
DEI expert Conor Curran, draws breath after the general and local election results to consider (DEI) manifesto promises. With a focus on workplace diversity & employment / equality law. This webinar provides some insight as to what changes to working practices employers in NI might expect in the future. The question is: when?
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Christine: Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our webinar sponsored by MCS group. My name is Christine Quinn. I'm a knowledge partner here at Legal Island. I'm joined this morning by Conor Curran. You're very welcome, Conor.
Conor: Thank you.
Christine: Conor is here today in his capacity as Head of Diversity and Inclusion at Queen's University Belfast.
He’s a qualified employment lawyer and HR professional with over fifteen years’ experience of embedding effective D&I strategies in large complex organizations, having previously worked in the policing, justice, and health sectors. So, in his current role as head of diversity and inclusion for Queen's, he's, developed a reputation as a leader in equality, diversity and inclusion best practice both locally and nationally. In his spare time, Conor is a freelance DEI consultant.
My colleague, Gosia, who is in the background helping with the tech, she's going to drop some links into the chat so you can connect with Conor on LinkedIn or via his website.
So, what are we talking about today?
Conor is going to take time to draw breath after the general election results to consider DEI manifesto promises. With a focus on workplace diversity and employment and equality law, this webinar will provide some insight as to what changes to working practices employers here in Northern Ireland might expect in the future.
As always in Northern Ireland, the question is when are they going to happen, of course.
Thanks as always to our sponsors, MCS Group. MCS help the 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.
Now we'll be taking questions at the end, so please do drop them in as and when you think of them. But I'm going to leave you to it Conor and I'll be back at the end to put those questions. So, sit back and enjoy everyone. Thanks, Conor.
Conor: Thanks, Christine. And hello, everyone, and thanks for joining this webinar and giving up some of your time on a on a Friday morning. So, yes, as Christine said, it's been busy few months, particularly in the world of politics, and work and getting back to work post pandemic.
The executive is in full swing. The general is over, and, you know, the ways of government are now turning both in Westminster and Stormont. So it's a good opportunity now to take stock, look at the HR and employment law landscape here and in GB and to see what changes we might expect to see in terms of HR practices, equality law, and in turn, how that might impact your diversity strategy, your diversity policies, and in particular your family county policies, which is going to be a specific focus of this webinar in the next thirty minutes or so.
So if you go to the next slide, what we're going to cover, we're going to look at recent announcements by Labour, the King's Speech, how they manifested themselves in the King's Speech, the slight differences still between GB and NI, and then what's being proposed in terms of changes to law and policy from our own department for economy in Northern Ireland via the new employment rights bill and the consultation on that. And what I'm doing is really taking a HR practitioner's view of this with particular focus on the DEI, the diversity, equality, and inclusion impacts. So as Christine said, it'll last about thirty minutes, and we can take some questions at the end. And there will be links to this, and the presentation will be made available, as a video recording as well.
If we look to the next slide and the manifesto and the King's Speech, Labour really made its new deal for working people a core part of their manifesto and then through the King's Speech, their legislative plans for the new session And on this occasion, there were forty bills. I think that's the highest number of bills, to appear in a row of speech since two thousand and five.
They came they came out, so we got we got some wind of what, was coming out in GB. There were two specific bills on employment law announced in the King's Speech on the seventeenth of July, the employment rights bill and a draft equality, race, and disability bill. But as you know, those proposals to involved here in Northern Ireland. It's really for the Northern Ireland Assembly and Stormont to decide which of those reforms should be extended to Northern Ireland.
If we look at the next slide, we can see that, however, Labour, as opposed to the Conservatives, have really placed, equality and inclusion at the heart of its mission for the next term of government.
And, you know, it's really widely believed that labour will be in power for not just this term, but possibly also the term after. We could be looking at, you know, the next four to eight years of significant change in this space.
If we look at the next slide for some of the detail around all of this that they were proposing that they're going to do in terms of reform and legislative change. We've got some idea of what's of what's coming.
So, the first announcement that I picked up on was that there would have been two strengths and rights around equal pay and gender pay. So you'll know that at present in GB, employers with more than two hundred and fifty staff have to report their gender pay gap by the fourth of April every year, And the Labour government now wants organisations with more than two hundred and fifty employees to also publish ethnicity and disability pay gaps to obtain a more comprehensive overview of the gaps in the workplace, and they're saying that this is going to be enforced by a new regulatory unit with trade union backing.
They've also said that just reporting new discrepancies in gender play is no longer enough. They are going to expect employers to put together, publish, and enact strategies to close their gender, race, and disability pay gaps, and they're also extending this to outsourced workers.
In Northern Ireland, however, it's different. We don't have gender pay gap legislation enacted here yet, and there's nothing in the new consultation which comes from the Department for economy talking about gender pay gap here because that is really a responsibility of the department for communities.
So, it remains to be seen in Northern Ireland what is to happen around gender pay gap reporting.
The second area that they wanted to strengthen were protections, from maternity and menopause discrimination.
And we know in Northern Ireland, a huge number of us have, over recent years, developed menopause policies and, activities and training around raising awareness of menopause in the workplace. But within GB, one of the announcements was that companies with more than two hundred and fifty employees will be expected to develop menopause action plans to support women going through that challenging time of life. So that's something that we're going to keep an eye on for Northern Ireland. The Race Equality Act will be enshrined in law on GB, and they're looking to further strengthen protections against dual discrimination and ruling out other racial inequalities.
And that doesn't apply in Northern Ireland, but it's interesting to see the further strengthening of those rights.
Protections from sexual harassment, they've also mentioned. And it's interesting in Northern Ireland, we almost appear to be slightly ahead of the curve in this respect because we know that in March, in Northern Ireland, the Labour Relations Agency published a new guide, that was called eliminating sexual harassment from the modern workplace.
They developed that in partnership with ECTU, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, and that had the endorsement of the minister, Conor Murphy, and contains really good practical guidance for employers, trade unions, and staff on how they should take further steps to prevent, those working in Northern Ireland from sexual harassment in the workplace. So, although that doesn't have the status of a code of practice, it's seen as the equivalent of our ACAS, guidance.
So, I would strongly encourage you, if you have time just to google the Labour Relations Agency's guide on that and to look at your sexual harassment policies or your wrongdoing harassment policies alongside that to see whether they could, be updated.
The party also said it would reverse the conservatives' decision to downgrade the monitoring of antisemitic and Islamophobic hit. Now, obviously, this is, you know, very topical at the minute, given the go global conflict in Gaza. It probably this probably affects more, more of us who are involved in further education or higher education.
Is of particular interest to us at Queen's, but we watch this space in terms of what that downgrading of monitoring means.
The Labour Party also said that they would champion the rights of disabled people by improving employment support and access to reasonable adjustments and addressing the access to work backlog.
Again, we watch with interest as to how they will do that and what changes to reasonable adjustments may filter through. There's nothing, within our employment rights bill that talks to this, but the Equality Commission may be progressing discussions with the Department for Communities on their equality strategies and taking up these points.
They've also mentioned strengthening existing strands of hate crimes so that they become aggravated offences, so giving further protection for LGBTQ plus people and disabled people and delivering a full trans inclusive ban on conversion practises. You might have remembered this hitting the news over the last few years.
It looks like a new conversion practices bill will then produce a full ban on conversion therapies in that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. And this has been welcomed by, LGBTQ plus and human rights charities because whilst the conservative government had committed to the ban in principle, they did not bring in the required legislation.
It'll be really interesting to see what happens in Northern Ireland given that that topic can sometimes divide opinion both politically and socially.
If you have an EDI or a trans equality policy, it will also be important to keep abreast of any announcements in respect of changes to gender recognition law. Again, this has devolved.
We really wait to see what happens in Northern Ireland in this respect. Three years ago, the executive was due to launch an LGBTQI plus and gender equality strategy. And these were part of four strategies that were promised including anti-poverty and disability, but we're yet to see any of these strategies in Northern Ireland and we've never had a strategy on either sexual orientation or LGBTQ.
We did have a gender equality strategy but that ended in in twenty sixteen.
So that work is kind of separate, and that's been led by the department for communities. And was interesting in in April, just of this year, the communities minister, Gordon Lyons, was asked, you know, what is happening in this space?
And the response to this MB question was that they were currently considering the next steps to be taken in relation to the strategies and final decisions on the content and timeline for implementation will be subject to executive agreement. So, again, that may be one of the things that's stuck in the pipeline and be coming out in due course.
If we look to the next slide then, we really will, focus on what's happening in Northern Ireland.
And as I mentioned earlier, at the start of July, the minister for the economy, Conor Murphy, as part of his economic vision to create good jobs, announced, the consultation on the Good Jobs Employment Rights Bill. If you Google that, term, you'll come up with a link to the landing page, which will bring to this document. And I'm really just going to focus on a theme day of this document. It's a huge document.
It's almost a hundred and eighty pages long. And I'm just going to focus on theme day about work life balance because that's where, I suppose, most of the impact on family friendly, diversity, and inclusion comes from. So, at the minute, it's a call for information. It's a call for views.
We're trying to gather evidence in from workplaces, individuals, trade union reps on proposed changes, to the employment rights bill in Northern Ireland or secondary laws, in this mandate or later. My view on this is it's a bumper document. It's huge.
It's of real practical interest to anyone who works in HR and employment or equality law. Do take time to print it off and to read it, because there will be implications for all of us. It is very well structured in that it is broken into four themes. It's based on the Carnegie framework, and it looks at the comparisons between GBNI and the Republic of Ireland.
And it clearly sets out what we're trying to catch up with in terms of GB and it and the Republic of Ireland. But it also sets out some ambition that's slightly different from GB and the Republic of Ireland as well. Things like work life balance, is where you'll find most of the proposals referred to in this webinar.
And I say that section comes with balancing home and work life. It's quite weighty, and most of the changes, have already come through private members built in GB, so they're trying to get ahead of ahead of the game. But if you look to the next slide, the first the first topic that I'm going to look at is flexible working.
So, again, this is us trying to catch up with GB. So, in Northern Ireland, the consultation on this, is really setting up the proposals.
And so, it's proposed, there's a number of proposals. So, essentially, it's going to be a day one. Right? Flexible working or the right to request it is going to be a day one. Right? For both new and existing employees.
The proposal is that we remove the current twenty-six-week qualifying period before you can make it. So, I mean, that's good in some respects and it comes to day one. Right? But obviously, that's going to lead to some implications for new starts, new staff, and, you know, staff being made aware of the fact that you can get this from the first day unemployment.
So, question query, is that going to create, you know, day one, welcome to your new job. And, oh, I see you've just, you've submitted your flexible working request already before even your probationary period, you know, has come and gone. There could be some teething difficulties or practical considerations for HR practitioners in that respect.
And the proposal is also to allow employees to make two flexible working requests in any twelve-month period. So currently, you're allowed one.
So, the new proposal is that you will be allowed two.
And so, there'd be questions over, like, when can you make the second? Do you have to wait until the first one is closed out? You know, do you have to exhaust that appeal process? And, again, there may be resourcing issues if it's the same request coming in the second time to the same manager or is it going to a different manager? So, again, HR practitioners, when you read this section and you and you're thinking of what practical considerations or implications that would be on you, it might be an opportunity to feed that back as part of the consultation to help shape this a bit.
They're also proposing a reduction in the time to respond to the request from three to two months, which is good, and removing the requirement, for employees to explain as part of the request what effect the change would have on the employer and how that might be dealt with. The department is really they feel like employees shouldn't have to highlight the potential effect of a request on their employer because they're saying that would discourage some people from actually making the request and, you know, frames it in the negative. So, that's really being removed, which again is another barrier removed, I suppose, to the flexible working request.
The default might be that in practical terms, you know, you get the flexible working arrangement unless the employer can objectively justify the refusal.
And there's a sense that those, employers in Northern Ireland who also have a workforce in GB are already adopting the flexible working changes, so that their Northern Ireland employees get this as a matter of best practice.
And so, again, if you have a workforce that's, spread over GB and NA, you may want to look at your flexible working policy now and considering, consider reviewing that in light of what's coming down.
In terms of, carriage leave, which is on the next slide, the right to carrier's leave was introduced in GB in April 2024. And in Northern Ireland, views are being sought on creating this new right for eligible employees.
And it's a right to take up to one week of unpaid leave per year to provide care for a family member or other dependent who has a long term or otherwise significant care need. So, this is a new right, and it's great to see it coming into Northern Ireland. And we know that we have a huge number of carriers in Northern Ireland, and, you know, they've long, they've long, sought for clarification on and the strengthening of their rights in this respect.
So, dependent for this purpose is broadly mirroring the definition, within emergency dependent sleep. In other words, anyone who relies on you as an employee to provide or arrange care, and that can include a spouse, a civil partner, a child, a parent, or someone living in the same house, but not a lodger or not a tenant, if you provide care for them, they, that meets the definition.
And the care can be for illness or injury requiring care for more than three months or a disability or issues relating to old age.
And they're proposing the care can be taken on whole or half days, and it will be prorated for part time staff. So great to see this new right coming in. Good to see a proposed pro definition of it.
Great that there's a new entitlement and there is that flexibility about it being prorated for part time employees. But the one thing that will probably not go down so well is the proposal that this will be unpaid leave.
Now this may change.
There is a sense that there's perhaps not enough money in the Barnett formula at current to pay for it, from the block grant, but that may change. And, again, if this is something that you feel particularly strongly about or your carriers’ networks or your carriers within your organization feel particularly strongly about is something to respond to them on.
The notice requirement for taking leave will be twice the length of time required. So, if you're taking three days off, it will be six days, etcetera.
And the entitlement that you get is for seven days, so it's not five working days. It's for seven days in a year.
Interestingly, the consultation is proposing that there won't be any evidence of the entitlement required.
And so, they're saying, like, for GDPR and for because there's medical and sensitive, you know, information involved, Employees won't have to provide evidence that they're entitled to this. And there's a feeling that because they're proposing that it's going to be unpaid, it's felt unlikely therefore that employees will then abuse this. Right?
And I maybe there's something written between the lines that if it was a paid entitlement that it may be more open to abuse. But, you know, there is a very low uptake of, carers leave in GB that's coming out, from what we're reading, and it may be because it's unpaid. So, it'll be interesting to see what's what happens in respect of carrier's leave. And, again, in terms of your own policies and practices, this again just something to keep an eye on, but, you know, no real changes announced as of yet.
If you look at the next slide, which, looks at neonatal care and neonatal leave and pay.
This has been introduced in GB.
Regulations in reducing that are expected to come into effect in April 2025. And in Northern Ireland, views are being sought on this. So views are being sought on allowing eligible working parents of newborn babies who enter neonatal care within twenty-eight days of birth and who receive at least seven days of continuous neonatal care to receive one week of leave and or pay for each week the child remains neonatal care up to a maximum of twelve weeks. So, you probably just need to break that down, but it is a new entitlement and it's proposed that this will also be a day one right.
And it's expected to be added on to other family leave entitlements. I think the department are they were feeling that it was maybe unfair for those parents who maybe had a difficult pregnancy, difficult birth. The young one, you know, goes into, you know, you know, emergency neonatal care or, is kept an eye on for that, you know, week or two after birth. They felt it was unfair that that time was eating into maternity and paternity leave. So, this is a new day one right to be bolted onto those. And the pay is expected to be at the same rate and paid subject to the same conditions as statutory maternity, statutory paternity, and shared parental pay. So, again, in terms of your policies, whether it's maternity, paternity, short parental, or even pregnancy loss policies, if some of you have pregnancy loss policies, this may be one area that you want to look at what your policy currently says.
Maybe think about how it may change once this new change to law is announced. I think this is non contentious, non-controversial. This is probably going to come in, have a look at how your policies may have to adapt to reflect that change.
And it applies to both parents and partners, which is great to see.
The next slide, we, continue that theme about sort of, protection.
Northern Ireland views are being sought on new rights to redundancy protection for pregnant employees and returners from family leave.
So currently, employees on maternity leave, shared parental leave, or adoption leave have the right to be offered suitable alternative vacancies if one is available before being made redundant.
It's now proposed that this right will be extended to cover pregnant employees, and that's from when the employer is informed of the pregnancy.
It's to cover pregnant employees, maternity or adoption leave returners, and employees returning from at least six weeks shared parental leave. And the protection lasts for eighteen months from birth or adoption. So, essentially, it's another bolt on protection.
If you take, say, maternity for twelve months, you're going to get an extra six-month protection.
But it's protection, it's not protection against selection for redundancy in the first place. It only relates to the offer of suitable alternative vacancies. So, again, have a look at that section of theme d and think about what policies, redundancy policies, maternity policies may need to be amended in in light of that.
If we go to the next slide, this really looks at paternity leave. So, new paternity leave routes were introduced in GB in April this year. And in Northern Ireland, views are being sought around how and when statutory paternity leave can be taken. So, again, they're suggesting this is, a day one right.
So, and they're saying under, under the current rules, you know, you we all know, paternity leave must be taken in a single block within the first eight weeks. Well, that's going to change if this, comes into law. And what they're saying is that fathers or partners will be able to take maternity leave at any point in the first year after birth or adoption and will be able to split it into two blocks of one week or a single block of two weeks. So, again, much more flexibility for that that first year.
You know, some will welcome this and, you know, it might be the case that people want to take a week after the birth and then take another week later on in the year. And, again, that's seen as a really sort of progressive, step forward.
Twenty-eight days’ notice will still be required for the dates of each leave period but notice of entitlement must still be given fifteen weeks before the birth. So, again, just have a look at the detail there and have a have a think about your paternity leave policies and how they may want to change.
If we look to, one other area, which isn't in the employment rights bill, but which was also announced this summer in terms of, possible, legislative changes around the subject of domestic abuse. So, if you want to, move on to the next slide there.
Domestic abuse unfortunately is a huge issue in Northern Ireland.
Between April 2023 and March 2024, there are almost thirty-three thousand domestic abuse incidents recorded by the police, and those are just the incidents recorded.
And, you know, we know, you know, and I know from talking to, you know, many, people that work in the profession, a lot of employers don't have policy positions on domestic abuse.
You know, what to do in the event that an employee discloses that they are the victim of domestic abuse, what to do in terms of safeguarding, signposting, training, awareness, etcetera. And so, it's really welcome to see legislation in this space, which will give clarity to employers on their responsibilities.
On the fifth of July, the department for economy launched public consultation on how to operationalize the provisions in what's called the Domestic Abuse Safe Leave Act Northern Ireland 2022.
This was introduced as a framework, and there's aspects of rights that are covered in the act. So, what essentially it says is that employees and workers will be entitled to safe leave.
So, a new, leave entitlement as a day one right. And the proposal is that this will be ten days of paid leave, and the cost of paid leave is to be met by the employer.
And what they mean is that they should receive usual pay, and I'll talk about that in a minute. And they're saying that applicants for safe leave must provide notice to their employers but not evidence of domestic abuse having taken place.
And there's stuff within the there's provisions within the legislation on the operation of this and practical considerations.
I'd really encourage you to have a look at, that consultation.
This consultation is much shorter than the employment rights consultation, there's only sixteen questions, but they look at the process for taking leave, they look at regulatory issues, equality issues, and other impacts of the right. And on the question of pay, they're saying that it should be, defined as normal pay as pay for the working time, directive holidays, or basic pay.
So, again, that may have pay implications for people who take up to ten days paid safe leave. And, again, it's a very sensitive topic as well. So, you may want to consider how best you engage with employees or trade union representatives on formulating a response. And if it's something that you want to formulate a response via a network or a federation, you know, I'm going to put a link into, for example, the Employers Federation for Northern Ireland. They may be able to take your responses and provide a more, robust and cohesive response on behalf of a large number of employers. The closing date for that is the twenty seventh of September 2024. It'll be interesting to see how that legislation, comes to bear.
If you are considering developing a domestic abuse policy or you already have one, it's probably a good idea just to bookmark, the department's consultation period, pages or just, you know, keep on top of LinkedIn or Legal Ireland Employers Federation emails just to see, what, changes are coming and when.
It's quite a run through.
I suppose, you know, it's been quite a high-level summary of some of the changes. As I say, the consultation document is very well written. There are good practical questions and answers within the consultation document, and I'm happy to take some questions at the end of this presentation shortly on any questions you may have. But in summary, I suppose if we look at the next slide, you know, these are a move in the right direction.
They're definitely more flexible and inclusive practices which will positively impact on, gender, disability, race, and sexual orientation.
It is going to be some time, I think, before they are enacted. My guess would be probably early 2025.
But the time to help shape these is now.
So do maybe give some thought to that. There's you know, what we're seeing is an increase in day one rights for employees.
And if you look in the consultation, that extends beyond family friendly. There's there are things like written statements of particulars and other, strengthening of rights. Like, there's a right to disconnect from work, for example, within another section.
There's going to be huge changes coming for the profession.
And the question is, are you in a state of readiness, or will you be in a state of readiness in the next few months?
Now is a good time to start thinking about, the implications.
If we look to the final slide, a lot of the information that has gone into this webinar has come from, both the consultation document itself and the question booklet, which is also on the department's website. But you can also get, good up to date information from Legal Ireland, they are hosting this seminar, by subscribing to their email newsletter, looking out for relevant courses. They'll obviously have their, annual conference in November this year, by which point there might be greater clarity on that. So, if you haven't already signed up for that, do.
I was at a briefing this week, by Michelle McGinley and Catherine O’Loan at the Employers Federation, and that was a fantastic session where they went into much more detail than I have today on a lot of the implications within the bill generally. So do check them out on LinkedIn for updates. Likewise, the Labor Relations Agency for the guidance of sexual harassment. And the CIPD, I noticed the Northern Ireland branch, have also announced a consultation this week on LinkedIn. So, loads of opportunities to get your information from different places and to get more information as the year progresses. But I hope for now, that has been a useful run through. My LinkedIn is, at the bottom there if you want to connect with me and use the QR code to connect with me.
For now, happy to take any questions that you may have and hand back to Christie.
Christine: Thank you very much there Conor, we do have good few questions coming in and some comments as well, lovely comment just saying thank you if the listener find it very clear and concise, and I would agree. It was real whistle stop and it gave us the headlines, so thank you for that.
But if we look at some of the questions, so, someone here asking, will the current business reasons for refusing flexible working requests still apply?
Conor: Yes. There's a sense that those will still apply. So, you know, the objective business reasons will still apply.
The flexible working section within the consultation document, if anyone's has called it up on screen, it is there on pages ninety-eight onwards.
There's nothing in it that says that those are changing, but I'll just have a quick squeeze.
Now it doesn't seem to be Christine. No. Go straight into Cara's day for now.
Christine: And if anyone is looking for that consultation document, I dropped it into the handout section there. I wasn't fast enough with my fingers typing to get the domestic abuse one up, but we will include that in the follow-up email. But the good jobs consultation is in that is in the handout section for anyone wanting to check it out.
So, we've got, a very good question here. I tend to I in private practice, I always worked on the claimant side, so I think all these things sound brilliant. But the question is, in what ways do these changes help employers?
Will there be any help to SMEs to cope with this volume of change that we may see coming?
Conor: Yes. Well, it should be said that, you know, the changes aren't locked in yet. This is just a call for evidence. And I would imagine that, you know, small and medium sized enterprises are going to be more impacted than the larger employers. Obviously, the volume of cases may increase the larger you are, but it's not yet locked in just what's going to become law. These are just proposals at this at this stage. I think the department has a has a tricky balancing act to play here because they're going to have to balance the impact on small, medium sized businesses with the direction of travel, with Labour and Sinn Fein who are very much more aligned to progressive, inclusive, modern, future ready workplace policies.
But that will really be for the department to balance, you know, the legislation so that it's fair across Northern Ireland PLC.
I would like to think that there will be a period of, you know, awareness raising and a period of getting used to what these changes will mean. But, certainly, the direction of travel is an increased number of days one rates, which is going to increase the burden on HR professionals and managers from day one, probably from 2025 onwards. So, there is change coming, just the impact of that is unknown for now.
Christine: Yes. And I suppose if you are an SMA, get involved in the consultation, put your side is the best way because, you know, the more people that are involved in the consultation the better this legislation will be for us all really, isn't it?
Absolutely, yes.
Christine: Yes. And I mean, I think when you were talking about the Labour Party's manifesto, I think I when I saw the Good Jobs consultation, I was like, great, we're going to get caught up in England and Wales and the Republic. And then when you were talking about the Labour manifesto, I thought, nope. There's England and Wales accelerating off from us already, really. So, we really are, you know, having to sprint to catch up here, aren't we?
Conor: Yes. And not just England and Wales. Actually, the Republic of Ireland are being quite progressive in this space, so we really are the meat and the sandwich here, you know.
And, you know, I suppose with, again, you know, with the political landscape having changed really significantly this year between Labour and government and Sinn Féin, I think, you know, the landscape looks very different than it did from, you know, two years ago. And in terms of that all Ireland approach and that sort of symmetry between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, I think those employers with bases in the Republic of Ireland, GB, and Northern Ireland will probably welcome this alignment, but there are still jurisdictional differences which are quite subtle between all three areas which are still going to prove quite tricky I think.
Christine: And, you know, it is a really big and potentially overarching bill but so the department is going to have to prioritize things. What do you hope they are putting at the forefront? What do you hope they do first?
Conor: Well, I mean, I say welcome all these changes.
I think there's a very tight legislative timetable, which is why this came out over the summer. I think this is probably going to be debated at Stormont. There could be some resistance, political resistance to some of these business resistance to some of these proposals.
So, it remains to be seen what comes out the other end. I have, I suppose, a vested interest in seeing what happens with our equality legislation.
You know, the equality commission, you know, for a long time, I think in 2022, they published a paper calling for single equality legislation and calling for reform of equality legislation.
You know, it remains to be seen what the department for communities and the minister does in that respect because if the strategies that they are looking to be introduced in terms of LGBT and gender equality strategies, If they result in changes to codes of practice or secondary legislation, they and anti-discrimination law, they also will have an impact on a lot of our policies and practices.
I just think that the employment rights bill is one area of work and it's great, but I think there could be, you know, pushes from different channels for changes to quality legislation, which could all impact us too as well. So, I mean, it is exciting times, and it is great to see that, you know, these changes are finally happening, but it is a bit of a still a bit of a messy landscape. And so, keep it on top of all your social media channels and, ways in which you get your information and updates is really important.
Christine: Yes. I mean, equality legislation in Northern Ireland is a bit of, it's kind of a very messy bundle of different legislation, isn't it? But then we the department needs to be mindful that businesses are coming out of a cost-of-living crisis, you know, rising fuel bills with COVID, it was four years ago, but it's still a massive hangover from that. So, yes, it's a real balancing act, isn't it?
Conor: It is. It would be great to see a single quality acronym which simplifies everything, modernises everything, and just, you know, takes away that sort of hierarchy of rights that maybe exists within the legislation. So, yes over to the Equality Commission to see what they can do to force some change in that space.
Christine: Yes, brilliant. Thanks so much Conor.
I am going to wrap up with a few of my takeaways from your session if you don't mind. So, the first takeaway I have is change is finally coming to Northern Ireland equality legislation. It's been a long time coming, but it's closer than it was, and we all need to be ready for it.
The second takeaway is get involved with a consultation if you can. The more feedback the executive gets, the better their resulting legislation will be. So, get your viewpoint across in there if you have strong views on that. And thirdly, review your policies and procedures now alongside the info provided in this webinar so you are prepared, so you are ahead of the game. So, thank you so much, Conor. That's been really informative. We've thoroughly enjoyed that.
And on the on the point of keeping on top of your DNI, Legal Ireland does, of course, have a course that can help you. We are currently accepting enrolments for the CPD certified certificate of diversity and inclusion in the workplace. It's a comprehensive online course. It runs over eight weeks, and it starts very soon. It starts on the twelfth of September. There'll be weekly sessions led by DEI experts from included, and they'll also be, a session led by, one of the team over at Lewes Sulkin on DEI and the law. It's a professional certificate program and will equip you with the essential knowledge and skills to spearhead diversity and inclusion initiatives in your organization.
As a special thank you for joining us today, we are pleased to offer you an exclusive discount. So, enrol before the 9th of August, and you'll receive an incredible four hundred pounds off the standard rate. So, there is a link in the chat to find out more about that. It will also be in the post webinar email along with recording of today's session and, of course, Conor's brilliant slides, so please do look out for that.
And if you do want to keep up with Legal Island webinars, we do have a podcast, so you can find us wherever you get your podcasts. We're on Spotify, Apple, and Amazon.
Please do reach out to myself or Conor. We're both on LinkedIn. We would love to hear from you. I would love to hear from you with any ideas for any other webinars you would like me to undertake, so please do get in touch with that.
But, in the meantime, I hope everybody has a lovely weekend. I hope it stays sunny for everybody. Thank you so much, Conor. Thoroughly enjoyed it, have a lovely weekend.
Conor: Thanks, Christine. Thanks, everyone.
Christine: Thanks. Bye now.
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