Jo Faragher

1 week ago | personneltoday.com | Jo Faragher

Black employees are at the highest risk of being targeted by workplace surveillance, according to research from the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR). The think tank claims that the rapid rise in use of technologies such as facial recognition, biometric tracking and keystroke monitoring will hit workers in low-skill and “low-autonomy” jobs the hardest – roles where black and ethnic minority workers are overrepresented.

1 week ago | personneltoday.com | Jo Faragher

A former 999 call-handler is taking the Metropolitan Police to tribunal after the force reinstated a colleague she had reported for discriminatory behaviour. Issy Vine has accused the Met of breaking its promise to listen to whistleblowers after a damning report by Baroness Louise Casey found it to be institutionally racist, misogynist and homophobic. A fellow call-handler made a series of comments including describing a rape victim as a “slut”, and was sacked in November 2023.

1 week ago | personneltoday.com | Jo Faragher

An IT director who insisted on working from home for an important meeting was unfairly dismissed, a tribunal has ruled. In May 2022 Ben Wicken worked for IT services company Akita Systems, and had been asked to meet with the managing director, Christophe Boudet, in person to resolve a disagreement. Wicken asked if he could attend the mediation meeting on Microsoft Teams instead, as he needed to be at home to supervise gardeners who were carrying out work on his property.

1 week ago | personneltoday.com | Jo Faragher

Car manufacturer Volvo will cut around 3,000 jobs as part of cost-saving measures. Most of the redundancies are likely to be office-based positions in Sweden, where the company is based. This will make up around 15% of its white-collar workforce. The company said around 1,000 of the layoffs would be positions currently filled by consultants, then 1,200 employees in Sweden and the remaining 800 from global markets.

2 weeks ago | employeebenefits.co.uk | Jo Faragher

Pooled tips and service charges, also known as tronc payments, should be included in holiday pay, according to a tribunal decision thought to be the first of its kind. In the case of Palanki vs The Big Table Group, the claimant worked for a branch of Las Iguanas restaurant in Wembley, London, where a discretionary service charge was levied on customer bills and a tronc system used to pool these and distribute among staff.