People need safe, fulfilling and well-paying jobs to reach their potential. This not only boosts employee morale, but also improves retention, productivity and health. That's what drives business growth and success.

At Legal Island we’re always on the lookout for new and innovative approaches to improving business, employee’s lives and the local economy. One such scheme is the “Greater Manchester Good Employment Charter”. It’s a scheme that’s being mirrored by Belfast City Council, who started their own initiative in April 2023. Employment Charters have yet to take off in the Republic of Ireland – but should they? Especially since we learned that the Republic is in breach of the European Social Charter? What can we learn from our Northern English neighbours?

Their scheme is a voluntary membership and assessment scheme which has been created to improve employment standards across all employers, regardless of size or sector. It is innovative because it takes a collaborative, voluntary, and aspirational approach to promoting good employment practices in the region, while providing recognition and support to employers who commit to meeting its standards.

Carol Halford, Manager, Good Employment Charter, Mark McAllister, Director of Employment Relations Services, Labour Relations Agency and Dr Martin Duffy, ROI expert and M.D. of ASA Consulting debate the pros, cons and what NI and ROI businesses can learn from the scheme – should we all follow suit?

Who should watch?
This event is ideal for line managers, HR professionals, trade union officials, business groups and business owners in NI and ROI.

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Recording

Transcript

Christine:  Hello, everybody, and welcome to the second of Legal Island's anniversary Workforce 2.0 webinars sponsored by MCS Group. My name is Christine Quinn. I am a knowledge partner here at LegalIsland.

So what are we talking about today? We're talking about employment charters. What are they? How do they work? And should we here in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland be getting on board with them?

So Belfast City Council has already started their own scheme, the Belfast Business Promise. It launched in April, so just a few months ago. So we're very much looking forward to hearing how that goes. Shout-out to Maria Robinson, who's involved with that, and I know she's listening in today. I hope we don't get anything wrong.

In the Republic of Ireland, it's an entirely new concept. So no employment charters that we know of exist in the Republic of Ireland. If I'm wrong and you're listening in from, I don't know, the Galway Business Promise or something like that, and you're shouting at your computer screen right now, please do drop us a message. We would love to know what you're up to. We want to be proven wrong if you're out there and do exist. But it would seem to me that the setup in the Republic makes it ripe for this type of scheme. We've got the WRC functions alongside the sectoral employment orders and the strong history of industrial relations in the Republic. And this would all seem to lend itself to the establishment of employment charters.

But more on all this later. We've got an hour set aside today, so we'll aim to finish at around 1:30 p.m. or shortly before. So thanks, as always, to our sponsors, MCS Group. MCS help people find careers that match their skill sets 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.

I've got three great speakers to introduce to you today. Got Carol Halford. She is from the Charter Implementation Unit of Greater Manchester Good Employment Charter. She is joining us today from Manchester. And we have Mark McAllister. Mark is our Northern Ireland expert today and is the Director of Employment Relations Services with the LRA and part-time lecturer in law. He specialises in employment law, dispute prevention, and strategic collaborative working in industrial relations. We've also got Dr. Martin Duffy. Martin is our ROI expert today. Having initially trained as a military pilot in 1984, he switched careers in 2001 to focus as an independent consultant in organisation development. He completed his Ph.D. in 2016, focused on organisation development. Carol, Mark, and Martin, you're all very welcome today.

Martin:  Thanks very much, Christine. Lovely to be with you.

Christine:  Lovely to have you all here. So we're going to kick off today with Carol. Carol is going to tell us what they're up to in Manchester, and she's also, more importantly, going to explain what an employment charter is for us all. After Carol speaks, Martin and Mark will join us again to unpick some of the ideas that Carol has taken us through. Let's see if Northern Ireland and the Republic should be thinking about following suit and implementing employment charters in their jurisdiction.

Please do drop any questions you have for our panel into the questions box. It's anonymous so no need to feel shy. We'd love to hear from you. But without further ado, it's over to you Carol.

Carol:  Thank you, Christine. Afternoon, everybody. I'm really pleased to be here to talk to you about the work that we've been doing in Greater Manchester. So I'm just going to talk about the Good Employment Charter and kind of our journey, how we started the Charter, and give you a bit of an update in terms of where we're up to now.

Next slide. Okay. So you might ask yourselves, 'What is the charter?' So our definition of a charter is that it's a voluntary membership and assessment scheme. And the idea of it is that it will raise employment standards across the whole of Greater Manchester. We try to be as inclusive as possible, so we are open to all organisations of any size, sector, or geography across Greater Manchester, or where an employer might be based outside of Greater Manchester, but it does have some employee presence within the city region. And so the other thing to say as well is that there is no cost at all in terms of any kind of link to the Good Employment Charter as well. It's free for employers.

Next slide. So just to say that the Charter as well, it doesn't sit in isolation. It's the Greater Manchester Charter, but it also features in many of the other Greater Manchester strategies. And so it features in our Good Lives for All strategy. And the idea of it is that it actually kind of underpins a lot of the work because what we're trying to do is to support employers to provide better opportunities for workers to grow, to develop, to thrive in a workplace, to drive economic prosperity, and, as we've said, to improve and drive up employment standards across all sectors that will help both the individual and their employer.

So just to kind of recap in terms of why the Charter started, it's important to say as well that this is a mayoral initiative. And so when our mayor, Andy Burnham, was first running for the mayoral role in 2017, he noticed some inequalities in our labour market. So despite it having strengths, there were some real core issues around wages not meeting the cost of living, accessibility and flexibility not offered in roles that led to a lack of diversity, but in addition, also led to lots of talent being haemorrhaged from the city region as well, people thinking that there were better opportunities elsewhere. And at that time as well, it was kind of the start really of the gig economy. So we had the Uber drivers. We had the deliveries, etc. So, you know, lots of unstable, low-paid work that was significantly rising at a rapid pace as well. And I think you could say that despite those characteristics being noted or those issues being noted in 2017, they're still very, very much relevant to today in 2023. So very much still relevant to the work that we're doing.

Next slide. So just to give you a bit of a summary in terms of the journey that we've been on in a timeline, as I've said, this was a mayoral initiative, first kind of thought of by Andy Burnham in May of 2017, when he was running for election and then he became elected. And then once he was elected and he had the mandate to go ahead with the promises that he made in his manifesto, there was an 18-month consultation that took place and two public consultations as well. So in that 18-month consultation and kind of co-production really, we spoke to third sector, private sector employers. We spoke to public sector. We spoke to advisory bodies, people like CIPD, ACAS, etc., and lots of partners, Chamber of Commerce, lots of key organisations that helped us to kind of shape what the Charter might look like.

And then after that consultation, proposals were taken to a steering group, and the Combined Authority approved the actual framework itself. And then we launched our supporters here in July '19. Then we had a pilot group of employees to work with us to look at developing the criteria that sit below the framework. Followed that up with a conference in November '19, which had about 140 delegates at it. We had lots of people from different advisory bodies and employers to help us. That session was facilitated by ACAS and some trade union reps as well, and we had Ph.D. students who kind of took all of our notes for that event, so that was really good. And then we launched our membership criteria and announced our first six members of the Charter in January 2020. And then after that, we went into lockdown.

But in terms of the Good Employment Charter and the structure of it, the backbone of it is based around seven characteristics. So the first one is pay, which I alluded to around making sure that people were earning enough to meet the cost of living. So within this particular characteristic, we would include the payment of the real living wage. And then as a result of the pandemic, what we then did, we reviewed that and we were looking at kind of things that were happening in the labour market. And so we also then introduced sick pay criteria into that particular characteristic. We were very conscious that lots of people in the foundational economy were very vulnerable and were having to go to work because they weren't receiving sick pay. And we felt that that was something that needed to be addressed.

So we have secure work as well. So this is about minimising the use of unnecessary zero-hours contracts. We have engagement and voice. So this relates to how an employer consults and engages with their workforce. So they might do that through a trade union, but they might not have trade union involvement. And so they'll do that through things like staff surveys, through staff meetings, staff conferences, one-to-ones, a whole different range of different types of communication channels.

Flexible work. Again, this is about increasing accessibility to job roles. And we have seen this move on leaps and bounds, especially during the pandemic. But what we kind of realise now is that just giving people a laptop and telling them to work from home isn't actually truly flexible working, because often people are working more hours than they did when they were in a kind of normal work environment, and the lines between home life and work life are becoming blurred. So we're still doing quite a lot of work in that area with people like Timewise.

Recruitment, this one is about open and fair recruitment policies. Put a lot of emphasis in this particular characteristic around equality, diversity, and inclusion. But this is looking at how an employer understands the makeup of its workforce, if it's identified underrepresented areas, what is it doing about that? Is it looking at progression? All of those sorts of things sit in recruitment.

Then we have people management. This is more about the organisational values, the culture, performance management, progression, development, training. All of that will sit in people management.

And then health and wellbeing, again, we've seen this move on leaps and bounds from the pandemic. And so initially, we had kind of lots of focus on physical and mental wellbeing. But what we've now seen recently is employers having to focus on financial wellbeing as well, because, obviously, that impacts mental and physical health as well. But obviously, the cost of living is driving some of these different approaches to some of the work that we're doing as well.

Next slide. Okay. Just to say as well that during the debate about the seven characteristics, there was talk of a separate characteristic that would just be around equality, diversity, and inclusion. But the strong sense was that equality, diversity, and inclusion does feature in each of the seven characteristics. But we are looking now at how we strengthen that further because we have lots of employers that talk about they've got action plans, but it's now looking at, 'How do we move those into real tangible action?' And I think over the past three years, three and a half years, knowledge and understanding about equality, diversity, and inclusion and awareness has increased significantly. And so therefore, we want to strengthen that as well in the work that we are doing.

Next slide. So just kind of a quick guide in terms of how an employer can get involved. So in terms of employer engagement, every employer that wants to engage with the Charter will start off as a supporter. So at this stage, this is the entry point. They are making a commitment to those seven characteristics. They might not meet them all, but they're making that commitment to say we are working towards meeting all of these characteristics, and they'll put an action plan in place. We will then work with that employer over a period of time. They'll come to our events. We'll look at our membership criteria and see how close they are to becoming ready for working towards the member tier.

Once they are ready, we'll carry out an assessment that's carried out by the team. It's not like an ISO audit or an investor or an offset inspection. It's about us working with an employer to understand what works within their organisation and can clearly demonstrate that they are meeting our characteristics. We don't apply a one-size-fits-all because we could never compare a blue-chip company to a very small SMA, for example. So we do look at what does work for that organisation.

And once we go through that membership assessment, we would then take our assessment to an independent advisory panel, and on that panel, we have a rep from ACAS, from CIPD, from a trade union, from a university, from the Combined Authority. And they will ask some questions. They'll ask for clarifications. And then once we're satisfied, that would then go to our board as a recommendation for that employer to become a member.

Okay, next slide. In terms of some of the benefits for employers, once they become a member, they've got access or support, so they've got access to a whole network of other employers. And we have found that our employers are very, very willing to share, to give the time, to support, to mentor other organisations as well. It does feel like Andy Burnham calls it a movement. And it is a movement of employers that do want to do the right thing, which is fantastic.

Network events, we have these on a regular basis. So we might do them through . . . we might do webinars. We will do in-person events. We have quality networking events. We have share and learn sessions. We have explore days where employers can go and visit another employer's site and learn about that employer and what their practices are. And they've been really, really popular. So we have a whole host of events that we organise.

When an employer does commit to either becoming a supporter or they become a member, they are making that visible commitment to employees. So not just their own internal employees, but also by using the logo, etc., they're making a visible kind of announcement really externally to say that they are a good employer or they're working towards becoming a good employer.

On our website, we have lots of resources that are all free to supporters and members. So some of these have been provided by CIPD. They've given us a micro link to a site where they have mapped all of their resources to our seven characteristics. ACAS have done the same. We've got resources for mind. We've got blogs for employers. We've got toolkits around recruiting young people. We've got a mental health toolkit that we did with the Integrated Care Board. So there's loads of things on that website that our employers can access.

And what we also now know is that some of our employers, quite a few are now seeing real tangible results in terms of performance improvement. So we've got improvements in retention. We've got improvements in recruitment. And we've got employers that are saying that in terms of productivity, they're now seeing that coming down onto the bottom line as well. So that's fantastic. And we're trying to capture some of those case studies at this moment.

Next slide. So we're currently, as a team, engaging with around 1,600 employers. We are a small team of 7, so we are kind of quite stretched, but we've got 1,600 employers, perhaps a little bit more than that now, who are engaged at different points in the process. We've got around 550 that have become supporters, so they've made that commitment. The impact is that the practices are benefiting over 400,000 employees. That's probably more like 450,000 now. And we now have 91 members of the Good Employment Charter.

The next slide. Just to say that in terms of our approach, we have kind of an employer engagement part of the team, but we also have a marketing part of the team. And so what we try to do is to balance our approach so that we do our assessment work with the employers and support the employers, but we also have a campaign side as well. So we're trying to get the message out there and promote the good practice, etc.

The next slide. So just to touch on some of the other work streams that we've been involved with, we've done some work around disability in the workplace, developing a toolkit working with Breakthrough and ACAS and CIPD. We've done some work recently around leadership for good employment, recognising that the skill set of leaders has had to change and is changing all the time. Again, the pandemic has really altered much in the way that we work. And so leadership styles have had to change to kind of represent the new way that we would expect people to be managed.

We've looked at ageing in the workplace as well. We've got an ageing demographic. We have our own podcasts as well.

We've linked, or the mayor has linked the Charter into public procurement. So this has really kind of driven quite a lot of traffic towards us as well. And that's starting to change some of the behaviours, particularly around the real living wage. And then recently, one of the biggest examples of public procurement was the link to bus franchising. So all the bus franchises that have been successful are now working towards becoming a member of the Good Employment Charter as well. And we've done a lot of work on racism and allyship. So different topics all the time, kind of changes month by month.

The next slide. So the next big thing that we have, we recently had our second awards event that took place at the end of April, which was a fantastic celebration of good employment practice. But from the 19th of June to the 24th of June, we're going to be holding our first Good Employment Week. So this will run right across the city-region. The focus is on employee engagement and voice. So we hear lots from the employers, but we want to hear more from employees.

And we want to raise awareness about what a good job will look like. So we've created a quiz, access through a QR code, and we will encourage people to complete that. And then at the end of it, it will tell them if they have got a good job. If they haven't, or if they need some more information about certain topics, it will signpost them to websites, etc. so they can find out more information, perhaps on the real living wage if they don't know what the real living wage is, for example.

So this is going to be quite high profile for us because we've got a bus wrap, we've got a tram wrap. They couldn't have the QR code on because it would be a bit dangerous for people running after the bus trying to get that. So it'll have links to the website on there. And then on some of the major trunk roads as well, the digital boards will have information about the quiz on there as well. And we've got a whole range of partners that are supporting us with events right across the city-region.

So the next slide. So just to say you might be thinking there's seven people that are on this team doing this work. In terms of governance, we do have a structure in place. So we have the Implementation Unit, which is where I'm based, and we carry on the day-to-day responsibilities of the Charter and the branding, etc. But we also have a Programme Board, and that does act as a champion. There's 14 members of that group, and it'll include people like CIPD, the chamber, some public employers, and some private sector employers. And they basically provide the vision, the direction, the oversight of the Charter. And then, as I've said, when we carry out assessment to become a member of the Charter, we have our Technical Review Panel as well. So that's kind of another layer of kind of scrutiny, but also support, I would say. And we tell employers that that's almost like free consultancy for them, which they've all found to be very valuable.

And then the last slide, that's it. So, yeah, any questions at any point, I'm quite happy to take. Thank you.

Christine:  Thanks. Thanks very much for that, Carol. That was really interesting. And I don't know whether I missed it at the start. How long has the scheme been going in Manchester? And when did you start?

Carol:  So it started, it kind of, when the mayor was elected in 2017, that's when the consultation work started. But then in 2019 was when the supporter tier was launched. So we've been going really operationally since 2019.

Christine:  Brilliant. So you've achieved a lot in a relatively short time. I'm hoping Mark and Martin are going to come on and join us in just a moment. But I suppose from somebody becoming interested, so the big number you were talking about, the kind of people who are involved, that means they're sort of tentatively feeling you out, trying to find out what goes on with it. Is that how you describe it? And then they become the supporter, which means they're engaging with the process and starting to improve their internal things. Have I understood correctly?

Carol:  Yeah. So we have our own website, and people can contact us through the website as an inquiry or they can sign up straightaway and become a supporter. Whenever somebody registers and they want to become a supporter, before we kind of make them a live supporter, we will try and have a conversation with them because we want to understand what their aspirations are and why they're getting involved with the Charter. Especially when we've had out-of-area ones as well, we want to also make sure that there's a genuine interest in becoming involved and contributing to GM. But sometimes there might be a delay with that if it's a big organisation, because we might meet with an HR manager, but then they may have to take that then to their board to describe what the Charter is and say this is something that we've got to get involved with. So we have some delays like that sometimes, but there's conversations that are just ongoing all the time with the employers.

Christine:  This might be how long is a piece of string type question, Carol, but generally from becoming a supporter to becoming a full member, how long would that take, or is it really just depends?

Carol:  So we always say that we wouldn't want an employer to be a supporter for more than 12 months, but at that 12-month stage, we would be wanting to have a conversation with them and say, 'Are you ready?' And we will have been having interaction with them along the way anyway. And to be honest, most of them do want to become a supporter within 12 months.

But there's a lot of bigger organisations that it does take longer than that, just purely because of kind of working through the process. Or at the moment, as an example, we are working with the health and social care sector. So we've got quite a few of the NHS trusts who are our supporters. They want to become members, but because of things like, well, up until recently, Agenda for Change, it was quite difficult for them to pay the real living wage because the national pay rates didn't sit with the real living wage. They do now. But we have to have conversations to see what will that look like longer term. Will the national structure keep up with the real living wage pay rates, for example?

But we also have some employers that join us and they'll say, 'We want to become a member within the next kind of three months'. So some of them are fast-tracked. And sometimes we know that they're a good employer, and so we're quite happy to work with them and make sure we can fast-track them as well.

So it does vary on the organisation, the size, the internal politics that they might have as well. But like I said, we always adapt this one-size-fits-all approach. Not one-size-fits-all, but we will work with them so that it's not one-size-fits-all. We will take account of their individual circumstances.

Christine:  Okay, brilliant. Thanks, Carol. And am I right in saying there's no fee to join up?

Carol:  It's entirely free. And all of the resources that we provide are all free of charge for people to access as well. And we know people have done that. Particularly smaller organisations that don't have a big HR department, for example, they've found it incredibly helpful to access those resources and to have conversations with other employers that if they've got a particular issue that they're trying to grapple with, and they know that somebody else has done something particularly well, or we're aware of somebody that's done something particularly well, we facilitate conversations as well so that people can have peer-to-peer support.

Christine:  Yeah, that's fantastic. I think that's the bit that really appeals to me. I mean, just having the expertise of so many companies just at your fingertips would be absolutely fantastic. I might move to Greater Manchester. It sounds amazing. Thanks very much, Carol. I'm just going to try and bring Martin and Mark in now, if I may. So, Martin, if I'll come to you first, from a Republic of Ireland stance, what were your thoughts on listening to Carol there?

Martin:  Well, I have to say it's a fire hose, to be honest. What a fantastic story, Carol, congratulations.

Carol:  Thank you.

Martin:  Really, really well done in such a short time. It looks like you've made fantastic progress in a relatively short period of time. I suppose maybe the elephant in the room initially, Christine, you brought it up yourself there, the funding of the initiative, does the funding come from the Greater Manchester Council area or how does the funding for it operate?

Carol:  So initially, we were part funded through some European Social Fund money, but we are predominantly funded through the business rates that come from the 10 local authorities. So our funding comes through the Combined Authority, but there's an agreement across the 10 local authorities that from business rates they will contribute to the funding of the unit basically. Yeah. That's how we do it now.

Martin:  My reason for starting with that question and then to address the question that you asked me Christine was from a Republic of Ireland perspective, I mean the immediate thing that struck me is if you go back to 1987, when the government in Ireland brought in the initial social programmes, but they brought them at a national level, and they were centrally funded. And it took about five, six, seven years for those programmes, for them to realise that actually the programmes weren't hitting down into the belly of the organisations. Even big organisations, they weren't getting into the belly of the beast. So that the latter programmes, so when we get into the mid-2000s, those programmes started to provide centralised funding to drive initiatives into workplaces.

Whereas what strikes me about your initiative, it's the direct opposite, which I think is fantastic, because it's a bottom-up, organic response to a social and an economic need. And that's a common thread between your initiative and the Irish initiatives. It's the joining of the social and the economic development. But I think what sets your one apart is it's bottom-up driven. And I think that sparks a whole lot of questions in my head that I'd really love to discuss as we have a further or detailed conversation.

Carol:  Yeah.

Christine:  Martin, I think that would take me into a question that I've been wondering. In the Republic, who, in your view, would be best placed to do this? I mean, the WRC's function is similar but different from the Labour Relations Agency in that it has kind of judicial powers, if that's the right expression to use. It's making judgments on employment matters, but then it also kind of pushes best practice as well, which arguably this Unemployment Charter is best practice. So would you see it as a WRC needing to be heavily involved? Would they have the power to start implementing this type of thing, or would it come down to council level as it has in Manchester?

Martin:  Yeah, I think that's a really good question. I actually don't think the WRC would be the place that I'd be inclined to start. I'd be more thinking in terms of local county councils, local enterprise boards, local chambers of commerce. And again, the emphasis on what's constantly striking my mind from Carol's presentation is it's local. It's local driven, local ownership. But the challenge, I suspect, will be how does that grow into wider and more national, more regional, and then more national. But my inclination would be not to try to replicate the Manchester model at national level. I'd be saying replicate it at local level and let that wave build from the bottom up, because I think that's so powerful, really powerful.

Christine:  Yeah, brilliant. I think that's a good point to bring you in, Mark, because I think that is also what struck me. It's kind of at the LRA conference where I first heard Carol speak about this, one of the other speakers said good employers don't need the law to tell them what to do. And what came into my head at that point was, well, that's a blooming good job, because, in Northern Ireland, we don't have anybody making any laws at the minute. So it is a wee bit of power to the people, this type of thing, isn't it, Mark?

Mark:  It really is. And it's sort of developed. And picking up both points that both Martin and Carol made, I think the difficulty in the Northern Ireland context is that we are in this sort of policy vacuum, if you like, because the Department for the Economy, without a minister, are sort of in a state of abeyance with regard to where they're going with their policy development. And in that vacuum, then what happens is there are organisations at a sectoral level that will do their own thing regarding employment charter work. And we have seen that with the like of Hospitality Ulster and other sectoral lobby bodies saying look, 'We're not waiting for legislation or we're not waiting for direction from a particular government department. We're going our own way on it'.

And I can see both Martin's points are very well made in terms of that bottom up and that initiative. We're probably somewhere in the middle in that regard, in terms of where there's an undeniable business case for both employers and employees about the use of employment charters, about raising standards, about all of the core issues that Carol had talked about. And I think that HR practitioners are looking around, and they see things like the Carnegie Trust measurements of good work. They look at the Belfast Business Promise. They look at the experience of Greater Manchester. And they're sort of cherry-picking parts of all of it to say, 'We need to be doing something here, but there is no strategic direction from government. So what do we do in the meantime?' And that is where that vacuum is being filled as we speak.

And as I say, there's no argument about the validity of this. The motivations for different sectors doing different things around employment charters obviously will vary. Some of it's about recruitment and retention. Some of it's to do with job security and all of that. But you will see degrees of commonality across the various initiatives. For example, Belfast City Council's Belfast Business Promise looks at fair wages, living wage, non-use of zero-hours contracts, recruiting inclusively, flexible working, employee voice, and all of the good things which are central to Greater Manchester.

But I think what you need to do is look at the political backcloth to all of this in the sense that in Greater Manchester, it's a massive, a massive region comparatively with regard to Northern Ireland. It's backed by a Labour MIR. It has the resources and funding, as Martin highlighted there, absolutely. So it's highly unlikely that you're going to be able to just lift and drop that model and say that will apply to Northern Ireland.

So if you take, for example, the Belfast Business Promise, how applicable will that be after the year of pilot to be able to say we can drop and drag that into Fermanagh or into Antrim or into wherever it happens to be? I think context informs everything here. So if you have a council area that is made up predominantly of macro employers who have difficulty meeting the voluntary living wage, you reach a stumbling block from the outset at that level. And where does that sit then at strategy level?

So as is very common in Northern Ireland, we are caught in this policy limbo. And everything that abhors a vacuum, especially employment policy. So people will do their own thing. And what our fear probably is, is that everybody goes at it in completely different ways. And you just have this patchwork quilt of charter initiatives that just suit a particular sector, but don't look at it in terms of the Northern Ireland economy generally and don't look at it under the broad strokes of things like improving productivity, which we have a massive problem with, and looking at the economic inactivity and looking at childcare and all of the big policy issues that intersect with this. And that's a difficulty. So there is a tangible frustration within trade union sector, business sector. I like to say we need to be moving on this. There just isn't any movement.

Christine:  And Mark, on the Belfast Business Promise, how much involvement has the Labour Relations Agency had with that? Are you consulted on it? Are you advising on it?

Mark:  We have hands up and conflict of interest about here. We are totally in. We are members. We are anchors. We are partners in all of it because the inherent component parts of the eight pledges in terms of pledge one, four, and five, which speak specifically to employment relations, we support as initiatives because they speak to the good work agenda. I mean, since the days of the Matthew Taylor report, the construct of what good work is, there has been a general, I suppose the best way to express it is a consensus by coalescing where there is this coalition of the willing to say we know exactly what works and what good work is. It's now just about putting a framework and putting some manners around that. And so the Labour Relations Agency as an organisation is supportive of it.

What I'd like to see is to operate at that sort of global policy level across Northern Ireland and cascade down to say these are the component parts of good work which are generic, and then look at where charters might differ because it won't be a case of one-size-fits-all but generic criteria will be across the piece. And I think when you look at Carnegie and you look at the seven criteria in Manchester and you look at the three pledges in Belfast Business Promise, you see that degree of commonality across.

Christine:  Brilliant. Thanks very much for that, Mark. Martin, if we just turn to you again. So in the Republic, in recent years, we've seen the rise of sectoral employment orders, registered employment agreements, and employment regulation orders for certain industries, like the construction sector, for instance. So what do you think an employment charter programme could learn from this type of employment agreement?

Martin:  Yeah, I think, I mean, some of the programmes that you've mentioned there, Christine, they've had their own challenges and difficulties in the courts here in the relatively recent past, where some of them have been challenged and the courts have upheld those challenges, which has in some ways put some of those initiatives back onto the drawing board. As Mark was explaining, from a Northern Ireland perspective, there was a kind of an idea forming in my mind here, and mindful of where Carol explains the whole initiative came from, it was politically driven initially, but it serves a business need.

And if you took that now from the point of view of Northern Ireland and even the Republic, supposing you had a joint initiative, supposing you turned around and said if you took the business organisation, so if you took IBEC, ISNI, as two major business organisations in Ireland, if you took the trade union movement, ITU in Ireland, so they were the main parties in the national social partnership programmes, but if you had the counterpart organisations just from Manchester putting forward a model that worked at a local regional level and then look to bring on the likes of the Workplace Relations Commission, IBEC in Ireland, ISNI, as partners in promoting and supporting the bottom-up approach and using the frameworks that Mark has talked about, that are already being progressively developed in Northern Ireland, but seem, from what Mark says, seem to be missing a certain amount of, I suppose, push, let's put it that way, political push and/or business push, then perhaps there's an initiative that could be driven from that middle out, not from government level. And perhaps the key drivers at the local level could then be the county councils in Ireland, which is kind of the equivalent of the Greater Manchester area.

So as a model to try to develop it, I'd be looking at, I'll take Mark's expression there, the coalition of willing. And the principles, the seven principles of your Charter, Carol, in some ways they sound like but that's just common sense. But actually, the bit that so often is missing, that isn't common, is common sense. So it seems to me that there's a fantastic framework there. And then to build a coalition of the willing at the appropriate level, to support the bottom up and maybe to prod the consciences upwards, to manage it upwards and downwards. And I think that will go to maybe addressing some of the issues, Mark, that you addressed or that you've identified from the Northern Ireland perspective in the absence of a sitting government, as we speak.

Christine:  Yeah, I mean, I think they seem like common sense, the seven things. I think that's what really struck me when you were speaking, Carol. It's so good that it seems like we should have come up with it before if you notice that type of feeling I kind of have. How on earth did you manage to corral these big organisations like ACAS and CIPD and stuff? How did you hook them in?

Carol:  I think we've been fortunate in that we've got a very proactive, very visionary mayor. And I think once Andy was elected, really it wasn't very difficult at all to get those organisers on board because once it was explained to them what we were trying to achieve, they wanted to be a part of it and they have been involved right from the very, very beginning. So they were involved with the steering group during the implementation phase, right from the off. So they have helped to steer it along the way. So they've got ownership as well of what we've been doing. And I guess there's respect there on both sides because we've respected their views as well and their advice along the way. We've listened to them, and we've incorporated their feedback into everything that we've done. But I think that the vision, there was no question there was a need for something of this nature, and they wanted to just be a part of it.

Christine:  And a big question, particularly in Northern Ireland, is does it have cross-party support in Manchester? So if, by some chance, the Tories or the Lib Dems become the dominant force in Manchester, are they convinced enough to keep it rolling?

Carol:  Yeah, and we do have some mixed political representations. And I think because people can see the traction that the Charter has got and they can see that it is making differences, and we've now got the local areas tying in their own campaigns to the Charter as well. So, for example, next week when we have Good Employment Week, we've got I think 4 of our 10 local authorities who are engaging with us and holding events of their own and linking it in again with the real living wage campaign as well. And I think that's probably one of the beauties of the Manchester model is that, as I've said, it doesn't sit in isolation. It links to other strategies.

Mark:  Yeah.

Carol:  And I think one of the things that we've heard a lot from employers, as we've been going along the journey as well, is that they want to feel that they are part of something, that they're part of this community. And it is a community that we have created. And I think that's quite unique. And I think that that's why people do want to come to it because the employers that are involved in it are also then talking about it to networks that they go to. You know, so I talked to one employer who's part of a manufacturing network, and in that manufacturing network now, we've had several other employers that have come forward to say, 'We want to be a part of this as well'. And we've seen that happen a lot.

We've recently had a GP practice that's signed up, well, become a member of the Charter now, and now is, in our scheme, we kind of allude to it as almost like having planes waiting to land at Heathrow. We've now got lots of GP practices that want to get involved. And so we're now getting into primary kind of care network sector and health and social care sector, because we have identified priority sectors as well. So those priority sectors and those areas getting involved just have a benefit to those local authority areas as well, because it's helping them to address some of their economic targets themselves.

Christine:  Brilliant. So it's kind of snowballing. It's taken on a bit of a life of its own and it's advertising itself.

Mark:  That's quite interesting, Christine, and pick up on Carol's point and back to Martin's point. It's really interesting that at a policy level, you obviously have to be very, very careful because if the perceptions are that ideologically this is a move towards social partnership, then politicians will have a difficulty with it. However, if you pervade evidence that from that bottom up and that sectoral level that this is working and it's handed over as a partial work in progress to say this is how it's working and this is how it's improving on the ground, then you counter those political narratives to say, 'Oh, we don't want social partnership by stealth because our system of employment has always been based on a sort of voluntaristic system, not hidebound by strict policy adherence.

So there is definitely an issue with regard to timing and practice and experience to be able to show what works rather than get bogged down in the sort of ideological, because invariably, as it happens very often in Northern Ireland, people will take a very sort of it's black or it's white. And if it's seen as part of simply an all-Ireland agenda, then that has its own political connotations along with it as well. So I think that's something you need to be cognisant of.

Christine:  Brilliant. Thanks very much. I've got a question here. It's come in for you, Carol. So in relation to the assessment of companies for the Charter, how are these carried out? Is it a mixture of evidence, witness statements, or in-person site visits? How does it work?

Carol:  So it is a combination of different things. But the process starts off initially with a readiness questionnaire. And so the readiness questionnaire is basically tick boxes, yes, no, where the employer will have to answer yes to all questions because that will be a key indicator for us that they are ready to go forward.

Once we've got that, and obviously we'll know that employer as well anyway, what we generally do is we'll go out and spend a half a day with them. So in that half a day, well, certainly when I go out to do that, I will spend a half a day and I will just talk through each of the seven characteristics. And I'll just ask questions and prompts to say, okay, I'll use my membership criteria, work through that and just generate a conversation, and I'll capture kind of everything that they're doing in relation to each characteristic.

Some organisations will, while I'm there, they might pull up policies on their internet on a screen. Other people might show me a handbook. But we don't want all of those being sent to us, because, one, we've got nowhere to store it. And secondly, you don't know with GDPR whether you're going to be compliant or not. But what we're more interested in is, okay, yes, you might have a policy. How is that communicated to your employee? But what is the impact of that? And that's what we try to capture, is more about the impacts on the workforce.

So for flexible working, for example, we'll be asking, okay, you've got a flexible working policy, but give us some examples of what working practice patterns you have in place. Give us an example of a few people that are using a flexible work pattern. What circumstances led to them asking for that flexible work pattern? How does it support them in terms of other responsibilities that they have outside of work?

So we go through it like that, and it's kind of just a conversation. We capture it all. And it's incredible, once you start talking like that, how much information you gather just when people start realising what they do do, they're like, 'Oh my gosh, we didn't realise we did all of these good things. We never acknowledge it. We never congratulate ourselves'. So it is really good.

So we capture it like that. As a team, we will write up that assessment. And then we will then take it to the Technical Panel, who might ask for some more clarifications. If they do, we will then go back and ask the employer some more questions. We might go out and visit them. We might do a Teams call just to pick up with them.

If it's a big organisation, then it might require another visit. Sometimes with a big organisation, you might need more than one meeting because if they've got or they might involve several people in the meeting, so you've got to kind of split it or make it a full day. They might have a lead for equality, diversity, and inclusion, or they might have a health and wellbeing champion. And you'll have the HR director in there. And sometimes the chief executive or managing director wants to come in as well and talk about their vision and what they've been doing.

But we always say it's a process that we don't do to that employer. We're doing it with them because we don't want it to feel . . . we want it to feel very different than other kind of accreditations that are out there. And that's worked really well for us, and it's really helped us to establish some really good relationships. And it might be that there have been odd times when we've been going through the process where we've had to say to an employer, 'Actually, you don't meet the criteria, so we can't carry on any further'. But we'll give them some solutions to help them to kind of move it so that they'll have a three-month time frame, perhaps, and they put some things in place, and then we'll go back and revisit again.

Christine:  Brilliant. I think I like the idea that it's . . . you know, I think the worry always is that a lot of big companies have all the glossy policies and they've got the internet sites, but they don't actually practise what they preach, or everyone who makes a flexible working request is told no, you know, that type of thing. So I think it's really interesting you actually get them to show you that they walk the walk. And also I think SMEs, in particular, are doing a lot of stuff maybe with regards to the environment and stuff like that, and they don't even realise it. Whereas if you had a multinational, like Google or Coca-Cola there, shouting from the rooftops everything that they're doing in ESG and diversity and inclusion, other people are quietly doing it and don't realise they should be telling the world about it really. So I think that that's a great comment, Carol.

I do have a question here that it's caveated with 'this is a cheeky question'. So I'll let you decide. Are the benefits relative? So if those in the Charter do well relative to those who aren't, will there be increasing returns if everyone joins? Or will you just be happy that it's raising the bar for all employers?

Carol:  The interesting thing is that we are hearing from more and more employers about the benefits. So for some, they are seeing that it is hitting things like retention, recruitment, productivity, profits. We've seen that. But for others, some of the value that they're getting from it is that it's supporting them with helping to write social value statements or policies. We've had a number that have wanted to help to change the culture within their organisation, and so they've used it as basically a template to help to bring in some cultural change to the organisation. Some people have used it, particularly smaller SMEs where they haven't got policies, procedures, etc., they've used it to try and learn from others what they should have in place and help them. So the benefits are really, really different.

I think, for us, the thing that we are probably most proud of is the impact in terms of the numbers of people that are benefitting from good employment practice overall. But one of the things that in terms of why we've set some different priorities for this coming year is that we know we've got to tackle some of the more kind of stubborn sectors of employment. And so we're now trying to focus on areas, such as hospitality, who find it harder to engage, retail, health and social care, which is why we're now doing a lot of work in that sector at the moment, because we feel that once we start really making some inroads into those sectors, we'll really start to see some huge benefits of the Charter. And we're fortunate that so far, the conversations with some of those sectors are positive.

Hospitality, I've been quite nervous about it because they've been going through a very turbulent time. They can't pay the real living wage in many instances. But what they are seeing is that there is value in terms of becoming a supporter because they don't have to meet all of the criteria at that point. They're working towards it. So they are engaging because they do want to improve overall. And at some point, we'll get to a stage where they can go to that membership tier.

And we're using our links, for example, with hospitality, we have a night-time guru, we've been working with him. Where we've got some employers that are involved, we're using them to help to get the message out into their sector as well. And that's kind of the tendrils are kind of expanding and going beyond our reach as well.

Christine:  Yeah. Brilliant. That actually leads me into a question that's been sent in for directed towards Martin and Mark. So which sectors would you guys believe in your respective jurisdictions should be targeted first, I suppose, in trying to get them into this type of best practice initiative? I'll come to you first, Martin. What's your thoughts for the Republic?

Martin:  That's a difficult question, actually, because I suppose different sectors have different demands, different challenges, different requirements. And I'm really struck by Carol's point there about the hospitality sector in particular. The turbulence that they have gone through in the last two years, even coming out of COVID, it's still the whole staff issue, the staff retention issue that is such a fundamental problem. So I don't have a ready-made suggestion for where you might start sectorally. But I think if you were to start it here in the South, I'd be leaning back towards a key point that I took out of Mark's comment, and that is that the whole ideological tagging of this should be avoided at all costs, I would think.

The concept of building community, Carol, you mentioned that point a little bit earlier. For me, that's so fundamental. And then community doesn't have to be built sector by sector. Community can be built town by town. So the idea of focusing into a sector, I'm not sure that that would actually be the best way to achieve what this initiative is trying to achieve.

And I think the last thing that I will be pushing strongly is the idea of shared benefits. So again, Carol, from what you've said about it, it serves businesses' needs, it serves performance needs, it serves productivity needs, and it serves employee needs. So if you take the building community, you take the shared benefits, you strip out ideology, and you say, well, let's start building this around community, then I'd be saying it's not sectoral. It's actually it's town, it's county. That will be my instinctive reaction to your question at this point.

Christine:  Brilliant. And Mark, what are your thoughts?

Mark:  Yeah, I think what Martin says is inherently logical. There's no question about that. I think the developments we've seen in hospitality trade in Northern Ireland through Hospitality Ulster's Employer Ability Charter and independent health care providers, for example, necessity has been the mother of invention for those charters to come along, but they're driven by industries and sectors in crisis around recruitment, around retention. So they're trying to . . . That's what the driver is. They're trying to do something about it because they see a sector in crisis, not necessarily, and I don't mean this in a disrespectful way, but not necessarily looking at it from a level playing field between employer and employee. Like it's the industries in crisis post-COVID and we have to do something. What can we do?

And I agree with Martin. I don't think there's one necessarily a sector that lends itself well over another. I mean, the construction trade, for example, here and across the water, are prime examples of where they have done, in Scotland, the Fair Work Convention around the construction trade. But you've also seen it in the context of at a sort of policy level around things like procurement and tying social value into public procurement notices and issues around that. And then that'll be aligned to things like childcare strategies.

So it's very difficult to look at this without looking at it from a sort of overall economic policy perspective and then bringing it right back down to the ground level. I think our experience with local governments within Northern Ireland, for example, and Belfast City Council often takes the lead in this because it's the biggest and it's a metropolitan city council, etc., etc. But it doesn't necessarily mean that that sector operates as a sector in a coordinated way. It tends to cherry-pick the bits of initiative that suit its economic makeup. And therefore, the town-by-town approach certainly has merit in it.

I don't think there is, at a policy level, that degree of joined-up thinking has happened yet because the Department for the Economy are very open to this. But the Department for the Economy are looking at things through the lens of the 10x economy strategy. So things like inclusion, innovation, and sustainability underpin that sort of vision there, that a minister is ready to sweep in and say this is what this looks like in practice. So that it's all to play for in that regard. It's just a case of it's beyond frustrating not to be able to sort of have that sort of policy direction.

Christine:  Yeah, brilliant. Thank you very much. And believe it or not, we have been chatting for a whole hour, folks, so we're coming to the end of our webinar. I would just like to say a huge thank you to Carol, to Martin, and to Mark. I've absolutely really enjoyed speaking to you. Your insights have been great. I've thoroughly enjoyed myself. I hope everybody listening has as well. And thank you for sending in so many questions. It's really added to it, everyone in the audience. So thank you very much.

We'd love it if you could join us again next Monday at 12.30 for the next webinar in our series, 'Working Time: That was Then, This is Now'. It's for everyone in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland again. So it'd be great to see you all there.

Likewise, we'd like to see you at our Annual Review of Employment Law. Northern Ireland is on the 7th of November, and the Republic of Ireland is on the 29th of November. They're hybrid events, so you can choose to come along and see us face-to-face, or you can stay cosy at home or in the office and watch us online. Either way, we'd love it if you could join us.

Thank you for attending today and we'll see you all again very soon. Thanks, everybody.

Carol:  Thank you.

Mark:  Thank you.

Martin:  Thank you.

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