Commentary and insights

Informed opinion, guidance and commentary on issues of interest to HR.

This tool includes:

  • Commentary and debate on HR and workplace practices.
  • Guidance and opinion on employment law developments.

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Latest items in Commentary and insights

  • April 2024 employment law changes: Eight-point checklist for HR

    Date:
    26 March 2024

    With a raft of employment law changes taking effect in April 2024, we provide a final reminder for HR professionals of what their organisation needs to do to comply with the new and amended employment laws. This April, the challenges for HR include: the introduction of carer's leave; reforms to the right to request flexible working; and updated rules on timing and notice to take paternity leave.

  • Why some employers must provide extra holiday in 2024

    Date:
    22 March 2024

    As a result of how the Easter bank holidays fall in 2024 and 2025, some employers will breach their employees' annual leave rights unless they furnish them with an extra day's annual leave.

  • The DEI of workplace healthcare: Social equity in action

    Date:
    20 March 2024

    The importance of workplace healthcare benefits should never be underestimated - particularly as access to healthcare disproportionately affects workers across the breadth of the intersectional identity spectrum, says gender and sexuality consultant Georgie Williams.

  • Three areas of focus for the AI workplace revolution

    Date:
    11 March 2024

    The AI revolution is upon us, but data reveals that organisations are struggling to develop practices to integrate the new technology fully and safely into their business. Reporting from the US, Natasha K.A. Wiebusch identifies three key focus areas that employers with AI ambitions should prioritise.

  • New flexible working request rules - what does HR need to know?

    Date:
    8 March 2024

    Changes to statutory flexible working rights are due to come into force on 6 April 2024. Given the increased expectation of staff to be able to work flexibly, coupled with the right to request flexible working becoming a day-one right, employers should prepare for an increase in flexible working applications. In this article, we guide HR through the key changes and how employers can prepare.

  • HR strategy essentials: Laying the foundations for success

    Date:
    23 February 2024

    Hearing that you are supposed to "be strategic" and create a strategy in your HR role can be incredibly daunting. That's probably because you've never been taught what it means or how to do it. Here, Fay Wallis offers clear, actionable steps to create a strategy that adds real value. 

  • Carer's leave: Six things HR needs to know

    Date:
    5 February 2024

    The new statutory right to carer's leave will come into force on 6 April 2024. We look at how this new type of leave will operate, so HR can be ready when requests start to come in.

  • Should you trust forecasts?

    Date:
    30 January 2024

    With so much information at our fingertips, working out which data to trust can be an overwhelming task. To help you, we have put away our crystal ball and taken a look back to explore the reliability of our research and to understand retrospectively how accurate our pay forecast analyses have been.

  • Global legislative changes to look out for in 2024

    Date:
    24 January 2024

    There's no need to ask the Oracle of Delphi for predictions about upcoming changes to employment law worldwide. Here, our international editors, Ronelle Barreto and Rocio Carracedo Lopez, present shifts in the future legislative environment in 20 different countries at a glance.

  • Teams with a culture of constructive feedback do better

    Date:
    18 January 2024

    Employee feedback is one of the most effective tools to assess the internal operations of an organisation. And it becomes especially important as organisations get larger, says Victoria Kelleher, XpertHR lead survey specialist in the US.

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