The Employment Appeal Tribunal has given some helpful guidance on what constitutes a valid job evaluation scheme for the purposes of bringing an equal pay claim under the Equality Act 2010.
Whether employers are making redundancy, promotion or more general day-to-day decisions, they should not disregard the risk of age discrimination simply because the employees concerned are of fairly similar ages. In an article published by Employment Law Journal, John Bracken analyzes three cases which highlight some of the perils employers face when making management decisions about older members of their workforce.
The Employment Appeal Tribunal has held that an original version of a grievance investigation report that did not attract legal advice or litigation privilege when it was drafted could not acquire privilege status retrospectively.
The European Whistleblowing Directive was to be implemented by the European Union’s 27 member states by no later than 17 December 2021, impacting employers with operations in those jurisdictions. Member states are still passing their implementing legislation, meaning employers are facing a period of intense activity as they adapt to changes in legislation across the region.
As organizations settle into more flexible working arrangements in the wake of the pandemic, we are seeing a wave of changes in Inclusion, Diversity & Equity-related legislation. Across the globe, governments are seeking to augment long-established, generic laws on equality to promote inclusion and diversity in the workforce and keep up with measures that many organizations are already implementing. In this update, we summarize recent trends and developments in I,D&E, focusing in particular on those relating to women in the workplace and work-life balance.
As organizations settle into more flexible working arrangements in the wake of the pandemic, we are seeing a wave of changes in Inclusion, Diversity & Equity-related legislation. Across the globe, governments are seeking to augment long-established, generic laws on equality to promote inclusion and diversity in the workforce and keep up with measures that many organizations are already implementing. In this HR Trend Watch, we summarize recent trends and developments in I,D&E, focusing in particular on those relating to women in the workplace and work-life balance.
TMT companies are often the first to develop innovative solutions and to face increasingly sophisticated regulation of key technologies they develop. As such, they have a unique opportunity to shape many areas including data strategies aligned to I&D, the future of remote work, and due diligence requirements for supply chains. A focus on data ethics underscores companies’ management of tangled data regulations and obligations as stewards of data. Additionally, TMT companies will also continue to develop and support innovative technologies to access and store renewable energy.
The EU has reached a political agreement on long-mooted proposals for board gender quotas. If finalized, listed companies would need to ensure that either 40% of their non-executive directors or 33% of all directors are from the underrepresented gender by June 2026. Some jurisdictions may be exempt from implementing the new rules to some extent where existing national provisions already meet minimum requirements set out in the proposed directive.
The Minister for Work and Pensions and Minister for Women has confirmed that the government is not currently planning to introduce menopause as a protected characteristic under the Equality Act or to implement dual discrimination. Instead, the government will consult the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and Acas, to assess whether improvements can be made to increase understanding of the law in this area.
A campaign to improve diversity must be fought on many fronts. In May 2022, a panel of I&D experts, including best-selling author Dr. Stefanie Johnson, discussed the findings of the report Mind the Gap: Insights from Global Employment Leaders and the steps diversity and HR leaders are taking to accelerate I&D progress and the challenges they are encountering.