Climate Change and ESG - The strategic and operational role of HR

Jane Fielding: Good morning. I am Jane Fielding and I am head of the Employment Labour and Equalities Team here at Gowling in the UK.

I am very pleased to welcome you to this, our second webinar in our mid-year review series of webinars where we take a look, take stock half way through the year at what has happened, and look ahead at things that are coming down the tracks. So our topic today is climate change and ESG so Environmental, Social and Governance. It is obviously very much a corporate buzzword or perhaps I should say buzz acronym if that exists but what does it actually mean for the HR community, HR practitioners and the in-house employment lawyers that support them?

So to answer that question today our speaker is Simon Stephen, one of the legal directors in our team who is very well placed to cover this topic because it is a natural extension of a lot of the work that he does in terms of investigations and whistleblowing. So Simon is going to talk for about 30 minutes. We have left some time at the end for questions and then it is my job to field those questions while he is talking and select the ones that we think are going to be of most interest to you as a whole and also make sure we finish on time at 11.45 so you can get on with whatever the next thing you need to do today is. If you want to ask a question please can you use the Q&A function. Just a reminder it is at the bottom middle of your Zoom screen. Nobody can see those questions except Simon and I as hosts so please do not be shy about putting your name on there. If we cannot get to all the questions in the time we have today we do like to follow up by email but obviously if we do not know who has posted the question we cannot do that if yours is one of the ones we do not manage to answer.

If you have any technical problems please also use the Q&A function and Lucy Strong, who is our technical support today, will do her best to get that resolved for you so you can carry on listening and viewing. And right at the end, I will give a reminder, but after the webinar we do circulate a questionnaire, a feedback questionnaire by email. It only takes a couple of minutes to fill in but we would be really grateful if you would do that because it will help us shape future sessions, do things better, differently, cover topics that are of interest to you.

So I will now go on mute and hand over to Simon.

Simon Stephen: Well thank you very much Jane and good morning to everyone and as Jane said, thank you very much for joining us. So on the topic in climate change and ESG which as Jane said is very much prevalent in the news and in many organisations' thoughts at the moment, I am going to first of all run through what we actually mean by ESG and climate change. We will all have our own different views but I thought it would be useful to put those into the context of HR roles. I then want to run through four specific points where I think HR has a pivotal role to play within ESG and climate change and an organisation's agenda. Then we will finish by looking at some risks which HR are well placed to manage, whistleblowing, discrimination and some other risks that we are seeing coming forward.

So what is climate change? What is it that we talk about? Well we all have our own views on this but I thought I would go back to the United Nations' view and definition which defines it as "a long term shift in temperatures and weather patterns". So it is not just looking at the extreme heat which often we think about, but it is also all other extreme forms of weather – cold, wind, flooding, all these things which, as I cycled in today to work, on a very hot day, on the day of the train strikes, I thought was kind of quite a backdrop really. But the UN, also really importantly for this talk and for the role of HR, recognises that the main driver behind climate change is human activity. It is what we as people do and that is what we and people do at home but at work and a huge part of what our activities are, are activities we do at work for whatever our organisation is doing and I think it is really important for HR to bear that in mind, is human activity in the work place does drive climate change. It is also widely acknowledged that there is a climate emergency. Things have got very bad and it is going to get worse, it is kind of at a critical moment in time according to many and indeed some of the science and on that there are two primary things for HR to consider when thinking about climate change.

The first one is how are we going to prepare for this ongoing climate change, for these changes and the emergency? How are we going to deal with it now but also in 5, 10, 15, 20 years' time when things are even worse, what is our work in practice going to look like? But also how do we work greener to reduce the impact as an organisation, how do we mitigate or reduce the impact of our work's human activities on the climate change?

So ESG – what is ESG? Well ESG is a really broad term and it obviously includes climate change but it is a really broad term for what are in essence three pillars which are used to assess or drive an organisation's behaviour and approach and that is behaviour in terms of ethics, culture, how it does things and the approach to how it fulfils its organisational needs: its business, what does it do? ESG is used for a number of different reasons. It is very much touted around politically, in the media, everyone is talking about ESG. But it is often used by investors and other stakeholders in assessing and looking at an organisation. We hear about ESG credentials, what does the organisation do in relation to ESG and how good actually are they at doing that? Obviously then we have the impact of green washing and things like that where people are challenged but they do not do what they say they would do, you know the Ronseal test for those of my ilk, does it do what it says on the tin?

But that broad term ESG covers a huge range of areas and we can probably talk all day about things that actually fall under it but in essence it is three areas which are environmental, social and governance. Now HR obviously has I think, well hopefully obvious, has a material and pivotal role to play in the S and the G: the social – how people are treated at work, how they are paid and indeed where they are employed, whether they are employed, all these things have a huge impression on the social footprint in wider society. How people are trained, the opportunities they have, how engaged they are, their wellbeing, anti-discrimination behaviour, all these things have a huge role to play and not only in the workforce but outside of it. And likewise the G for the governance. HR by its very remit is a governance function, making sure that things are done in the right way, the right things are done in the right way.

But HR also can have a role in influencing the E for an organisation, the environmental approach as HR can very much influence culture and behaviour through policies, through training, through awareness, through many other different mechanisms. It has a big role to play in influencing a client's approach to environmental issues and how it actually achieves its set goals and aims. So the key point to take from all of this is that HR does therefore need to be aligned to the overall ESG strategy. To use a hideous phrase it needs a seat at that table, HR needs to be intertwined with it and climate change needs to be brought in that as well, it cannot be looked at in isolation.

So bearing those in mind then, what is the role of HR in climate change and ESG? Well I am going to go on to those four specific topics shortly but just a quick overview to remind yourselves actually of the role you already are playing in ESG and many organisations will indeed be doing these things but not quite thinking 'oh it actually falls under ESG' but they do. HR is perfectly placed to identify and manage workplace risk in relation to individuals, in relation to how you deal with climate change, any ESG practices, any ESG commitments, HR should be there to be able to identify where those risks are. HR can also and it is pivotally placed to ensure that rights are respected, yes you might be doing initiatives but actually how does that impact other people. What is the impact and are their rights being protected as we should?

But it can also develop cultural behaviour change and that is often the ambit of HR, the remit is to drive the culture and behaviour of an organisation. I think HR is also perfectly placed to look at whether initiatives are sustainable. Can our workforce actually do this long term or is this just a short term fix? HR is the team that is going to be best placed to review that and make sure that practices are fit for the future as well so that buzz word again of future proofing. And as part of all of this HR is perfectly placed to do that because it has the data, has the employee data, has the ability to use that data to shape and inform decisions that are taken. So bearing all of those in mind HR does indeed have a really key role to play in driving climate change and ESG agendas.

So then looking at specific practical ways in which HR could do that. Looking at climate change initially and bearing mind the United Nations' definition, the extreme shifts in temperature, we are looking at extreme rises in temperature but also extreme drops and wind. In the UK it often feels a little bit odd talking about this because you know, we have frankly, pretty boring weather, are we actually that massively impacted by climate change?

Well I think the science will say yes we are. We are having hotter days, there is a lot more wind, there is flooding and there is also the whole thing about coastal areas being eroded, dropping into the sea, all these kind of things are a big impact of it. So yes, UK organisations do need to start planning about actually what is the impact of climate change and the perceived emergency going to have on our specific businesses? Because there are going to be issues about where will people be able to work in 15, 20 years' time? What are dealing with in terms of the weather, where are people going to be work, will they be able to working at specific times and what will they need to work?

We are not a country that is designed to deal with anything particularly over 20 degrees so when we have days when people are working at 36 degrees how is that actually going to work? I was talking to a client last year on an incredibly hot day about how they actually keep their manufacturing workforce cool and it is not just actually keeping them cool so they can work but it is the impact of the heat in the environment on the quality of what is then produced but of course if we are hot, we sweat, sweat picks up grime and that could have an impact on quality so what actually is needed to be able to work?

But I think also for any country which has a global footprint, which is pretty much every organisation these days in some form due to supply chains and things like that, what is going to be the knock-on effect of issues from other countries? We are hearing stories that in America there are some areas of America where it is going to be too hot simply to work at various times in the day and we are already seeing that in a number of countries across the world. That is just going to get worse and likewise with other extreme temperatures. So what is the knock-on impact going to be on our workplaces here on shift patterns? How are we going to make things co-ordinate supply chains, all these kind of things?

So at the moment it is a bit of fear and a bit holistic but I think organisations would be well placed to start forward planning as what is actually going to happen and planning how you are going to deal with this impact because of course it is an impact not just in office environments but on remote home working but hybrid working as well. Because organisations have that duty of care in relation to people's health and safety and wellbeing to make sure that the workplace where people do their work is a safe place to work, taking into account all of these issues. So that is the thing to start planning for the future and start building into HR and indeed organisational plans now.

But likewise with ESG, working practices have a fundamental key role in defining the culture and social footprint and governance aspects of an organisation. If you think about the social side and the governance side, everything that a working practice does will have an impact on how that influences the organisation's approach. So I do think that ESG could be built into all strategic HR decisions. In a similar way such as we have equality impact reviews and things like that, then when companies are making decisions they will build in with legal advice, what are our legal risks here, what are the Equality Act risks etc. I think that ESG particularly the S and the G perhaps could be built into those decisions. I am stopping short of saying "should" because there is no one size fits all and it very much depends on the organisation, what it is doing, what its ethos is, how it operates but I think that actually making sure that ESG is incorporated is going to be a fundamental way to drive that cultural behavioural shift and make sure that any ESG agendas are firmly embedded. And a key part of that is training individuals to make sure they understand what ESG and climate change is for the organisation that they are working for, for you as employers. What is it that you are trying to achieve with any ESG agendas, with any climate change and then how do you want people on board to do that. HR is perfectly placed to put forward that training and that is indeed something we are seeing more and more, not just internally but with clients who are actually training and putting in ESG policies, all these kind of things and making sure people understand what it is that is required, what it means and how that organisation themselves are with dealing with it.

And that links very much then to policy development. I am a big fan of not having policies for the sake of policies, having worked in-house where there was a policy about how to write policies so I think in many ways the few policies the better. But that said, in terms of driving an ESG agenda and driving climate change thinking back to HR's role in managing human activities and the impact of it, then policies are going to have a really key role to be used akin and linked with training to ensure that the understanding and that those ethos and values are driven forward.

And I have put forward some obvious examples there on the slide re green credentials. What is it that you are aiming to do with green credentials, I am assuming it is not just putting things in the recycling bin but what is your net zero commitment, your carbon footprint initiatives, all these big issues making sure that there are policies which clearly set them out and define how you approach them are going to be key. Likewise with travel, what is the approach to business travel now? How do you make sure your travel is greener? HR is best placed there, HR knows how people travel including commuting etc.

But I think it stems wider from that particularly building up actually on the S side of it because there are things like volunteering, people are much more active, there is much more employee activism now. People want to be more and more involved in societal issues and helping and supporting and volunteering and volunteering policies and practices can have a really key role in doing that which adds to the social footprint of the organisation. It helps employee engagement as well and I can that as a scout leader who is using volunteering leave to attend a scout camp in the summer, it is a very useful and a very good thing. Again I talked about activism, we will come on to activism later on but people are much more active, much more vocal about things in relating to ESG and climate change and calling them out. So making sure that social media policies deal with things like activism and disciplinary, all these things build it in. So I think it is worthwhile having a wholesale review of policies in line with an ESG agenda to make sure that everything is linked up and again it gives HR that really powerful role and that is something we are very much kind of involved in as a practice here at Gowling.

In terms of working practices you can also look at contracts of employment themselves. You could consider building climate change and ESG considerations into contractual documentation. Again I have used very careful wording there which you would probably expect from a lawyer, you know consider building them in. I am not saying "should" because no one size fits all, there are some organisations who are doing this because it is very important to them and their whole ethos and that organisation how they do things but actually they want people to have in there set commitments on climate change related issues as well as wider ESG issues but not everyone will have those needs but I do think now is the time to start to looking at your client contract and documentation and to see where climate change and ESG issues can be weaved into them. And it is not necessary just a clause around climate change, kind of bold and stark in the contract but weaving it into the wording, the language of contracts is what it is. So if you think about contracts which have people's roles and responsibilities, building in what is their responsibility around climate change and ESG. And you can build things in there into other aspects of the contracts and wording. We have got disciplinary issues on the slides, building in an example of something that could be a disciplinary issue that relates to ESG issues or climate change. It could be a useful way of starting to drive those behavioural changes so there is a number of different ways that it could be done and of course, we see clients approaching this in many different ways.

And another key part of that then is the mandatory training aspect. Under Section 1 of the Employment Rights Act, training is required to be specified, any mandatory training is required to be specified in the employment contract. There is often reference to anti-bribery, anti-tax evasion, sexual harassments, misuse of computer, data protection – all these kinds of things. I think that it is perfectly placed now to start considering building climate change and ESG into the contract akin to that and also building it into mandatory training. So if you do have a climate change and ESG policy and agenda an approach which most organisations now are actually putting forward and we are working with a number on how they do that, you can then link that in to the contract, the training, so you have it all in one place pulling together. So I think having mandatory training on ESG issues such as ED&I, anti-harassment and the green credentials is going to be very important.

So the next point I wanted to look at was remuneration and incentives which can have a huge role in both ESG and climate change and of course, HR is at the heart of remuneration and incentive plans having such a key and pivotal role in driving them. Remuneration itself is a huge part of your ESG credentials, what people are paid, how they feel about their pay will have a huge impact on them back into society as a whole and indeed an organisation's reputation and wider impact. Indeed we are seeing as part of employee activism more and more strike action and trade union activism as the train strikes we are going through this week kind of clearly demonstrate.

So as part of that, HR has a really key role in identifying areas of remuneration which do have an ESG element and as part of that we are looking at and advising clients on things like pay audits, pay gap reporting and equality working pay. That is not just maybe the obvious gender pay gap reporting but also things like race pay gap reporting, disability pay gap reporting even down to national minimum wage audits, making sure that actually what you are doing is the right thing and doing it in the right way. HR also has a pivotal role to play in benefits. Benefits themselves obviously sit along the pay we get but they have a big impact on people's own employee experience. So looking at benefits obviously there are cycle to work schemes and things like this which are becoming more prevalent but having charging points at work or discounts, all these things all go into the big pot and they are a really important part of those ESG credentials.

But there is also the stick if you like or the stick and carrot approach. What we are seeing a lot more of is bonus schemes and long term incentive plans building in climate change and ESG related aspects. So we are having bonuses where parts of it are related to individuals driving carbon neutral or reducing carbon footprint, those kind of things. Now they obviously do not necessarily apply to all organisations and it can be quite difficult to find a climate change or an ESG aspect for a bonus for certain people. Sitting here as a lawyer you might think that is not that easy but it is something we are seeing more and more of and really driven and a lot of investors and stakeholders are expecting to see the climate change and ESG as a fundamental part of particularly executive remuneration. The idea of course being then that drives the culture, drives the behavioural change that the organisation needed linking back to that initial point about it, after all climate change is driven by human activity and the decisions we make.

And I think the stat I was reading earlier this morning, I think it is about 60%25/62%25 of the FTSE 100 now have specific climate change and ESG related conditions in their bonus schemes. But I think you can go a step wider than that and consider applying that to all staff. Building it in to people's objectives, their bonuses, pay reviews, incentive plans, building it into the fabric of the remuneration approach to make sure that everybody then is pulling together in the same direction. After all why should it just be executives who are given the responsibility for it? But the fundamental difficulty with having ESG and green issues as part of remuneration incentives is measuring it with achievable outcomes. As I said, that is quite difficult and can be so it is not something that can be done as a kneejerk reaction or a quick fix and again this is where HR plays a great role in helping out with the sustainability of remuneration programmes. Do they actually work to do what they are supposed to do in terms of incentivise people and support the ESG strategy as a whole?

And then the next issue to talk about is recruitment where I think again obviously recruitment sits very firmly within the remit of HR and HR has a critical role in driving a firm's recruitment strategy. And in relation to climate change and ESG it is a two sided issue, because a firm wants to attract and retain a diverse talent, well it should want to attract and retain diverse talent and that is where having a good successful embedded ED&I initiative will really work. That of course is a key part of the S side of ESG, having a good ED&I approach because you want to have diverse people from diverse pools, not just in terms of ethnicity but also in terms of all the other protected characteristics you want that there are, but also in terms of social mobility. So widening that talent pool from where people come and that is a huge part of an organisation's social footprint so building that into the recruitment strategy.

So that is the S and E if you like because of course you want people who support your own environmental agenda as well so you want to make sure they have those diverse people, But then comes the governance piece, you want to make sure you have the right people to join the company, the right people to do what you want them to do in the right way and also people who are going to help the business take forward. So obviously HR has a key role in applying those and they are really key parts of the ESG. But it is wider than that as well because applicants are more and more interested in an employer's approach to climate change and things like the ESG and ED&I. Particularly now with the Millennials and Gen Z coming through, much more kind of enlightened view and we were talking at home about this about the fact that in my house I am not allowed to buy certain things to eat because my children do not think they are environmentally friendly. It is very much the expectation from different generations kind of coming through. So in making sure that you have a clear ESG agenda and climate change agenda in your recruitment practices is going to be really key to making sure you do actually attract and retain those diverse talents from different generations and then having the right people in place going forward because of course an organisation is shaped by the people that they recruit going forward. So again that then needs to be linked back into the wider ESG process, so again another reason why HR needs to have that clear role in it.

And, of course, none of this works unless people are engaged and people support it and think actually yes this works. So employee engagement, another buzz word maybe from a few years ago which has been replaced by ESG perhaps. But poor engagement leads to poor performance and higher legal risk. Disgruntled employees are more likely to do things that you do not want them to do or raise concerns in a less constructive way than ideal and also they could also walk. We hear lots of talk about the war of talent and how difficult it is to recruit and retain talent at the moment. This all links back to employee engagement. So any involvement in any real climate change or ESG agenda and initiative needs to therefore balance a myriad of views. It needs to balance this diverse kind of workforce, it needs to balance everything that people said because there are a myriad of views. Everybody on this webinar will have a different view about what ESG means to them, what their organisation should do and climate change and that does include climate change scepticism as well, to climate change deniers. So building all that in needs a careful balance and HR again is perfectly placed as the governor of human activity, if you like, the understanding of the workforce with initiatives we talked through, all of those working practices to help do that, to minimise the risk, either legal or then practical in getting people behind it. So of course how you engage with staff is going to be key to developing and embedding organisational values and then thinking proactively and creatively about how you do that. So I have got on there on the slide four examples, you have got employee representatives, most organisations have some form of employee representatives but how are you going to build them into the ESG and climate change agenda? Could you have employee representatives on the board, kind of like an eco-champion on the board if you like? Certainly going back to my children, they have those at the school and they find it really informative. So there are things like that to think about but also employee forums, wider employee forums. How do you engage with them on ESG, the climate change, how involved are they in actually the firm's initiatives and bringing them forward? They can be really good placed to actually give you that conduit of feedback up and down to make sure that information is shared and all decisions are informed correctly. And as part of that speak up cultures as well, engaging people to make sure that they are aware and feel that they can raise things in a safe way, in a constructive way where views will be listened to and respected is a fundamental part of any governance framework but also pushing forward the ESG agendas and so HR is very firmly placed in there to be able to do that.

We have done a lot of work with clients over the years in terms of whistleblowing programmes and speak up cultures and of course the approach to ED&I as well. Equality diversity inclusion underpins almost everything in relation to ESG and plays such a fundamental part of an organisations internal footprint as well as external footprint in terms of the S and the social. So making sure that there is the clear defined approach to ED&I which is built into all these other forums and all these other decision makings is going to be really key. I think HR doing that will then really be able to drive that cultural behavioural change and drive it going forward. We are doing a lot of work for clients on equality diversity inclusion initiatives and how to get the best out of them, how to make it all fit in whilst managing, of course, that risk of people having different views which could be protected as discrimination under the discrimination legislation. So there is a number of different ways in which HR can be involved in employee engagement which then links back to the clear organisational approach and values to drive everything, pulling together.

Now I did mean there to be a neat segue-way into the slide about discrimination but I managed to muck that up. Looking at employee risks and where HR has a key role discrimination is going to be a big one in managing climate change and ESG because of course managing discrimination is a key element in the firm's ESG approach. Making sure that people are respected and people are treated in the right way is going to be key for that and as we have said before ED&I initiatives also will play a fundamental role in that. But in terms of wider risk, I think it is really important to bear in mind that climate related beliefs may well be protected under the Equality Act since the seminal case of Grainger and Nicholson a number of years ago which set out a number of different things to take into account, but in essence if somebody does have a genuinely held belief in something like climate change then that could well be a protected belief and they are protected from discrimination. Which is why it is really important again for HR to be involved in all the things we have talked about before. Building up into having that firm role in a firm's climate change ESG practices to make sure that you do not unwittingly expose the organisation to potential discrimination claims because of course that will have a number of knock on effects with litigation, financial risk, but also it does not particularly sit well with ED&I and ESG.

So climate related beliefs are very much there and are we seeing more and more of these? There is a slight trickle I think fair to say now coming through the tribunals. We have not had any appellant decisions as yet but there are a number of employment tribunal claims where people are saying that their climate related beliefs are philosophical beliefs under the Equality Act and the tribunals are taking them seriously so I think it is probably only a matter of time before we start getting that more and more embedded. But of course it is not just climate related beliefs, it is any other beliefs, many other beliefs around environmental issues, social issues and governance issues which could also be protected. So we do need to have a wide view, and an open mind about these kind of beliefs to avoid unwittingly tripping ourselves up with risks, which is again where HR has a key role in making sure that people are informed in wider decisions and making sure that issues are taken into account.

And likewise whistleblowing. I mentioned speak up before, whistleblowing is in itself a fundamental key part of governance managing risk. If you have a good speak up culture, a good whistleblowing framework where people are able to raise concerns then that is going to greatly help your approach to managing risk in governance. Whistleblowing itself is a topic which we could talk about all day but if you have heard me talk about whistleblowing before. I often talk about it being the dashboard lights on a car, you want to know if your oil is running low or if you have got a problem with your water temperature, whistleblowing is very much kind of like that so it is a fundamental part of the G and HR should have a clear role in making sure that the whistleblowing frameworks are in the shape they should be. I think again, and this is something we are seeing more and more of now is that disclosures about climate change and ESG could actually gain whistleblower protection and there are more and more of these coming through. As I said going through whistleblowing protection is a topic in itself and in my last webinar I did talk about it which is still available on our website if of interest.

But two specific points to draw out, under the whistleblowing legislations a qualifying disclosure (so one that qualifies for protection to gain whistleblowing rights) can be made on a number of different topics. There are two specifically which directly relate to climate change and ESG. One is where an individual reasonably believes that an organisation has failed, is failing or is likely to fail to comply with their legal obligation. Now that is really wide and there are those words 'reasonable belief' as well so it does not have to be a legal obligation but if an individual reasonably believes that one has been breached, they could have whistle blower protection rights and that is really important to bear in mind because people do not really understand the legal obligations around climate change and ESG. People might think there are legal obligations to have carbon zero targets, carbon neutral targets to meet net zero by a particular period of time. There are not many of those that relate to the specific employment relationship but where people are raising those they need to make sure they are taken into account and considered because otherwise you risk falling into the pitfall of not picking up that somebody may have blown the whistle and then unwittingly subjecting them to a detriment or at worse dismissing them.

And likewise under the whistleblowing legislation it could be a qualifying disclosure where somebody has made allegations that the environment has been, is being or is likely to be damaged, and again that is really wide. That was designed really to kind of deal with the issues about chemical spills and things like that but actually now that has changed with the science and the more common awareness of climate change and ESG, it is a much wider topic, environmental damage. Could somebody potentially say that actually the way we run this building is increasing the carbon footprint which is then damaging the environment? That might not get too much shrift but it is the kind of things we are now seeing that people are raising, building it into things, so it is actually then a real risk I think that there is going to be more and more opportunities for people to claim that that what they are saying is linked back to whistleblowing. And again HR is sat in the great place, a pivotal place, to make sure that these risks are built in to any decisions that are being taken around ESG and climate change practices and making sure they are managed fairly.

Then finally, just to flag other risks which is behaviour outside of work. This is something with a non-financial risk management, it has become again more and more of an issue for organisations over recent years because employees will have their own personal beliefs and their own behaviours. They may not bring all this to work. We hear a lot of talk about bringing your true self to work and I am sure many of us do not actually do all of that. There are things we do outside of work which we do not want anyone at work to be involved in and that is entirely fair enough and there is always going to be that difficult issue about that split between outside and inside of work.

But I think where you are talking about climate change and ESG you have then the issue of employee activism. People are quite vocal, they are very vocal about this and they are very active in pursuing what they have as their own personal beliefs and behaviours outside of work and this can very quickly then slip back into impacting on work. Social media is the obvious example. Social media, you know, we are all on social media more often than not in many cases, but it is often used as a way to call issues out and to flag people's kind of views and people will comment and run away with things. But indeed social media is often used as the prime way to complain. If you have got a complaint or concern or question for an organisation. People know if you put that on social media. They will respond because it has a much wider audience than if you just send it through the customer helpline. So social media is going to be a big issue managing how people voice their own climate change and ESG considerations outside, which links back to those working practices and making sure you have a clear ethos and values which are understood by staff with training and that is when the contractual documents can come into it as well.

But I think also it is worthwhile thinking about the risk of protest and people's participation in protest. We are seeing more and more protest in different ways. You know strikes are obviously one way of doing it, gluing yourself to the motorway is another. But in the midst of all of those there are a number of different ways that people could do it and I think, bearing in mind that these are on the rise and as things get perceived to be worse with climate change and as ESG rules and obligations tighter, it is going to be a bigger issue for people. So actually how is an organisation going to deal with protest when that protest is against the employer? Are you going to have staff actively protesting against you? How will you manage that, how will people understand what is right and wrong in terms of the organisation? They may protest against other organisations. I think we have probably all heard the story about the individual who stormed the Capitol a few years back kind of wearing an employee badge I think it was. You know, there is that kind of PR impact on that.

And also then managing the participation in protest by non-employees, other people outside, picketing outside the office and all these things. They are all risks which need to be taken into account and they all are underpinned by the other things we talked about but HR again will have a huge role in making sure that the working practices can build in protection and understanding of how to deal with those behaviours outside of work. That is probably, well, that is indeed the end of my talk, so I will pass now onto questions.

Jane: Thanks Simon. I think that is certainly plenty of food for thought, distilling all of that down into a short timeframe. So we have had a few questions. So the first one picks up on the point that you were making about the Grainger case and climate change believers, activists potentially being protected, that that belief being protected. So the question is, what about a climate change denier on the basis, you know, obviously there are people around who do not believe the United Nations – I will not name any – but there are, so what rights do they have, do they have any?

Simon: Well, it is a good question because I think the first answer is yes, of course they have their right to their own views, you know, that is enshrined in human rights, people have the right to their own views and beliefs, and they should be entitled to raise those as appropriate. But then you have the issue of actually how appropriate is that in the workplace, by kind of balancing that and it is linked with anyone with a view, whether that is a religious belief or a philosophical belief, and how that manifests in the workplace it is different. But I think in terms of them actually having protection under the Equality Act, I think it might be quite difficult for a climate change denier to gain protection as a philosophical belief, you know, as a belief under the Equality Act. They may well have a genuinely held belief and it could be their own personal belief and it could have a big and weighty impact on their human life, but I think where we get to now with science and where things are generally accepted is whether or not that is actually something which is worthy of respect in a democratic society. It is a bit of a legal test there but I think I am doubtful that they will maybe gain protection under the Equality Act but that does not mean that they should not be treated almost as if they have because they are of course entitled to their view. And that is one of the difficulties with all of this is balancing those views and I think that is where the employee engagement and making sure that people are kind of able to view them in a safe space is important.

Jane: Yes, it is worthy of respect in a democratic society, is one of those, one of the criteria in Grainger, isn't it, to qualify, so I guess that would be the battleground potentially.

OK, so the next question, you talked about considering building into contracts clauses around climate change into template contracts and somebody is saying they have heard that there are some template clauses doing the rounds. I think they are probably thinking of the Chancery Lane ones but, could you expand a bit on what those are, where they have come from and how they are being used or could be used?

Simon: Yes, of course. So there is an organisation and that is the Chancery Lane Project which is a group of lawyers and other kind of similar organisations who have pulled together a whole range of template contractual clauses relating to climate change and that includes contractual clauses. A lot of them at the moment are in relation to supply chains and procurement and things like that but they do have suggested clauses in relation to climate change. They themselves call them aspirational. They are very full, they are very large, but they do have things like making sure that people commit and engage into climate change initiatives and potential disciplinary actions if not. So they are there, there is a link to their … and we can circulate the link afterwards if people want but there is a link to those clauses and they are freely available online. And they are being picked up by some of other legal firm resources, you know, as kind of template precedent clauses. I mean we certainly looked at them internally for various client needs that we are looking at as well.

But I think they are not a 'you must have these', they are a good starting point and as they themselves say they are aspirational because they are so very wide and big and prescriptive. So I think it is kind of, if you want to be very prescriptive and really kind of at the top end of this, these clauses are good but they are good to then feed into how you approach things. So, are we seeing them being used that much? The employment contract ones, no, I do not think as much because it is not quite so pressing if you like as to things like supply chain and other aspects, but they are there, we are aware of them and they are kind of helping inform the debate like today even.

Jane: Yes. And then there is a question which I think when we were prepping for this we thought somebody might ask about temperatures. So we all know that there is minimum temperatures in workplaces, the question is, is there any maximum temperature set already?

Simon: The quick answer is no, and we always, well, it is probably not a joke, it is funny to us internally in the employment team but, invariably on a hot day we get asked that question by friends and family. But no, there is no set upper limit which, as I was sat in my garden office yesterday working at 36, I wish there was! But what it comes down really is that duty of care and to provide a safe place to work. So whilst it is not illegal to work at a set temperature it will impact on so many other different issues. If somebody has a health issue working in hot environments it is clearly going to aggravate that and as I talked about before, actually it impacts on people's ability to do their job properly. So there will need to be risk assessments and things like that, the planning for hot days to work out at what point do we say to people 'right, stop, go home or we will do something' but you have got to kind of plan to mitigate those risks. And that is very much the point I was trying to get across in terms of preparing for climate change is when you do have those really, really hot days what are you going to do? How are you going to get people to be able to work in a safe environment? And I think, you know, those days that they are going to get hotter and hotter for us.

Jane: Yes. And there goes our environmental building, timing out the lights in this room because I have not moved enough. I think I am too short to trigger it. It happened yesterday and it went completely black so… anyway, we are almost at 11:45 and there are a few more questions but I do not think we are going to have time to deal with any of those, so we will follow up with you by email for those of you we have not got to.

So I will say thank you very much on your behalves to Simon for talking us through all of that. Thank you to you for joining.

Do please take a bit of time to fill in the questionnaire when it comes round to you and the next webinar in this series is going to be next Tuesday 28 June 11.00 and we are going to be looking at complex maternity and pregnancy rights. It is an area that never seems to get any simpler, even for us, but we are hoping to shine some light on that for you next Tuesday.

So thank you again Simon and hope the rest of you enjoy your day.

Simon: Thank you all.