We’ve always known that many of us have a tendency to come into work when ill even though we would  be better off staying at home, but the problem of people turfing up in the office when they should be in bed or a GP’s queue is worsening according to a new report from insurance company Canada Life. Knocking into a cocked hat all the various surveys which detail the UK’s ‘working days lost’ due to stress?snow/The World Cup/hangovers and idleness, the survey claims that as many as 93 per cent of UK employees have hauled their diseased carcass into the workplace when they really shouldn’t, threatening their own health and the wellbeing of those around them.

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Millennial or Generation Y workers are not the bunch of entitled youths we’ve been led to believe. Those born between 1980 and 1995 say they would choose workplace flexibility, work/life balance and the opportunity for overseas assignments over financial rewards. PwC’s NexGen survey reveals that millennials view work as a thing rather than a place that requires a traditional nine to five routine, so are more likely to stay in a job if they feel supported and appreciated, are part of a cohesive team and have greater flexibility over where and how much they work. This contrasts with the non-millennial generation, who place greater importance on pay and development opportunities.

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Among the renewed debate on whether the Thatcher years sowed the seeds of social and economic inequality, comes new salary data by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) and XpertHR, which reveals company directors (including chief executives) enjoyed pay increases almost twice the size of the average UK executive over the last 12 months. The research also found that the number of employers struggling with staff recruitment continues to increase year-on-year. Almost two thirds (64.7 per cent) of employers experienced problems with staff recruitment over the last 12 months – up from 58.7 per cent in the 2012 report and 48.9 per cent in 2011. More →

A rigid attachment to ‘best practice’, rather than a focus on business needs, is preventing many organisations from unearthing and nurturing staff to drive their business forward and the danger of such an inflexible approach is killing organisations’ ability to properly manage talent. According to Anna Marie Detert, KPMG’s UK Lead for Talent – a tendency to copy or adopt the latest fad or fancy must be challenged if employers are to understand the talent they truly need to succeed, and plan effectively to find and keep it.  More →

Following on from the revelation that wellness programmes are only as good as the willingness of staff to participate, comes a study from the U.S. which highlights the role incentives can play in employers’ efforts to improve workforce health and performance. Aon Hewitt’s survey of nearly 800 large and mid-size U.S. employers representing more than 7 million U.S. employees found that 83 per cent now offer employees incentives for participating in programmes, while 58 per cent plan to impose consequences on participants who do not take appropriate actions for improving their health.

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The latest in a surfeit of surveys into employee wellness has found that wellness programmes may be firmly on the global business agenda, but there remains a major problem in persuading the most unfit and least healthy members of the workplace to participate.  A whopping 95 per cent of organizations say they are implementing a wellness strategy, but according to the 2013 Global Workplace Health & Wellness Report, by Global Corporate Challenge (GCC) employee participation is another matter, with wellness initiatives achieving less than 20 per cent participation on average, well short of organizations’ 60 per cent participation goals. More →