UK: EDI & Workplace Culture: EHRC’s 2025-2028 Strategic Plan

Authors: Frances Ross, Ruth Bonino, Corinna Harris, and Sophie Jackson

The EHRC’s consultation on its draft strategic plan for 2025-2028 is open until October 2024. The plan gives employers a useful insight into areas of equality law where we may see development and possibly greater regulation.

It has identified three potential areas that it will focus on from 2025 to 2028, and plans to use its regulatory powers to support long-term change and improvement in equality and human rights in these areas:

• Work – as well as tackling sexual harassment in the workplace through the new duty to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment, the EHRC will also seek to improve pay and employment gaps for women, disabled people and ethnic minority groups and address barriers to participation in the workplace for disabled people, including issues related to reasonable adjustments. The EHRC will also focus on the disproportionate levels of discrimination, harassment and victimisation experienced by workers with certain protected characteristics, including ethnic minority groups. In addition, it plans to look at the rise of insecure employment, and the discrimination risks associated with new technology (for example automated recruitment processes) and the increasing prevalence of home/hybrid working arrangements.
• Participation and good relations – the EHRC will focus on the risk of discrimination and breach of privacy rights arising from the use of artificial intelligence. It also plans to look at social tensions due to polarised discussion of equality and human rights issues, and the risk to freedom of expression where the expression of some views is prohibited or debate is shut down.
• Justice and the balance of rights – the EHRC plans to improve legal clarity around issues where there may be tension between the rights of two or more groups, for example, in relation to sex and gender or matters of religion or belief).

Practical point

The EHRC’s draft strategic plan is a useful indicator for employers of areas where we may see greater regulation or legal developments in future.  We will keep clients informed of important developments to be aware of.