All Opinion articles – Page 38
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OpinionOliver Topping: How to spot personal data breaches and when to report them
In 2018, new data protection laws brought in a requirement for data controllers, like employers and trustees of pension schemes, to make reports swiftly after certain types of personal data breaches occur.Before rushing to pick up the phone to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) or emailing affected employees or pension ...
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OpinionDr Mathew Donald: Managing employees through times of change
The business environment is full of ongoing change, characterised by uncertainty and risk. Employers may be wondering what will happen if Brexit occurs or not, or be concerned about latest trade wars; it is clear that disruption is not reducing.My paper, Resistance to change forms and effects in Greater Western ...
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OpinionRosalind Connor: How will the judges’ and firefighters’ case impact pensions?
Sometimes, legal changes creep up on us when we are looking the other way. When, in December 2018, the Court of Appeal decided in favour of the judges and the firefighters in their claim of age discrimination regarding the changes the government had made to their pensions, in Lord Chancellor ...
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OpinionProfessor Shaun Tyson: How important are benefits for motivation and retention?
The relative importance of pay and benefits in the wider context of the full range of HR policies varies, according to changing organisational and economic environments.Recently, for example, the growth of the gig economy and the concept of ‘self-employment plus’ has raised questions about the significance of employee benefits. However, ...
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OpinionLovewell's logic: Summer in the city...
As temperatures began to rise this week, the Employee Benefits team received a flurry of press releases about steps employers should be taking to help employees cope with the heat during summer. With UK temperatures expected to top the hottest on record for July on Thursday (at the time of ...
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OpinionTony Pugh: Master trust consolidation implications for employers and members
One of the biggest success stories from the last five years of pensions auto-enrolment has been the growth of the master trust market, with over 14 million savers now enrolled in master trust schemes.While many providers rose to the challenge of providing well-run schemes for members and their employers, others ...
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OpinionDr Monica Franco-Santos: Beware the peer-to-peer bonus
Recently, we have seen a new management practice taking centre stage: peer-to-peer bonuses. This type of scheme is a new motivation tool in which peers, rather than managers, proactively recognise the good performance of their colleagues by rewarding them with money or points.At first sight, peer-to-peer bonuses are useful, simple ...
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OpinionPatrick Glencross: Social media can be as important as the law
A recent incident in June 2019 regarding Mexican dining chain Wahaca, which saw the restaurant forced into withdrawing its practice of deducting pay from staff after customers leave without paying, highlights the legal risks associated with making deductions in these circumstances.In light of the incident, it is vitally important that ...
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OpinionBen Watson: The rise of the employee ownership model
Employee-owned businesses are relatively uncommon in the UK, but with several household names now embracing the concept, could there be reinforcements to the upward trend we have been seeing these last few years?There are many reasons why a business might consider employee ownership, such as creating too much competition for ...
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OpinionLovewell's logic: Tackling sickness absence moves up the agenda
Tackling pay disparity within the workforce has been a hot topic in recent years, with many organisations now going beyond gender pay gap reporting obligations to also analyse areas such as ethnicity pay gaps. Yet, alongside these oft-discussed areas of disparity, there is also currently a marked difference in how ...
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OpinionEsther Langdon: How can parental leave impact employee engagement?
Most employers would agree that staff who are engaged at work perform well and contribute more. To be engaged, employees need to feel secure, not only in their work, but also in their own wellbeing.There is nothing like parental leave and a new baby to shine the spotlight on personal ...
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OpinionBeverley Sunderland: Does voluntary overtime count when calculating holiday pay?
Following a significant number of cases, which have gone to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and back, it is settled law that when calculating holiday pay, elements such as commission, guaranteed overtime and non-guaranteed overtime must be included. However, what about voluntary overtime? This can still form a large ...
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OpinionLovewell's logic: Could life leave work for all organisations?
This week, Molson Coors Brewing Company announced that it is introducing life leave for more than 2,200 employees based in the UK and Ireland. This entitles staff to take up to an additional two weeks of paid leave per year to support them through significant personal situations, such as moving ...
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OpinionJo Thorburn: How does social activity link to wellbeing?
At Equifax, wellbeing is fundamental to our #AtYourBest people strategy, and we recognise the important role that social activities play. When people are healthy and happy, they bring their whole selves to work and perform better.We also know that people have different things going on at different times in their ...
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OpinionRebecca McGuirk: Pay offer was not unlawful inducement to bypass collective bargaining
The Court of Appeal has held in Kostal UK Ltd v Dunkley and others that an employer's direct offer to individual employees when collective bargaining had broken down did not amount to an unlawful inducement contrary to section 145B of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992.The employer ...
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OpinionCaroline Escott: Fair pensions policies are needed to ensure good employee morale
Gone are the days when institutional investors like pension funds, insurance firms and other large asset managers kept a low profile and quietly, passively, bought and held their shares in organisations they expected to grow over time.With analysis of environmental, social and governance practices becoming mainstream in investment management, professional ...
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OpinionJemima Coleman: Diversity in the legal sector needs to improve to reflect society as a whole
Across the UK, more than half of all practising solicitors are women, while black, Asian and minority ethnic (Bame) individuals account for 21% of lawyers in law firms, according to August 2017 data from the Solicitors Regulation Authority. These figures compare favourably to the UK as a whole, where women ...
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OpinionLovewell's logic: Is work-life balance so difficult to achieve?
Hello! Earlier this week, I returned to my role as Editor of Employee Benefits after 13 months’ maternity leave (which seemed to fly past at a frightening speed!).I have spent the majority of my first week back trying to catch up with all that has happened in the world of ...
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OpinionClare James: Increasing focus on ESG factors could help engage employees with pensions
The deadline for updated statements of investment principles (Sips) on 1 October 2019 is fast approaching; this time round they will need to include the trustees’ policy in relation to economic, social and governance (ESG) and other financially material considerations. It is no surprise, then, that ESG has been a ...
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OpinionStuart O'Brien: Be aware of updates to statements of investment principles
From October 2019, trustees of all occupational pension schemes with more than 100 members must update their pension scheme’s statement of investment principles (Sip) to cover the trustees’ policies on environmental and other sustainable investment issues.It is important that employers are aware of these changes and discuss approaches with their ...