June 4, 2015
Third of working women feel disadvantaged in the workplace
One in three (31%) successful working women in the UK say that men are offered greater opportunities at work, according to new research by Badenoch & Clark. The research claims that the glass ceiling is still a barrier to women in the workplace and this is especially true in typically male-dominated professions such as law and the IT industry. 58 percent of women in the private sector say that their organisation had leadership and development programmes compared to only 48 percent of women in the public sector. When asked why men are offered more opportunities, over half of the women surveyed (57%) said it was because of an unconscious gender bias with male-dominated senior teams preferring to recruit, mentor and measure performance in their own image. This suggests that the challenging issue of gender bias cannot be resolved through development programmes alone.
June 8, 2015
Three reasons why National Work From Home Day has it all wrong
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, Public Sector, Technology
Last Friday was National Work From Home Day in the UK. Each year, the TUC and organisers Work Wise seem to take this as an opportunity to analyse data about the uptake of flexible working and arrive at the wrong conclusions. This year, its analysis of the ONS Labour Force Survey found that the number of people regularly working from home had increased by more than 800,000 since 2005, taking the total to over 4.2 million. These are solid enough data, but what are we to make of TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady’s conclusion that: “these figures show millions of British workers have adopted homeworking and are enjoying a better work-life balance, while saving time and money on costly commuting that benefits no-one”? There are several reasons to suggest that he’s got that wrong to a large extent.
More →