Farha Leadbetter

Farha is a UK qualified lawyer with over 10 years’ experience in private practice specialising in employment law in the UK, UAE and KSA with particular expertise in workplace equality & diversity.

Prior to joining Al Tamimi & Company, Farha worked as an Employee Relations Compliance Manager for faculty at New York University Abu Dhabi advising on crisis management, compliance investigations and ethics breaches and delivering training programs on positive employee relations and faculty development. Stakeholder management and risk analysis were key components of the role.

In addition to presenting legal seminars and case law updates to clients when in private practice, Farha also has extensive experience delivering labour law and organisational development training to large organisations in the UAE such as MOFA (Ministry of Foreign Affairs), ADIA (Abu Dhabi Investment Authority), Mubadala, ADNOC (Abu Dhabi National Oil Company) and ADGM (Abu Dhabi Global Markets) on Change Management, Employee Engagement, Effective Working & Workplace Diversity.

Farha regularly advises on day to day contentious employment matters including constructive discipline, grievances, probation, performance and absence management, family friendly rights, discrimination & harassment, communications monitoring & privacy, employment status, termination, post-termination restrictions, intellectual property, restructuring and redundancies and labour disputes,

Farha also has solid expertise in drafting employment, secondment, consultancy, novation, internship and severance agreements as well as workplace rules and policies and is experienced in conducting the employment due diligence in corporate transactions.

Farha’s KSA specific experience involves advising embassies on the retirement of staff, advising large manufacturing companies on Saudization requirements and the effect of recent legislation on Customer Services functions, advising companies on the approved use of e-signatures in employment transactions, WPS and GOSI compliance & advising foreign entities on the anti-concealment laws specific to KSA.