Another year of change

In 2015 some of the main employment law events were changes to zero hours contracts, the introduction of shared parental leave and the continuing furore over holiday pay. 2016 doesn’t look to be any less busy in terms of legislative change and interesting case law in the field of employment law for practitioners and business owners.

National living wage

The national living wage (NLW) will be introduced at a rate of £7.20, up from the current national minimum wage of £6.70 from April 2016. The NLW will only be paid to those aged 25 and over; younger employees will continue to be paid the national minimum wage at the appropriate rate. The NLW is set to rise incrementally, with a target of over £9 by 2020. The Office for Budget Responsibility predicts that at least 2.7 million low-wage workers will benefit from the NLW, but that it will lead to approximately 60,000 job losses by 2020.

If you or any clients have not already carried out an audit of how the NLW will affect your organisation and its employees, it would be sensible to do so as soon as possible. You should particularly take into account the “ripple” effect of an increase to the salaries of workers not only in this category, but those currently graded (and therefore paid) above them.

Trade Union Bill

2016 looks set to see a massive shake-up to our already complicated and burdensome trade union law. The amendments will increase ballot thresholds, introduce new information and timing requirements in relation to industrial action, and impose legal requirements on unions for the supervision of picketing. Although the bill has been met with strong opposition, it is now going through the House of Lords before receiving Royal Assent at some point this year.

The Scottish Government asked on 17 October 2015 for Scotland to be excluded from the entire bill. Roseanna Cunningham, the Cabinet Secretary for Fair Work, Skills & Training, believes that the proposals could “undermine the effective engagement of trade unions across Scottish workplaces and across the Scottish public sector in particular”. Debate between the Scottish and UK Governments on these changes is likely to continue.

Auto-enrolment continues

Organisations with fewer than 50 employees should by now at least know their staging date for auto-enrolment (which will be before 1 April 2017). Once again, if you or any clients you advise do not yet know the impact of increased pension costs on your business, you should take steps to consider this as soon as possible.

Improving board gender balance

On 29 October 2015, Lord Davies published his final report on improving the gender balance on British boards. FTSE-100 companies have achieved the target, set in 2010, of a minimum of 25% female board representation by 2015; Lord Davies reports that, at 1 October 2015, there are no male-only boards in the FTSE-100.

Despite his comments that “a near revolution… and… profound culture change at the heart of British business” has taken place in the boardroom, there is much still to be done. Addressing the continuing disparity in numbers at the crucial executive layer is one of the key long term challenges British business now faces. Other recommendations made by the report are to continue with the voluntary business-led approach for a further five year period; raising the voluntary target; and ensuring that stakeholders work together towards increasing the number of women in the positions of chair, senior independent director and executive director.

And beyond?

Watch this space for more pressure (although perhaps not by legislation) on companies to ensure their boards are split equally by gender, and on an extension of shared parental leave to grandparents.

In the Scottish Government’s programme for 2015-16 a commitment is made to pursue the devolution of powers from the UK Government to allow the enactment of legislation to achieve a gender balance on boards. In the meantime, this is being pursued in Scotland through a voluntary route, in the 50/50 by 2020 campaign. In addition, the Scottish Government continues to build membership of the Partnership for Change, a network which aims to improve gender balance and diversity in the boardroom, ensuring that more public, private and third sector bodies sign up to the 50/50 by 2020 commitment.