The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) published its Business Plan for 2024 to 2025, which amongst the six key priority areas identified, highlights the EHRC’s plans to focus on tackling sexual harassment and regulating AI.
Tackling Sexual Harassment in the Workplace – The EHRC plans to lead the campaign on this and prepare employers for their new duties under the Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Act 2023, which includes a mandatory duty to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace. The Act will come into effect on 26 October 2024 and will also give Employment Tribunals the power to uplift compensation for sexual harassment by up to 25% where an employer is found to have breached the new duty. The EHRC will also be considering whether other regulatory action should be taken to enforce breaches of the new requirements.
Regulating AI – Our MD, Pam Loch, recently hosted a webinar on ‘AI in the Workplace’ in collaboration with CIPD Sussex. Pam explored both the benefits and potential drawbacks of using AI and in particular, when using AI for recruitment where it can lead to bias and discrimination arising from the data which has been inputted in the first instance to train the AI. The EHRC has recognised this and plans to focus on the use of AI in recruitment practices and to police the use of facial recognition technology, which Pam highlighted also presents a challenge for employers due to the data protection aspects because it involves collecting special category data and monitoring their employees.
