Case study: E-quality education

Demonstrating clear equal opportunities and behaviour policies is not enough to cover companies facing potentially damaging discrimination claims. Employers must learn to ensure all staff are trained to be aware of them. PJH Law won the ‘best race equality initiative’ at the 2006 Solicitors’ Race Equality Awards for an innovative e-learning programme that proved as effective with employees as with clients.

By Philip Hyland, principal, PJH Law

Looking at the bigger picture first, the top-down driver for PJH Law’s ‘Dignity at Work’ equal opportunities e-learning package was the internet.

When you really think about the internet, you start to marvel at its genius. It is the disruptive and transformational technology of the 20th and 21st Century.

Previous pre-internet business models need to be revised in light of certain achievements. Google’s revenues were $3bn using a worldwide workforce of 7,000. EBay’s revenues were $4.5bn with a 12,500-strong workforce.

Many business sectors are facing the full force of ‘disintermediation’ caused by the internet. What discerning traveller uses travel agents these days? Is dead-wood media a dying form? My son shuns the local record store in favour of iTunes. We can all think of countless other examples.

In short, walls came tumbling down when the internet came along – and the internet is at the heart of most of PJH Law’s business clients’ operations and strategies. All businesses, large and small, are using it to drive up sales and drive down operational costs. Desktop-based learning, e-procurement, internet marketing strategies, search engine optimisation (seo), unique visits – these are the new business buzz words in the internet age.

And law firms are not immune. The Clementi reforms and the advent of the alternative business structure, together with the transformational nature of the internet, will mean most law firms face a key strategic choice. Will they be found in the new legal creature’s head or its much longer tail?

Clearly, the big city firms are in the head. Regional and mid-sized firms will have to decide either to merge with other firms in an attempt to join the head, or fragment, become a niche firm and join the tail.

From the middle a firm cannot beat the competition – it has to join either the head or the tail. As for the high-street firm, any partner not alert to the threat will need to smell the coffee very quickly. Those who try to duck this key strategic decision will find that there is room in neither head nor tail and will go the way of the betamax, remembered with wry amusement as a historical footnote. PJH Law is firmly in the tail.

However large the firm, what cannot be in doubt is that web-savviness is critical for law firms. It is not an optional extra. In fact, firms will have to become more like the internet themselves – more collaborative, meritocratic, non-hierarchical and innovative. A cultural leap too far, I suspect, for many firms. Those firms that grab the internet’s opportunities will thrive and prosper. If the legal profession does not grab them, rest assured that other movers such as Tesco, Capita and the AA have the internet at the very heart of their current strategies.

The internet is also at the heart of PJH Law’s business strategy. We are the first law firm to have a hyperlinked Lexcel manual rather than a dead-wood version, which makes changes to systems and processes easy and gives the Lexcel system a joined up and seamless feel. The record of no major non-compliances in two years of assessments speaks for itself. Paper systems get filed and dusty, but the online system is used every day. It is in your face from the moment you arrive and switch it on. Quality systems need to be that integral to a law firm’s operation. The firm also uses a Blog to update the employees, its clients and prospective clients, in an informal, readable and (hopefully) entertaining way.

E-learning at work

The other driver for the e-learning Dignity at Work product was awareness that in 2005/2006, 109,000 complaints were presented to tribunals. Of those, approximately 10,000 of the complainants were alleging some form of sex, race or disability discrimination at work. I have myself been representing both employees and employers in tribunal cases since 1992 and have represented in many discrimination cases.

The discrimination legislation is straightforward in the way it imposes liability. If the claimant establishes discrimination, the employer is vicariously liable for the discriminatory actions of its employees. The individual employee who has discriminated can also be individually liable for his or her individual acts of discrimination.

When I am representing employers in discrimination cases I try to establish very early on whether the employer can make out the statutory defence. The statutory defence is that the employer will not be vicariously liable for acts of discrimination by its employees if the employer can show it took all reasonably practicable steps to prevent discrimination. However, the courts have held that in order to establish the statutory defence, the employer must show that it had an equal opportunities policy and a harassment complaints procedure, and it must have inducted and trained employees in them.

Most employers can tick some of those boxes, but very few can tick them all. What I found was that a lot of employers did not train employees in issues relating to equal opportunities and behaviour at work. Face-to-face training was perceived to be time-consuming and was not considered a priority.

One of the most common forms of discrimination complaint is where an employee alleges harassment in the workplace. Not only can a harassment complaint lead to an employment tribunal complaint – it can also lead to civil and criminal liability through the Protection from Harassment Act.

At PJH Law it was therefore decided that an e-learning product could help clients to train employees on appropriate behaviour at work. We also identified that the evidence of the statutory defence was a market opportunity, and linked up with specialist e-learning company, Nelson Croom. Dignity at Work was born.

The package enables employees to learn about the required behaviour for the workplace at their own pace. It is interactive and tailors the learning to the individual’s own preferred learning style. Individuals are tested throughout the course, and complete a short online exam at the end, which has a 75-per-cent pass mark. From the employer’s point of view the package can be tailored to precise requirements and the robust back-end will evidence the following:

That the employee has sat the two-hour course;
That he/she has had his/her learning tested and examined;
That he/she has read and understood the employer’s ‘Dignity at Work’ policy by checking a confirmation box.

With packages starting from £10 such e-learning clearly makes it easy for all employers to ensure employees have sat the course, whatever their size.

When submitting tenders for public sector work, many of our clients are asked specific questions on equal opportunities and the number of discrimination claims they have experienced, with outcomes, in the last three years. The package can therefore be a very real benefit for overall business performance. The business case for having happy employees working in a productive environment, free from the negativity of bullying and harassment, is overwhelming. Moreover, Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) studies have shown that employers in FTSE companies with the most advanced equal opportunities policies and procedures have provided the best returns for shareholders in the long-term.

Importantly, the package can also demonstrate the law firm itself has the necessary level of commitment to its employees and equality responsibilities. Clients expect their lawyers to practise what they preach in terms of equal opportunities and dignity at work. Moreover, risk management is rocketing up the agenda of most businesses, but this is particularly true of law firms. The product is a key tool for combating and mitigating that risk.

Finally, and not insignificantly, Dignity at Work has helped the firm recruit and retain talented and committed staff. It has also raised the firm’s profile, with online availability enabling a greater geographical reach than would otherwise be possible.

Philip Hyland is principal of PJH Law. He can be contacted at: philip@pjhlaw.co.uk