Employers should provide full and equal access to flexible working arrangements, occupational health support and appropriate workplace adaptations to help older workers to manage health conditions at work. This is according to a new report from the Centre for Ageing Better, Fulfilling work: what do older workers value about work and why? which identifies the characteristics of work that are important to people aged 50 and over, and explores actions employers can take to attract and retain them. Understanding what older workers want is the first step in helping employers, policy makers and others create age-friendly workplaces. By 2020, one in three workers will be over 50 but while the employment rate for all working age adults remains at a record high of nearly 75%, for people over 60, this falls to around 50%. and there are currently 12 million people heading towards an insufficient retirement income. Ageing Better commissioned the Institute of Employment Studies to carry out the study as to ways of helping people stay at work and the report finds that health is the most important factor affecting older workers’ decisions to continue in work, ahead of job satisfaction and job quality.

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We’re only just out of January but new research claims that one in ten employed Britons in the UK has already pulled a sickie from work in 2017. The poll by online travel agency www.sunshine.co.uk also looked into previous bogus sick leave and found that 21 percent of grown adults have had a parent, partner or friend call in sick for them so that they didn’t have to on a past occasion. Respondents answered questions about any time they’d taken off sick from work in the last 12 months, were asked ‘How frequently have you taken sick days from work over the past year?’, the majority (57 percent) said ‘once a month’. 22 percent said ‘hardly ever’ and 16 percent said ‘only once or twice’. Everyone was then asked how many of the sick days they took were false (i.e. they weren’t genuinely unwell when they called in sick). From this, the research suggests approximately 1 in every 4 sick days taken by Britons is a false ‘sickie’.

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Flexible working hours and being their own boss makes the UK’s self-employed much happier than those in traditional employment a new survey claims. According to the latest set of findings from the ‘Definitive Study of the Self-Employed,’ commissioned by Intuit QuickBooks, the self-employed generated mean annual revenues of £32,623 (£5,000 more than the average UK salary), despite working 10 hours less per week. Of those who have been a salaried worker, two thirds (66 percent) claim to be financially better off or the same and 65 percent also feel better off in terms of ‘life satisfaction’. When the research considered nuanced reasons for choosing to work for oneself ;control of schedule (77 percent), more flexibility to work to one’s own terms (68 percent) and liking being one’s own boss (65 percent) were leading reasons, with not worrying about workplace politics (47 percent) also regularly referenced.

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