January 9, 2017

Global lack of female leadership, despite benefits to companies’ performance ⁰

by Sara Bean • Legal news, News, Workplace

Gender inequality remains high around the world – despite the fact that new research suggests how female leadership increases companies’ performance. A new report published by IZA World of Labor looks at the reasons for the persistence of wage and leadership gender gaps and their causes and consequences and emphasizes the beneficial role of female leaders in reducing gender inequality. The report claims that gender wage gaps and women’s under representation in leadership positions exist at remarkably similar magnitudes across countries at all levels of income per capita. In a new IZA World of Labor report the economist Mario Macis of Johns Hopkins University, USA summarizes recent research which shows that although women in many developed countries have reached parity with men in terms of formal educational attainment and employment, earning disparities between the genders are actually greater in richer countries.

January 6, 2017

Over half of employers struggled to find newly graduated employees last year ⁰

by Sara Bean • News, Technology, Workplace

Over half of graduate employers are struggling to fill their graduate vacancies, partly due to students reneging on offers. A poll by the Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR) claims that 52 percent of employers did not fill all of their graduate vacancies last year and while one in five offers were declined, 7.1 percent of offers made were accepted and then reneged. The size of the challenge differs by sector. Accountancy, banking and engineering firms are the most likely to find reneging an issue. It is less of a problem in the public sector and among law, utility and IT businesses. However, employers are finding ways to tackle the issue with 97 percent communicating and 78 percent holding events for graduates between offer and join date. As a result the proportion of job offers reneged is falling – in the AGR’s 2015 poll 8.2 percent were reneged. Employers are also being advised to take more of a digital approach to reaching ‘tech savvy’ graduates.

January 5, 2017

Recognition by promotion rather than reward, is key driver in job satisfaction ⁰

by Sara Bean • News, Workplace

Nearly two-thirds of respondents in a global survey (63 percent) said they would prefer to get a promotion with no salary increase than a salary increase with no promotion this year. One reason for this, the research from Korn Ferry suggests, is that many organizations are not doing an adequate job of creating clear advancement opportunities for professionals. More than half (56 percent) of respondents who did not get a promotion within the last 12 months cited “bottleneck or nowhere to go” as the main reason. Nearly one-fifth (19 percent) said office politics got in their way of moving up the ladder, and while 39 percent said they did receive a promotion within the last year, less than half (45 percent) said they expect to receive a promotion in the coming year. Also, 84 percent said that if they were passed over for a promotion, the No.1 action they would take was to identify the reason and work to improve. The vast majority (88 percent) said that if they wanted a promotion, the No. 1 action they would take would be to have a conversation with their boss and identify growth areas that would enable them to move into the next role.

January 4, 2017

Millennial women predicted to earn less than male counterparts over their careers ⁰

by Sara Bean • Legal news, News, Workplace

It has been suggested before that the gender pay gap is a reflection of what happens to women when they become parents – and a new piece of research backs up this theory by revealing an enduring pay penalty associated with having children; which, unless tackled this will mean that current and future generations of working women will continue to face a significant life earnings penalty. According to a new analysis published today (Wednesday) by the Resolution Foundation as part of its Intergenerational Commission, while the gender pay gap for millennials in their 20s has halved in a generation to just 5 percent, much of that progress looks set to be undone with early signs showing that the gender pay gap continues to escalate as women enter their 30s and 40s. This suggests that millennial women will still earn significantly less than their male counterparts over their careers.

December 30, 2016

One in five working millennials in the UK have two or more jobs ⁰

by Neil Franklin • Flexible working, News, Workplace

New research from recruitment app Coople, claims that British millennials are a generation of career jugglers, seeking ‘varied lifestyles and accelerated multi-skilled growth’. The survey of 2,000 employed millennials in the UK, carried out by OnePoll, claims that there is a growing “slash culture”, in which workers take on more than one job simultaneously. The new statistics claim that one in five (19 per cent) employed young people have two or more jobs, more than any other generation. Some of the main reasons cited by millennials for taking on multiple roles include to learn new skills (47 per cent) and for variety and experience (27 per cent). By comparison, older generations put more onus on increased earnings when stating their purpose for working within multiple roles. The study also claims one in three millennials (29 per cent) plan on changing industry within the next two years, 13 per cent intend to change industries within the next year and 45 per cent will be looking to move within three years.

December 26, 2016

The Winter 2016 issue of Work&Place is available now ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Architecture, Case studies, Facilities management, Flexible working, Premium Content, Technology, Work&Place, Workplace, Workplace design

The Winter 2016 issue of Work&Place is now available to view online. In this edition… Neil Usher, Workplace Director at Sky offers a first hand account of the story behind the firm’s remarkable new offices at the Osterley campus in London; Kate Langan explores some of the implications of the growing digitisation of the workplace; Jim Ware looks at how the challenge of creating effective meeting spaces is now a strategic concern; John Blackwell tries to make sense of falling productivity levels when we have all the tools and know how to increase it; David Woolf makes the case for designing better collaborative spaces; Mark Eltringham looks forward to an almost entirely unpredictable future for workplaces in the 21st Century; and Karen Plum and Andrew Mawson set out the factors that drive knowledge worker productivity. The PDF edition is available to view and download here. Or view online here.

December 22, 2016

Getting ahead at work: social class divide, power and office politics ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • News, Workplace

A new study from the University of Virginia Darden School of Business has found that class-based inequality in the workplace persists not only because of external factors like bias and glass ceilings, but also because of structural factors that discourage people from lower social classes from seeking positions of power in the first place. The paper, co-authored by Peter Belmi of the Darden School of Business and Kristin Laurin of the Stanford Graduate School of Business, claims that most people believe that getting ahead requires a mixture of pro-social behavior – such as being competent, hard-working, and a team player; and political behaviour – such as being outspoken, flattering, and treating others as “resources”. According to the research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, inequality begins to thrive in the disparity between which groups are actually willing to put both behaviours into practice. Even though everyone derides political angling, it turns out that relatively high-class individuals are still willing to play the game to get ahead. Not so with lower-class individuals.

December 22, 2016

Government plans to tackle gender pay gap oversimplify the issue, say experts ⁰

by Sara Bean • Legal news, News, Workplace

Companies with 250 or more employees will soon be required to give overall statistics about levels of pay for each gender. But experts say real change will only come about if employers were required to present this data in a more expansive way, accompanied by a reflective report explaining any gender pay gap alongside an action plan of how they intend to close them. Unless this happens, the new regulations requiring companies to report pay gaps between men and women are potentially “superficial” and will not necessarily tackle the complex reasons why females still have lower salaries on average, new research shows. Employers told researchers from the University of Exeter, University of Bath and Cardiff University that the Government’s proposals would over-simplify issues, just advertise pay rates without giving context and may not benefit all female staff. The study has been undertaken as part of a research collaboration facilitated by the GW4 Alliance, which brings together four of the most research-intensive and innovative universities in the UK; the universities of Bath, Bristol, Cardiff and Exeter.

December 22, 2016

British workers find it increasingly difficult to unwind after work ⁰

by Neil Franklin • Flexible working, News, Workplace

A large proportion of British workers are struggling to switch off from work when they finish for the day, according to new research. The study of 1,011 UK adults in full or part-time employment, conducted by Cascade HR as part of the firm’s The Stress Report, claims that more than three quarters (76 percent) are unable to unwind immediately and instead experience residual stress after leaving the office. The data found it takes on average 1 hour and 39 minutes for UK workers to relax after they have left work for the day, while almost a fifth say they often take work home with them and so don’t ever fully unwind. This residual work stress isn’t just encroaching on employees’ free time after work, but time spent on annual leave, according to the study. When they go on annual leave, it takes UK workers an average of 2.63 days for them to relax, and 10.31 days of annual leave for them to return to work feeling truly refreshed. This equates to just over half of the UK’s statutory allocation of annual leave per person, per year.

December 21, 2016

Employee retention and engagement was top of mind for employers this year ⁰

by Sara Bean • News, Wellbeing, Workplace

Employee retention was the top workforce management challenge in 2016, claims a survey by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), with almost one-half of surveyed organizations (46 percent) citing it as a top challenge in 2016. Other top workforce management challenges for at least one-third of organizations were: employee engagement (36 percent), recruitment (34 percent) and succession planning (33 percent). SHRM’s survey Influencing Workplace Culture Though Employee Recognition and Other Efforts, which was produced in collaboration with and commissioned by Globoforce, found that as employers look for ways to deal with the challenges of low employee retention and high turnover, more organizations are tying employee recognition efforts to their core values.The majority of respondents indicated that their employee recognition programs had positive impacts on employee engagement, workplace culture, retention and employee happiness.

December 19, 2016

UK employers predict workforce growth in 2017 along with more inclusive hiring ⁰

by Sara Bean • Knowledge, News, Workplace

Four in ten (41 percent) of firms across the UK will grow their workforce in 2017 but uncertainty about the UK’s future relationship with the EU has shaken overall business confidence in the labour market claims a new report. According to respondents to the 19th CBI/Pertemps Network Group Employment Trends Survey, for the fourth year running, growth in permanent job opportunities will outstrip temporary recruitment. But the balance of those expecting the UK to be a more attractive place to employ people in the next five years has flipped from +16 percent in the 2015 survey to -21 percent in this year’s results. In terms of engagement, over three quarters (76 percent) of respondents reported that a diverse and inclusive workforce is vital or important to the future success of their organisation. They report a range of benefits of inclusive workplace practices including increased skills (73 percent), attraction and retention of staff (60 percent) and engagement levels (46 percent).

December 16, 2016

Millennials more tuned-in to discrimination at work than other generations ⁰

by Sara Bean • Legal news, News, Wellbeing, Workplace

Millennials have widely divergent experiences and attitudes toward diversity and inclusion within the workplace than older generations, claims a new US-based report. In the research from the Institute for Public Relations (IPR) and Weber Shandwick into the importance that people place on diversity and inclusion (D&I) when considering a new job found that 47 percent of Millennials consider it an important criterion in their job search compared to 33 percent of Gen Xers and 37 percent of Boomers. Nearly six in 10 of all employed Americans (58 percent) report that they see or hear about some form of discrimination and/or bias at their workplace, most frequently racial or ethnic in nature (22 percent). Millennials are significantly more likely than older generations to be attuned to such behaviour at work, and also much more comfortable discussing these issues at work than their older colleagues. The survey also asked respondents why they believe employers emphasise diversity and inclusion in the workplace. All three generations cited “To make it a better place to work” among their top three reasons. Millennials also recognize increased opportunities while reputational benefits and outside pressures are noticed by Gen Xers and Boomers.