Ep 4: Trade union access, AI agents, Fair Work Agency

This month's episode of the Personnel Today HR Podcast, brought to you by Deel, explores what employers need to do when trade unions come knocking, ahead of new statutory access rights later this year. We also examine the rise of agentic AI, and what the newly established Fair Work Agency means for employers.

Every month, we focus on some of the most significant events of the previous weeks and delve into the implications for HR professionals.

Employment law trainer and commentator Darren Newman joins the PT team again to discuss trade union access rights and what HR professionals should be doing to prepare for new measures which are scheduled to come into force in October 2026. How will the new regulations affect organisations that already engage with trade unions? And what about employers that have not had to manage trade union relationships before?

We look at AI agents and "digital twins" and what they mean for the workplace. And we look at the Fair Work Agency and ask whether the new body will be any more powerful than the four enforcement bodies it replaces.

Presented by Rob Moss, Jo Faragher and Adam McCulloch
Produced and edited by Rob Moss
Music: Eternity Bro/Shutterstock

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:05

Hello and welcome to the Personnel Today HR podcast brought to you by Deal. Hire, manage, and pay anyone, anywhere. I'm Rob Moss, editor of Personnel Today, and I'm once again joined by our contributing editors Joe Farragher and Adam McCulloch and our resident legal expert Darren Newman. Welcome everyone.

SPEAKER_02 0:26

Hi Rob, thanks for having us.

Trade union access rights

SPEAKER_03 0:29

Each month we look at some of the most significant HR stories of the past few weeks and examine the implications for HR practitioners and employers. Coming up in this month's episode, what should you do? What we have to do when trade unions come knocking. We examine new trade union access rights and what HR needs to be doing to prepare for new measures coming into force later this year. Regardless of whether you have existing relationships with unions or none at all, employers need to be ready. We'll be exploring the rise of artificial intelligence agents and how HR tech providers are deploying AI tools that move beyond the chatbot, just helping humans towards AI agents that act on their behalf. We'll also be looking more at the Fair Work Agency and asking what, if anything, is likely to change. The unions are worried the new enforcement body that launched just four weeks ago won't have any teeth, while business groups are concerned about the FWA's ability to turn up unannounced. But before any of that, a message from our friends at Deals, sponsors of the Personnel Today HR podcast. Deals, the all-in-one people platform for modern HR teams. Bring hiring, onboarding, payroll performance, offboarding, and more into one global system. So you can focus on people, not paperwork. Serving over 150 countries, Deals simplifies compliance and helps HR teams move even faster. See what hiring without borders looks like. Visit DEEL.com slash personnel to book your demo. That's DEEL.com slash personnel. Okay, Darren, we knew the Labour government was always going to strengthen trade union rights, and much of the Employment Rights Act includes measures to do just that. For our HR listener who's never really had to deal with unions, what do these new access rights mean?

SPEAKER_02 2:40

Yeah, well, I think this is potentially quite a significant change. And it's something that I'm not sure we paid enough attention to as the bill was going through parliament. It was slightly under the radar. But essentially, what this new right will entail is a union will be able to approach any employer with 21 or more employees and make a request for it to be given access to a specific workplace that it identifies. And the union and the employer will then have to enter a period of negotiation to talk about what that means. What kind of access are we going to be looking at? So it may be that the union will come onto the premises and organize a meeting of employees. It may be that they'll have an office space for a period of time where they'll be able to consult with employees or perhaps have individual meetings with them, hand out leaflets. They may be setting up an exhibition space in the canteen. There's all sorts of potential things they can be doing with the purpose of either providing representation for those employees or organizing them, trying to drum up membership, talking to individuals about what their problems are, providing representation, that sort of thing. Not organizing industrial action, that's outside the scope, but everything else that a union does, it will be able to ask for access to a workplace to help it do that. That can be physical, it can also be electronic. So it could be that it would be digital access. Maybe the employer would have to facilitate a Zoom meeting or a Teams meeting with employees, or even pass on messages from the union to employees through email. There's provisions about protecting privacy and data protection, but the employer would have to facilitate that so trade unions are able to communicate not just with their members, which they can already, but with people they regard as their potential members. And I think that's the key thing.

SPEAKER_03 4:34

Okay, so how does it work at the moment? If if if I was running a trade union and I wanted to enter an employer now, I I wouldn't be able to do so, or would I be able to do so in certain circumstances?

SPEAKER_02 4:48

I mean, you can ask, but if you're not an employee, then you don't get access to a workplace unless the employer gives you permission for that. If you are an employee, you're permitted to take part in union activities in the workplace. But obviously, the employer can control the extent you're doing that during working hours and doesn't necessarily have to give you any facilities to do that in terms of access to a meeting space and that sort of thing. But at the moment, an employer that regards itself as not unionized, or the phrase I often come across, we don't have unions here. Um I think very often the employer will find that they do. They just don't have a relationship with them. You know, the employer at the moment can simply say, Well, we don't have to cooperate with this at all. We don't have to um have any sort of relationship if we don't want it. That's going to change under this new right.

SPEAKER_03 5:40

And this comes in in October.

SPEAKER_02 5:43

Yes. It's set up according to the timetable, it comes in in October. But this is the first real test of the government implementing measures in the Employment Rights Act because so far, everything that's been implemented has been really straightforward, right? They've been repealing things, they've been taking away um qualifying periods for family-related leave, that sort of thing. They haven't created a big complicated thing and introduced it yet. So before October, they're going to have to publish some quite detailed regulations that will cover how this will work and finalise a code of practice. At the moment, we've got a draft code of practice, which is out for consultation. That consultation closes on the 20th of May. We've got a response to a consultation that took place earlier this year that sets out what the government plans to do with the regulations, but we don't have those regulations yet. And, you know, the government seems quite busy with one thing and another at the moment. So I wonder how easily they'll get this done in time, but it's certainly scheduled to come into force in October.

SPEAKER_03 6:52

Right. Okay. And before we get into the nitty-gritty of how a request for access works, can this stuff be done voluntarily without following the regulations as they as they will appear?

SPEAKER_02 7:06

Yeah, you can absolutely. I mean, you can now as an employer, and lots of employers do. They have an access agreement. Most union recognition will have, as part of it, an access agreement that talks about when and under what circumstances the union can have access to the workplace and what facilities the employer will provide for that. You can certainly enter a voluntary agreement with it. One thing that I think is perhaps surprising about this new right is that once it's come in, even if there's a voluntary agreement reached, the idea is that both sides will then notify the Central Arbitration Committee, which is the body that currently looks after union recognition and is not terribly busy, to be honest. They will be able to notify the Central Arbitration Committee that they've reached this agreement, and then it will become an agreement under the jurisdiction of the Central Arbitration Committee. So the Central Arbitration Committee can oversee its enforcement, which I think is quite a big step.

SPEAKER_03 8:02

Right. Okay, and we'll come to what that enforcement might mean shortly. But let's let's talk about the mechanics of an access request. So I go into work on Monday morning as HR director, and there's an email waiting for me saying that a union wants to have an access to our building.

SPEAKER_02 8:24

So there's going to be a standard form for the union to use that will set out exactly what it's looking for in terms of union access. So it will specify the workplace, it will specify what kind of access it's looking for, it will specify the regularity with which it wants to access. The idea is the default will be we get to come in once a week, for example. Um, but it will talk about exactly what sort of arrangement it's looking for. The employer will then have to decide whether to accept that, reject that, or enter into a period of negotiation with the union to try and come up with an agreement. It's got very little time to do that. The government has made a concession. It was originally proposing that you would have to turn around your response within five working days, which would obviously have been just completely impossible. Um, but they very generously extended that to 15 working days. So you'll have 15 working days to decide whether you're going to agree access or not. Which still isn't long, especially if it's a ridiculously short period of time. It's bizarre.

SPEAKER_03 9:28

Okay. And but but when the government published its response, most business groups were up in arms about this idea of weekly access, weren't they?

SPEAKER_02 9:36

Well, I think this is where we need to be realistic about what's actually going to happen here, right? I think a lot of employers looked at this and thought, oh, good grief, we're going to have a swarm of union officials in every workplace we have coming in every week and organizing mass meetings and protests and leaflet drops and things like that. I think we have to accept that unions are going to be strategic and selective about what sort of access they want. And if they if what they're saying is we'd like to come into your workplace on a weekly basis and organize meetings, um, that's going to be part of a wider campaign for union recognition, presumably. You're going to be a targeted employer if that's happening, where a union has decided that getting recognition in this workplace is significant enough and important enough to put that level of resource into it. Your average employer that just happens not to have very many union members at the moment is not going to suddenly have full-time union officials marching into its workplace and organizing mass meetings and membership drives completely out of the blue. I think we've got to have, you know, some realistic expectation about what unions are really going to want to do out of this. I personally don't see why allowing a union on site every week is in itself an objectionable thing. It's just a question, really, of what that access entails and what level of disruption that access is. It could be a very straightforward thing where someone just comes and stands in the canteen and sits with a desk and takes down details of anyone who wants to join, right? Why why would that be a burdensome thing for an employer to put up with?

SPEAKER_03 11:13

Okay, so an employer's got 15 days to respond, 15 working days to respond. What if they just ignore it or say no?

SPEAKER_02 11:22

Um, if they just ignore it or say no, then the union has got until I think the government is now saying 55 working days from the time of their their request. Um, though that's slightly unrealistic because the union can just make another request if it wants. So it's not like this is a big, a big timeline for the unions. They can then make a referral to the Central Arbitration Committee, which will assign one of its members to look into it and make a determination. Sometimes a panel of three members, sometimes just one member, um, will see how much resource they've got. And they will then make a determination as to whether access should be granted and on what basis. That's where the code of practice comes in, because that gives the CAC some pretty clear principles, I think, about the sort of thing you might expect. I think what everyone has to accept as a result of this is as far as the law is concerned, a union having access to a workplace is a good thing. Right? You are not, as an employer, in very many circumstances, going to be able to argue, look, we shouldn't have a union coming in and talking to our workforce, right? That's gonna get no sympathetic hearing at all. Exceptions for national security is the sort of thing the code of practice is thinking of. But it's that level of saying no. Um, by and large, if a union wants to have access to your workplace, it's going to be allowed to have access to your workplace. What you have to do is engage constructively to come up with an agreement about exactly what that means. And the CAC will ultimately come in with a model um access agreement if you're unable to reach an agreement.

SPEAKER_03 13:01

And the size of the workplace is irrelevant, it's the size of the employer.

SPEAKER_02 13:07

Yeah, that's that's that's a weird thing, isn't it? The the right of access is the access to a workplace, the request is made to an employer. Um, so the employer has to have at least 21 employees. In theory, your workplace could have three employees, but I'm not sure how much resource a union would want to put into getting access to that workplace. So I don't I don't think we really need to worry about okay union swamping very small workplaces because I don't think it would make much sense for them to do that. And what if the union doesn't have any members in in well that's one of the reasons it might want access to the workplace, right?

SPEAKER_03 13:44

Okay, right.

SPEAKER_02 13:45

So it's it's it's perfectly entitled to say there are people working in this in this workplace who are within our sort of scope for membership, and we'd like access to them so that we can put our case and ask them to join the union, right? That is a perfectly legitimate, in fact, it's the envisaged purpose of the access request. Remember, you know, under this government, joining a union is a good thing, union recognition is a good thing, union access is a good thing. So, you know, we're just not in a position to say, but look, you we're just not a unionized company, right? That's that's not going to be an argument.

SPEAKER_03 14:24

What about our HR listeners who already have lots of engagement with unions might have quite good relations? Let's talk first about another union wanting to come in and have access. How does that work?

SPEAKER_02 14:39

Yeah, I mean, it could be a bit more tricky. In a union recognition claim, under the statute union recognition claim, that's absolutely disqualifying, right? So one union recognition claim cannot overlap with existing union recognition to any extent, and it's knocked out of out of court if it if it does. That's not the case with this, but the Central Arbitration Committee can take into account the fact that this might be a disruptive access if we've basically got a rival union coming in and trying to undermine an existing union relationship. I think the CAC might, in those circumstances, would be entitled in those circumstances to say, look, that wouldn't be appropriate. The battleground between these two unions shouldn't be the workplace.

SPEAKER_03 15:24

Right.

SPEAKER_02 15:25

Um, but there are going to be circumstances where a union might not be the recognized union, but it's still got some membership or it's still got some legitimate reason to be there, and it might be perfectly appropriate to grant access to that union for particular purposes, even though collective bargaining is going on with a different union entirely.

SPEAKER_03 15:43

Well, how will this affect the trade union relationship that already exists? So, you know, you've recognized a union for years, decades. How will this change things?

SPEAKER_02 15:55

Well, it probably shouldn't if you've got a good relationship with a trade union. Most recognition agreements will have provisions on access. It's possible that a union might want to upscale its access to a particular workplace. But if you're already recognizing, you're really not going to be a target for a union that wants access to the workplace. I think they're largely going to be going for organizations that don't recognize a trade union. So it's those are the organizations that I think have to be careful. If I can make one sort of practical point that employees should probably try and get on top of before this all comes in, um because this isn't a situation where you can just prepare for everything that's going to happen, because it all depends on what the union actually requests. But what you can make sure is that if you're in a large organization, particularly if you've got an international parent, make sure that the most senior people in the organization are aware that this is happening. Because if you've got an organization that is hostile to the idea of trade unions having access, the top people need to be aware that this is a change in the law and it's a thing that they're going to have to take on board. And because the access is going to be to a workplace, but the request is going to be made to the employer, try and have a sort of infrastructure in place where you know who it is who's going to be handling the access requests, and they've got the appropriate contacts of the various workplaces so that when you've got that very short timetable to turn around the access request, you know who it is who's got to deal with these requests, and they know who they've got to talk to about whether the um request can be accommodated or not. I think that's as much as you can practically do before this actually comes in. And then we wait and see how much advantage the unions will take of this and how much they want to push it. And we won't really know what the impact is going to be until it comes in and we see what trade unions do next.

SPEAKER_04 17:54

Yeah, what interests me, Darren, is um what's your sense of the reaction on the ground, you know, from businesses themselves, their level of understanding and their level of anxiety about this. What do you what do you think?

SPEAKER_02 18:07

I I mean, I I think there are lots of employees who are perfectly comfortable with trade unions and whether they recognize them or not, uh have no particular concerns about a union having access. I think it's easy to catastrophize what you think might happen, that you imagine a much bigger and more aggressive move from a trade union than you will actually see on the ground. And I think it's one of those things that you often get in advance of a new measure coming in, that you build it up in your mind as to being a bigger and more significant thing um than it's actually going to be. So I'm getting lots of questions from employers about well, couldn't could a union do this, could a union do this, could they make this demand? And you know, the answer is often, well, they they could, but are they likely to? And I think we've just got to be realistic about what a union will actually want to do and what a union is going to have the resources to do. I don't think this new right is making any unreasonable demands on an employer. The draft code of practice has has an interesting um provision in it. It's paragraph 62, if anyone wants to look it up, where very helpfully the the code draft code of practice says that an employer should not be required to make any major structural changes to the workplace in order to facilitate access, which I think well, well, that's a relief. We don't have to actually build an auditorium in order to accommodate um a union. They do talk about the employer potentially having to move tables and chairs around to facilitate a meeting. And okay. My advice is very much that if you're negotiating an access agreement, make the union officials move the tables and chairs and put them back again afterwards. But you know, I think these things can just be they can just be handled when the request comes in. In you know, they it doesn't need to be a dramatic thing. I I don't see that this needs to be a big problem for employers.

SPEAKER_03 19:57

Okay. And enforcement, you mentioned about the the Central Arbitration Committee being able to enforce this. Uh are there any fines?

SPEAKER_02 20:07

Yeah, I mean, potentially there are. And again, I always feel a little bit guilty pointing these out because when you point out a maximum fine, it creates sort of like you know dramatic scenarios in people's minds that aren't actually going to happen. But what the government is envisaging is if one party, and it could be the union as much as the employer, if one party acts in breach of the access agreement, then they can report that to the Central Arbitration Committee who will investigate it and make a declaration. They can also change the access agreement if they think it needs changing in light of this. And if the person persists and continues to breach it, they can start issuing fines. And they are technically fines because they're sums of money paid to central government rather than paid to the aggrieved party, right? Um, so but they go as high as for I think a third fine could be as high as 500,000 pounds. Okay, which makes you think, oh wow, that could be really dramatic. I'd I'd bet good money that no one ever gets fined 500,000 pounds as a result of this. I'd bet good money that almost nobody will ever get fined as a result of this, right? The CAC will intervene and it will give people guidance and they'll comply with the agreement. I don't I don't think this is something where realistically employers are going to be dragged through the courts and fined um because of technical breaches of um the access agreement. That's not how the CAC operates, it's not their mindset to impose fines on people, it's just you've got to have that backup in the legislation. So I I wouldn't want to draw too much attention to the£500,000 you could be fined as a result of breaking the access requirement. It's a it's a more sensible thing than that.

SPEAKER_04 21:50

Yeah, just one more question from me, Darren. Um do do you do you know are the TUC very happy with these with this aspect of the act? Uh is it Is it everything they wanted, would you say?

SPEAKER_02 22:03

I think it's pretty good. I mean, I I think there are lots of things that uh different people in the union movement might be disappointed by in the Employment Rights Act. Um, but it is the most pro-union legislation we've had um certainly since the 90s, certainly since the late 90s and arguably since the 70s. So it's a bit rich if they are that cross. I think the right of access is pretty good for unions and they were pretty they were pretty focused on it. You know, they do you would expect a union official or a union person, if they were looking at the whole act and they wanted to point out what was really helpful to them, they would point at the right of access and say, that's important. Um that's something that that can really change the way in which we interact with with employers. So in the particular businesses where it's going to really benefit them, I think the fact that they'll get access will be really important to them. Whether it will have the dramatic change that they perhaps hope it will, because you know, obviously what they hope is that this will lead to a major increase in union membership. But people have a right to join or not to join a trade union, and no one's going to be forced to join a trade union, even if there's a really, you know, well-presented um exhibitor stand in the canteen. And even if there's a really interesting meeting to attend, um, you know, they can choose or to join or not to join, and we'll have to wait and see what happens.

SPEAKER_03 23:30

Perfect. Thank you, Darren. And there are there are a few more things coming in October in relation to unions, aren't there?

SPEAKER_02 23:37

Um Yeah, there's there's an obligation to provide a statement of your right to join a trade union, which they've also consulted on, but haven't responded to the consultation yet. So this is a statement that you will have to give to employees that will have to tell them they can join a trade union, also give them more information. The debate is how much information will you have to give them, how detailed a statement will it have to be. Probably it's going to be a set statement that the government will set out that you'll have to basically give to employees along with their written statement of terms and conditions, and also either provide to them again or remind them of, say, every year or so. Um, I'll be interested to see how detailed that statement is is going to be. Um, I think ideally we'd want something a bit short and snappy with appropriate links to the information. We'll we'll see how well the government drafts something short and snappy for um employers to hand out to employees, but we'll see.

SPEAKER_03 24:37

Great. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_02 24:39

Yeah, thanks.

Agentic AI

SPEAKER_03 24:39

All very interesting stuff. The personnel today HR podcast is brought to you by deal. Hire, manage, and pay anyone, anywhere. Next, we're looking at AI. Again, I hear you cry, I'm afraid so. But as former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said this week, government should be considering its impact on employment and the economy more than anything else. So, Joe.

SPEAKER_00 25:06

Essentially, agentic AI or AI agents are something that goes beyond the chatbots that a lot of HR departments might be using at the moment and um the use of chat GPT, and they're a lot more autonomous. So they can replicate the decisions that employees make. So in a banking app, for example, you could they they're probably using AI to flag up fraud, fraudulent transactions, and that sort of thing, but then generally before that that fraud would be flagged up, and then a human would deal with it. Now, more and more these AI agents are making decisions and dealing with situations like that. And then um in HR, that might be in the recruitment process, so it wouldn't just be selecting people from a big pile of CVs, it might be making a decision on whether they move forward and then only really involving a hiring manager right at the end when you're looking to make that decision.

SPEAKER_03 26:02

So okay, and so who who are using these AI agents?

SPEAKER_00 26:08

It's a one of those things, isn't it? So there's a lot of talk about companies using AI to make decisions, and we get press releases every week about such and such using Agentic AI to do this. This company's announced an Agentic AI tool, Salesforce.com. Uh, the CEO Mark Burney Office said he might rename his company to Agent Force because it's such a big thing. Um, apparently, here Capita is using it to speed up recruitment. But you know, is it really that that advanced use of it that I described, or are they just kind of putting a branding on it on an algorithm? I mean, there's definitely money in it, and obviously there's a lot of worry about AI replacing jobs at the moment. We we only covered the announcement today that Meta and Microsoft are both laying off kind of 8,000 and 7,000 workers each as they invest in more AI.

SPEAKER_04 26:59

Yeah, I was I was really interested um in one of our stories, uh, I think it was probably two months ago now, that Accenture were linking use of AI to promotion. And that's that's something we've I think we've seen we're seeing more of is businesses saying that you you have to use AI. So it's and it's become a sort of badge of honour that the more you use AI, the better employee, the more productive you are. That's now replaced the idea that you're cheating somehow by using AI. But to actually link it to promotion.

SPEAKER_00 27:33

Yeah, there seems to be a kind of split here with this. There's some companies saying, well, they're gonna incentivize you to use it innovatively. Um, and you you we we can link that to promotion, and and there's some that are just saying, right, we're just gonna chuck a load of money at this, and then that's gonna level it's this is RishiNet's worry, isn't it? That it's gonna level off all those entry-level jobs. So it it's kind of a a split down the middle, really. And that's also the another thing that's coming through, which I'm I'm not sure of the exact technical difference here, but digital twins. So you could make a digital twin of yourself, right? There's an AI agent that would be trained on your on your work and behaviours.

SPEAKER_03 28:15

This is this would be an AI agent that I would set up to do certain things that perhaps I find laborious and tedious.

SPEAKER_00 28:23

Well, um well, it would um in theory, it would draw a lot of data from your email, from the chats that you have at work, from any other work-related data, and then it would build a profile of you, and you could ask based on that, you could ask it to to you would train it on your work and your behaviour so it would be able to make decisions on your behalf. So there was a story um recently on the BBC about this analyst company, and there's a guy who's retiring, and um he's built a twin of himself so that he can have a phased exit. But um, yeah, so or you could do like on a simple level, it could do stuff like listen to a conference call for you, um, it could respond to emails and that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_02 29:05

Yeah, I I mean my employment law sense is tingling a little bit because what I'm what I'm thinking is if you set up a a digital twin, first of all, is it processing data about you? So, you know, dull question, but what's the data protection privacy issues around that? What happens if you leave? To what extent do you think an employee who's got a digital twin has some ownership of that digital twin so that if they leave, the digital twin goes with them? Or does the digital twin get left behind to continue operating as though they're the person who has actually left? Um, and I I I've got no answers to that, and I hope that it doesn't have until long after I've retired from employment loss. Yeah, it seems like the sort of thing that is a problem for the future.

SPEAKER_00 29:52

Yeah, and it's a good point though, in all of these issues is that accountability. Who who owns that data? Um, who if if something goes wrong, is it the twins' fault, or is it the employer's fault, or is it the person's fault? If if you're training something on data and then it creates a new output, which General Juvai can do, as we know, it's like who owns that, who's given consent? It's it's a minefield, really, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 30:19

It's only a matter of time before AI twins are giving evidence in employment tribunals. It would be absolutely fascinating to watch how an AI employment judge deals with evidence from an AI AI witness in a tribunal.

SPEAKER_03 30:31

So, Joe, uh are HR teams ready for this? What does what does what does an HR professional listening to this podcast need to be thinking about?

SPEAKER_00 30:40

Probably at the moment, not too much. I mean, there's a lot of noise, isn't there, about AI at the moment, and about I I doubt that many HR professionals have got someone in a in working from home today setting up a digital twin so they can go to the pub this afternoon, for example. Um but in response to AI more generally, I think they're doing a lot of firefighting, they're setting up learning modules and that sort of things after the fact. It it seems like they're playing catch-up a lot of the time, aren't they? What people are suggesting is that the best thing to do right now is to think about the governance you're gonna provide around things like this. So if it is only going to accelerate, it is only going to get more complex. What what are you gonna be your broad principles of governance on this rather than just accepting that people are gonna do it?

SPEAKER_03 31:29

And we ran an interesting piece.

SPEAKER_00 31:32

Is it algorithmic inclusion debt? That one.

unknown 31:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:35

Yeah, so it essentially it explains how um if there is already bias baked into the data or bad decisions, potentially bad decisions being made through existing data, that's only you're only catching up with that all the time. So you're you're in this inclusion debt all the time because it's making ever worse decisions and ever less equitable decisions based on that data.

SPEAKER_04 32:00

Is the you do you remember a few years ago that we were told that uh I think Meta were behind it? We'd all be wearing headsets and working in a virtual work environment of virtual workplaces. Yeah, that that whole project has now been dropped completely. Metaverse. But isn't it incredible how fast technology has moved on from that, which just seems like complete nonsense now, to like to AI to digital twins. I mean, is it that's an extraordinary movement? It's mind-blowing.

SPEAKER_00 32:32

The concept itself, yeah. The concept itself isn't that different. It it is essentially an algorithmic representation of someone, but it's the worry is that making decisions and creating more inequities or doing something illegal as well, you know.

SPEAKER_04 32:49

Yeah, I just I just want to come back on you you mentioned the um Microsoft job losses and the meta job losses, but we saw a comment this morning that these companies are being are not being completely honest. We saw a come we saw um I can't remember who it was that was saying it. They're saying that they're covering up the fact that actually they employed far too many people during the pandemic, and they're and they're still in the process of shedding the that employment boom, you know, and shedding people, um, and it's not to do with AI at all. And I I don't know what the motivation for for that, but I've heard this comment several.

SPEAKER_00 33:26

I've heard sorts of it's a correction, isn't it? It's a that um shortly after the pandemic and um employers struggled to get employees back, so they they over-recruited and over-recruited, sort of 2024-25, and then they realised they didn't need all those people, and now this there's this hyper correction going on, and they're blaming AI.

SPEAKER_03 33:48

Or they're making they're they're attributing it to AI in a positive way, like you know, we're a great company because we're we're we're this.

SPEAKER_00 33:57

Yeah, we're so innovative is your P45.

SPEAKER_03 34:00

Okay, thank you, Joe. Um, I should mention here that the Personnel Today Awards 2026 are currently open for entries, and we even have a new category called Excellence in AI adoption. Um, visit personneltodayawards.com to find out more.

SPEAKER_02 34:19

Are you gonna have a real human judge for that, Rob, or are you gonna have it judged by legitimate AI twin?

SPEAKER_03 34:25

I'm gonna give it to you, Darren, I think.

SPEAKER_02 34:28

That's that that's not falling within my bailiwick, I think.

SPEAKER_03 34:33

Okay, Adam, the Fair Work Agency. We talked about it a little bit last month, uh, but now it's been launched. Yeah, um, and you've uh you've been looking into the reaction.

SPEAKER_04 34:44

Yeah, well, actually, I was I was kind of um uh just picking up from what uh Darren said about it last month. And uh correct me if I'm wrong, Darren, but you sort of intimated that nothing much is going to change in the short term, given given the funding limitations of the fair work agency, and that it couldn't really carry out a sort of remit of raiding premises all over the place, and it simply wouldn't be able to carry out these these things. But what I've noticed since then, I've seen a lot of sort of employment law sites and and other commentators warning that the fair work agency is gonna make a huge difference. That is that uh you know, you better watch out because if you don't get your house in order, these people the feds are gonna raid you. So it's it's got that vibe about it, you know.

SPEAKER_02 35:35

Um is this um commentary coming from people who are going to help people get their house in order?

SPEAKER_04 35:41

I presume so. But amongst it.

SPEAKER_02 35:43

Certainly they have a bit of an interest in making it sound like the fair work agency is gonna have a bigger impact than it actually will.

SPEAKER_04 35:49

I can hear what you're saying, and I think you might be right. But um, one of them was uh a solicitor Rohit Wallier from Mayo Win Baxter. She said the agency's powers were significant and wide-ranging. But the biggest risk to firms was not deliberate wrongdoing, but accidental non-compliance. And she said that um industries like hospitality, social care, and warehousing were likely to face the greatest scrutiny, particularly given the long-standing issues they have around holiday pay calculations. But that that's that's probably I'm sure she might actually, but you know, given what you were saying last month about the the lack of funding, that the lack of staff, it's hard to see how they're going to pursue that. But then there was the Institute of Directors, um, Alex Hall Chen, from she's she warned that it's going to have huge powers, significantly broader powers than the enforcement bodies it has replaced. It's going to have the authority to enter business premises without a warrant. It could extend its powers beyond its original purpose without proper scrutiny or consultation with business. I mean, that is that is really quite worrying.

SPEAKER_00 37:01

So yeah. But they haven't got any more staff, have they? So they can't enforce it. That's it.

SPEAKER_04 37:06

It's and this is this is the great unknown about it. We think there's about 150 staff at the moment spread in various offices around the UK. Most of them have come over from the the bodies it has replaced, the gangmaster and labor abuse authority, the director of labor, market enforcement, employment agency, standards inspector, and the HMRC National Minimum Wage Unit. But anyway, but the point is that there's a huge range of opinion. There's warnings from one side about the terrible things this agency might do. And then you've got on the union side, terrible worry that there's there's simply no, it hasn't got any real unit and no real funding. And I think there's I think one of the most telling uh briefing papers about this was came from the Institute of Employment Rights. And I was speaking to um their director, James Harrison, this morning about it, actually. And uh, you know, he was he was pointing out that over the last 15 years, funding for enforcement bodies in the UK has fallen by 58% in real terms, and workplace inspections and enforcement activity has declined massively over those past 15 years. So, on the basis of that, the Fair Work Agency's got a lot of work to do uh to catch up and actually fulfill its remit. And and and I also picked up on something said by um it was Emma Wilkinson from the Employment Legal Advice Network. She's saying that 445,000 workers paid less than the national minimum wage in 2025, 130,000 people trapped in modern slavery, and 900,000 workers a year have their holiday pay withheld. And on top of that, she was talking about migrant workers, how dependent we are on migrant workers, and how they're now they've now got an incentive not to spill the beans on their employers if they've been exploited and mistreated. Because under the draconian new immigration rules, they're much more liable to be liable to be deported you know once they've complained to their employer about something. So it's like, oh, thank you very much for telling us about this bad employer. Now here's a here's a here's a taxi that will take you to the airport. But um, so there's this huge, huge number of things at least 150 people have got to do, plus the fact that if they do do their job properly, they bring down the employment tribunal system. And why then well because the fair work agency has has the right to start proceedings.

SPEAKER_02 39:55

Yeah, but it's not going to start any proceedings, Adam, right? It's it's like you've you've got to be realistic about what this thing can do. And you can't just look at the Employment Rights Act and see the powers it's been given and think it's going to exercise any of those powers. The employment tribunal system will collapse for reasons of its own long before the Labour, the Fair Work Agency gets around to doing any of these things that are just fantasy at the moment.

SPEAKER_01 40:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:20

Right. If it could do a slightly better job of enforcing the minimum wage and start to add some sort of supervision of holiday pay to that, it will be doing fantastically well. If you look at its strategic objectives, um, it's basically being given the objective of operating at the same level that the current constituent parts are operating at. Um so their big task over the next year is not to be worse at it than the original bodies were. So the gap between that and us raiding recalcitrant employers is just vast. It's not, it's not really going to be a thing. There is a there's a major problem with enforcement of employment law, and then and it's not affected by the Fair Work Agency. It's always been there. And one of the problems is, you know, I think you quoted 440,000 people not getting the minimum wage. How many employees are are covered by orders made by the HMRC? I think it's something like I don't have the figure, but there was a tiny number compared to that. Is it 75,000 or 75 employers get named and shamed? It's it's just not it's just not a significant chunk of the people who are underpaid. And the danger is that what an agency does, if it's driven to, you know, if it's given targets to catch a certain number of employers, it catches the low-hanging fruit, right? So this is the this this is the um inadvertent breaches risk, that if you are a large, respectable employer that keeps very good records of your holiday pay, but you've made a mistake, that's really easy to find and enforce because you've created the record that demonstrates that something's gone wrong. If you're a completely dodgy employer that simply doesn't give anybody any holiday pay and doesn't properly record anyone's working hours and doesn't give people proper pay slips and doesn't keep good records of who's employed and not employed, well, that takes quite a lot of effort to investigate.

SPEAKER_01 42:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:16

And the danger is that those employers get away with it while the big employees that are trying their best, but maybe have got something technically wrong find themselves being named and shamed. I I think that's the issue. But it was the issue before we had the fair work agency. Yeah, that's right. Right? It's just a slightly different body is now responsible for that.

SPEAKER_04 42:34

Yeah, but uh but the the gap in funding is quite interesting. I mean, it's um the bodies that it replaces, they're they were funded uh 45 million pounds a year. Uh the fair work agency is going to be funded to 60 million pounds a year. So there is a there is a major difference. Um but the CIPD actually is that a major difference?

SPEAKER_02 42:57

I'm not sure how major a difference that is.

SPEAKER_04 42:59

Well, uh what's 13 million quid a month, friends? You know, but but um but uh the the CIPD says it will need 300 million in order to carry out its its remit.

SPEAKER_02 43:12

There you go. And what do we reckon the chances are of it getting 300 million? Zilch.

SPEAKER_03 43:16

That's all for this month. Remember to subscribe to this podcast wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're interested in taking part or want to share something, do drop me a line by emailing rob.moss at personneltoday.com. Our next episode is scheduled to drop on the last Wednesday of the month, so that would be the 27th of May. The Personnel Today HR podcast is brought to you by Deal. Hire, manage, and pay anyone, anywhere. Thanks for joining us and goodbye.