Sexual harassment anywhere is not going away at all. A recent report published by Parliament’s Women and Equalities Committee on harassment in public places concluded ‘Sexual harassment pervades the lives of women and girls and is deeply ingrained in our culture’.  Another recent survey found that a third of women had been sexually harassed at…
Continue reading

Following on from my recent blog, I thought I would look at another aspect of disability discrimination law that makes it unique within the word of discrimination/equality law: the issue of whether the employer (or potential employer in a recruitment scenario) had knowledge of the person’s disability. It’s what you know Disability discrimination differs from…
Continue reading

Sometimes I feel Job Evaluation is a bit like my favourite tipple – Babycham – although I’ve been a fan of Babycham slightly longer than I have job evaluation (I was always a sucker for anything that came with a cherry on top – cherry bakewells for instance). Like many, I started out on Babycham…
Continue reading

Almost every week I find myself advising employers on all sorts of aspects of discrimination law. Common scenarios include an employee, very early in their probation period, taking substantial leave from work with possible mental health issue.  Another is ‘what does a reasonable adjustment look like?’ in this or that situation.  In my experience, the…
Continue reading

I have recently been involved in a 4-car shunt, so I have every sympathy for anyone trying to sort their car insurance just now.  Being in the middle of the shunt and having missed the car in front twice before the 4th car hit us all so hard I finally hit it, I am fortunate…
Continue reading

In the heady days of 2015 (a year after the Flexible Working request legislation was introduced) I presented to a group of HR professionals on the business case for Flexible Working and Flexible Hiring. Back in 2015 less than 7% of advertised ‘quality’ job roles (i.e. roles with a salary of £20k+ FTE) stated that…
Continue reading

It’s been a busy year for mentorists (and I don’t mean the mind tricks chaps on the telly!) – those who are deemed the good and great of mentoring in every business are unusually busy at the moment, as companies rush to put in their next big thing – mentoring programmes for women. There are…
Continue reading

Travelling by plane is an exciting experience for me. I doubt I will ever lose the thrill of take-off and landing. Even though I am technically minded enough to understand how the plane stays in the air, I still feel a bit of childish wonder. My latest journey was brightened by the realisation that we…
Continue reading

Rather like my recent blog on constructive dismissal, it is always helpful when their judgy-nesses have another look at your bread-and-butter employment law topics  –  in this case, ‘what type of conduct justifies a fair dismissal’? Two cases recently published have looked at this exact point. Two gross misconduct cases The first was Mbubaegbu v…
Continue reading

You will hopefully have read by now our newsflash on the Supreme Court’s Pimlico Plumbers judgment. I’d like to clear up a couple of myths about that case that have been circulating in the media. First of all, this it is not a gig economy case. Mr Smith was not engaged via an app or…
Continue reading