Our Employment & Incentives blog is one year old today. It’s been a busy year on the blog with members of our E&I team covering trends and hot topics. What can you expect to see featured in the next 12 months?

What issues have we been blogging about?

The workplace continues to evolve raising a range of employment law issues including flexible working, home-based workers and the gig economy. Our first posts looked at the changing workplace covering issues such as job-sharing, the corporate dress code and the experience of WeWork offices. 

Diversity has been high on the agenda in 2018.  We looked at pay gap reporting in all its forms (gender pay, CEO pay ratio and ethnicity pay) and also reported on key trends such as #MeToo and the backlash against NDAs.

What do we expect to be reporting on in 2019?

Diversity will be a continuing theme on our blog in 2019, but with a widening perspective to include culture in the workplace. Nicola Rabson, our Global Practice Head, began a series of workplace culture related articles by commenting on the FCA’s stance on sexual harassment as misconduct within its regulatory framework.  More recently, she has looked at the approach of other regulators to harassment. Look out for future posts in the culture series! 

We’re eagerly awaiting the government’s response to its consultation on employment status (and related consultations on rights for gig economy workers) following the Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices. Greg Clark, the business secretary, reportedly told the cabinet last month that new legislation will be introduced to simplify the process of determining employment status and that workers would be eligible for enhanced rights generally. We look forward to blogging on further developments in this area.

The new tax rules for self-employed contractors which were announced by Philip Hammond in the autumn budget pose some complex questions for companies with a high volume of independent contractors. We’ll be looking at some of the practical issues arising from the rules which will come into effect in early 2020.

Employment law is increasingly a feature of the boardroom agenda. New corporate governance rules come into force on 1 January 2019.  These impose new requirements on listed companies in relation to diversity, whistleblowing and board-level engagement with employees.  We’ll be looking at what these requirements are and how to implement them effectively.