Editors Blog

Earlier this week I visited the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) offices in central London to interview Jenny Watson before she sets off into the Outback sunset next week.

It can of escaped no HR professional's attention that the EOC is being wound up at the end of September to make way for the all-encompassing Commission for Equality and Human Rights (CEHR).

What's in a name? Quite a lot apparently. The new all powerful equalities body starts work today, replacing the three long standing commissions.

What we thought was going to be called the Commission for Equality and Human Rights is, in fact, going to be named the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Why the last minute change you may ask? Why was nobody told about the name tweaking until the commission sent out press information yesterday (Sunday).

The debate on whether diversity should be taken out of human resources was taken one step further at the Employers Forum on Age awards lunch yesterday.

Now HR practitioners are calling for, wait for it... HR to be taken out of HR.

The subject came up when HR and diversity senior managers were discussing how HR can be seen as being more 'in tune' with business-wide concerns, rather than being accused of having a narrow vision.

HR should be taken out of HR, to give it more credibility and equal weight with core business functions such as IT and finance, according to one equality manager.

Britain's first Muslim minister, Shahid Malik, was detained and searched by airport security in the US.

The international development minister was searched at an airport in Washington DC, ironically after a meeting aimed at tackling terrorism.

Malik said he endured a similar experience at JFK airport in New York last year, again after an invitation as a keynote speaker to talk about tackling extremism and defeating terrorism.

"I am deeply disappointed," he said, adding that British ministers and parliamentarians should be afforded the same respect and dignity in the US as Britain bestows upon members of the Senate and Congress.

"Obviously, there was no malice involved but it has to be said that the US system does not inspire confidence," Malik said.

England women's footballers were fuming last week over a poultry £40 a day allowance allotted to them by the Football Association for the five weeks that they were at the World Cup in China in September.

The team reached the quarter-finals, but players believe they are struggling to retain their fitness levels because they now have to work extra hours to claw back wages lost from their jobs.

“Two months back from China, people are still working to recoup the money,” said Chelsea striker Eniola Aluko.

It's World AIDS Day tomorrow and the TUC is launching a campaign to combat the discrimination and stigma that accompanies infection.

Alongside the global pandemic, 70,000 people are now HIV positive in the UK. In that light the TUC said the workplace was a "key battleground" because HIV is suffered disproportionately by people of working age.

And although discrimination on grounds of HIV infection is illegal under the Disability Discrimination Act - many people living with HIV face unfair treatment at work, according to the TUC.

A recent survey found that majority of workers living with HIV still felt unable to tell their employer about their condition, despite increased legal protection.

A 2005 revision to the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) extended protection to employees living with HIV from when they are first diagnosed. However 84% of non-white gay men living with HIV who responded to the survey said they did not feel able to tell their employers about their condition.

A new GMB analysis of pay by occupation reveals that directors and chief executives of major organisations took home an average annual salary of £214,000, up 714% from a UK average of £29,999 for full time staff.

The union found that brokers on £101,627 or 339% of the UK average are next on the list, followed by financial managers and chartered secretaries on £84,063 and medical practitioners with £78,882.

Senior officers in national government took home an average of £69,404 followed aircraft pilots, who obviously need to afford the leather jackets, Porsche, and Ray-Bans that comes with looking cool.

The lowest paid job in the country (341st position) were waiters and waitresses on £11,303, followed by school midday assistants on £11,439.

And somewhere in the middle, earning around the UK average of £29,999, include storage and warehouse managers, rail construction and maintenance operatives, engineering technicians and researchers.

I was quite un-moved at first when I read that the new Equalities Commission had formerly issued a statement, together with a range of leading faith figures, that it's OK to celebrate Christmas. And, more to the point, it's OK to celebrate Christianity.

Well, obviously, I thought. But then it took me just seconds to remember the plethora of stories hitting the papers that nativity plays have been banned from nearly half of England's schools; that only one in ten of Christmas cards sold in the UK have the word "Christmas" in them; and that Birmingham City Council, in a PC panic back in 1998 decided to re-name Christmas 'Winterval' so as not to offend anybody.

Britain's employers too are scared of putting up decorations for fear they will leave out those non-Christian employees.

The taboo of Christmas - and Christianity - does seem to be growing: and finally, a formal commission has spoken out about it.

The creation of a new body representing equality and diversity professionals seems to be edging ever closer following the publication of a study by the Learning and Skills Council (LSC).

Initial research last summer overwhelmingly found that employees in these fields would welcome a new professional association to help establish industry standards and define proper career paths.

At the time, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Develop­ment (CIPD) said the formation of the Association of Diversity and Equality Practitioners – or whatever it might eventually be called – was a “gung-ho” approach, and that more research was required.

UK consumers are being encouraged to recycle their clothes through an exchange programme being launched by retail giant Marks & Spencer (M&S) and UK charity, Oxfam.

The new initiative aims to raise money to reduce the one million tonnes of clothing sent to landfill annually.

The M&S and Oxfam Clothes Exchange programme marks the first anniversary of Plan A, M&S’ ‘eco-plan’, and will enable consumers to pick up a £5 voucher when they donate unwanted clothes to Oxfam.

Research by the National Aids Trust has revealed that almost half of UK workers would expect to be told if a colleague was HIV positive. But why? Apart from fact the law states that people do not have to disclose their HIV, what business is it of those who work with them? Perhaps more worrying though is the large number of people questioned who stated at least one incorrect way in which HIV is transmitted. HIV and Aids have been widely known about since the early 1980s – almost 30 years. Where have all these misinformed workers been? On a desert island?

A report out today (Saturday) - Jobs for the Girls - says the government needs to look again to find out the best way forward in eliminating the gender pay gap.

Great! But I've heard this many times before.

And looking at the report's contents - much of it's been 'discussed' or 'considered' before.

What is actually new in it, then, you ask?

Ahem. Nothing.

What are the areas it highlights that are barriers to women, you ask?

Here we go, drum roll please...

• Lack of knowledge of career opportunities (yep, heard that before)
  
• Difficulties with training (oh that old chestnut)
  
• Training for older women (ooh, possibly a new angle with older women, but again, heard similar before)
  
• Problems with business cultures (obviously)
  
• Flexible working (oh gosh, not this again)

Six months on from the formation of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) the consensus among employers and others would probably be; could do better.

The commission’s softly-softly approach in the first weeks of its existence has not been met with universal approval as our news analysis in this week's Personnel Today shows. When it launched back in October there seemed to be more of a debate about what it should be called – EHRC or CEHR, did it matter? – and the £100,000 spent on a new logo and website (still incomplete), than what it meant for employers.

That debate still seems to be raging with one senior figure bemoaning the lack of either campaigning action or real dialogue. The news that the watchdog is about to launch an awareness campaign on YouTube, then attempt to gain some friends on Facebook, will hardly set pulses racing among HR professionals.

As our story in this week's Personnel Today magazine points out, employment minister Stephen Timms is urging HR "to recognise and embrace the scale of the opportunity that an approach to greater diversity in recruitment can provide". While most in HR recognise the opportunities greater diversity can deliver, few employers have fully embraced them.

It's fair to say that HR has sometimes struggled to get buy-in from the rest of the organisation (see our 'Trade secrets' feature for tips on how to do this).

And now the debate over whether HR be stripped of its diversity role - which has been hotting up in Personnel Today over the past few months - has moved on with Whitehall HR chief Gill Rider adding fuel to the debate by recommending that, for chief executives to take diversity seriously, it should be taken out of HR. At the same time, it seems that support for a separate diversity body is waning.

Personnel Today reports that demand for staff is at its lowest for more than four years, and employers are preferring temps to permanent staff. Might this be an opportunity for older workers, who can still legally be forced to retire at 65 – despite legislation which you could be forgiven for expecting to have outlawed such discrimination – to extend their employment prospects beyond shelf-stacking at B&Q?

Hard to believe but it is 40 years since Enoch Powell delivered his notorious "rivers of blood" speech about immigration.

On 20 April 1968, the Tory minister warned of disastrous social consequences if immigration levels were not reduced, speaking of 'rivers of blood' flowing through the country.

Now 40 years on equalities chief Trevor Phillips gave his own speech in the very Birmingham hotel in which Powell spoke all those years ago. His message was basically that there were no rivers but "a tide of managed immigration and active integration".

There can be no doubt that immigration has brought economic benefits to the UK and employers welcome the ready supply of labour. But the wider social impacts and strain on public services should not be ignored.

The two issues that seem to be preoccupying HR professionals at the moment are agency workers' rights and flexible working. Yes, it's the old red tape story. For a couple of decades employment regulations have kept HR in gainful employment and given the profession a useful lever to make line managers take them seriously. But cynics could say the red tape mind set reflects an us and them attitude: us being the management and the others being those pesky employees threatening to cost the organisation more money and take you to the cleaners at an employment tribunal.

On the other hand, you could turn this on its head and, instead of seeing temporary staffing and flexible working as a threat, try to see  them as strategic opportunities. This week a report by the CBI and the TUC called Talent not Tokenism showed how some firms are using flexible resourcing to their advantage. Hospitality company Botanic Inns provides employees with flexible working options and enhanced maternity and paternity pay resulting in lower staff turnover.  Even small firms (Beacon Foods, Oakwood Builders and Joinery, and mouse mat manufacturer Listawood) are taking into account the need for flexibility to look after children. 

Unfortunately the sad truth is that some HR manager's focus on the red tape reveals that they see the workforce as a liability? In other words it's the complete opposite of the HR cliche "People are our most valuable resort."

Brummies beware - a whopping 76% of employers have discriminated against job applicants because of their accents, with candidates from Birmingham the worst hit.

A study by law firm and prolific survey producers Peninsula found that 'accent discrimination' is widespread and job seekers are becoming increasingly desperate to disguise their regional twangs.

The worst accents as voted for by 2,647 employers, according to the survey were:

1. Birmingham
2. Liverpool
3. Newcastle
4. Glaswegian
5. 'London' Cockney

There's certainly an argument to be had that the Brummie accent is grating, but is it really enough to not give a job to someone? I'd certainly think about hiring Birmingham-born Cat Deeley.

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-clutter the law'. However, far from being a definite move in the right direction, equality minister Harriet 'Harperson's' framework document has raised a few eyebrows - in particular with its moves to allow employers to give preferential treatment to female and ethnic minority candidates.

It lacks clarity as to how a business could positively discriminate in a lawful way and, by inconsistently referring to both 'equally suitable' and 'equally qualified' candidates in describing the positive discrimination test, it raises more questions than it answers.

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 women and black and minority ethnic (BME) workers will undoubtedly provoke controversy.

As this is a view expressed by the managing director of one of the leading names on the high street, does it truly indicate the way the wind is blowing in boardrooms across the UK?

The idea put forward by Boots' managing director Alex Gourlay suggests that top employers have yet to be fully convinced of the business case for diversity ­ if they were, surely there would be no need for financial incentives in the form of tax breaks to operate a more diverse workforce?

Compare paid paternity leave levels with other countries and you'll find the UK has some of the worst rights for new fathers in Europe.

The speech made last week by Nicola Brewer, Equalities and Human Rights Commission chief executive, highlighted the fact that the UK's parental rights currently support the idea that fathers are "optional seasoning" on children's lives, while mothers are the main carers ('Maternity leave could damage women's careers', Personneltoday.com, 14 July).

The government has published its response to the consultation it held before drafting the Equality Bill.

The document can be downloaded here. Be warned - it's a weighty piece of work (more than 200 pages long) but the executive summary is useful.

It succinctly covers the government's plans on a new equality duty, gender pay, positive action, gagging clauses in pay deals, extending tribunals' powers, union equality reps.

The government also said it would be working with the Tribunals Service, employment judges "and other relevant stakeholders", to identify other ways of ensuring that lessons are learnt from tribunal judgments.

The losers it seems are the Welsh and Indian workers of lower castes. The government said it did not intend to introduced specific protection against caste discrimination or discrimination of Welsh speakers.

Personnel Today is supporting a campaign by the Employers Forum on Age (EFA) to force the government to commit to remove the default retirement age (DRA) in 2011, rather than merely reviewing it.

Ditching the retirement age will provide much needed clarity for both employers and employees and give organisations more than two years to prepare. EFA director Catharine Pusey outlines the arguments for scrapping the default retirement age in this week's magazine.

The EFA is working with a growing number of employers, including Co-op and Hertfordshire County Council, who are operating successfully without a fixed retirement age and is encouraging other employers to follow suit.

It is our view - and the EFA's - that it's inevitable the default retirement age will be removed altogether, whatever the final outcome of the Heyday legal challenge currently being considered by the European Court of Justice.

So now's the time for HR professionals to show leadership and make the decision to ditch the retirement age. You can register your support for our campaign by signing our petition on the Number 10 website.