For the past year, employers have been unable to give notice of retirement to employees, and it is more than five years since age discrimination legislation was introduced in the UK. One might expect that organisations have made significant progres  More...
17 May 2012 12:37

The Government has today launched a consultation on plans to repeal provisions in the Equality Act 2010 that make employers liable for the harassment of their staff by a third party. Under the Act, employers can be held liable if a third party haras  More...
15 May 2012 16:25

Can an unsuccessful job applicant demand that the prospective employer provide him or her with documents about the successful applicant? The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has held, in Meister v Speech Design Carrier Systems GmbH , that there is   More...
08 May 2012 12:26

This week saw two significant age discrimination cases reach the Supreme Court, both of which involve issues that employers need to be aware of. The cases are now the leading authorities for age discrimination. The cases, Seldon v Clarkson Wright a  More...
26 April 2012 14:33

How would you deal with an employee whose bad behaviour at work would normally justify disciplinary action, but whose actions might be explained by medication being taken for a health condition? And how would you manage the workload of an empl  More...
24 April 2012 15:58

An argument that offensive references to an employee's pregnancy are inherently discriminatory has been rejected in the case of Warby v Wunda Group plc . The case involved a dispute between Mrs Warby and her employer, Wunda Group plc, about what ha  More...
20 April 2012 15:33

The recent Court of Appeal decision in Woodcock v Cumbria Primary Care Trust is the latest ruling on whether or not an employer can objectively justify acts of discrimination purely for reasons of cost. Chris Wellham, employment lawyer at Hogan L  More...
10 April 2012 12:09

Pensions minister Steve Webb has told Personnel Today that employers should not take the approach that it is "inevitable or excusable" for older workers to under-perform. In the run-up to the one-year anniversary of the introduction of transitional a  More...
03 April 2012 15:05

The Government has made a pledge to support thousands more disabled people into gaining mainstream employment. The commitment came in its March response to the Sayce review , which was commissioned to look at how its £320 million protected budget f  More...
29 March 2012 10:23

Do women really need to get better at networking to further their careers? A recent Personnel Today article suggested so, but might the solution lie elsewhere? Maggie Berry, who runs the networking group Women in Technology, investigates. I read wit  More...
28 March 2012 09:51

Although there has been an increase in the number of women appointed to board-level positions in the past year, the rate of improvement is slower than that laid out by Lord Davies in his report on boardroom diversity 12 months ago. A year on from the  More...
13 March 2012 14:07

UK businesses will have to embrace the benefits of older workers in order to meet the "employment deficit" caused by a lack of young people coming into the labour market, the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development (CIPD) has warned. Accor  More...
12 March 2012 14:34

HSBC claims to be the first large corporate employer in the UK to guarantee part-time work when parents return after maternity or paternity leave. The bank has announced that it will offer a part-time role equivalent to 2.5 days per week so that st  More...
12 March 2012 11:04

A European consultation has begun that could result in the introduction of compulsory quotas for the numbers of women appointed to board-level positions. EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding yesterday announced the launch of the three-month consul  More...
06 March 2012 14:00

Physiotherapists are getting increasingly worried about the safety implications of workers, particularly those in the NHS or other physically demanding jobs, being asked to work until they are 68 years old. But physiotherapists meeting for the Char  More...
26 February 2012 12:00

One year on from the publication of Lord Davies' report on gender diversity in UK boardrooms, it is clear that while some progress has been made, a lot more can be achieved. But before resorting to compulsory quotas, what can HR do to improve   More...
23 February 2012 09:26

The Government has published an amendment to the provisions on compromise agreements in the Equality Act 2010, after employment lawyers said that the wording of the Act made the agreements made under it "unenforceable"  More...
17 February 2012 12:19

The Government has confirmed that it is to postpone the extension of the right to unpaid parental leave until 2013 due to the ongoing development of its Modern Workplaces policy. Under the Parental Leave Directive, the parents of a child u  More...
20 January 2012 16:14

One of my senior planning department employees has recently got married. Her new husband works for our fiercest competitor and I am concerned that she may be tempted to disclose our confidential information to him. I have never had a problem with her be  More...
11 January 2012 08:54

A former NHS worker has been awarded £933,115 in compensation after an employment tribunal found that he had been subject to racial discrimination and unfair dismissal. Elliot Browne was a divisional director at Central Manchester University NH  More...
10 January 2012 14:36