Editors Blog

The Government Equalities Office has launched a consultation on banning age discrimination in accessing goods and services.

The measures are included in the Equality Bill and cover how the legislation will enable things that are beneficial to continue such as age-based holidays and discounts for pensioners.

Of course, age discrimination is already outlawed in the workplace as a result of regulations introduced in 2006. Or is it?

The default retirement age - included as part of these regulations - allows employers to compulsorily retire workers at age 65 without giving a reason. If that's not age discrimination then what is?

Continue reading "Support for scrapping the retirement age grows" »

Mystic Meg was unavailable for comment and anyway, I would question how reliable her answer to this question might be.

If you're interested in what the answer really is, it's worth you registering for our upcoming webinar, in association with Oracle.

Register here and you'll be able to take part live in the event and submit questions to the discussion.

I can't promise we'll have all the answers but I'm sure this online event will provide plenty of food for thought.

The HR function is facing many challenges as some organisations fight to survive. Topics up for debate include remuneration, downsizing, pension black holes and outsourcing.

But what will the future HR function look like? And what should HR professionals be doing now to meet the challenges the next decade will bring?

On 7 July at 2.30pm BST, I will be hosting "The Vision for the HR profession in 2020" with a panel of experts including Orion Partners' managing director Jane Saunders and Oracle's vice president human resources Vance Kearney.

What role must HR play in organisations in the future? What are the big issues that will define the UK workplace in the coming years? Or if you have a specific question let us know.

I look forward to relaying your questions to our panel!

Michael Jackson is dead. As the news broke late last night it shocked thousands of fans across the globe.

And if the Twitterati is anything to go by, some die-hard fans will take the day off work, too distracted to do anything else.

One Tweet reads: ""Since Michael Jackson is dead I'm not going to work!! I'm gonna tell my boss that I'm too sad to come in." Another demonstrates just how distracted Michael Jackson lovers will be at work. "Still at work...watchin michael jackson videos on youtube," it reads.

Nobody can believe that the King of Pop, aged 50, had died of a heart attack - just weeks before his sell-out 50-tour-date show was due to begin.

Celebrity website TMZ first broke the news, shortly followed by mainstream newspaper LA Times. News reels in Britain reported the singer, famous for smash hits Thriller, Beat It and Billie Jean, was reportedly dead, but it took the BBC in particular a while to confirm it as truth.

Jackson died of cardiac arrest in his home. He arrived at the LA hospital already unconscious and doctors were unable to save him.

Are you affected by the news? Will you take the day off work or do you suspect your team mates might?

Two weeks after the cabinet reshuffle which caused six women to walk out of Gordon Brown's inner circle of ministers, equality campaigners remain concerned the government is sending the wrong message to employers about gender equality.

Lynne Featherstone, the Liberal Democrats' youth and equality spokesperson, told me the government was seen as an example of best practice and the underrepresentation of women at senior levels would encourage employers to think this was acceptable.

"I think it could have implications for reinforcing the attitude that it's okay not to put women on an equal footing," she said. "The government is saying it's okay to treat women as second class citizens and we can wait for equality. It sends out a message that women are dispensable and disposable when times are tough."

Featherstone said she sympathised with former European Minister, Caroline Flint's comments that women in government are seen as little more than "window dressing".

She said: "I think it's quite clear that Gordon Brown has acted differently towards men and women in his cabinet. He has kept women in less high profile roles. When the chips were down he backed the men and dispatched the women."

Katherine Rake, director of women's campaign group Fawcett Society, agreed with Featherstone that the government should be seen to set the equality agenda.

She said: "There is the whole issue around role modelling. The government should be leading the gender revolution by example and they are not doing that at the moment.

"It's always worrying in times of recession that the [gender equality] issue could be sidelined. We want the government to push for equality and show they are interested in it."

Rake added "no government has ever been inclusive enough," and she urged all the parties to use positive action - including all women shortlists when selecting MP candidates - to ensure the imbalance was addressed from the bottom up.

But Sarah Jackson, chief executive of the campaigning charity Working Families, said the situation could be set to get worse. She said if the Conservatives win the next election David Cameron could have even fewer women in his cabinet because he has fewer female MPs to choose from.

"The Conservatives will have far fewer women in the talent pool as there are fewer female Conservative MPs," she said. "It will make it harder for Cameron to create equality, as he won't have as many women available to him."

After escaping virtually unscathed by the worst of the recession so far, HR teams in the public sector must now brace themselves for a storm heading their way.

Official labour market figures show that public sector employment actually increased by 250,000, or 5%, between April 2008 and April 2009. In the meantime, the private sector workforce reduced by 700,000 people.

But this imbalance will soon be corrected. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development has warned that at least 350,000 public sector jobs are likely to be shed over the next five years. Public Sector People Managers' Association president Gill Hibberd has raised the stakes, predicting the figure could hit almost 600,000 jobs.

Continue reading "Public sector HR must brace itself for storm ahead" »

Banksy's latest exhibit, daringly launched in the Bristol Museum, has been staffed in part by local jobless sourced through Jobcentre Plus.

The notorious graffiti artist, who worked with the museum curator to set up an exhibition featuring 100 of his works in his home town, ensured many of the staff helping at the show were unemployed Bristol residents.

Continue reading "Local unemployed secretly hired for Banksy exhibition" »

The long-awaited House of Lords Stringer ruling was supposed to clarify the muddy waters of holiday pay procedure. Instead, it has complicated things still further, leaving employees on long-term sick leave at risk of being 'managed out' by employers worried about costly pay claims (see our front-page story in next week's issue, out on June 16, for full details).

The potential scale of such claims is daunting. The judgement has opened the door for workers on sick leave to claim unpaid holiday pay going back years - in theory to 1998, when the right to statutory paid holiday was introduced.

While already cash-strapped employers - and their HR departments in particular - are understandably keen to keep costs to a minimum, sacking staff on sick leave could have even more expensive legal implications. Lawyers are warning that the ruling has left a worrying number of important questions unanswered, and HR professionals say they have been left "reeling" from the decision and the added financial burden it could impose.

The advice from the legal profession is that employers need to be more proactive about managing workers on long-term sick leave. But they acknowledge that everyone is still somewhat in the dark. The House of Lords did not clarify how employers should actually deal with the holiday entitlement of workers on long-term sick leave, and significantly did not address the issue of workers carrying over unused holiday from one leave year to the next.

This ruling will do nothing to ease the UK's existing estimated £100bn annual sickness absence bill. Further case law is urgently needed before employers can confidently navigate their way around this issue.

The continuing tube strike in London today threw the Women's Leadership Network Conference into an initial state of disarray - with both speakers and delegates AWOL.

But Penny de Valk, CEO of the Institute for Leadership and Management, still took to the stage to tell delegates - rather stereotypically - that it was time to re-write the recipe books on leadership.

Valk told the women there was "no recipe" for leadership anymore and women have to embrace what makes them different.

She said: "The challenge for leaders today is there is no recipe. Copy cat leadership doesn't work we have to have our own recipe. Good leaders need followers and people won't follow leaders that aren't authentic.

"The challenge for women leaders is to make the most of their differences instead of being like someone else."

She added people want to be led by "real people" who are aware of their flaws and that to be an effective leader in the current climate you don't need to be an expert, but you need to be able to live outside your comfort zone and on the edge of your capability.

Finally she compared the differences between traditional leadership qualities and those required in today's environment, to the differences between classical music and jazz.

She said the traditional leadership style which was more structured and led by a grand conductor, like in classical music, had been thrown out the window and replaced by jazz leadership, which is more fluid and throws up plenty of surprises that can be dealt with as a team.

At an event last night held by membership forum Employers for Carers to help celebrate the launch of Carers Week.

Nearly one in seven UK workers are carers (according to the 2001 census), with official estimates that claim as many as one in three people will fulfill a carer's role at some point in their lives.

Hosting a range of employers last night was Caroline Waters, director of people and policy at telecommunications giant BT. She was joined briefly by Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, who assured attendees that he was confident the Equality Bill would go through largely unchanged.

"If I were forced at gunpoint, I would say there will be an election next year, and there will be time to get this bill through [parliament], provided we are not stupid about it and provided our friends in the House of Lords get on with it and don't muck it about," he said.

Phillips is one of a number of business and union representatives asked to provide views on the impact of the Bill's provision to protect people from multiple discrimination.

Continue reading "Carers and the Equality Bill" »

At a breakfast briefing this morning, Alan Sugar's right hand man and PR advisor Nick Hewer gave all the gossip on the hit TV show The Apprentice. Here's a few tid-bits you might be interested in.

1. Topshop owner Philip Green and Virgin boss Richard Branson were considered by the BBC in the early days to host the TV show. Alan Sugar ended up kidnapping about seven people from the BBC production team for a weekend, taking them to his fancy home in Marbella, Spain, to talk them into giving him the part. It obviously worked.

2. Nick and Margaret - both famous for their quizzical facial expressions and eyebrow raising - do not know who Sugar is going to fire until he says the magic words "You're Fired". They tell Sugar who they think should go before the boardroom until they're blue in the face, but he might not listen.

3. The 16 candidates do not meet each other until they first step into the boardroom. They stay in 16 separate hotels prior to the show beginning.

4. Sugar and the team have no scripts for the boardroom.

5. Each episode is edited from 100 hours of footage to one hour.

Continue reading "Alan Sugar's The Apprentice | Ten things you didn't know " »