October 1st is almost here, and with it comes the implementation of most of the key features of the Equality Act 2010.

As you will have gathered from my previous blogs, this is probably the single most important piece of equality legislation we have ever seen, consolidating nine separate pieces of anti-discrimination legislation into a single Act.

This consolidation process means that much of the existing law stays the same. There are, however, some key changes that widen the scope of discrimination and strengthen the law significantly. Other areas have been extended, whilst completely new concepts such as discrimination arising from disability have been introduced.

There are also changes that impact directly on organisational policy and process – for instance the outlawing of pre-employment health questionnaires except in closely regulated circumstances, the introduction of positive action and restrictions on pay secrecy.

For public sector bodies there are further implications, in particular the creation of a new single equality duty.

All this means that every company and organisation of whatever size needs to become familiar with the content and implications of the new law so that they are able to gauge its impacts and the actions they need to take. One action that all organisations will need to take is to ensure that their employees are fully familiar with:

• What the law says
• What this means in practice
• How it impacts on them

And

• How they can avoid contravening it

This is where Learning Nexus can help...

In my last blog I outlined how we intend to address the learning challenges of the Equality Act; briefly, this involves producing a comprehensive series of courses aimed at three levels within the organisation:

• Level 1 for people at an operational level with no supervisory or managerial responsibilities
• Level 2 for managers, supervisors and high grade or specialist staff

And

• Level 3 for senior management

I am now able to provide details of how this course series will be created and introduced.

The first tranche of new courses will be released at the beginning of October 2010. The titles for this release are:

DE 1: Diversity, Equality and Discrimination
DE 2: Harassment and Victimisation
DE 3: Applying Equal Opportunites in the Workplace: Recruitment and Selection

From this point forward we shall introduce courses on a scheduled basis, with the next tranche as follows:

Quarter 4 2010

DE4: Applying Equal Opportunities in the Workplace: Parents in Employment        
DE5: Diversity and Equality in the Workplace: Sex Discrimination
DE6: Avoiding and Dealing with Disability Discrimination
DE7: Avoiding and Dealing with Race Discrimination

Quarter 1 2011

DE8: Avoiding and Dealing with Age Discrimination
DE9: Avoiding and Dealing with Sexual Orientation Discrimination
DE10: Avoiding and Dealing with Religious or Non-Belief Discrimination
DE11: Avoiding and Dealing with Gender Reassignment Discrimination

My colleagues and I here at Learning Nexus are tremendously excited about our new diversity range. We have worked with experts in the field to ensure the integrity of the content, whilst pushing the boundaries of innovation to ensure that the learning is interactive, entertaining and effective – the creation of the virtual town of Equalityville being a good example.

We have many other diversity courses in the pipeline, so to keep up to date on all diversity course news and information, please sign up for e-updates by emailing your name and contact details to marketing@learningnexus.co.uk or keep visiting our blog page.