Equality Commission Northern Ireland

INTRODUCTION TO UNDERSTANDING EQUALITY IN THE WORKPLACE

Basic – for beginners in employment equality
This seminar is designed to give employers an awareness of the principal anti-discrimination laws and explores the concepts of direct and indirect discrimination.  It also looks at the particular requirements of Northern Ireland's fair employment legislation.

Webinar overview:
 

• The role and function of the Equality Commission
• Introduction to anti-discrimination legislation in NI
• Definitions of discrimination
• The reasonable adjustment duty
• Fair Employment Treatment Order (FETO)
• Good practice

REASONABLE STEPS DEFENCE

This webinar is designed to give participants an understanding of the statutory defence that they have taken all reasonable steps to prevent acts of unlawful discrimination in their workplace.

Session overview:

• Overview of the reasonable steps defence in practice
• Discussion of the key tools which may be used to promote equality of opportunity and a good and harmonious working environment
• An examination of the concept vicarious liability
• Examples of good practice

MANAGING FLEXIBLE WORKING IN A POST PANDEMIC CONTEXT

This webinar will examine the practice of flexible working in Northern Ireland and the challenges to ensure equality of opportunity with new working practices such as hybrid working and increasing requests for flexible working from employees.

Webinar overview:

• What is meant by flexible working (hybrid working is one example)
• Business benefits of adopting flexible working to attract talent from under- represented groups
• Flexible working and its relationship with employment and equality law
• Promoting good practice

MANAGING HARASSMENT AND BULLYING AT WORK - PROMOTING AN INCLUSIVE WORKPLACE
- Delivered by the Equality Commission NI and Labour Relations Agency

Harassment and bullying at work continue to be an unpleasant fact of life for many employees. Employers can work to change this by putting in place policies and procedures to create and help sustain inclusive workplaces. The Equality Commission and Labour Relations Agency have produced guidance (pdf) that outlines some steps that you can take to help build an inclusive workplace.

This webinar will examine the types of behaviour that can constitute harassment and bullying and the impact of these behaviours in the workplace. It will highlight the legal position in relation to harassment and bullying as well as issues liability, and what actions employers can take to promote diverse and inclusive workplaces.

Webinar overview:

• Types of harassment
• Bullying and harassment behaviours
• Differences between bullying and harassment
• Legal context
• Nature and consequences of workplace bullying and harassment
• Developing effective policies and procedures
• Building an inclusive workplace
• Equality Commission workplace research

PROMOTING AGE EQUALITY: WHAT CAN EMPLOYERS DO? 
 

This seminar is designed to give employers an awareness of age discrimination in the workplace and explores some of the key issues in relation to recruiting and retaining employees.

Webinar overview:
 

• Scope of the legislation
• Types of Discrimination
• Objective Justification
• Recruitment
• Benefits based on length of service
• Retirement
• Redundancy
• Good practice recommendations
   

MONITORING WORKSHOPS

These sessions will advise employers on how to comply with their legislative duty to collate and retain monitoring information for inclusion in the annual monitoring return.

Session overview:
 

• Discuss completion of the annual monitoring return
• Address employer queries

Workshops are limited to 16 places, book now to avoid disappointment.
 

ARTICLE 55 REVIEW - KEY ASPECTS

To provide support around completion of the three yearly, Article 55 Review, we are offering an overview of some key aspects of the review and the opportunity for you to ask questions relating to the review process.
 

It is intended that we will cover the analysis and evaluation of:

Session overview:

• Fair Participation as an underpinning theme running throughout the review process
• Identification of geographical catchment areas for your organisation and related comparator ranges. These are key to the assessment of fair participation and as benchmarking tools, help the analysis and evaluation of the following points
• Workforce Composition
• Workforce Flows
   

These aspects of the review are interlinked.
 
Our expectation is that you may be working towards completing an Article 55 Review for your organisation. That being the case, we hope you will be in a position to identify questions arising from your initial work on your review. Please have these questions to hand and we will address them during the meeting or shortly after.

Please note, the time allocated for this webinar is approximate. Workshops are limited to 16 places, book now to avoid disappointment.