Opinion – Page 10
-
OpinionJohn Forth: How have total reward trends developed?
A major feature of the reward landscape in recent years has been the prolonged period of wage stagnation; according to Employee earnings in the UK: 2018, published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in October 2018, average wages are still below levels recorded in 2008, after adjusting for inflation.As ...
-
OpinionKaren Coleman: Mandatory job evaluation could mitigate equal pay claims
Morrisons has become the latest big supermarket group to face a challenge at the Employment Tribunal (ET) over equal pay by its shop staff; these are predominantly women who believe that they are being unfairly paid less than their male counterparts employed in distribution centres. If the test claim by ...
-
OpinionNigel Morris: A warning to the private sector – IR35 is coming
The October 2018 budget brought with it confirmation that IR35 rules changes, introduced for the public sector in April 2017, will come into force for medium and large private sector businesses from April 2020. The definition of medium and large, however, remains unspecified.Organisations in the public sector, such as NHS ...
-
OpinionPhil Hall: Timidity around ethnicity pay reporting will not deliver real change
Labour force survey data, published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in October 2018, indicates that, in general, ethnic minority groups earn less per hour than white employees.The independent Race in the workplace report, published by Baroness McGregor-Smith in February 2017, indicated that equal participation and progression across ethnicities ...
-
OpinionKatrina Philippou: What is the key to increasing workplace happiness?
Most forward-thinking employers have begun to recognise happiness at work as a key piece of the productivity puzzle; it is a factor that cannot be ignored, with research conducted by Warwick University finding that happy employees are 12% more productive.Personal Group runs a UK employee happiness survey each year, which ...
-
OpinionKevin Barrow: Two years since the Taylor review - what is next for zero-hour workers?
It has now been two years since the government commissioned The Independent Review of Employment Practices in the Modern Economy, or the Taylor Review as it is more commonly known.Over the past 24 months, this much anticipated review into modern working practices has certainly been high on the agenda for ...
-
OpinionEmma Satyamurti: The fight continues for equal pay
That a woman should be paid the same as a man for doing the same or similar work is no longer controversial. Sadly, this does not mean that pay parity is a guaranteed feature of our workplaces. This year, we saw a recent high-profile example of this in the case ...
-
OpinionHannah Ball: Employers need to consider national minimum wage in conjunction with TUPE employees
HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has changed the way it enforces the national minimum wage following a transfer of employees under the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006 (TUPE).Since 2 July 2018, all national minimum wage liabilities are being enforced against the new employer, whereas previously the old ...
-
OpinionNicola Butterworth: Agency Workers Regulations may apply to more businesses than employers think
Perhaps the most surprising element of the decision in the recent case of Brooknight Guarding Limited v Matei, published in August 2018, was that the organisation argued it was not a temporary work agency for the purposes of the Agency Workers Regulations 2010 (AWR). On the stark facts of the ...
-
OpinionWilliam Clift and Daniel Parker: Brexit and the working time directive - an opportunity for reform?
The government has been keen to stress that workplace rights will continue largely as is post-Brexit, including European Union-derived developments such as the working time regulations (WTR).The WTR has embedded the EU’s working time directive (WTD) in UK law, and so, in principle, departure should not have an immediate impact; ...
-
OpinionTom Heys: Gender pay gap reporting for smaller employers could be problematic
While there may be certain problematic issues with the gender pay gap reporting regulations, they have been a catalyst that has prompted employers to address workplace pay inequality for women. To assess how effective the regulations have been, the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) Committee conducted an inquiry and ...
-
OpinionAnvita Sharma: Pay transparency, where do we go from here?
In the wake of the Gender Pay Gap Regulations 2017 and widespread media coverage of the first gender pay gap reports, employers are under greater pressure to increase pay transparency.Some organisations, including the big four accountancy firms, have chosen to go beyond the formal requirements of the regulations by disclosing ...
-
OpinionSimon DeMaid: Sleep-in carers not entitled to national minimum wage for time spent asleep
The Court of Appeal announced in July 2018 its ground-breaking decision in the case of Royal Mencap Society v Tomlinson-Blake, overturning the Employment Appeal Tribunal's (EAT) decision and ruling that employees on sleep-in shifts are not entitled to be paid the national minimum wage for all of their shift, only ...
-
OpinionMatthew Smith: What have recent legal cases revealed about employment status?
Does it matter if someone is called an 'employee' or a 'worker' or 'self-employed'?The simple answer is yes, provided that label reflects the reality of the working relationship. An individual's status determines what workplace rights, if any, they have and it will also have implications for tax and national insurance ...
-
OpinionMatthew Smith: What does the Pimlico Plumbers case mean for employers?
After almost seven years of litigation, the Supreme Court has upheld the decisions of the Employment Tribunal, Employment Appeal Tribunal and Court of Appeal that Gary Smith was a 'worker' and not 'self-employed' in the high-profile case Pimlico Plumbers Ltd v Smith. The Supreme Court found that the 'dominant feature' ...
-
OpinionElaine Gibson: Data management challenges for payroll post-Brexit
Payroll professionals have to decipher and adapt what guidance is out there. When considering management of data transfer, Brexit is no exception.Data Protection Regulations have been around for a long time, and most organisations are compliant, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) being an extension of existing regulations. When it ...
-
OpinionNicola Butterworth: Employees' conduct is not a guaranteed agreement to new contractual terms
In the age of austerity, compounded by technological advances and the uncertainty of Brexit, many UK businesses continue to face tough challenges. With the biggest organisations announcing profit warnings, and other organisations struggling to make ends meet, faced with the need to cut operating costs, one option open to employers ...
-
OpinionJonathan Swan: How flexible working can help close the gender pay gap
Many organisations are thinking about how they can close their gender pay gap. Fortunately for most, they have a powerful tool at hand in the shape of flexible working. Using flexibility strategically, as part of a wider approach to work-life balance, provides an opportunity to tackle some of the stubborn ...
-
OpinionGeraint Jones: What to be aware of when using cryptocurrencies in benefits
There are more than 1,500 so-called ‘cryptocurrencies’, such as Bitcoin, in circulation now, and an increasing number of people are taking them as benefits.The risks are clear. A virtual currency is not backed by any state treasury, is hard to turn into ‘real money’, and exists only as a computer ...
-
OpinionPaula Rome: What do employers need to take stock of for employee benefits in the next year?
One of the continuing areas of concern for employers is employee retention, increasing productivity and reducing absence. The concentration on wellness and how benefits can be used to assist with these concerns will be on employers’ minds. As well as the traditional benefits, such as employee assistance programmes (EAPs), private ...