35 FTSE 100 companies have implemented new long-term incentive plans in the past 12 months.
Stephen Cahill, partner in the remuneration team at Deloitte, said: “This year, we have seen an unprecedented amount of change to remuneration structures, undoubtedly prompted by more dialogue between companies and their shareholders following the new requirements on disclosure and voting. A particularly striking finding from this year’s analysis is that, in over a quarter of performance share plans, the participants will not receive any shares for five years. Overall, almost half the long-term plans in place are now based on time periods longer than three years. There is an expectation that directors will hold sufficient shares to create real alignment with shareholders. In the past year, we have seen over a quarter of companies increase the minimum requirements, resulting in a median requirement to hold shares with a value of 200% of salary, compared with 150% last year. In the largest companies this rises to 300% of salary. “Shareholders are taking a robust position where policies and practices are not considered to be in line with best practice. A key expectation of shareholders is that companies will be able to claw back incentive payments and share awards where they were clearly inappropriate. This is rapidly becoming normal and accepted practice, and provisions allowing sums already paid to be recovered are now in place in over 40% of companies.” We are grateful to Personnel Today for a summary of ten examples of straightforward reasonable adjustments which could have been made by employers which have arisen in case law. Personnel Today point out that disability discrimination laws place an active duty on employers to make reasonable adjustments to accommodate the needs of disabled employees. This duty arises at any time before, during or after the employment relationship when the employer puts a disabled person at a substantial disadvantage in comparison with individuals who are not disabled. The following ten examples show a variety of circumstances in which this duty can arise. 1. Reallocation of a duty a disabled employee cannot do An NHS trust discriminated against a deaf applicant for a position when it failed to consider reallocating telephone work, according to the employment tribunal in Keane v United Lincolnshire Hospital NHS Trust . 2. Providing a nearby parking space for a disabled worker In Environment Agency v Donnelly , the EAT held that an employer’s refusal to allocate a parking space near to the workplace of a disabled employee was a breach of its duty to make reasonable adjustments. The employer’s suggestion that the employee should arrive earlier at work to ensure a convenient parking space was wrongly placing the responsibility for making the necessary adjustment on the disabled person. 3. Providing a piece of equipment West v Lewis t/a Squires Model & Craft Tools is a good example of an employer committing disability discrimination by failing to make a simple and inexpensive adjustment for a disabled employee. A shop worker who had undergone a hip operation had requested numerous times that the company provide her with a stool behind the shop counter, so that she could sit from time to time to ease her pain. Disability discrimination: 10 examples of reasonable adjustments 10 September 2014
4. Swapping two pieces of equipment
CIPP Policy News Journal
08/04/2015, Page 68 of 521
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