Welcome to our latest Coffee Break in which we look at the latest legal and practical developments for employers.
Working arrangements and discrimination risks
With employers encouraging employees back to the office and re-establishing set patterns of work, more issues are arising for those employees who have difficulty complying with a particular place of work or hours of work requirement. Employers are increasingly needing to assess the fairness of any place and time of work requirements and key to this is considering any potentially discriminatory impact. A commonly arising issue is whether a requirement to work full time or particular hours has an indirectly discriminatory impact on those with childcare commitments, who are more likely to be women.
In a recent case, the claimant complained of a provision, criterion or practice (PCP) of being required to guarantee her availability to work the Thursday late shift, something she was unable to do because of her childcare responsibilities. In assessing the discriminatory impact of the requirement, the Employment Tribunal (ET) included within the pool for comparison two male employees and concluded that the claimant could not show that the requirement put women at a disadvantage compared to men and there was, therefore, no indirect discrimination.
On appeal, the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) found that the ET had wrongly failed to address the specific PCP of which the claimant complained and had included within the pool...
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