conducting audits into stress at work issues and implementing risk-mitigating actions
  • Developing and implementing proactive procedures, in co-operation with HR and Occupational Health for managing long-term absenteeism
  • Developing legal policies to mitigate risk associated with engaging non-traditional classes of workers, conducting risk assessments of independent contractors and agency workers and implementing risk mitigation actions
  • Managing cross-border and global projects for US multinationals headquartered in Ireland 
  • Developing and delivering training to Human Resources professionals, managers and procurement professionals

Joanne was nominated as a stand-out lawyer in the Acritas Stars Sharplegal study.

Joanne is "absolutely outstanding, her advice is fantastic and she is extremely efficient" - Chambers Europe

Joanne  has "an outstanding track record for assisting clients with a diverse range of contentious and non-contentious employment mandates." - Chambers Europe

She is commended by market commentators and lauded by her clients, one of whom reports: "She is a font of wisdom and has the perfect temperament for her role. You feel comfortable in her hands" - Chambers Europe

Joanne is "outstanding" - Legal 500

A client admires that she "always gets back to us as soon as possible and breaks down the issues," adding that this enables her to give "very pragmatic and practical advice."

"She steers a good line of managing the risk and getting a good outcome." - Chambers Europe

"Her practical application is superb. She has our best interests at heart, you feel she is emotionally invested and she never makes us feel there are clients who are more important than us." - Chambers Europe

“She is excellent from a strategic and tactical perspective. She really helps us to resolve complex issues, and makes it look easy,” - Chambers Europe

"She really knows her stuff, is practical and understands the objective.” - Chambers Europe

Legal 500 EMEA-Leading Individual-2021

Ranked in Chambers Europe 2020, 2021

BCL (First Class), University College Cork, 1991

Joanne Hyde

Partner

Head of Employment Law
Head of Commercial department

Joanne Hyde

Partner

Head of Employment Law
Head of Commercial department

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