Your review should be conducted in a formal manner resulting in a written report. However, the precise way in which you carry out your review will depend on your own individual circumstances.
To assist you the Commission will provide you with a review booklet to complete. The booklet includes a number of sections to assist you in reviewing your employment patterns, trends and practices and to reach your own conclusions on fair participation, affirmative action and goals and timetables. It also takes account of the Fair Employment Code of Practice. These form the core components of your Article 55 Review and, if fully and accurately completed, will be accepted by us as your formal Article 55 Review report.
Download the relevant booklet for your business/organization:
Also see our
Employer's Guide to Completing an Article 55 Review (pdf)
This depends when you first registered with the Commission. When a review is due, the Commission will send you the review booklet together with guidance on how to complete it. This will also set out the prescribed period for completing the review.
When carrying out your Article 55 Review you must also consider whether it is practical to set goals and timetables for the progress towards fair participation that can reasonably be expected to be made by the underrepresented community concerned.
There is no requirement to submit your Article 55 Review report to the Commission by a specific date. However we may request that you return it to us to ensure that you are complying with your legal obligation to undertake it. We therefore recommend that you complete your review when required and return it to us as a hard copy when requested to do so.
The primary purpose of an Article 55 Review is to enable you to determine whether you are providing, or are likely to continue to provide, fair participation in employment to members of the Protestant and Roman Catholic communities. A determination of what is fair depends on the circumstances of each particular case.
This means you should be working continuously, as an integral part of your personnel and management functions to ensure that equality of opportunity in your employment is offered to members of the Protestant and Catholic communities. If not, you should make sustained efforts to promote it through affirmative action measures and, if appropriate, the setting of goals and timetables.
It does not mean that every job, occupation or position in every undertaking throughout Northern Ireland must reflect the proportionate distribution of Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland.
Indicators that fair participation may is not being provided include:
- the numbers of applications for employment from members of a particular community are regularly lower than expected, especially when compared to the community background composition of the available workforce in the local area;
- success rates for job applicants from one community are regularly lower than the success rates enjoyed by job applicants from the other.
If you have also collected monitoring data on the racial groups on your job applicants and employees, you should analyse this information to ensure that the Article 55 Review reaches valid conclusions about the provision of fair participation in your workforce and whether there is a need to take affirmative action
When carrying out your Article 55 Review you must also consider whether it is practical to set goals and timetables for the progress towards fair participation that can reasonably be expected to be made by the underrepresented community concerned.
Goals and timetables are also a means of measuring any changes that occur as a result of the affirmative action that is taken. If it is practical to set such goals and timetables, then you must do so.