Search Results for: employment

September 17, 2015

Growth of on demand economy is transforming work and workplaces ⁰

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

Some of the key characteristics of the workplace of the near future are starting to crystallise pretty rapidly. In many ways, employees are aware of this to a greater extent than employers, legislators and politicians. For example, this week and over recent weeks Uber has been arguing in courts around the world that its drivers are not employees but are in fact self-employed. This is the shape of things to come. In the UK, around a fifth of the workforce is already freelance or self-employed, something which politicians like to misinterpret as small business, possibly because it makes them look better because they associate it with entrepreneurialism and the prospects of these firms employing other people. The idea this is simply not the case is supported by a new report from software provider Intuit which claims that just 13 percent of British workers think they will be in traditional employment in 2025.

September 16, 2015

UK pay rates predicted to overtake rest of Western Europe ⁰

by Sara Bean • News, Workplace

Latest figures from the ONS show that after several years of pay rises at or below the level of inflation, the UK has seen average pay rates grow at the fastest rate since 2009. Unemployment rates are unchanged at 5.5 percent compared with February to April 2015 but lower than for a year earlier (6.2 percent). Comparing May to July 2015 to a year earlier, both total pay (including bonuses) and regular pay (excluding bonuses) for employees in Great Britain increased by 2.9 percent. According to the latest Salary Budget Planning Study from Towers Watson’s, this upward trend will continue, with British workers set to enjoy a boom in real-terms pay increases in 2015. The study, primarily covering private sector companies, shows that average UK pay rises of 3 percent, coupled with record low annual inflation of 0.2 percent, will outstrip those enjoyed by workers in all other major European economies.

September 11, 2015

New analysis claims to reveal resurgence of long hours culture ⁰

by Sara Bean • Legal news, News, Wellbeing, Workplace

The Government is being urged to reassess its plans to request an opt-out from the EU Working Time Directive, when it seeks to renegotiate the terms of the UK’s membership of the EU. The Directive stipulates a 48 hour working week, which the Government has argued is stifling competitiveness and flexibility. According to research by the TUC, the number of people working excessive hours has risen by 15 per cent since 2010, following more than a decade of decline in long hours working, with the number of employees working more than 48 hours per week reaching 3,417,000 – up by 453,000 since 2010. The union says many people are working unpaid overtime and at least a million report that they want to cut their excessive hours. The return of the long hours culture makes people feel pressured to ‘opt-out’ from the 48 hour limit as a condition of employment as currently, individual opt-outs are allowed by law.

September 9, 2015

Five unconventional ways to attract and retain Millennial talent ⁰

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, Flexible working, Knowledge, News, Workplace

Almost one third of millennial staff (29 percent) claim that a higher salary is the biggest contributor to their loyalty, despite only 20 percent of the broader American workforce reporting the same; the Staples Advantage Workplace Index, a study of office workers in the US and Canada claims. US office workers consider title and work responsibilities (38 percent) and work-life balance (30 percent) as leading contributors to their loyalty, but Millennials favour less traditional benefits including more flexibility; generous office amenities, such as gyms; a company which promotes and supports sustainable practices; a more sociable working environment with plenty of breaks; and finally, lots of positive feedback from their direct line manager. Unsurprisingly, unlike other generations of workers, Millennials say that the use of social media enhances rather than detracts from their productivity.

September 1, 2015

Government announces plans to improve national levels of fair pay ⁰

by Sara Bean • Legal news, News, Workplace

A package of measures designed to improve levels of fair pay have been announced by the Government today; including doubling the penalties for non-payment of the National Minimum Wage and the new National Living Wage; increasing the enforcement budget and setting up a new team in HMRC to take forward criminal prosecutions for those who deliberately do not comply. A new team of compliance officers in HMRC will investigate the most serious cases of employers not paying the National Minimum Wage and National Living Wage when it is introduced in April 2016. This team will have the power to use all available sanctions, including penalties, prosecutions and naming and shaming the most exploitative employers. Employers who fail to pay staff at least the minimum wage they are legally entitled to will have to pay double what they do now.

August 20, 2015

81 percent of women and over half of men experience sexism at work ⁰

by Sara Bean • Comment, News, Workplace

What’s the difference between office banter and comments which can make people feel uncomfortable at work? That’s the issue which has plagued the workplace for aeons, and the age of so-called political correctness has not made the situation any clearer. Legislation may be in place to protect staff from discrimination or victimisation, but as some well documented cases have demonstrated sexism is still rife in many white collar professions. But it’s worth noting that it’s not only women who can feel that a colleague has crossed the line. A new survey has found that well over three quarters of women (81 percent) have been victims of sexist jokes at work. However, men are not immune to feeling uncomfortable, as according to the survey by Peninsula, well over half of men (63 percent) feel uneasy when female colleagues make indecent remarks about their physical appearance.

August 18, 2015

Car sharing and longer commutes are the keys to workforce mobility ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Cities, Flexible working, News

The Government should introduce new policies to incentivise people to car share and travel further afield to find work. Those are two of the key finding of a new report, On The Move, from the think tank Policy Exchange which sets out ways to improve the mobility of the British workforce. Making it easier for people to commute twenty minutes further afield would put them in touch with at least one additional major urban area and potentially 10,000 more job opportunities, according to the report. Additionally, it suggests that drivers who offer fellow commuters a lift should be given a tax break. The authors claim that in a third of local authorities that make up the eight city regions no major employment sites (defined as having 5,000 or more jobs) are within a twenty minute commute by public transport and 80 percent of these Local Authorities have an unemployment rate above the national average.

August 14, 2015

Apathy, laxity and ineptitude continue to dog data security issues ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Technology

How firms must hanker for the days when the issue of corporate data security could usually be addressed simply by asking what somebody had in their bag when they left the building or were fired. Amongst other things, the practice of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) means that the ways for data to leak out of the organisation are now numerous, if not generally malicious. A new cluster of reports has emerged that highlight how carelessness, indifference, cultural ineptitude and the complexities of unmanaged, privately owned technology make it increasingly difficult for firms to maintain the security of their data. While some of the sources of this leakage are generally well known, a couple that are not generally acknowledged is the apathy of employees when it comes to keeping work files safe and secure and the lax attitude of employers when breaches occur.

August 11, 2015

The key to the productivity puzzle may be to give people better jobs ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Knowledge, News, Workplace

Ever since the UK started to emerge from the economic downturn there has been a great deal of brow beating about the so-called productivity puzzle. Although the UK economy grew between 2012 and 2014, productivity fell by 1.15 percent. In addition, the UK has a productivity gap of between 23 and 32 per cent between it and comparable economies such as Germany, France and the Netherlands. When considering the reasons for this, most of the time a finger has been pointed at some old favourites such as working practices, a lack of engagement or – according to this feature published in HR Magazine this week – individual behaviour. Now a new report from the Institute for Public Policy research (IPPR) claims that the problems are far more complex than people typically assume and that one of the major factors is the jobs people are offered.

August 11, 2015

Regional differentiations as job pay gap accelerates worldwide ⁰

by Sara Bean • News, Workplace

Since 2008 the pay gap between lower level employees and senior managers has widened in every region across the world, a global survey has found. The pay gap between lower level workers (comprising skilled manual, clerical, supervisor or graduate entry jobs) and senior managers (heads of departments or equivalent) is now on the rise in as twice as many countries as it is falling (42 to 21). The latest research from global management consultancy Hay Group reveals however that Europe has the smallest gap, with an average increase in the pay gap of only 2.2 percent since 2008. This has been fuelled in part by the use of communal pay cuts to avoid redundancies, whereas US firms prefer to cut jobs and urge remaining senior managers to expand their job roles. The research underlines how a large job pay gap can lead to discontent and disengagement among the workforce.

August 10, 2015

London is leading the way in the global coworking revolution ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Property, Workplace design

Changing attitudes amongst occupiers towards office space and the explosion in the numbers of freelance workers and microbusinesses are driving an upsurge in coworking and other flexible working environments worldwide. That is the key conclusion of a new report from DTZ which claims that the number of dedicated flexible working locations worldwide is likely to hit 50,000 over the next three years, with parts of London leading the way. We reported recently how coworking pioneer WeWork has already announced its plans to dominate London’s commercial property scene in the same way it already does Manhattan’s. Now, the How You Work report from DTZ suggests that this is the shape of things to come for many cities, with London leading the way alongside a tranche of global tech and creative centres such as New York, Berlin and Shanghai.

August 4, 2015

Employers must support older workers with chronic ill health ⁰

by Sara Bean • Legal news, News, Wellbeing, Workplace

As a recent profile in the Guardian Magazine of workers in their 70s, 80s and 90s illustrated, people who work well into old age are still viewed as remarkable. Yet by 2020, a third of the UK’s workforce will be more than 50 years old. Following the scrapping of the Default Retirement Age, more than 1.4m people in the UK are working after state retirement age, of whom around 300,000 are aged over 70. Now the Health at Work Policy Unit of Lancaster University’s Work Foundation has issued a White Paper, ‘Living Long, Working Well: Supporting older workers with health conditions to remain active at work’, which warns that 42 per cent of over 50s have often manageable chronic illnesses that – if left unsupported by employers, could undermine their productivity, increase their absence from work or even force them out of work altogether.