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The Evolving Workplace: Balancing Office and Remote Work for Tomorrow’s Businesses
As an HR expert with years of experience and a lot of grey hair to show for it, I’ve seen workplace trends come and go. But in this post-pandemic world, one question dominates the boardroom and watercooler conversations alike: where should our people work? The recent KPMG 2023 CEO outlook survey report suggests that around…
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How to support transgender employees in the workplace
The legal protection of transgender individuals starts with the Equality Act 2010. Within this act, gender reassignment is recognised as a protected characteristic. This is reaffirmed in the Statutory Code of Conduct of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. This, therefore, means that an employee is protected if they plan to, are experiencing, or have undergone…
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Age Discrimination in Recruitment
Last week I had the pleasure of discussing recruitment, age discrimination and Artificial Intelligence with Roberto Perrone at BBC Three Counties Radio. You can listen to the interview here, but below are my thoughts. The interview was triggered by the experiences of Karen Beecham, a 58 year old buyer who was made redundancy from M&S…
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The Elephant in the Room: Loan Elephants – Hybrid Working
Anyone who tells you that they know what the future of work looks like is lying! This blog is particularly focussed on those businesses, or parts of businesses, which are office based. There are of course plenty of people who do not have the opportunity to work from home for whom this debate is not…
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The Elephant in the Room: Protected Characteristics – Parental Status
Being a working parent is hard! For me, it was actually harder when my kids were at primary school, than when they were at nursery. At nursery, there was cover from 7am – 7pm if I needed it. At primary school there appeared to be a natural assumption that you could drop off at 8:50,…
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The Elephant in the Room: Protected Characteristics – Age
While it is not unlawful for a potential or current employer to ask you your age, it is unlawful for them to make decisions based on your age. On this basis, many hiring employers don’t ask about age because they don’t want to run the risk of an age discrimination from someone before they even…
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The Elephant in the Room: Protected Characteristics – Gender
There are two ways in which I can tackle the Gender Elephant! The first is in the traditional way; by looking up to see if there is still a glass ceiling. The second is by looking at gender in today’s society i.e. the increasing use of pronoun confirmation in email signatures, LinkedIn profiles etc. I’m…
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The Elephant in the Room: Protected Characteristics – Disability
Starting with the assumption that the person can do the job, has done it before and has a proven track record…… Would you employ a disabled person? If not, why not? Would it depend on their disability? Would it depend on your location and working environment? If they are deaf, blind, wheelchair bound, an amputee…
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The Elephant in the Room: Protected Characteristics – Race
I often ask myself how, in 2021 is Race still an ‘Elephant in the Room’ in the workplace. The Race Relations Act first came into force in 1965 and outlawed discrimination on the “grounds of colour, race, or ethnic or national origins” in public places. It was then updated in 1976 and 2000 and replaced…
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The Elephant in the Room: Mental Health – Self-harm
Self-harm is widely misunderstood. There are many people who self-harm as a way of exerting control over themselves or a situation. Contra to popular belief, self-harm is NOT an attempted suicide, however, the people who self-harm are at increased risk of suicide, often because the stress triggers are the same. Self-harm is a behaviour which…