February 19, 2018
Employers in the dark ages over recruitment of pregnant women and new mothers, report claims
British employers are ‘living in the dark ages’ and have worrying attitudes when it comes to recruiting women, according to a new report from the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Claiming that many businesses’ attitudes are decades behind the law, the survey of 1,106 senior decision makers in business found around a third (36 percent) of private sector employers agree that it is reasonable to ask women about their plans to have children in the future during recruitment. The new statistics also reveal six in 10 employers (59 percent) agree that a woman should have to disclose whether she is pregnant during the recruitment process, and almost half (46 percent) of employers agree it is reasonable to ask women if they have young children during the recruitment process.
A third of workers (32 percent) regularly struggle to be productive in their job, and one in six (16 percent) blame their manager – claims a new survey from ADP. This puts bad management ahead of inefficient systems and processes (15 percent) and staff shortages (13 percent) as the biggest drain on productivity in the UK workplace. The UK has been grappling with low productivity levels for a number of years, consistently placed behind other leading economies, such as Germany and the US in official productivity tables. While recent ONS figures suggested a recovery is underway, reporting 
Demand for office space in Scotland’s three largest cities pushed overall take-up beyond 2m sq ft last year, aided by a solid final quarter of occupational deals in Aberdeen and Glasgow, and an all-time record year for Edinburgh. Scotland’s offices market in 2017 reach ed2.4 million sq ft, 14 percent above the 10 year average, according to the latest Scottish Office Spotlight from Savills. In Edinburgh (city centre and wider market) office take-up amounted to a record 1.1 million sq ft boosted by the ongoing growth of tech in the city. According to data from Stack Overflow, the Scottish capital saw a 19 percent increase in data scientists employed in the city centre over the course of 2017. Activity places further pressure on supply with only 220,000 sq ft of Grade A now available which Savills suggests will push top rents to £34 per sq ft in 2018. Keith Dobson, director in the business space agency team at Savills in Edinburgh, says: “The soon to be completed 40,000 sq ft office scheme at 2 Semple Street will ease pent up demand come Q2 2018, whilst The Mint Building and Capital Square will complete in 2019 and 2020 respectively.”
