July 15, 2015

The standard gender pay gap narrative is a myth, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t problems

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, HR, Knowledge

It is one of the great ironies of modern life that in a world drowning in data, a great deal of public discourse is driven by narratives that have little or no factual basis. If anything, the substitution of baseless and questionable stories. Sometimes these narratives are based on outdated realities. Sometimes on assumptions. Sometimes they are deliberately created and upheld by those with vested interests. Sometimes people lie, including to themselves. However they are formed, they can become pretty hard to dislodge, especially when they become so enshrined that the default response to inconvenient truths is a wall of cognitive dissonance and denial. I’m obviously building up to something here and it won’t necessarily be an easy thing to say or hear. And it’s this. The gender pay gap doesn’t exist. Or at least, it doesn’t exist in the way we normally assume so distracts from related issues that we may be able to address.

March 16, 2015

Employee benefits policies still not family friendly, claims new report

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, HR, Legal news

Fewer than half (48 percent) of UK employers offer enhanced maternity pay to staff, claims a new study by Croner. According to the Croner reward employee benefits report, based on a survey of 127 employers, the most commonly offered enhanced scheme was 3 months leave at full pay. The research also found that fathers fare even worse with less than a third of firms offering paternity leave above the statutory minimum, with 62 percent offering full pay for a period of two weeks. Commenting on the findings, Viv Copeland of Croner says: “While some family friendly benefits such as flexible working and childcare vouchers have really grown in the last few years, the offer of enhanced maternity and paternity leave and pay still has a long way to go. The recent legislation around shared maternity/ paternity leave should bring some fresh thinking to this area from parents and employers alike.”

March 11, 2015

Two new reports highlight potential benefits of flexible working for women

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, HR, News

Two new reports published this week highlight the potential benefits of flexible working for both employers and staff, especially women. According to a Workingmums.co.uk Best Practice Report, only 36 percent of employers have a flexible working policy despite over half thinking it improves retention, particularly of women, and over a third saying it makes people more efficient. Meanwhile, a study from the TUC claims that around half of the net growth in female employment in 2014 came from women moving in to lower-paid part-time jobs. The analysis claims that while full-time employment accounted for all of the net growth in male employment last year, for women full-time employment accounted for just 47 per cent of net female jobs growth. The TUC also claims that women who moved into part-time jobs during 2014 were typically employed on much lower rates of pay than those in full-time work.

February 19, 2015

Acas publishes guidance on shared parent leave as countdown begins

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, HR, Legal news, News

With just eight weeks to go until new rules on Shared Parental Leave (SPL) come into force, parents with babies due on or after 5 April 2015 should now give their employers 8 weeks’ notice of the pattern of leave they intend to take. The estimated 285,000 working couples a year who are expected to be eligible can start sharing up to 50 weeks of parental leave after 5 April and expectant parents need to have that all-important conversation with their employers. Acas has published a new free guide on Shared Parental Leave to help employers and employees understand how these new changes will affect them and how to manage leave requests fairly. They advise that eligible employees and their employers need to start having early discussions about the different options available so that preparing and planning the leave is as straightforward as possible.

November 25, 2014

Employers unprepared for employee take-up of new flexible work rights

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, HR, Legal news, News

The new Shared Parental Leave legislation comes into force next week (1 December), but according to a new report, employers are unprepared for the changes. The Workforce View 2014/15 – an annual barometer of the views and attitudes of UK workers and employers by ADP, also indicates that employers have underestimated the likely level of interest amongst employees. More than one in five (21 per cent) HR Directors admitted they are not ready for the requirements of the legislation, while 70 per cent say they predict little or no interest from employees in the first 12 months. Yet when employees were asked their views, a third (33 per cent) of 16- to 34-year-olds said they anticipate taking advantage of it within the next five years. Shared parental leave is a new right that will enable eligible mothers, fathers, partners and adopters to choose how to share time off work after their child is born or placed. It will be an option for parents with a child due to be born on or after 5 April 2015. More →

November 21, 2014

Worktech weaves together the strands of people, place and technology

by Mark Eltringham • Cities, Events, Flexible working, HR, Technology

Day two of Worktech London and affirmation that far from dying, as so many headline writers would have us believe, the office is merely entering a new phase. The underlying theme of Worktech continues to be how we find new ways of weaving together the strands of presence and connectedness formed by cities, buildings and technology. Worktech is a constant reminder that while our world may be shaped by algorithms, we still need each other and need to be with other people at least some of the time. The event is admirably hosted by long time collaborator and MC Jeremy Myerson whose knowledge and donnish charm holds things together while the real Don, founder Philip Ross, beams from the sidelines. It is now de rigeur for such events to have a poet in residence and this year’s was Matt Harvey who summed things up at the end of the day with reference to Worktech’s longstanding idea of jellybean working but who popped up in between sessions with lyrical summations including one that showed some real spunk (you had to be there).

January 28, 2014

New data suggests parents are frustrated at lack of flexible working

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, Legal news

Following last week’s revelation that the planned extension of Flexible Working Rights to all UK employees would be delayed beyond the proposed implementation date in April, new statistics released by the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) and a new report from the Working Families charity have revealed some of the disparities that exist in flexible working arrangements across the country. The Working Families survey of a little over 1,000 adults with dependent children, found that almost a third claim there are no flexible arrangements on offer where they work, leading many to feel resentful against their employers, with young fathers twice as likely to strongly resent the lack of flexible working affects their lives.