Kirsty Watt is the Director of Strategy and External Affairs at Acas. Kirsty was previously Deputy Director (Disadvantage and Place) at the Department for Education. She led teams to help tackle disadvantage issues faced by children and young people.
Acas has published our latest helpline and early conciliation data: our first data since the government published the Employment Rights Bill.
What trends does the data show?
At Acas we're seeing demand for services trend up almost across the piece – with the notable exception of collective disputes, which remain steady. The helpline service handled around 158,500 calls in the quarter to December: an 11% jump on the previous quarter. Web traffic is nearly 20% up on the previous year to date.
There are welcome signs that employers and employees are seeking the information they need to get their practice right when there are regulatory changes: following the new duty on employers to prevent sexual harassment we saw 46,000 web sessions − up 180%. As the pace of regulatory reform picks up, we will need more ways to reach more employers to get our advice out.
Economic conditions continue to have their own impact. While the most common calls were discipline, dismissal and grievance (around 39% of calls), we are continuing to see money matters as a cause for concern for both employee and employers.
The world of early conciliation also shows a pattern of increasing volumes with 28,969 individual cases in October to December 2024, compared to 27,334 last quarter. That's now a continuing trend over the past 7 quarters. And the most legally complex cases, often relating to complex discrimination matters, continue to be the largest proportion of cases since April 2023.
We've yet to see what that might mean for employment tribunals: we do know that increasing volumes of complex cases mean further press on backlogs in the system. For our part the positive news is the proportion of cases that do not progress to employment tribunal remained steady at 68% between October 2023 and March 2024, slightly increasing to 69% in April to September 2024. We are also putting increasing focus in our preventative work on discrimination to clarify and help employers get it right from the start.
Our complete refresh of all discrimination guides is almost complete with the following advice now published:
- preventing sexual harassment
- sexual orientation discrimination
- marriage and civil partnership discrimination
Collective disputes is the only area bucking the trend, with the number of cases received remaining steady, providing more predictability compared to the last 2 years of high unrest. We have several settlements with a range of public sector trade unions on pay deals and the de-escalation of some long-running disputes.
What is likely to happen next?
Put simply − it's unpredictable: the Bill has increased expectations and speculation among both trade unions and workforces about the potential for change. Pay and money matters are always our biggest drivers of dispute, and we have yet to see the impact of increased National Insurance contributions play out.
We'll certainly be watching the trends closely to get ahead of new demands.
Read our October to December 2024 bulletins for: