ROI Employment Law In Brief: May 2023

A sad goodbye to the Queen of rock ‘n’ roll, Eurovision, the rise of the machines, the return of the Comparative Law Table and a whopping €1.2 billon fine imposed on Meta – that pretty much sums up May! Just as Patrick Kielty had better stock up on his Christmas jumpers, you should top up your employment law knowledge.  Don’t worry, we have it all below …enjoy the highlights in this month’s In Brief!

AI and Emerging Technologies

There is no doubt the capabilities of AI and tools like it are remarkable. They can summarise books and generate images in mere seconds - but what effect might they have on how we work? And which jobs are they likely to impact most? An academic team in the United States have been trying to answer those questions and you can read more about their findings here. Meanwhile the ‘Godfather’ of AI, Geoffrey Hinton quit his job, warning about the growing dangers from developments in the field. He told the BBC some of the dangers of AI chatbots were "quite scary". " Right now, they're not more intelligent than us, as far as I can tell. But I think they soon may be."

For an update on the most recent developments in ChatGPT, have a look at this article from Legal Island.

Meanwhile, BT announced that is to axe up to 55,000 jobs by 2030 replacing around 10,000 of them with AI. Many of them will be in HR(!)

A new survey carried out by Irish IT service provider Auxilion reveals that Irish business leaders expect to invest an average of nearly €1m IT this year with the main investment areas for 2023 include AI and cloud infrastructure.

Lus Laboris had an interesting take on Diversity and Inclusion in the Metaverse discussing the two key ways that this virtual reality could impact upon diversity and inclusion in the workplace. They looked at some potential benefits and pitfalls of work in the metaverse from the perspective of diversity and inclusion, considering a workplace staffed not just by humans but also by their avatars.

DE&I

Speaking of Diversity & Inclusion, did you catch our webinar with Stephen Frost on D&I in the workplace? Named in 2022 one of the top ten Most Influential HR Thinkers by HR Magazine, Stephen is a leadership, communications and inclusion expert. If you missed it, don’t worry, you can watch the recording back.

Companies need to do more to compile data relating to inclusivity in their workplaces in order to better equip themselves in addressing the issue according to the Community Ireland (BITCI) Elevate report. The report found that representation of a number of sections of society among the 150,000 strong collective workforces of the 60 participating employers fell well short of what would have been expected.

WRC

The WRC published its 2022 Annual Report highlighting that more cases in WRC are being resolved with the use of mediation with a 30% increase in parties willing to engage in mediation in 2022. Other highlights from the report include a recovery by the WRC of €1.4m in unpaid wages for employees last year; 5,820 inspection visits to workplaces were carried out in 2022 and from these, 5,700 specific contraventions of legislation were detected.

If like us, you were still talking in May about the Work Life Balance and Miscellaneous Provisions Act 2023 and if you need a good overview of the changes, check out, Matthew McGrogan, Solicitor in A&L Goodbody's article. Want to have your say on the WRC’s Code of Practice on the right to request remote? The WRC invites submissions on this to be submitted by 9 June 2023.

Comparative Law

Don’t forget to download your FREE copy of the Comparative Law Table – prepared in association with Lewis Silkin LLP, it’s essential reading for anyone employing people across the jurisdictions! You can also catch up on the Comparative Law webinar with Lewis Silkin LLP HERE where they talk all things redundancy and restructuring in Ireland, NI and GB.

Legal Island turns 25!

In May we launched our FREE Anniversary webinars – Workforce 2.0. In celebration of our Silver Anniversary, we want to make sure you’re up-to-date and ready for the future in HR and employment law. See you at 1 (or all?!) of the webinars (did I say they’re absolutely FREE?!) throughout June and the start of July!

Have a great June!