The Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) new rules on non-financial misconduct (NFM) will come into force on 1 September, bringing all firms regulated by the Senior Managers and Certification Regime (SMCR) into scope and not just banks. Non-banks will be required to prevent bullying, harassment or violence against colleagues where this is related to work, even where the conduct does not directly relate to regulated activities.
State and local legislatures were active throughout the last quarter in passing employment laws and ordinances concerning topics such as arbitration agreements, wage transparency requirements, and drug testing laws to name a few. As always, minimum wages continue to increase in many jurisdictions and various posters have been updated.
As always, our team will continue to monitor these and other state employment law developments. If you have questions or need guidance, please reach out to your SPB contact for more information or assistance with compliance.
In an unexpected development, Acas yesterday launched a consultation on updates to its statutory Code of Practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures.
According to Acas’s press release, the Code is being revised to encourage early and informal resolution of concerns at work. Acas research on the annual cost of conflict has found that managing formal disciplinary and grievance procedures is estimated to cost UK employers £2.36 billion per year, whereas the annual cost of informal resolution is around 10 times lower at £250 million. The consultation aims to “start a conversation about how we can disagree better at work”.
A couple of years ago I read a quite serious piece on whether it was sensible or necessary to say please and thank you when interacting with AI platforms. This was not because Skynet might be a little less inclined to destroy humanity if we all had lovely manners. Instead, ran the argument, if we wanted AI’s “thoughts” and outputs to be of a certain quality or tone, we would have to teach it, and the sooner we started, the better.
Sadly, even in just the space of that couple of years, that particular ship has not just sailed, but rolled over and sunk without bubbles, meaning that one abiding characteristic of the AI-assisted workplace grievance seems to be a pseudo-legalistic and passive-aggressive tone which cannot help but put the reader’s teeth on edge.
On May 21, 2026, we predicted that employers’ longstanding obligations to maintain and report workforce demographic data, as required by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”), may be eliminated. That prediction has moved one step closer to becoming reality.
By Jose Martin with Alexandre Pessoa of Azevedo Sette LLP
The next 12 months are likely to bring significant developments in Brazil’s labour law landscape, driven by both political dynamics and evolving judicial and social expectations.
The number of labour claims (which fell significantly following 2017 fee reforms) is again on the rise, with news reports of over 2.3 million cases having been filed with the Labour Courts in 2025, an increase of 8.47% from 2024.
Many factors appear to be causing this increase, but most cite increased employment especially in the services sector which has traditionally suffered from high turnover rates. Our experience also suggests other factors including the use of AI by plaintiffs to reduce barriers to claims, persistent employer compliance gaps, workplace burnout, and a legal environment that favours employee-based litigation.
The UK government has launched a consultation on the use of workplace monitoring technologies (WMT), including surveillance tools, algorithmic management systems and AI-enabled decision-making. The consultation forms part of the wider Make Work Pay agenda and seeks views on whether additional regulation is needed to improve transparency, worker engagement and accountability when employers monitor workers.
Key dates:
What are WMT?
The government uses the term WMT to refer to digital tools used by employers to collect, track, analyse or make decisions based on information about workers and their activities.
A major new court decision could remake federal labor law for years to come. This decision – issued on July 21 by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit – signals that courts may soon revisit many longstanding legal standards governing labor law issues. The decision also highlights a new route for parties to appeal a broad range of cases decided by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
California employers that seek to enforce arbitration agreements with their employees may feel like they are playing the game of “Whack-A-Mole.” For those unfamiliar, the game of “Whack-A-Mole” is played on a machine with a table-like play area top, an elevated display screen and a large, soft mallet. Five to eight holes in the play area top are filled with small, plastic, cartoonish moles, or other characters, which pop up randomly throughout the game. Points are scored by, as the name suggests, rapidly whacking each mole with the mallet as soon as it appears from its hole. As soon as one mole retreats into its hole, another mole emerges, and this continues until time is up. California employers may feel like they are playing this game in the sense that they are constantly responding to new legislative or court created rules against enforcement of arbitration agreements. Although certain rules against enforcement have been invalidated based on preemption by the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”), California courts have continued to recognize new defenses against enforcement.
When workplace investigations hit the headlines, the risks can escalate quickly.
Suddenly, employers are dealing with media attention, social media commentary, employee concerns and potentially serious reputational risk – all while trying to conduct a fair and effective investigation.
We were recently privileged to host the International Employment Lawyer’s Workplace Investigations Masterclass, which included three lively and engaging panel discussions. Each was designed to address the thorny issues which can and often do arise in such situations, with valuable insights from a variety of panellists whose work (whether in-house or in private practice) keeps them at the coalface of workplace investigations.
Here is the last of our five key takeaways from the event. Please see here for part one and part two.
