January 7, 2019
Workers say finding people with the right skills is biggest issue this year
Over half of workers (53 percent) believe that getting the right people with the right skills will be the biggest issue faced by their workplace in the year ahead. This is according to research published by Acas today, which commissioned YouGov to find out what UK employees identified as the most important workplace issues in the year ahead. The other two top issues identified were technological change (36 percent) and productivity (36 percent). Other issues identified by participants in the poll included fit and healthy staff (18 percent) and Equality and Fairness (17 percent). Acas Chief Exec, Susan Clews, said: “Employees feel that getting workers with the right skills is a key concern in the year ahead. This could be attributed to uncertainty around our relationship with the EU at the moment or general concerns around skills shortages.
January 3, 2019
Anti-team legislation can make us slaves to individual rights
by Helen Jamieson • Comment, Flexible working, Workplace
Society is becoming more selfish. At least that’s what the most commonly held view on the issue suggests, and it’s only set to get worse. Whether or not you believe the headlines, my 20 plus years’ experience as an HR consultant has led me to believe the hype. Increasingly many (I stress, not all) employees no longer see themselves as part of a team, but are increasingly ‘lone wolves’ single mindedly pursuing their needs and wants above those of the team. Each decision they make is with ‘I’ first and foremost, with ‘we’ maybe just a passing thought. It could be argued this was inevitable. How do you create a culture of team engagement, and group morale when for decades UK workplace legislation has focused almost exclusively on Individual Rights, rather than the ‘rights’ of the group? I’d argue it is simply not possible to develop successful teams where each individual has numerous legal rights but no corresponding responsibilities. My wish for 2019 would be for the government to set out a ‘responsibility’ alongside every ‘right’ it confers.
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