HR Articles

During the Covid-19 pandemic, we witnessed ‘the Great Resignation’ in which many workers used the lockdowns to re-evaluate what was important to them in respect of achieving a work-life balance and redundancies following the UK’s Furlough Scheme.

The UK seems to be suffering from a shortage of talent and there are a number of reasons for this. One of the reasons is demographics, with the baby boomers fast retiring, leaving generations much smaller in size behind them in the workplace.

Job vacancies in the UK rose by 127,800 in the period from October to December 2021, reaching a new record of 1,247,000 vacancies. This equates to a record ratio of 4 job vacancies for every 100 employee jobs that exist.  

There were 835,000 job vacancies recorded by the Office of National Statistics between May and July 2021 and, this is good news as it shows the economy is recovering from the pandemic. However, organisations must review their recruitment procedures to ensure they are compliant with anti-discrimination laws.

Clarkslegal Employment Solicitor Sebastian Reyes publishes in The Global Recruiter Magazine on the employment law liability of recruitment outsource processing (RPO).

This month, the BEIS (Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy) opened their consultation on reforming employment contract non-compete clauses. Back in 2016, there was a close to universal consensus amongst employers that restrictive covenants are a valuable instrument for those seeking to protect their business interests. At the same time, their perceived impact on an ex-employee’s ability to find new work was deemed insignificant, or not unfair.

Employers can be liable for inducing a breach of a restrictive covenant. But relying on legal advice can provide a defence held the Court of Appeal in Allen v Dodd & Co Ltd.

The technology sector has come under the spotlight for its lack of diversity after a series of high-profile cases of sexual harassment in Silicon Valley companies, including Uber. A series of scandals in the US about predictive policing and facial recognition software that cannot recognise black people have also raised concerns about ethnic discrimination.