The Presidents of the Employment Tribunals (England & Wales and Scotland) have issued an addendum to the Joint Presidential Guidance on employment tribunal awards, updating the Vento bands for damages for injury to feelings and psychiatric injury in discrimination claims.
The government has published a consultation seeking views on how to introduce mandatory ethnicity and disability pay reporting for employers with 250 or more employees. The consultation closes on 10 June 2025.
Creating a diverse and inclusive workforce remains a business imperative for global employers. Despite stakeholder and social pressure to accelerate progress, many companies have been unable to move the dial towards greater equality and diverse representation in the workplace. Join our panel of Inclusion & Diversity experts on May 11 as they discuss the findings of our recent Mind the Gap Survey and the steps diversity and HR leaders are taking to accelerate I&D progress and the challenges they are encountering.
The Court of Appeal has held that dismissing an employee for a social media post expressing gender critical beliefs and beliefs on same sex marriage was disproportionate, and therefore discriminatory. This decision confirms the legal tests for balancing conflicting protected beliefs, underscoring the basic principle that employees have the right to manifest their religious or philosophical beliefs, subject only to limited, objectively justifiable exceptions. While the post was arguably offensive to some gay and/or trans people, expressing a protected belief that is offensive to others does not by itself justify disciplinary action; there must be something objectively objectionable in the manner of expression. This is a high threshold; merely âintemperateâ language is not sufficient.
President Trump has taken quick action to ramp up immigration enforcement in his first days in office. While Trump’s early focus on deportations and border security is not new, the swift and aggressive enforcement approach represents a significant change as compared to prior administrations. These actions have led to arrests and heightened concerns among employers and employees alike.
On 21 January 2025, the Department of Labor and Employment issued Department Order No. 248, series of 2025 or the “New Rules and Regulations on the Employment of Foreign Nationals in the Philippines” (“New Rules”), which provides for the rules regulating the employment of foreign nationals in the Philippines.
The New Rules shall take effect fifteen (15) days after its publication in the Official Gazette or newspaper of general circulation. As of the date of this writing, the New Rules has not been published in the Official Gazette or any newspaper of general circulation.
On January 16, 2025, the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission replaced the 2016 Antitrust Guidance for Human Resource Professionals. The new guidelines now titled, Antitrust Guidelines for Business Activities Affecting Workers, reaffirm the major points of the 2016 guidelines. Wage-fixing and no poach agreements remain illegal and sharing wage information may violate the antitrust laws. However, the new guidelines identify a slew of other agreements and practices that can violate antitrust laws, including franchisee agreements with employment restraints, non-compete clauses, overly broad non-disclosure agreements, and other employment restraints.
Belgium’s new Private Investigation Act (PIA) was published in the Official Gazette on 6 December 2024, with most of its provisions having entered into force on 16 December 2024. The PIA replaces the 1991 Belgian Act on Private Detectives with the aim of modernizing the applicable legal framework in light of new investigation methods and the application of the General Data Protection Regulation. With its broader scope of application â this legislation is now also applicable to internal investigations â and the significant additional requirements it imposes, the PIA will undoubtedly impact many businesses operating in Belgium.
Starting 1 January 2025, only citizens of Georgia and Armenia will be eligible for residence permits for the purpose of employment and guest worker residence permits. This marks a significant tightening of the previous rules, which allowed citizens of 10 countries to obtain guest worker residence permits and had no such restrictions for residence permits for the purpose of employment. Although these changes do not affect currently valid permits, the new rules will apply to all new permit issuances.
In an article published in Compliance & Risk Journal, Kim Sartin, Lauren French and Melissa Chan discuss the new duty on employers to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of their workers in the course of their employment that came into force on 26 October 2024.