Employers are flouting the law by asking recruitment agencies to screen out women of childbearing age, and it is up to agencies to stop the practice, according to the new head of the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC). Kevin Green admi  More...
18 July 2008 16:00

Barclays is the first company to sign up to a new campaign that aims to raise awareness of 'facial discrimination'. Despite legal protections provided to people with disfigurements under the Disability Discrimination Act, research by the Changing F  More...
18 July 2008 09:02

The government has set a target of increasing the number of women appointed to the boards of public bodies to at least 40% by 2011. Equality minister Harriet Harman unveiled measures to increase the number of women, disabled people and ethnic minor  More...
16 July 2008 12:56

Army chiefs joined forces with protest group Stonewall to promote equal rights and tolerance of homosexual soldiers. The head of the British Army, General Sir Richard Dannatt, said discrimination prevented soldiers doing their jobs properly, an  More...
14 July 2008 13:52

Thomases Jefferson and Paine have a lot to answer for: it was they, in the late 18th century, who proclaimed that all men are born equal. They were utterly wrong of course, but the notion has stayed with us ever since. Its latest manifestation in the UK  More...
08 July 2008 11:28

HR news and analysis including: what employers can do to help tackle violent crime and help inner city youths find employment how a new tool for HR directors can show how much money illness is costing the workplace Boots HR director Alex Gourla  More...
04 July 2008 15:28

The fallout from last month's unveiling of the Equality Bill continues apace. The suggestion that employers should, in effect, be paid to hire more black and minority ethnic (BME) workers will undoubtedly provoke controversy. When this view is expre  More...
04 July 2008 12:03

The Equality Bill is a good start but it cannot ensure equality for women without tackling the underlying cause of discrimination.   More...
04 July 2008 11:05

The new Equality Bill will create a step change in opportunities in modern Britain. Ensuring diversity – both by protecting vulnerable groups where necessary and by building their capacity in the workplace – is essential if we are to cre  More...
03 July 2008 17:02

The government White Paper on the Equality Bill was published on 26 June 2008. And although it doesn't go as far as some employers had originally feared, the clear message is that the government is committed to working to achieve equality in the workpla  More...
02 July 2008 16:07

The Equality Bill promises the biggest shake up in discrimination law since the 1970s. Its provisions will have serious repercussions for employers, especially with regard to positive discrimination, openness on pay and the extension of age discrimi  More...
02 July 2008 15:59

Will the Equality Bill allow employers to effectively tackle the inequalities that still persist in many British workplaces? No. Let's be honest - positive action is discrimination. Whether it is justifiable or, indeed, necessary is a totally   More...
02 July 2008 15:55

HR legal eagles will need to swap their summer read for some serious Equality Bill swotting, following the raft of controversial new measures announced last week. The purpose of the Bill is to "strengthen protection, advance equality and de-cl  More...
30 June 2008 10:56

Private firms received a let-off when the Equality Bill was laid before Parliament - as stringent transparency measures for employee reporting passed them by. Only public sector employers and those firms seeking government contracts - less than  More...
30 June 2008 00:02

Tribunal panels will be given powers under the Equality Bill to order organisations found guilty of discrimination against a single employee to make sweeping changes to their hiring and pay practices. Employers that fail to heed these  More...
30 June 2008 00:01

Equality minister Harriet Harman today laid the first draft of the long-awaited Equality Bill before Parliament. The Bill would give public bodies an overarching equality duty, forcing them to publish statistics on their gender pay gaps, as wel  More...
26 June 2008 16:27

Harriet Harman will unveil the first draft of the Equality Bill before Parliament today - potentially paving the way for positive discrimination in the workplace. Several reports claim the equalities minister's White Paper will force companies   More...
26 June 2008 11:21

Impassioned pleas were made last night for ministers to intervene in the plight of union equality representatives. Equalities minister Harriet Harman and business secretary John Hutton received a battering on the issue from up to 100 members of unio  More...
25 June 2008 10:56

Diversity issues should no longer pose financial or legal problems for employers, with a report out today indicating that organisations which take steps to remove workplace bias are better off than their counterparts. The report, Talent not Tokenism  More...
04 June 2008 09:38

Colleges and universities are failing to write race, gender and disability equality schemes and action plans as required by law, according to the sector's main union. The University and College Union (UCU) wants to see the Equality and Human Ri  More...
29 May 2008 09:55