In this months Employment Law at 11, Seamus McGranaghan from the employment team at O'Reilly Stewart solicitors and Christine Quinn from Legal Island  discuss:

1.  HR – putting the ‘Social’ into ESG! 

Environmental, Social and Governance, or ESG as it’s known, is the big buzz word in industry at the moment. But it’s more than just a passing trend and HR play a pivotal role in its success. Seamus discusses:

•             What is ESG? 
•             Why does ESG matter for your organisation? 
•             How your organisation can communicate your ESG agenda to employees to retain existing and attract new talent.
•             And why HR are key to ESG success.

2.  Draft legislation was introduced in the Assembly before it fell aiming to provide enhanced protection for zero-hours workers. It’s in the pipeline and forearmed is forewarned! Seamus explains:

•             The current law around zero hours contracts
•             The law in GB
•             The new proposals, and what they could mean for you.

Recording

Transcript

Christine:  Good morning, everybody. Welcome to "Employment Law at 11", sponsored by MCS Group. MCS help people find careers that match their skillsets perfectly, as well as supporting employers to build high-performing businesses by connecting them with the most talented candidates in the market. If you're interested in finding out how MCS can help you, head to www.mcsgroup.jobs.

Hello, everybody. My name is Christine Quinn. I am part of the Knowledge Team here at Legal-Island. I'm joined as usual by Seamus McGranaghan, Director at O'Reilly Stewart Solicitors.

So, today, Seamus and I are talking about ESG and how HR put the social into ESG. We're also looking at some important draft legislation that was introduced in the assembly just before it fell around enhancing protections for zero-hours workers.

But first things first, I would like to get you guys involved in a bit of a poll. Now, it's a bit unusual today in that it's not specifically about the topics that we're talking about today. We are interested to know what you think about something very topical.

So, at Legal-Island, we're always watching developments relevant to HR world to bring them to your attention. One item in the news that has caught our eye this week is the ChatGPT.

So, if we may, we'd like to ask you a couple of questions just to help us shape events for you in the future. But I'm not going to go into what it is just yet, because that will be a spoiler for the polls. But if you could click your poll buttons now.

So how familiar are you with ChatGPT and its relevance to HR? So, the first one, I've never heard of it. Secondly, I've heard about it, but I don't understand its relevance. Or I've heard about it and I understand its relevance to HR.

So if you could vote now, that would be great. Let's just see how you are getting on. Let's see what the results are. So 81% of you have never heard about ChatGPT. Thirteen per cent have. Seamus, have you heard about this?

Seamus:  I have heard about it very briefly, but I would put myself in the categories between I've never heard about it and I've heard about it and don't understand its relevance. I think I would put myself between those two. But I did hear about it on the previous podcast that I listened to specifically around the use of AI and the relevance in the workplace and for HR advisors.

Christine:  Yeah. Well, I'll ask the next poll question, and then I'll maybe just give you a brief overview of what my understanding of it is. So if Legal-Island were to run an event in the coming weeks on ChatGPT and HR, would you attend? And we've got a yes, a maybe, or a no. If you could have a vote there, that would be brilliant. Maria, if you're ready there, if we just see what people are saying. Got yes and maybe, so that's fairly encouraging.

I mean, what I know about this chatbot is we've been having a bit of a play with it. It is quite interesting, I think. It reminds me slightly of Alexa in that sometimes you have to ask it the right question.

 But we did put in some HR-type questions and we asked for some advice on unfair dismissal in Northern Ireland. It gave, I have to say, Seamus, a very lawyer answer. I mean, we could have drafted it ourselves right down to the caveat that really every case turns on its facts and you may want to seek some professional legal advice.

Seamus:  But did it say what is reasonable? No?

Christine:  So I think if this thing starts charging by the hour, we are going to be out of a job. All joking aside, I think its potential is very wide. It's scarily accurate at pulling the law. I don't know how they do it. It obviously has a massive, massive database. But it was scary how accurate it was.

It was our CEO Barry who was playing with it and sent me some of the answers it was giving. And at one point I thought, "Is Barry asking me to check the advice that he's giving out?" As a former barrister, it sounded so conversational and so correct. So you can start to see how it would impact HR.

 Maybe it'll take some of the more menial tasks away from HR, the same questions that you get. Maybe a wee bit of the admin support it could get involved in. So I think it's really interesting and it's something Legal-Island are going to be looking into a bit more.

But thank you all so much for your participation. That gives us an overview of what you understand and what you want to understand.

 So, Seamus, let's get into the webinar proper. As I said, HR put the social into environmental, social, and governance. It's very buzzword-y, but it's also extremely important and it's growing. I don't want to mention the COVID word, God forbid, but COVID has played a pivotal role in pushing ESG, particularly the social aspect of the agenda.

So, Seamus, do you want to tell us what exactly ESG is?

Seamus:  Yeah. So I suppose that the first point is ESG and the mind boggles as to what we're referring to, but it is something that has been around for a long time, and it has been around for a long time in different guises, I suppose.

But essentially, what we're looking at is it's the broad range of environmental, social, and governance criteria in which organisations will run themselves and how they run themselves responsibly. And that's where the focus has come on.

It generates really going back to sort of investors and what investors were looking for in organisations when they were coming to invest monies in them. And these three aspects of the environmental, social, and governance gave really strong pointers for investors, if their investment was going to be good, whether the organisation was going to be sustainable, whether it was going to continue to be profitable, or whether there were serious cracks in the foundations that could result in the company going bad, if I put it that way. That's where ESG is generated from.

But it has very much moved on now into . . . I think what we can clearly say after coming out of the pandemic is that there's a very real expectation from across the board relating to whether it is your customer base, your client base, your staff, whether you're going for funding through banks, through investment rounds, whatever it is. These are the clear indicators that all of those different avenues will look to assess your organisation.

We'll get into it further, I suppose, in relation to the social aspect and the various HR processes. But really, what you're looking at . . . I mean, I think that if any of the listeners are familiar with the likes of investors and people, ISO, those sort of benchmarks in relation to the operation of organisations, they'll be familiar with the requirements in order to get those benchmarks.

ISO changes, I think, every year. There's a new version of the accreditation. And we do something similar in our office. We have ISO and we have . . . Lexcel is the branded benchmark for law firms, which is operated, and it's promoted through the Law Society.

And it may well be that if we in my office are tendering for work or if we're invited to partake in the possibility of obtaining new work, some of the aspects of those tender processes may well say that you have to have some of those benchmarks before you'll even be considered as a candidate for that type of new work.

So if you're doing banking work, if you're doing any kind of investment work . . . If you're doing insurance work, the insurance companies will require an automatic standard of how your business operates. And this all really feeds in and around this idea of ESG.

And it's the movement of your organisation. Whether you're brand new to it or whether it's something that you have been working on . . . And if we take Legal-Island as an example, Legal-Island is an excellent example of ESG, I think. But whether you're new or whether you're old to it, it is continually developing and it is the way that things are moving forward.

So if I maybe try to bring this bang up to date, as any business or any organisation is looking to attract customers and clients, if you're looking to attract staff, it's very important for customers and clients now to say, "Well, I would like my business to work with this organisation", or, "I'd like to bring my business to this organisation because I know that they are a responsible organisation. They treat their staff well. They have policies and procedures, and clear. They're well governed. They have a board of directors. And I really like their board of directors' makeup, the compilation of it. Looking at the diversity side, the inclusion side, all of that sort of stuff".

So it's clear now that there's a benchmark and there's an expectation, and it's been reinforced and almost generated and pushed on. And sometimes I'm not sure who's the pulling force and who's the following force, whether it's the law or whether it is society.

But if we think about all of the new legislation that we have, we have all of the equality legislation that is in place, the family-friendly legislation, right up to very recently the introduction of the bereavement leave here in Northern Ireland as well, the Bribery Act in 2010, the gender pay gap information of 2017. I know we are not there yet in relation to it, but it's on the way and it is there in the Republic of Ireland. The Modern Slavery Act of 2015.

All of the legislation is pushing organisations in a direction to be more . . . Environmentally, socially, and good governance are the three main threads that all that leads into.

And ultimately, you have a number of these companies that provide professional services, a lot of the big accountancy firms that provide professional services. And what they will tell you is that if your organisation has a strong mandate, is strong in relation to ESG, you will have an organisation that is sustainable, is profitable, and will be able to recruit and retain its talent within its organisations.

It's really important around ESG to think about things like your organisation's reputation. We all thrive in the brand that we work for and that we have at times developed through.

The productivity element, the happy staff, happy workforce, a lot of that feeds in. We think about all the strike action at the minute and how prevalent all of that is, and how it's so focussed on media, and that a lot of those employers are getting really bad damaged reputations because they have staff complaining about their terms and conditions.

Value as well is a really important one. If you are strong in your ESG, that you're bringing value to your product or to your business or to your organisation, whatever it is. And then it's also defining the legal compliance with it.

So, at times, it really does come across that this is some sort of great buzzword for the likes of huge companies like Apple and big banking corporations to follow into. But in actual fact, when you break it down, all organisations, small, medium, large, are all doing some form of this, and that is the movement. It's the movement of the traffic.

And ultimately, what the ESG will do, it's a wraparound approach and it's a joined-up approach within your organisation. And if you are presenting your organisation as being a good organisation or a good place to work as we know it, these are the things that will push you in the right direction.

Christine:  Yeah, and I think it's really important to bear in mind that you don't have to be Google to be doing this. And I think HR are doing the social aspects already without knowing that they're doing something trendy. They're just doing their day job.

I mean, Legal-Island has less than 30 employees. So anyone would describe us as a small business, but really it comes down from the top in Legal-Island. And I think that's really important to walk the walk and not just have the pretty sign up saying that you want to do it.

 So our CEO, Barry, our MD, Jayne, they are very open about their lives. They have small children who get sick and who they need to rush off and collect from school. All of that stuff is very openly talked about.

So then I know, as an employee, it's definitely not a problem that I have children and may need to pop off to get one of them when they're sick or whatever. So it comes from the top.

And I think it's also very much like looking . . . You've got to look at your demographic. So who are your employees? There's no point in kind of starting a marathon team for your company if everybody is working mums, or in their 60s, or not into sport, or whatever. Not to say people in their 60s can't do marathons, of course. I don't want to discriminate.

But I suppose Legal-Island looks at who they employ. So we have a health champions group that does small things that don't cost money. World Mental Health Day, we all got a lovely message to say specifically about why we were valued in the company, which was really lovely. It's just an email. It doesn't cost anything. We've had outside companies coming in to do health checks once a year. Again, that doesn't cost a lot.

And then just looking at the demographic of Legal-Island, you can take from this what you will, but we've got a menopause support group called COCO, Cardigans On, Cardigans Off, and they meet once every couple of months. And it's just really a support and chat group. None of those things cost a lot of money.

It's not about, as you say, being Google and having loads of bells and whistles around it. You can do small things. And I can tell you, as an employee benefitting from that, it does really help. There are some great initiatives that don't cost any money.

Seamus:  Yeah, absolutely. And I suppose just as a bit of a breakdown there, on the environmental side of things, it is what it says on the tin, but it's not just about climate change and climate activism.

Most organisations, as a result of the pandemic, have really had to push on through the various different ways that we work. If you've gone paper light in your office, and that is your policy and that is your mission, you're reducing your amount of paper that you're using.

If your employees are working from home part of the week or full-time, or whether it's hybrid, there's a saving there in relation to travel. It's a reduction in respect of cars, use of fuel.

There are all those different aspects that organisations are already doing, and it isn't difficult for them to promote that and to let other people know that they're doing it.

Lots of other things have happened. I mean, some organisations have got rid of all of their cardboard disposable utensils, their drinking cups, their cutlery, and replaced them with glass, sustainable items that are better for the environment.

Those sorts of things are really small things, and you might think, "Oh, we wouldn't be wanting to tell anybody about that". But that's an important part of the environmental side when it comes to ESG. It's about your footprint and the amendments that you've made within your organisation around the environment.

The social side of it is really important when it comes to HR. HR put the S, as you say, in ESG. But HR will no doubt have a fundamental role. And again, it's threading the needle through the three principles of it that they will have the role in relation to it.

But the social stuff is looking at . . . it's the diversity, the equity, the inclusion, the DEI aspects, pay transparency, whistleblowing, employee engagement, workers' activism, if that's going to happen in the workplace, health and safety issues, what the HR policies and procedures are, issues around remote working.

And then really importantly, which is the one that seems to have developed a lot recently, is the mental health and wellbeing aspect of it. And again, Legal-Island is ahead of the game on that.

And then when we look at the governance side of it, we're really looking at how is the organisation managed and what are the policies and procedures that are in place? How are decisions made? And if they're made by boards or they're made by directors, how are those made up? Is there diversity on them? Are there women included within them? What is the percentage of it?

And a lot of the larger organisations now have put thresholds in place to say that a certain percentage of the board has to be women, and the age groups, and people with disabilities. Trying to make everything as inclusive as possible, so that from top down, your board is providing and making representations on behalf of your entire workforce.

And those aspects are really important to us as society, but really want to sort of, I suppose, drill down and look at the HR aspect and why that's important for HR, and particularly in and around when it comes to the workforce.

Christine:  Yeah. Again, I suppose it's coming back down to it's not just for the big companies. Northern Ireland is a small country. Everybody knows everybody. You can guarantee you'll bump into somebody who knows your cousin at some point. It is a small place.

So it's not just about Google being embarrassed by a failing on their part. People will kind of learn about your failings, so it's about maintaining your reputation and avoiding reputational damage.

There was a great example on International Women's Day last year. There was a bot on Twitter that every time a big company published kind of a shiny picture about International Women's Day and how supportive they are of women, it published their gender pay gap results, which resulted in a lot of posts being taken down very quickly.

Now, obviously, that's a fairly extreme example. But if you get a reputation for not looking after your employees, or not really caring about diversity on your boards, or environmental problems don't bother you, that gets out. And in a small country, it does matter, doesn't it? And it will affect your recruitment and retention.

Seamus:  Absolutely. I mean, local examples of that really are . . . With the Equality Commission, if they bring legal proceedings in relation to equality issues within the workplace or goods or services that are provided, they promote that. If they are successful, if the case resolves settlement-wise, or alternatively, if there's a judgement provided by a tribunal or a hearing, they will promote that. And there will be media often.

We heard just during the week there in relation to there was a family with a young child and a disability issue that the Equality Commission had assisted. The purpose of the Equality Commission is to promote and to safeguard legislation essentially. But that will no doubt have a reputational impact upon some of the organisations where there has been failings and where that has been highlighted.

But it also affords an opportunity for those organisations to do things better, to learn from their mistakes, and to . . . One of the key things organisations like the Law Centre here and the Equality Commission will do is they will offer to assist those organisations with their policies and procedures after the event.

So reputation is a big aspect of it. And whenever we're looking at the HR involvement, we are coming back to . . . I think the key aspects are probably the equality, diversity, and inclusion aspect for human resources. Often they're dealing with it at the coalface and the issues that arise of trying to navigate around those really difficult issues.

But again, if you have a good policy and procedure, if everyone is clear about what the culture and what the expectations are in the workplace, that makes the job so much easier if it has been communicated.

Definitely the big one is recruitment, retention, and training. We've had the great resignation and employers are more focussed on "What are the desires of their employees? How can they retain? How can they attract?"

And again, if you have really good social policies and procedures within your organisation, and you make it a good place to work, you will attract the right people that want to work there.

Health and wellbeing, really important. Making sure that there are good working practices.

What I hear a lot about is employees in organisations that they don't feel are run properly, where people have said to me, "I've left that organisation", or, "I felt that I couldn't stay any longer because there were just so many issues going on that weren't under control".

Whether they were financial issues, whether they were health and safety issues, people have said to me, "Look, I just couldn't be responsible any longer in the role because there were no good working practices in place and I couldn't change it, because from the top up, they didn't want to change".

And often, they've got these great policies and procedures in place, but there's no demonstration of how those policies and procedures are actually put into effect in the workplace.

Pay is another one that's really important for people. And the transparency around pay is something that has become really important.

In my day, I remember whenever I started as an apprentice solicitor, everybody knew what apprentices earned because we all earned the same money. It was just a figure that the Law Society, I think, ultimately told. But once you qualified, you didn't tell anybody how much you were earning because it was the fear that you were earning too much or too little. People kept that really safe.

And now, even if you look at a lot of the public sector jobs, they're all banded. Everybody knows what they . . . in and around what the figure might be in terms of salary and stuff like that as well.

And the question is, "Is there anything wrong with that?" Does it make it more open or transparent? Will it make people feel more comfortable in the sense that they're maybe sitting beside somebody else in their workplace . . . or maybe not so much as sitting beside them anymore, but they're doing the same job, but they're getting paid differently or they're getting paid less?

That breeds the aspect of, "I don't want to be here anymore. I'm going to move out and move on". So it really is a key aspect.

I think, for me, the other side of it is this accountability aspect. It's not just good enough to have up on your website what your corporate responsibility position is. I think your customers, your clients, your staff that you're trying to recruit, people will dig deeper.

There's so much available information on the internet. And if you're holding yourself out on your website through your mission statement to say that you are a good place to work, yet if somebody goes on to one of the . . . Is it Glass Hour or Glass . . .

Christine:  Glassdoor?

Seamus:  Glassdoor. That's it there. You can find out that they're not a great employer, and that in actual fact, they're a bad employer, they pay badly, and they discriminate, they don't allow people to have flexibility in their roles. You're not going to attract the talent.

So I thought out the accountability point. As you say, you have to walk the walk and talk the talk. You can't just have the sign up.

And when you think about all of the different movements that have happened recently, #MeToo, Black Lives Matters, now all of the striking action, these are important issues for people. They're not going to go and work for someone . . . If they go and work for an organisation that they don't feel is supportive of their beliefs, they'll either leave or they'll just not be motivated to do any work. They'll become a bad employee.

So I think across the board, whether you're looking from a regulatory function, from investment and banking, from your employees, and even just from a societal position, we're all paying closer attention to what an organisation's ESG is.

And we might never have called it that before, we might not have known that that's what it is, but we're all doing it across all the platforms that we can do it on.

Christine:  Yeah. And I think younger employees, the millennials and the Gen Zers that are coming behind them, it is so important for them. They do not see it as strange to ask their employer about wellbeing policies, or to expect mental health support, or to almost outline their political views on veganism or whatever it may be. They want their whole personality in work and it to be respected. So if we think ESG is big now, it's only going to get bigger, isn't it?

Seamus:  Yeah, absolutely. When I was having a look just to see what sort of resources I could look at, I did see that Deloitte Legal . . . This was available on the internet, so I hope I'm not saying anything wrong here.

But there was sort of a presentation that had been done. And it was really interesting to me that some of the stuff that they were talking about in this was about pay and working practices, about reward at work and executive reward, and how that is managed and how they look forward with it all.

But some of the other stuff that they had in was environmentally-friendly terms and engagement, these sorts of things, where they talk about paid leave, sustainable travel, garden leave, return of property, all the stuff in HR and employment law that we know and are familiar, but we've never really thought about it in that capacity, in that way.

But yet there's no doubt the younger folk that are coming through are thinking of them in that way, and they are the new generation. And when you talk about sustainability of your business, that's where you have to be looking at in terms of legacy and your ability to continue on.

One of the other ones was on workforce engagement. And then specifically they had posed a question, which I thought was really interesting. They said, "Is belief in climate change a philosophical belief?" And I thought, "All right, here we go". That could be the . . . We've moved on from the recent case there in relation to the leather goods and the employee and the organisation.

This is another potential one. I'm just flagging it up there. They've done a slide now. It's done under the Equality Act, but it's really interesting.

And they say, "Why should this issue be on your HR agenda?" And they say that managing climate change is a protected belief. Managing conflicting views and opinions on climate change in the workplace. And that really is important because everybody doesn't agree. And attracting and retaining future workforce.

So you can see where you have someone like Deloitte that is giving those sorts of professional management services, exactly whether they're looking at for how things are going to go in the future when we come to ESG.

Christine:  And what would be your kind of . . . How would you sum it up, Seamus? What would be your takeaways?

Seamus:  I think that the key is not to panic about it. I think that all organisations will be doing ESG in some shape and form. It maybe is that you just have to pull it together and look at it from a policy and procedure point of view.

I think it's really key that you can't just focus on one aspect of it. You can't just think about the governance. It has to be intertwined. It has to be a holistic approach with it all.

That aspect of accountability, you're not going to be able to kid people. If you're holding yourself out as being this great organisation, have it up on your website, and you have a few photographs even on Twitter of doing a litter pick at the beach or something like that, people are going to delve into this. They're going to ask questions. The information that they want about your organisation is going to be available not necessarily on the internet, but back to even good old word-of-mouth in relation to it.

I think in terms of sustainability of your business, I think we're all still having problems in relation to recruitment and retention of staff. These are the issues that are important, and particularly trying to bring through the younger folk, whether it's just people coming out of school or people coming out of university. These are really important interests, as you said, to them, and that has to be part of the mission statement of the organisation.

I think just from a regulatory approach, and particularly even in sort of commercial transactions that I've worked in recently, you can see more of the due diligence process is now focussed on these types of matters. So if somebody's buying a business, they want to know how the business has catered for those matters.

I was doing a lease for a client last week and the landlord's covenants in the lease for the tenant were that the tenant will operate the premises in an environmentally friendly way.

Christine:  Unusual.

Seamus:  Society is moving in that direction, and I think they absolutely have to get on board with it. You will be doing a lot of it anyway, but it's about just compiling and pushing that together.

And anybody that is working with investors or people, ISO, they'll be familiar with this as it is. But I think that definitely for an assessment of an organisation, ESG is the way that people will view the company or the organisation as to whether it's healthy or not. And that applies whether you're in the public sector, the private sector, or third sector.

Christine:  Yeah. Brilliant. Thanks very much, Seamus.

Folks, just a wee reminder, if you do have any questions, drop them into the question box and I'll put them to Seamus.

So now we're just going to move on to the next topic. It's around zero-hours contracts. So draft legislation, as I said at the start, was introduced in the Assembly just before it fell. And it is aiming to enhance protection for zero-hours workers.

This isn't unique to Northern Ireland. Over in England and Wales, they have been legislating on that as well. They removed exclusivity clauses from being permitted. Down in the Republic of Ireland, they have a banded hours system.

Now, interestingly, the Northern Ireland Assembly version of the legislation is very close to the Republic of Ireland's. So it's useful. We have our neighbours to look at, to see what problems they've had with it, what they've done well, what they haven't. So that's quite useful.

But, Seamus, zero-hours contract isn't a legal term. It's kind of a concept, isn't it? Would I be right in saying that?

Seamus:  Yes. I mean, the starting point for it is really . . . In general, we have three types of employees. Or sorry, three types of categories of staff, not three types of employees. But we have three types of categories of staff.

We'll have an employee. Most people will fall into that bracket. I think the vast majority of people will fall into the aspect of employee.

Then we have worker. Employee and worker are very similar, but also very distinct rights.

And then the third is that we have an independent contractor.

Our standard employee that we think about will be somebody that has a contract of employment, and the contract of employment will tell them their terms and conditions. And part of those terms and conditions will be what their working hours are per week. And they'll know that if their contract says that they work 35 hours a week, that's the minimum that they can expect to work in their workplace. There might be some avenue for overtime outside of that, but the contract is very clear on it.

A zero-hours employee may also have a contract in place, but the contract will not provide any exclusive terms when it comes to the aspect of working hours. So there will be no obligation on the employer to provide a set number of working hours. There's no obligation to provide any work, and equally, there's no obligation on the employee to accept work if it is offered. Now, that's the general way that we would look at zero-hour workers.

Zero-hour workers fall into the workers category. Also, sometimes they may fall into the employee category also, but it's not an easy distinction to make. Labour Relations Agency have a document that you can look at to make a decision whether you are an employee or whether you're a worker. It's a grey area, and there's lots of case law around it, lots of case law that is in relation to it.

But the types of those zero-hour workers that we'll see will be . . . they're sometimes called bank staff, casual workers, care workers, delivery drivers. People that work within the gig economy will generally always be zero-hour workers. And we know that there have been interesting cases right up to the Supreme Court in and around the gig economy and those various types of delivery companies and fast food companies that will generally provide work to those gig economy workers.

But the zero-hour contract, it is a legal contract. It is a form of contract and it's permitted under the law. The problem with it is that it can be open to abuse. And often, a lot of the zero-hour workers are considered to be treated unfairly, unfavourably, detrimentally in comparison to an employee with an employment contract.

And interestingly, there was an old NICVA sort of response at the time for the Minister for Employment and Learning about the future position on zero-hour contracts. This is going back to 2014, which is almost 10 years at this point. That is very long time ago now when we think about things. But you can see how long that this has been in the contemplation of our government and issues that are arising from it.

But just some of the statistics around that . . . They're probably too old now to give really any too much value, but interestingly, it did record that women were more likely than men to have a zero-hour contract, and young people.

The types of industries that normally you're looking at, hospitality, retail, caring profession, are all generally on zero-hour worker contracts as well. And there's a vulnerability around those because, essentially, the organisation could provide them with 30 hours one week and zero the next. And what has happened is that those staff are vulnerable because they don't have a set number of hours, and then they end up being prepared to accept this vulnerable position from the people that are giving them work and they end up being treated very badly.

So government has for a long time been looking to step in to try to amend that. But the feeling that I'm getting . . . And I know maybe we want to move on in relation to what the proposed bill at the time was looking at. But I think government's concerns have been around the vulnerability.

I don't think that there's going to be a position where they're going to simply say zero-hour contracts are illegal. They'll look at amending the legislation, as they've done in GB and as they've done in the Republic of Ireland as well.

They're not all bad. They provide advantages for people, and there are some people that enjoy the flexibility that a zero-hour contract can provide. The member of staff can equally say, "I don't want to work next week. I'm actually going to be working on another project". Realistically, does that mean that the business is going to say, "Well, I'm not giving them work the following week because they didn't help me out this week"? There are so many problems that are complicit with them.

But it can help in relation to where a business is looking to expand, but expand cautiously, and the use of zero-hour workers. And it can help in relation to their retention. You can have a bank of staff there that know how your organisation works that you can call upon, and they will come in and work if they're available and if they want to, and they have knowledge of the business. They have knowledge of the culture of the business and everything like that as well.

But there are disadvantages there. And maybe just to bring that forward there, this was an extract from the Assembly Committee for the Economy at Stormont. And at the time, one of the MLAs was a Dr Caoimhe Archibald, and she had said that it was estimated that approximately 11,000 workers in Northern Ireland were on zero-hour contracts.

And she said, "We recognise that flexibility can be desirable for both employees and employers and that it enables growth and demand and things like that". But she also went on to say, "However, workers on zero-hour contracts can often be required to be readily available but with no guarantee for work. The unpredictability, the unreliable working patterns can lead the anxiety in workers, as well as an uncertainty about income, and can make it harder for some to make long-term financial plans".

So this was the committee that were examining the position around zero-hour contracts and what their thoughts were in relation to it.

Christine:  And so, Seamus, what are the proposals then? What was discussed in the Assembly about amending this?

Seamus:  Well, the bill itself, what the bill was entitled was the Employment (Zero Hours Workers and Banded Weekly Working Hours) Bill. And essentially, it set out fundamentally, I suppose, proposals about the way that zero-hour contracts are going to be regulated in Northern Ireland.

And what they said was that the overriding objective was to provide zero-hour workers with enhanced protections by providing less precarious working environments while still allowing for responsive and agile working.

So there are a couple of things that are key to it. One is you'd mentioned at the start there, Christine, about a ban on exclusivity clauses. And this was a real issue that was coming out in GB where employers were businesses and organisations were saying, "I'm going to give you a contract as a zero-hour worker, but you can't work for anybody else. You're restricted. You can't work for a competing business".

And if somebody has a certain skill . . . If you're working in hospitality as a waiter or a waitress and that is your skill and you're good at your job, if Business A can't provide you with hours that week, you're going to want to work and go for Business B because they have available work.

And these restrictions, then, that were placed on zero-hour workers are unfair essentially, because whilst not giving the worker any employment, it is also restricting them from engaging in other work as well.

So the plan would be that that those restrictive aspects would be valid and void. And I think in GB, the reports have been that employers will still readily try to put these restrictions into the contracts. The law is clear, though, that if they do, it is unfair.

And there have been additional protections provided. I was looking just at Acas last night, and there are restrictions there in GB that if you are subsequently dismissed or you're treated detrimentally because of your failure to adhere to a restriction on the exclusivity aspect, that is illegal, it's unfair, it's unfavourable treatment, and there are rights for the zero-hour worker to bring claims in relation to that.

There's also, then, this aspect of . . . There was potential of saying that you were going to have a minimum set of hours, so that if over a period of time you were doing a certain amount of hours, you would fall within these banded hours.

Seamus:  So there was this aspect of the possibility of looking at banded hours to say that if over a period of time you were doing a certain amount of hours, you would fall within this banded period, and that then there would be a limitation in the contract to say that was the minimum number of hours that you could be provided for. And if there wasn't any work, you would still get paid for those hours.

They did toy with the idea also of saying that if you were brought into work . . . And often this can happen. This is another really detrimental side of it. If you're brought into work and it turns out that it's not busy and they say after one hour, "We don't need you any longer, off you go home", this minimum aspect of saying that if you're brought into work, the minimum payment will be at least three hours' work. And even if you don't work the three hours, you're still entitled to some form of payment in relation to it.

But the banded hours is very similar to what they've done in the Republic of Ireland. In England, they've looked more at this minimum set of hours where the band works and . . . The band runs from A up to H. A is three hours and you get up to, but not including, six hours. Right up to G is 31 hours to 36 hours, and H is 36 hours and over. So if you're put into a band, then you're almost guaranteed that that will be your limited amount of pay that you'll receive.

But I think from what I can read, NI Business, and a lot of the consultation that came out in relation to this, there is support there for increasing the rights and benefits for anybody on a zero-hours contract.

And I suspect that if we get things back up and running here in Northern Ireland, or alternatively if we end up having to get a ruling from London, that this will end up with us at some point.

That's why we thought it was important to look at today, because we do have it already in GB and it's been brought in, in the Republic of Ireland. So it's very likely that we're going to end up with these added protections as well.

I think my view in relation to it is I'm perfectly aware of circumstances where it very much suits the employee and the employer, and that works well, but I'm also aware of other cases where it is entirely unfair. I think it's right that there's some form of amendment made to the existing laws.

Christine:  Brilliant. Thank you very much for that, Seamus.

We have overrun slightly, so apologies, folks, but there was a lot to say there. So thank you all very much for coming. Thanks to Seamus for coming and sharing his experience.

So Legal-Island have an ESG course, an eLearning course, that has just been launched. If you'd like to drop my colleague, Debbie, an email, debbie@legal-island.com, she can arrange a free demo for you there. So, hopefully, we've sparked your interest today and you understand the importance of ESG.

We've also got our Employment Law Hub. We've got some events coming up. We've got a great event coming up on the cost of living crisis, and then we have another one in March on productivity in a blended working environment. And we've got our other eLearning courses as well. So please do check them out.

Thank you very much for coming. If you want to catch up, we are on Spotify, Amazon, and Apple Podcasts.

You can also find me and Seamus on LinkedIn, so please do drop us a message and we'll connect with you.

But thank you very much for listening. Thank you, Seamus, for coming along. Thanks to Maria for running all the tech so smoothly this morning. Have a lovely weekend, everybody. See you later.

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