November 15, 2017
Mergers and acquisitions often fail because workers struggle to integrate into the new organisation
Mergers and acquisitions often fail because workers struggle to integrate, and new research from King’s Business School and the University of Helsinki claims that successful integration is much more likely when organisations actively help employees feel that their jobs are safe. Organisations must also ensure that their integration procedures are seen to be fair and just. Professor Martin Edwards and his co-authors studied the merger of three universities and the acquisition of a manufacturing organisation by a larger multinational. As the first study to track employees during and after a merger and an acquisition, it identifies the factors that influence the likelihood and rate of employee integration.
Two in five employees have pulled a sickie in the last year and half, and a million have pulled more than eight, with stress, ‘couldn’t be bothered working’ and hangovers the top reasons for absence, a new report claims. According to research conducted by Citation, 41 percent of employees confessed to pulling at least one sickie in the last year, and 18 to 24-year-olds were markedly more likely to pull a sickie than any other age group, with just under two thirds (6 percent) admitting to doing so. Just 12 percent of employees aged 65+ said they had lied about an illness in the last year. Men are twice as likely as women to pull a sickie because they are hungover, and women are almost 10 percent more likely pull a sickie because they are feeling stressed.
Over half (52 percent) of people who work remotely feel their colleagues don’t treat them equally, claims a new study. Working remotely has become a highly sought-after job perk and having the flexibility to live and work where you please, regardless of corporate headquarters, often draws people to take one job over another. But a survey from VitalSmarts produced by David Maxfield and Joseph Grenny, authors of the bestsellers Crucial conversations and Crucial Accountability, found that remote employees have a significantly harder time with a number of workplace challenges than their onsite colleagues. 67 percent of remote employees complained that colleagues didn’t fight for their priorities compared 59 percent of onsite employees. 41 percent of remote employees believed colleagues say bad things about them behind their back compared to 31 percent of onsite employees and 64 percent of remote employees had changes made to a project without warning vs. 58 percent of onsite employees. Over a third (35 percent) of remote employees thought colleagues were lobbying against them vs. 26 percent of onsite employees.
Banking and finance companies within the FTSE 100 have increased gender and ethnic diversity at board level, but there remains a question over whether minorities can break through the glass ceiling, as many of the top roles in banking and finance companies (Chair, CEO & CFO) remain a closed shop for ethnic minority and female leaders. This is according to a new study from Green Park which claims the leadership pipeline, supplying the highest tier of management in FTSE 100 banking and finance companies, now features the highest level of ethnic minority talent in four years, including 15 percent of professionals with a non-white background compared with 5 percent of leadership pipelines for FTSE 100 companies overall and 6.5 percent in 2014. The banking and finance sector has also met the target set by Lord Davies that 25 percent of board members should be female. However, this has been updated by the Hampton-Alexander Review to a target of 33 percent by 2020, which suggests that banking and finance companies will still need to do more to increase the proportion of female leaders in their leadership pipelines.
November 10, 2017
Warnings of widening gender pay gap as women are hit hardest by low pay
by Sara Bean • Comment, Flexible working, News, Wellbeing, Workplace
It is Equal Pay Day today (Friday 10th November) – the day in the year which is marked in the calendar as the one where women start to work for free, and the campaigning charity the Fawcett Society has warned that the pay gap is actually widening for some groups of women and will now take 100 years to close, based on the current rate of change. Research by the Living Wage Foundation published to mark the day has also revealed women are hit hardest by low pay in the UK. Women make up nearly two thirds (62 percent) of workers currently struggling to make ends meet on less than the real Living Wage claims the Foundation, which amounts to 3.4 million women compared to 2.1 million men. Nearly 1/3 of all UK working women (26 percent) are still earning less than the Living Wage, compared to just 16 percent of all working men. And this trend has been the case since 2011, when KPMG and the Living Wage Foundation launched its annual Living Wage report.
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