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One of the most important roles a diversity officer plays is to help senior leaders appreciate the value of diversity and inclusion and commit to their own set of D&I goals. Although business leaders may have an intellectual grasp of the general business case...

Over 55 Diversity and Compliance professionals from approximately 40 organizations met for the Workforce Opportunity Network Meeting in July hosted by member PricewaterhouseCoopers in New York City. Members and guests heard from a variety of speakers on various topics...

Nita Beecher, chair of workplace compliance and the employment law and litigation group at Mercer, formerly ORC Worldwide, gives her expert take on the Dodd-Frank Act in Diversity Executive this month. According to Nita, there has always been a little competition...

We are currently in phase 2 of our study of employee resource groups, conducting interviews with diversity leaders in selected organisations. In the meantime, we’ve been crunching the numbers from phase 1 in which we surveyed 64 organisations about their ERGs. Some...

Elena Kagan, President Obama’s second appointment to the Supreme Court was approved by the Senate Thursday.  The Democratic-led Senate voted 63-37, to confirm the former Harvard Law School dean as the fourth female justice in U.S. history.

By Michal Fineman and Elizabeth MacGillivray
ORC Worldwide

ORC Senior Vice President Frank White is quoted in three articles that cover the recent approval of OSHA reform legislation by the House Labor Committee. The articles appear in EHS Today, and two publications from the...

Thank you everyone for making the July Workforce Opportunity Network (WON) Meeting at PwC a success!

Meeting summary can be found here...

The 24th June meeting of the Global Diversity Forum was the largest meeting in its history since the network launched in 2006. The meeting drew a global audience from over 40 organisations in the...

Female students wearing a full face veil will be barred from Syrian university campuses, according to the country’s minister of higher education.  Ghiyath Barakat was reported to have said that the practice ran counter to the academic values and tradition of...

Vince Cable, the Skills Secretary, has proposed that bright children from poorer homes should benefit from better access to the UK’s top universities through reserved places.  His proposals raise the possibility of quotas for state school children and a...

On June 29, the French Parliament unanimously passed groundbreaking legislation making "psychological violence" punishable by law. The bill defines mental violence as "repeated acts which could be constituted by words or other machinations, to degrade one's quality of...

Beginning in 2012, Singapore employers will be required by law to offer reemployment to workers who have reached the current statutory retirement age of 62. Rather than raise the retirement age, the government has formulated this legislation as a more flexible way to...

Figures released by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) show a significant rise in the number of part-time workers in the UK as more people are forced to take on shorter hours or not work at all, and the differing impact on other groups of workers.

The United States and the European Union both want equal pay for men and women, but much of the similarity ends there. Employers are left navigating an array of legal requirements and penalties as varied as the languages in which they were written. The Global Workplace...

A member was interested in the EEO and Diversity efforts of US companies with overseas operations. They were trying to determine how companies with overseas operations handle concepts such as EEO and Diversity and corrective action/discipline; how they impose/monitor...

We have been seeing some interesting developments in Employee Networks (aka employee resource or affinity groups)—new kinds of Networks forming, new ways of managing them, new contributions they're making to the business. To learn more about these changes and the...

Many a diversity officer has had to deal with a senior executive who makes offensive remarks, touches people inappropriately, telegraphs disrespect for certain kinds of people, or discriminates outright.  More often than not, he or she doesn’t understand what...

In the May-June 2010 issue of Profiles in Diversity Journal, Deirdre Golden, Director of ORC Worldwide's Global Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Practice talks about the emerging focus on class and socio-economic background as a 'new' area of diversity. While...

Closing the Gap on Unfair Pay


Employers need to act now to make sure their pay practices don’t discriminate; ORC Worldwide can help

The following attachment is a primer that provides information on accomodating individuals with learning disablities in the workplace.  The primer provides pertinent definitions, list characteristics of those with such disablities, methods of...

The following attachment is a primer that can aid in helping your workplace accommodate the visually impaired.  The article provides pertinent definitions, guidelines for interaction with the visually impaired, technology suggestions, and resources...

The following attachment is a primer that can aid in creating a more Deaf-friendly working environment.  It also defines Deaf terminology that may be difficult for those outside Deaf culture to discern.


 

On June 16th the Wage and Hour Division of the Department of Labor issued a new interpretation that the statutory provision does not excuse an employer’s failure to pay an employee for time spent donning and doffing protective equipment that is “required by law,...

Diversity councils, task forces, and employee resource groups often share some of the same members and end up working on similar initiatives, resulting in overextended employees and/or duplicated efforts. It falls to the D&I leader to sort out what the...

Craig Jones, Director Diversity at Barclays Wealth, is a member of ORC's Vanguard Network and Global Diversity Forum. He...

A lot of companies seem to be reshuffling the organisational structure for equality, diversity, and inclusion lately, with the result that EDI leaders find themselves housed in new functional areas and/or reporting to bosses with little direct experience in the...

The $250 million in punitive damages that Swiss pharmaceutical Novartis has been ordered to pay to plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit is a record for U.S. gender discrimination verdicts, and it may end up being small...

In this article, featured in Profiles in Diversity's November 2009 issue, ORC consultants Mary Martinéz and Michal Fineman explore key practices for creating meaningful diversity metrics....

On June 10, 1963, President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act. When the Equal Pay Act passed, women earned, on average, 60 cents for every dollar earned by men. Today, women in the...

ORC’s compensation and employment law experts will teach compensation, equality and diversity, and compliance professionals the ins and outs of new U.S. legislation and enforcement strategies and how to ensure the protection of their organizations against claims...

As many human resources professionals in the U.S. know by now, recent federal activity has increased employers’ compliance responsibilities. In last month’s Sightlines, we reviewed many of these changes, including the passing of the...

Ceres, a national network of investors, environmental organizations and other public interest groups, has issued a new plan for creating a sustainable economy. The plan, Ceres 20·20, calls for honest accounting, acceleration of “...

The OSHA Listens forum, along with other steps being undertaken and considered by OSHA, are encouraging signs that the agency is willing to engage more meaningfully with its stakeholders in the policy and program development process. Deepening stakeholder engagement with...

Forbes.com’s Video Network interviews ORC Executive Vice President Syd Robertson about how employees can get ahead during this economic downturn:
...

The financial hardships experienced by so many people during the last couple of years have hit minority communities the hardest, not only with increased unemployment, but indirectly in terms of health care, education, life expectancy and community safety. The problems...

 

According to an on-line YouGov poll commissioned by the Exploring Islam Foundation, most people in the UK associate Islam with extremism and the repression of women. The poll, conducted among 2,152 adults, found that 58 per cent of those questioned linked...

Two of our Global Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion staff, Deirdre Golden and Mary Martinéz, recently shared ORC’s latest research and best practice advice,“Diversifying Organisation Leadership: Getting Focused and Getting Results” at the Diversity and Inclusion...

The conversation at compliance day at the WON meeting was around OFCCP and what members can expect now that the agency finally has a new director, Patricia Shiu. Mickey Silberman, partner at Jackson Lewis and attorney for...

On 20 January, the Global Workplace Compliance network held its third webinar focusing this time on Asian employment trends and what U.S. employers need to know about employment law in India, Korea and China. The session was moderated by Jacqueline Scott of...

A primary topic at the 4-5 March meeting of the Law Group was the impact of social networking on employment laws and regulations. Elise Bloom of Proskauer Rose offered a number of observations and suggestions to members. First, the issues relate not only to social...

Employee engagement across working life



As companies struggle to meet the challenges of the recession, HR and business commentary is highlighting the importance of employee engagement; the key to business success is motivated employees within a...

Within private sector corporations, Human Rights has long been the focus of interest for corporate social responsibility, addressed through initiatives such as labour standards or the Global Compact. However at ORC, we...

According to a recent study by the ISACA (formerly known as the Information Systems Audit and Control Association); a global organization focusing on the security of information systems, employees who dabble in social networking...

The ScotusBlog mentioned three points which it felt had been overlooked in the coverage of the Kagan nomination and which it believes might shift votes in the confirmation process.  First, Elena Kagan signed a letter in 2005 strongly protesting Sen.

The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors and the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office in Phoenix have agreed to pay overtime back wages totaling $2,059,807 to 1,690 detention officers and sergeants for uncompensated pre-shift meeting time.  An investigation conducted by...

A new book by law professor Deborah Rhode, The Beauty Bias, discusses appearance-based discrimination and the law. Michigan and six locales have laws against appearance discrimination...