Tag Archives: bbc

Private Investigations

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The current (at the time of writing) allegations against an unnamed (again at the time of writing) BBC Presenter have caused a media frenzy and plenty of speculation, while also showing up some of the vagaries of media law.  This post is not to discuss the specific issues in this case (we don’t know them and only have partial media reports about what has or hasn’t happened). But there are also plenty of employment law and HR issues that need to be considered when dealing with serious allegations against a member of staff.

The first of these is that if an allegation of this type is made, the organisation should respond to it immediately – but that this should be the start of an investigation process into what has happened, not jumping to conclusions. If the incidents have happened outside work this can make the process even more complicated. Even where things seem a little more clear-cut, a proper investigation may take a couple of weeks, even in a small business – as witnesses may need to be spoken to, meetings noted and documents reviewed, and a final report produced.

If the matter appears to involve something that may be criminal in nature, the organisation will probably want to involve the police. In my experience, the police will respond to such issues in one of two ways

  • They will suggest that there appears to be nothing to the issue from a criminal perspective and advise you to simply proceed in accordance with your internal procedures. In some cases they may ask you to report back with your findings in case further information means they need to rethink this, or
  • They will ask you to pause any internal process while their own enquiries are made, so as not to prejudice (or warn individuals about) the police investigation.

You may want to suspend the member of staff while the investigation is ongoing. In the past this was assumed to be automatic in cases where serious allegations were made. However, recent Tribunal cases have suggested that suspension should be considered as one possible option and if there are other, less draconian possibilities – such as moving the employee to a different location – these should be looked at.

You also have a duty of care to the individual who has been accused of the alleged offence, as well as any others who may be involved. This means keeping details confidential within the investigation and certainly not making any public commentary until matters are concluded.  This applies even when the organisation is a high-profile publicly funded body like the BBC (regardless of any additional media law implications).

In this case, if the BBC have known about the allegations against a staff member for over 7 weeks and not done anything until the news story broke last week, then they could be accused of failing to respond to the issues (and it wouldn’t be the first time that they have made basic HR mistakes). If however, they have been investigating but needed time to do so thoroughly (and may have had to wait for the ‘green light’ from the police first) then 7 weeks in not necessarily an unusual period for a disciplinary investigation. The fact that the Director-General of the BBC does not appear to be in possession of the full facts is also not unusual – he might need to be involved in a subsequent disciplinary hearing and so should only find out the detail when the investigation is completed.

The BBC has employment law responsibilities – these may be inconvenient for certain sections of the media and for those who like to speculate on social media, but it doesn’t mean that the organisation can ignore them. If you are an employer in this situation, the same responsibilities apply to you, regardless of any external pressure. You are the one who will face the unfair dismissal (or worse) claim with its financial consequences for your business if you don’t do things in a correct way.

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There but for the Gracie of God…

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About 6 months ago, I wrote this post about BBC pay and the gender pay gap. Rather naively, I stated in that post “I can’t believe a major national organisation with extensive HR and legal resources would expose itself to such a reputational and financial risk” by breaching equal pay legislation. It appears I was wrong.

As has been widely reported, the BBC’s China Editor, Carrie Gracie, resigned at the weekend, citing the corporation’s failure to pay her at the same level as male colleagues doing the same job in different parts of the world. Reading her public post explaining her reasons for resignation, it appears that she does have the potential for a successful claim.

Equal Pay is either pretty straightforward – men and women doing the same job must be paid the same* – or complex – men and women doing jobs of equivalent value must be paid the same (this is complex because working out the “equivalent value” can be difficult and time-consuming to establish).

Ms Gracie’s case however seems to fall into the former category. As I understand it, there are a group of 4 senior journalists within the BBC who undertake editor roles for distinct regions of the world (Europe, North America, China, Middle East).  So essentially there are 4 people who are doing the ‘same’ job – two of whom are men and two women.

Can the BBC justify a salary difference? It could, if it was able to show that the difference was due to

a)       Work Performance

b)      Geography

c)       Market forces

d)      Special duties or responsibilities

e)      Greater skill and experience

Obviously, I can’t comment in any detail on most of those areas. But given the individuals in the 4 editor roles are long serving experienced BBC journalists, it would seem that reasons a), c) and e) are unlikely.  Reason d) would seem to apply equally to all 4 – all of them undertake other BBC jobs (presenting on TV or radio etc), which leaves us with simply geography as the reason.

On that basis, I could probably argue a case that the Middle East editor should be paid higher (due to the need to visit war zones/higher degree of personal risk etc) and it might be justifiable to pay slightly differently if the cost of living were significantly different between countries/regions.  But otherwise I’m struggling to see how the BBC will justify a difference in salary.

We’ll see how Ms Gracie’s claim does over time. But the message for my clients and other readers is that you should be paying men and women the same* for doing the same job and differences can only be justified for one of the reasons highlighted. A claim may not be as publicly damaging to your organisation but it has the potential to be very expensive.

(*To be clear, the same can mean within the same pay scale/band, not necessarily an identical salary)

 

 

BBC Pay – what does it really tell us?

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“A little learning is a dangerous thing” said poet Alexander Pope. A little bit of data can be dangerous, as today’s release of the BBC’s top salary information shows. Making assumptions about gender pay gaps and equal pay in an organisation on figures solely of well-known personalities is always likely to be fraught with problems, although that hasn’t stopped plenty of people offering their viewpoint.

First of all (something HR people should know, but other readers may not). Equal Pay is not the same as a Gender Pay Gap.

Equal Pay is paying the same wage for the same job – or a job of equal value –  to an individual regardless of sex. Not to do so is illegal in the UK. So, paying a male production line worker £300 per week and paying a female one doing exactly the same job £250 per week is not allowed. Where it becomes difficult is trying to judge if two different jobs are of equal value. There is no simple way to do this and trying to compare roles often ends up in long and complex employment tribunal cases.

A gender pay gap, in contrast, is not illegal. It is simply a snapshot of average salaries between men and women. It may for example show that men earn 10% more than women in an organisation – the important thing is to identify why this is the case (more men than women in the organisation overall; more men in senior positions; or a small group of highly paid men skewing the figures are among possible reasons).  Without knowing the cause, it is impossible to address the problem . Companies with more than 250 employees must report their gender pay gap figure (actually 6 different figures) on an annual basis, starting no later than April 2018.

So, do the BBC figures reveal a Gender Pay Gap in the Corporation? We simply don’t know. What we have are the salaries of the 96 most highly paid “names” – TV and Radio presenters, journalists and actors. That’s a drop in the ocean – the BBC has many thousands of employees. The fact that a male Casualty actor earns more than a female journalist tells us nothing in itself.

What about Equal Pay? Actually the data at face value does suggest some potential claims. Why is Strictly judge Darcy Bussell paid less than fellow Strictly judge Bruno Tonolli? Why does Today presenter Nick Robinson earn more than colleague Mishal Husein? But I’m pretty sure that on investigation there will be valid reasons (appearing on other shows, for example), as I can’t believe a major national organisation with extensive HR and legal resources would expose itself to such a reputational and financial risk.

Of course, a lot of this is nothing to do with pay equality, but a chance for some to make political points about the BBC and for others to express incredulity at presenter salaries (usually ones we don’t like – “Nick Knowles gets paid how much?”). Let’s see what transpires when the BBC does actually publish its gender pay figures before jumping to conclusions.