Search Results for: jobs

July 27, 2015

Fifth of new mothers claim to experience workplace discrimination

by Sara Bean • Legal news, News, Workplace

One in five new mothers experienced harassment or negative comments from their colleagues, employer or manager when pregnant or returning from maternity leave, a new report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission claims. It also found disturbing evidence that around 54,000 new mothers may be forced out of their jobs in Britain each year. The findings are based on a survey of over 3,200 women, in which 11 percent of the women interviewed reported having been dismissed, made compulsorily redundant where others in their workplace were not, or treated so poorly they felt they had to leave their jobs. If replicated across the population as a whole, this could mean as many as 54,000 women losing their jobs each year. Despite this perception, the majority of employers claimed they were firm supporters of female staff during and after their pregnancies and find it easy to comply with the law.

July 24, 2015

Groundbreaking public sector estate scheme rolled out nationwide

by Mark Eltringham • Facilities management, News, Property, Public Sector

We’ve reported previously on the Government’s One Public Sector Estate scheme, which encourages local authorities to find ways to share office space and find other ways of divesting buildings as well as freeing up land for development. Over the past two years there has been a phased rollout of the scheme to 32 councils. Now the Cabinet Office and the Local Government Association claim they have gauged the success of the first two phases and are confident the scheme can be expanded nationwide. Their announcement suggests that the 32 councils who are currently on the programme own 28 percent of council land and property assets in England and have applied the ideas of the One Public Sector Estate Initiative to free up land for around 9,000 homes and create some 20,000 new jobs. The councils involved are also expected to raise £129 million in capital receipts from land sales and cut running costs by £77 million over 5 years.

July 23, 2015

Majority of managers are ready to welcome robots in the workplace

by Mark Eltringham • News, Technology, Workplace

The relationship between mankind and the beings it creates has been a staple of science fiction ever since Mary Shelley first dreamt up her tale of Frankenstein and his creature. It’s an enduring idea because it poses questions about the nature of life and what it means to be human. We’re now about to address those questions in real life for the first time and we’ll need to address their mundane as well as profound implications, including the advent of robots in the workplace. As things stand, the problem is that you can come up with any answer you like to these questions because, for every report that a robot has displayed a degree of self awareness, another will tell you about a robot in Germany crushing a man to death. And for every piece of footage disconcertingly showing a robot learning to clear hurdles like an Arab stallion, you can find dozens of them falling over like drunks.

July 22, 2015

OECD nations need to urgently address the coming digital workplace

by Mark Eltringham • News, Technology, Workplace, Workplace design

There is now an urgent need for the world’s growing number of digital economies to shift their focus to how they help people to manage their own transition to a new form of digital workplace. That is the main conclusion of a new report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The OECD Digital Economy Outlook 2015 claims that while most countries have moved from a narrow focus on communications technology to a broader digital approach, they now need to address the significant and growing risk of disruption in areas like privacy and jobs. The report – which covers areas from broadband penetration and industry consolidation to network neutrality and cloud computing in OECD countries says more should be done to offer information and communication technology (ICT) skills training to help people transition to new types of digital jobs.

July 16, 2015

Women are less assertive in asking for a pay rise than men

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

There has been much focus on gender pay this week with the announcement that larger companies will be forced to disclose pay rates. Now a new poll suggests another reason why women’s pay lags over their career, a lack of assertiveness. A report commissioned by Glassdoor found that only a quarter of UK women (27 percent) feel confident they will receive a pay rise within the next 12 months, compared to 40 percent of men. Women are also less likely to leave a job because of low salary than men – 30 percent of women said that low salary had been the major factor behind them moving on from jobs in the past, compared to 39 percent of men. The Glassdoor UK Employment Confidence Survey, conducted online by Harris Interactive, monitors four key indicators of employee confidence: job security, salary expectations, job market optimism/re-hire probability and business outlook optimism.

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, Knowledge, Workplace

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.

July 10, 2015

UK Government abandons zero carbon buildings pledges

by Mark Eltringham • Environment, Facilities management, News, Property

The UK Government has today announced that it is to abandon its plans to introduce zero carbon buildings, including homes in 2016 and zero carbon commercial buildings in 2019. As part of a range of planning measures officially announced by the Treasury, it has been confirmed that the government ‘does not intend to proceed with the zero carbon Allowable Solutions carbon offsetting scheme, or the proposed 2016 increase in on-site energy efficiency standards’. Officials from the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) have also separately confirmed that the zero carbon policy for non-domestic buildings will also be discarded as part of the new changes. The move has already been heavily criticised by the UK Green Building Council and senior figures in the construction sector, who are dismayed at the move by a Government that once claimed it was to be the UK’s ‘greenest ever’.

July 8, 2015

Productivity starts with people, advises CIPD ahead of today’s Budget

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, News, Workplace

Investing in people’s development and offering flexible working practices can help organisations boost productivity. This is according to research by the CIPD published ahead of today’s budget, which the Chancellor has said will put the emphasis on improving UK productivity. The report: Productivity: Getting the Best out of People, explores the factors that help to explain why some businesses have higher productivity than others and finds that there are clear links between productivity and how people are managed at work. The report finds that performance tends to be higher in businesses where there is a focus on higher quality products or services rather than only on low cost and where workplace culture is clearly aligned with the future direction of the business. Investment in workforce training and an intelligent approach to the implementation of ‘smart’ or agile working practices also has a positive impact.

June 26, 2015

Value older workers or sleep-walk towards a skills shortage, employers warned

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, News, Workplace

A demographic time bomb means employers must act to avoid a cliff-edge loss of skills and talents by 2035, a new study by the CIPD has revealed. There are currently 9.4 million workers in the UK today who are over the age of 50 and while the employment rate of older workers has increased significantly in recent years, there is still a 64 percent drop in the employment rate between the ages of 53 and 67. New research from the CIPD and the International Longevity Centre-UK (ILC-UK), the independent think tank on longevity, ageing, and population change, warns the UK could face serious skills shortages over the next 20 years. Unless organisations start improving how they recruit, develop and retain older workers it is estimated that the UK economy will struggle to fill one million jobs by 2035, even taking into account the mitigating effect of migrant workers.

June 24, 2015

Construction work completes on UK’s greenest commercial building

by Mark Eltringham • Architecture, Environment, News, Property

Morgan Sindall has completed construction of what is claimed to be the UK’s greenest commercial building, the Enterprise Centre at the University of East Anglia. The building boasts record-breaking sustainability credentials including both BREEAM Outstanding and Passivhaus accreditations. It has been designed to maximise the use of low embodied carbon materials over a projected 100-year life span. The building incorporates an innovation lab, a 300-seat lecture theatre, flexible workspaces, teaching and learning facilities, as well as business ‘hatcheries’ and incubator units for small businesses and start-ups in the low carbon sector. The developers believe that by placing like-minded academic and private sector occupiers side by side, the centre will foster innovation, stimulate smarter ways of working, promote industry standards and create new sustainable supply chains.

June 18, 2015

Gen Z workers will be far more conventional than commonly assumed

by Sara Bean • News, Technology, Workplace, Workplace design

Despite being the first generation of workers to boast ‘native’ digital skills, so-called ‘Gen Z’ is far more conventional than previously assumed. The coming generation of 16-19 years-olds who are fast approaching the jobs market will care far more about their workplace and their employer’s ethics than Gen Y, new research from recruiter Adecco claims. The research shows that long-term security is more appealing to Gen Z than short term perks; with gym memberships (12%), free technology (16%) and time off to travel (26%) rejected in favour of qualifications and job security; at 43 percent and 41 percent, respectively. However, the research does show they have strong personal ambition and high expectations from employers, with half of those surveyed expecting a promotion within their first year of employment and the same number expecting to move on from an employer within two years.

June 16, 2015

London cements its status as Europe’s most important tech hub

by Mark Eltringham • News, Property, Technology

A new report launched to coincide with London Technology Week claims that London has cemented its position as the most important tech hub in Europe and will boost the UK economy by £18bn in 2015. According to the event’s organisers, London’s technology sector is growing faster than both the overall economies of London and the whole UK and will continue to do so for the next decade. The figures show that the number of companies in London’s digital technology sector has grown by 46 percent since the launch of the Tech City programme. The sector now employs almost 200,000 people, 17 percent more than in 2010. Other research from EY claims to show London’s dominance of the European tech sector. According to EY more than 1,000 international tech investment projects located in London between 2005–2014, significantly more than the next most attractive city, Paris (381).