Welcome to our 2025 employment and immigration winter newsletter. This year has been anything but quiet and employment lawyers and HR professionals have been kept busy on several fronts, with key developments both in the UK and internationally.
Workplace culture has remained firmly in the spotlight in 2025, partly due to the duty to prevent sexual harassment (see below), but also widespread media coverage of historic misconduct allegations at high profile organisations. Ongoing scrutiny of how employers handle "speak up" complaints, and the proposed UK restrictions on confidentiality provisions in settlement agreements (see Coming Up in 2026 below) will place an even greater importance on employers having a thorough and transparent investigation process. We continue to carry out significant investigations work for our clients, whether advising on the employer's own internal investigation, conducting the investigation or instructing an external third party to carry out the investigation. Our investigations checklist sets out the key considerations for employers in the first 24 hours of any investigation. More information about our investigations work can be found here.
There is often a regulatory aspect to our investigations work. Whilst workplace culture and diversity remains a key focus for the UK's FCA, the planned diversity and inclusion rules have been dropped (for the time being). Instead, the FCA is introducing a new non-financial misconduct rule from September...
In a fight over President Donald Trump’s quest to acquire Greenland, the president made false and misleading statements about the Nobel Peace Prize and his own peace record. “Considering your Coun...