EMPLOYER OF THE FUTURE

April will usher in a whole raft of new legislative changes for employers to get to grips with.  Interestingly, in view of the enhanced rights to request flexible working being one such change, there's news that Boots has confirmed that its hybrid working policy, under which full-time office employees could work remotely for two days a week, will end on 1 September with office attendance expected from that date. While a full-time return to the office isn't on the cards across the board, there's definitely been a shift towards more office-based working over recent months.  

Having said that, the past few weeks have also seen news of the launch of "4ugust", a new initiative encouraged employers to do a mini-trial of the four-day week in August. This has been launched by the 4 Day Week Campaign and the think tank Autonomy, and follows their report earlier this year of the four-day week trial in 2022. This found that the majority of employers had continued with the policy, and that 58% of the public expects the four-day week to be the standard way of working by 2030. Clearly flexible working will continue to be high on the agenda for discussion – watch this space!

There has also been interesting news on the discrimination front. The press has reported on a case where an employment tribunal awarded a disabled council employee, who developed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following the Grenfell Tower fire, £4.6 million following her dismissal while on sick leave. The award is believed to be one of the highest awards made for disability discrimination.

Meanwhile, we have also received the news that the tribunal case of Manjang v Uber Eats has settled. The claim was brought by an Uber Eats driver who alleged that facial recognition software used by the app indirectly discriminated on the ground of race. The case was one of the first employment claims involving AI and automated decision-making and highlights the risk of discrimination that comes with increasing use of AI. 

At the end of last month we fed back the results of our survey on the proposals for the competence and conduct standard in our response to the government's 'Consultation on a direction to the Regulator of Social Housing to set a Competence and Conduct Standard for social housing'. Thanks very much to all of you who responded! To read more about the responses we received please see our bulletin.

And finally Trowers Tuesday recommences next week after a short Easter break. We kick off with a look at new family friendly law and good practice. Other forthcoming sessions include a look at employment status and the extension of rights in future, as well as a look at the national minimum wage and common pitfalls and investigation of fraud in an employment context.