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

RECRUITING FAIRLY 

Systematic, fair and objective recruitment and selection procedures increase the likelihood that the most suitable persons will be appointed and significantly reduce the possibility that unlawful discrimination will occur. This session looks in detail at the various aspects of the recruitment and selection process and aims to provide employers with practical guidance and support.

Session overview:
 

• Recruitment and selection and the law
• Developing an effective policy and procedure
• Avoiding common mistakes
• Practical examination of key aspects of the recruitment and selection process (including job documentation and reasonable adjustments)
• Case law
• Good practice

EQUALITY TRAINING FOR LINE MANAGERS

This webinar will focus on good practice regarding employment equality issues for those with line management responsibilities.

Session overview:

• Overview of the legal context and types of discrimination
• The role of the line manager in relation to creating a harmonious working environment
• Flexible working – the right to request and the duty to consider
• Managing poor performance
• Disability and the reasonable adjustment duty
• Summary and overview of management responsibilities

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

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

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
   

PROMOTING EQUALITY IN EMPLOYMENT FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES

This webinar will examine how employers can promote equality and employment for disabled people with an emphasis on the reasonable adjustment duty.

Webinar overview:
 

• Barriers to recruitment and retention of those with disabilities
• Effective strategies to reduce and minimise these barriers
• Types of discrimination
• The reasonable adjustment duty
• Reasonable adjustment examples
• Positive action
   

THE DISABILITY REASONABLE ADJUSTMENT DUTY IN THE RECRUITMENT AND SELECTION PROCESS
 

This webinar will examine the management of disability in the workplace with a particular emphasis on the reasonable adjustment duty and promotion of equality of opportunity for disabled applicants and employees. It is aimed at employers who already have a knowledge of the key provisions of the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) 1995.


Webinar Overview
 

• The requirements of the reasonable adjustment duty in the DDA
• The importance of the duty to promoting equality in employment for disabled people
• How to develop an action plan to facilitate compliance with the duty and promote good practice

MORE AND BETTER JOBS FOR DISABLED PEOPLE IN CREATIVE INDUSTRIES

This webinar, delivered in partnership with NIUSE, will raise awareness of how to create more and better jobs for disabled people in the Creative Industries. The webinar will focus on creating job opportunities for people with disabilities, the reasonable adjustment duty in recruitment and lawful positive action.

We will be joined by NI Screen discussing how they are developing outreach measures to encourage more disabled people into different roles across the sector, and the BBC discussing how they have made reasonable adjustments for staff with disabilities and the positive action measures they have taken to increase the number of disabled people in the workforce.

Contributors include:

• David Corscadden, CINE Outreach and Access Manager
• Emma Paterson-Bennett, BBC Portfolio Manager, Diversity and Inclusion
• Leo Quinn, Department for Communities
• Edyth Dunlop, NIUSE
• Una Wilson, Equality Commission NI

Paul Oakes will facilitate a panel discussion exploring the practical changes employers can make to facilitate more disabled people into work in the creative industries in Northern Ireland.
 

EMBRACING THE DISABILITY DISCRIMINATION ACT - VISITOR ATTRACTIONS AND EXPERIENCES IN NORTHERN IRELAND

This Tourism NI webinar, delivered by Una Wilson from the Equality Commission, will address the barriers preventing people with disabilities from booking and visiting your visitor attraction and experiences. The session will provide practical information and helpful techniques to help you to improve accessibility for people with disabilities and the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. This webinar will be facilitated by Claire McNaughton who is a Senior Quality Advisor with Tourism NI. Claire has extensive experience within the visitor attraction sector in Northern Ireland and is currently developing a visitor experience quality scheme for attractions and experiences to enhance their product offerings and services.

Why should you attend?
An accessible business is one that is equally open to all potential customers, including the approximately 400,000 people in Northern Ireland who have a disability.  

Providing better access means that your business is more welcoming to everyone. Enabling customers with disabilities, carers and people of all ages to access your services which will widen your customer base.

Every business has a legal duty to take reasonable steps to ensure that people with disabilities can access their services, but there are many other reasons why you should stop and consider how accessible your business currently is..

Who should attend?
The webinar is aimed at anyone working across the holiday accommodation sector. However, the content and learnings are highly transferable across the tourism sector, so everyone is very welcome to attend.

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

EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES MONITORING

This webinar is for those employers wishing to develop voluntary systems of employment equality monitoring.

Session overview:
 

• The reasons for employment equality monitoring 
• How to establish a system of employment equality monitoring 
• Equality Commission guidance on employment equality monitoring

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.