Register and monitor your workforce for fair employment

The rules here are for Northern Ireland.

What the law requires

Count your employees

Count people on contracts of service or apprenticeships. Where your head office is does not matter. The exception for school teachers was removed on 12 May 2024, so schools monitor their teachers like other staff.

Register within one month

The application describes your business in general terms, gives the employer's name and address, and says how many people you employ in Northern Ireland. If you take over a business that is already registered, apply within one month to have your name entered on the register.

Missing the deadline is an offence. The fine is up to level 5 on the standard scale, which is £5,000 in Northern Ireland, plus up to £500 a day if you still have not applied after a conviction. It is a defence to show a reasonable excuse and that you applied as soon as reasonably practicable.

Ask everyone about their community background

Monitoring uses two communities, Protestant and Roman Catholic, and you also report anyone whose community cannot be determined.

For employees, treat someone as belonging to a community if you hold a written statement from them that they are Protestant or Roman Catholic. If you do not, ask them in writing whether they are Protestant, Roman Catholic or neither. If they do not answer, or say they are neither, you make no determination from the question and report them as not determined. If an employee has given you relevant information about themselves in writing, such as the schools they attended or the clubs they belong to, you may use it to decide which community they are connected with.

For job applicants, ask each one in writing. Put the question on or send it with your application form, or post it separately with a pre-paid reply envelope. Also seek their name and address, and obtain the information within two months of the application.

Obtain the information from your employees within the first three months of your first monitoring year, and within the first month of each later year.

Tell employees how you have recorded them

At least two weeks before you send a return, give each employee you have treated as belonging to a community, or as not determined, written notice of how you have recorded them. They have seven days from the notice to tell you if they think it is wrong. If they are right, you must correct it for the return.

Keep records and keep them confidential

Keep the written information you used to decide an employee's community, and your record of the decision, until three years after they leave. For applicants, keep the same until three years after they applied. Failing to keep these records without reasonable excuse is an offence, with a fine of up to level 5.

It is also an offence to disclose this information. You may share it with the Equality Commission or the Labour Relations Agency, with people whose duties make it reasonable, for tribunal or court proceedings, with the person it concerns, or with that person's written consent.

Send the annual monitoring return

The return also gives your apprentices and the people you appointed in the previous 12 months, and splits employees between full-time (16 hours or more a week) and part-time.

Missing the deadline is an offence with the same fines as for registration. Sending a return that is not prepared as the Regulations require, or that leaves out required information, carries a fine of up to £10,000.

Review your employment practices every three years

The review covers the make-up of your workforce, including people who leave, and your recruitment, training, promotion and redundancy practices. Have regard to the code of practice the Commission maintains, and ask it for advice on carrying out the review.

You do not send the review in, but the Commission can require information about how you carried it out and what it found. Where it finds your monitoring or review unsatisfactory, it can seek a written undertaking or issue directions.