Search Results for: labour market

April 30, 2018

Number of working mothers rise by a half in under forty years, claims study

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News

The past four decades have seen a transformation of the UK’s jobs market and society marked in particular by a decline of the traditional single-earner couple driven mostly by the mothers of young children and partners of higher-earning men. More than three quarters of women aged 25-54 in the UK are in paid work, reaching a record high of 78 percent in 2017. In contrast, fewer than 60 percent were in paid work in the mid-1970s. New analysis by IFS researchers, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), looks at changes in women’s working patterns over the last four decades. It claims that these big social and economic changes are in large part driven by working mothers. In the mid-1970s nearly half of couples with dependent children had just one adult in paid work; that proportion now stands at just 27 percent. The increase in maternal employment has been concentrated among those with children of pre-school or primary-school age, and also among the partners of relatively high-earning men.

April 18, 2018

Business leaders struggling to keep up with demands of individuals and technological developments in the workplace

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Technology, Workplace

Organisations are struggling to keep pace with workplace shifts including skills gaps, the development of artificial intelligence, the demands of employees and new social expectations, according to the latest Human Capital Trends report from Deloitte. In its 2018 edition, The Rise of the Social Enterprise, Deloitte focuses on the growing expectations of individuals and the pace at which technology is shaping organisations’ human capital priorities.

April 11, 2018

Quarter of workers say job negatively affects their mental health and a third feel overworked

by Sara Bean • News, Wellbeing, Workplace

One in four workers (25 percent) feel their job negatively affects their mental health, while nearly a third (30 percent) say their workload is too high, according to a brand new report from the CIPD, the UK Working Lives survey. Although the survey found that two-thirds of workers (64 percent) were satisfied with their job overall, one in ten (11 percent) report regularly feeling miserable at work. More than a quarter (28 percent) of senior leaders say that they find it difficult to fulfil personal commitments because of their job, while over a quarter (27 percent) say that their job does not offer good opportunities to develop their skills, jumping to two in five (43 percent) among unskilled and casual workers. Focusing on the three main groups in the labour market, those at the lower levels are far less likely to have access to skills and training, those in middle management feeling significantly squeezed by their workload and those at the top find it difficult to maintain a work/life balance.

April 2, 2018

Combination of factors means UK faces severe workforce crisis by 2025

by Neil Franklin • News, Workplace

New projections published in Mercer’s Workforce Monitor predict that a perfect storm of falling net migration driven by Brexit and an ageing population, will lead to a severe shortage in the UK labour market. If these challenges are not met with immediate action by UK employers, they will face significant costs trying to attract workers with the leadership and skills they need to execute their business strategies. Mercer anticipates the UK workforce will increase by just 820,000, or 2.4 percent, by 2025, a significant reduction in recent trends that have seen 9 percent workforce growth in the 10 years to 2015. For the first time in half a century, the overall population will be increasing at a faster rate than the workforce, creating long term structural challenges for the economy.

March 30, 2018

CIPD to co-chair Government’s flexible working task force

by Neil Franklin • Flexible working, News, Workplace

The CIPD has been invited to co-chair the UK Government’s new Flexible Working Task Force. The task force has been established by the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy to promote wider understanding and implementation of inclusive flexible work and working practices, bringing together policy-makers, employer groups, Unions and employee representative groups, research groups and professional bodies. More →

March 29, 2018

With a year to go, occupiers are less concerned than they were about the impact of Brexit

by Mark Eltringham • News, Property

Occupiers are less concerned about Brexit than they were a year ago, according to a new CBRE research survey of over 100 major occupiers across Europe, most of whom have pan-European or global operations. By late 2017, the proportion of European occupiers worried about Brexit having a ‘very significant’ impact on their operations in the UK had dropped from 15 percent to 6 percent compared with a year earlier. The proportion of occupiers worried about Brexit having a ‘significant’ effect has also fallen, from 38 percent to 33 percent, meaning that the number of occupiers worried about negative impacts from Brexit has fallen in total from 53 percent to 39 percent. A year to the day on which Britain aims to exit from the EU, global real estate advisor CBRE has published an updated guide unpicking some of the key real estate impacts of Brexit.

March 14, 2018

Four UK cities ranked in Europe’s top ten most attractive locations for businesses and employees

by Mark Eltringham • Cities, News

London has been ranked as Europe’s most attractive city for businesses and employees for second year running according to Colliers International’s latest European Cities of Influence report, which reviews and ranks cities based on their occupier attractiveness, availability of talent, and quality of life factors alongside economic output and productivity; Paris, Madrid, Moscow and Birmingham making up the rest of the top five. The report claims that the UK remains a highly desirable destination for capital and occupiers, largely driven by its ‘magnetism as a centre of diverse high-quality service sector talent’, which is in turn is helping to drive economic output and productivity. Other UK cities which score in the top 10 include Birmingham (5th), Edinburgh (7th) and Manchester (10th).

March 5, 2018

Automation will lead to greater inequality rather than job losses

by Neil Franklin • AI, News, Technology

The total level of wages associated with jobs that have the technical potential to be automated in the UK is £290 billion per year, which represents 33 percent of all wages and earnings from labour in the economy, according to a new report published by IPPR for the IPPR Commission on Economic Justice. The report further claims that low-wage jobs have more potential to be automated than high-wage jobs and so it’s not just automation’s impact on the number of jobs that need to be considered but the impact on inequality. If automation leads to lower average wages or working hours, or loss of jobs in aggregate, a significant amount of national income could be transferred from wages to profits. And while increased automation of activities will replace some workers and labour earnings, employment and wages will rise in other areas of the labour market due to higher output and productivity, offsetting some of the original £290 billion lost but increasing pay inequality.

March 5, 2018

UK progress on opportunities for women in the workplace slows

by Neil Franklin • News, Workplace

New PwC research claims that the UK is not making progress fast enough to improve female economic empowerment in the workplace. Despite improvements since 2000, these gains have been outpaced by other countries’ efforts, according to the report. In particular, slow progress in closing the gender pay gap, coupled with a persistent low share of females in full-time employment, has put the brakes on the UK making bigger strides towards gender equality in the workplace. The latest Women in Work Index claims the UK has fallen slightly from 14th to 15th place in a ranking of 33 OECD countries based on five key indicators of female economic empowerment. Although labour market conditions for women improved, the UK was outpaced by better performance from other OECD countries. Since 2000, the UK’s position has improved from 17th place and it compares well to other G7 economies, being second only to Canada. The Nordic countries continue to lead the Index – with Iceland, Sweden and Norway rated as the top three countries for opportunities for women in the workplace.

March 2, 2018

Employment law is out of step with flexible work and the changing workplace

by Leon Deakin • Comment, Flexible working, Legal news, Workplace

Anyone who works in employment law or HR is certainly living through interesting times. With the removal of employment tribunal fees, litigation over the correct calculation of holiday pay and Brexit planning there is much to keep us busy. In addition, In addition, the impending GDPR is highly topical. However, for me, the most intellectually stimulating but also practically difficult area to advise on often remains employment status. Put simply, the law is out of date. Legislation drafted in the 1990s, and to some extent based on cases from much earlier, simply does not cut it in an increasingly flexible and developing work place.

February 28, 2018

The very idea of good work in a gig economy remains a distant ideal

by Tonia Novitz, Alan Bogg et al • Comment, Flexible working

Don Lane’s employment contract for his work as a courier described him as an “independent contractor”. This meant he was neither an “employee” nor a “worker”, so not entitled to legal rights such as protection against dismissal, paid holidays, or statutory sick pay. The 53-year-old also suffered from diabetes, and had previously been fined £150 by the delivery firm he worked for for missing work to attend a hospital appointment. He died in January 2018 after working through the Christmas season despite his illness. The following month, the British government revealed its response to an earlier official report on modern working practices and the gig economy. That report, by Matthew Taylor, contained 53 recommendations to improve the working environment, or achieve the report’s title, namely ‘good work’.

February 7, 2018

Extension of rights for gig economy workers are broadly welcomed

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News

The government is to give so-called gig economy workers new rights including holiday and sick pay for the first time. Its new Good Work plan is a direct response to last year’s Taylor Review which recommended changes in conditions to reflect modern working practices and extend the rights of workers in the new economy. The government has said it will proceed with almost all the review’s recommendations including giving zero-hour and agency workers the right to request a more stable contract.