11/09/2024
As the Labour government passed its first 50 days in power this week, we asked lawyers about the upcoming changes to employment law that HR should be aware of.
These included changes to legislation on working hours, sexual harassment, unfair dismissal, tribunal claims and ethnicity pay gap reporting.
Working hours
The Workers (Predictable Terms and Conditions) Act 2023 was granted Royal Assent in September 2023, and was originally due to come into force this September. However, its implementation date is still to be decided, according to Kloe Halls, managing associate for Linklaters employment and incentives practice.
The legislation, when it comes into force, is due to grant workers the right to request predictable working terms and conditions.
Speaking to HR magazine, Halls said: “This legislation is likely to have the biggest impact on organisations with workforces made up of zero-hours contract workers and temporary or agency workers, as they could face an influx of requests to change working patterns.
“It may help to conduct an audit of how widespread such arrangements are within an organisation, to determine the potential impact.”
Halls pointed to the code of practice published to accompany the legislation, which explained how employers can handle and reject a request.
Sexual harassment
The previous government passed legislation that will increase employers’ duties to prevent sexual harassment in their organisation. This is set to come into force on 26 October 2024.
The legislation will require employers to take proactive steps to prevent sexual harassment within their organisation.
“This layers on an additional set of related obligations for employers to take steps in advance, on a proactive basis, not to be reactive in how they deal with sexual harassment, but to create a working environment in which sexual harassment is less likely to arise and to have managed the risks associated with it," David Samuels, employment partner at firm Lewis Silkin, told HR magazine.
Halls noted that employers will also be required to protect employees from sexual harassments by third parties.
“While the third-party harassment provisions were dropped before the legislation was passed, the draft guidance from the EHRC makes several statements that the new duty does, in fact, include protecting employees from third-party harassment,” she commented.
“This indicates that employers could face enforcement action by the EHRC if they fail to protect their employees from sexual harassment by third parties such as contractors and customers, despite employees not having a direct claim for breach of the duty per se in the tribunal.”
Samuels added that Labour is likely to strengthen protections under the legislation.
Unfair dismissal
According to Samuels, employers should look ahead to proposed changes to unfair dismissal rights.
While the legislation is not likely to come into force in 2024, he explained, Labour has promised it will amend legislation so that employees have day one unfair dismissal rights, rather than the current time period of two years.
Samuels said: “What that means for an employer is that the hiring decisions they make will have to be even more carefully thought through, because it won't be so easy to reverse the decision if they realise it was the wrong one.”
Employers will need to start considering how this will impact employees they hire now, he explained, as the legislation is set to come into force while they are within the current time period for unfair dismissal rights.
He continued: “Employers are going to have to think much more carefully about whether a hire is really necessary and whether it's the right fit, because it's going to be a much trickier, more time-consuming, costly, and risky decision to terminate someone during those first two years, or even during those first few months.”
Tribunal claims
Labour spokespeople have claimed that the government would extend the time limit for tribunal claims, Samuels noted.
The current time limit for employment tribunal claims is three months from the “wrongful act”, and it may extend to six months.
This could open employers up to more claims, Samuels theorised.
“This is going to increase the number of claims, because people won't be out of time so quickly,” he said.
“Even though that may not come into force in 2024, it will have an impact on hiring decisions made in 2024 because you have to expect that people you hire now may gain unfair dismissal rights in the coming months that they do not have at the point of them being hired.
“That two-year threshold [for unfair dismissal rights] will be lowered or reduced or removed, even for people who have already been hired. Employers should be anticipating that now.”
Ethnicity pay gap reporting
Samuels also pointed to the changes to ethnicity pay gap reporting, which Labour promised in its manifesto would put into action within its first 100 days in government.
Labour explained in its manifesto that this legislation would require employers with over 250 employees to report the pay of employees based on their race and disability.
Samuels explained that employers will need to start thinking about how they collect employees’ data on race and disabilities.
“The starting point is going to be to gather the underlying information. Employers have to make sure that they do so carefully, in accordance with their data protection obligations,” he said.
“The question is, do you gather that already or request it when recruiting people? If not, maybe you need to start doing so and make it clear that people don't have to hand over that information.
“Even [employees] saying they prefer not to say what ethnic background they come from is preferable, from the point of view of crunching the numbers, than them not responding to it at all. Start to analyse that data now.”
Original Article: HRmagazine
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