Search Results for: skills

September 8, 2015

Over a fifth of working mothers denied flexible hours are forced to quit ⁰

by Sara Bean • Comment, Flexible working, News, Workplace

Discussions about the gender pay gap and increasing the number of women on Boards need to acknowledge that the greatest obstacle to female empowerment in the UK is balancing home and family. Just last week the TUC revealed that many women felt compelled to take time out of work to care for young children while another survey found over half of working women believe they would need to alter their career in order to have a child. Now the latest figures fromthe workingmums.co.uk 2015 Annual Survey show that over a fifth of working mums have been forced to leave their jobs because a flexible working request was turned down. Although the right to request flexible working was extended to all employees last year, this new policy has a less rigid timetable for employers and no statutory right to appeal if a request is turned down.

September 7, 2015

Employment is increasingly dependent on an ability to get on with people ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Knowledge, News, Technology, Workplace

It can be heartening to learn that there will still be a role for humans in the forthcoming world of robots, drones and driverless vehicles. Inevitably, it is those skills that are hard to automate that will define many of the human jobs of the near future and so one of the skills that will continue to attract paid employment will be the ability to get on with other people. This skill has already defined the labour market for the past 35 years and helped to narrow gender differences in the job market. These are the main conclusions of a new report published by David Deming of the US based National Bureau of Economic Research. According to his working paper “The Growing Importance of Social Skills in the Labor Market,” which is currently awaiting peer review, nearly all job growth since 1980 has been in occupations that depend to a large extent on well developed social skills.

September 4, 2015

UK surveyors remain slow to adopt BIM despite awareness of risks ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • News, Property, Technology

According to a new survey from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, around a half (49 percent) of surveyors do not use Building Information Modelling (BIM) on a regular basis, despite the fact that a significant majority (74 percent) have considered the business case and a similar proportion (73 percent) acknowledge that non-adoption will create significant challenges for the UK construction sector. When asked for the reason for non-adoption. around two thirds (68 percent) feel they lack the information to adopt BIM properly, a third (31 percent) claim there is no need for their own firm and a quarter (26 percent) say they lack the technical skills needed for adoption. This is in spite of that fact that over half of all respondents (55 percent) say that they are currently working with architects that use BIM.

September 2, 2015

Flexible working key to counteracting female workers’ ‘baby shame’ ⁰

by Sara Bean • Comment, Flexible working, News, Workplace

Whether the gender pay gap is more of a motherhood gap is an ongoing debate, but now a new survey has found that when even planning to have children, one in five (18 percent) working women hide their family plans from their employers. In an interview with the BBC yesterday, Labour Party leader candidate Yvette Cooper revealed that when she took maternity leave from her ministerial job in 2001, there was no procedure in place and when she sought maternity leave a couple of years later, things were made very difficult for her. If that’s how a high powered government minister is treated then it is no wonder over half (58 percent) of women feel they would have to alter their career in order to have a child, and why three quarters feel flexible working which doesn’t leave women feeling ‘baby shame’ for working child friendly hours is essential.

August 14, 2015

Far from being on board, older women still face recruitment bias ⁰

by Sara Bean • Comment, News, Workplace

The news that the Davies review has met its 25 per cent target for female representation on boards, and is now considering setting a target that a quarter of executives at FTSE 100 companies should be female, has been met with approval by the Institute of Directors, which said it was right that the focus is on increasing the number of women in senior executive positions. But what about those further down the salary scale, where many older women struggle to even get a job interview? A recent study carried out by Anglia Ruskin University’s Lord Ashcroft International Business School shows that older jobseekers face widespread discrimination in the UK, with older female applicants more likely to experience bias than men. The study found no significant link between a company having a HR department or providing commitments to equal opportunities, and the level of discrimination it displayed.

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 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.

August 2, 2015

Female bosses enhance workforce engagement and motivation

by Gill Buchanan • Comment, Flexible working, Wellbeing, Workplace

As businesses begin to ease out of recession they are starting to feel more confident in the economy and look at how they can increase spend. But while companies adjust to their new found growth they must ensure that their employees are reassured that they have a voice and, more importantly, are listened to. At Pure, we’ve recently taken a look at the wider impact which employee engagement can have on businesses big and small using an analysis of some key research. This included some illuminating data on gender roles, which included the fact that employees who work for a female manager are 6 percent more engaged, on average, than those who work for a male manager; female employees who work for a female manager are the most engaged, at 35 percent and male employees who work for a male manager are the least engaged, at 25 percent.

July 30, 2015

Far from dying out, the office is becoming more essential than ever

by Luke Finch • Comment, Technology, Workplace design

Samsung recently released a new report which explores how our offices might look in the year 2025. The death of the office has been predicted over and over again, however the Samsung Smarter Futures Report goes against the grain and predicts that the office could actually become more important than ever. Driven by the adoption of smart technology the report claims that offices will become hubs for productivity and collaboration and what Samsung calls ‘Creative Villages’. Smart technology will create devices and systems that take notes, automate admin tasks, organise meetings and deliver information as you need it. This will mean employees have more time for face to face communication and collaborative work. As a consequence, current trends such as flexible working and agile workspace could actually become less of an issue than they are currently.

July 28, 2015

Government urges employers to recruit untapped disabled talent

by Sara Bean • Legal news, News, Workplace

The number of disabled people in employment has experienced a growth equivalent to around 650 people every day, according to new figures from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). They’ve been published to mark the first two years of Disability Confident; launched in 2013 to work with employers to remove barriers, increase understanding and ensure that disabled people have the opportunities to fulfill their potential in the workplace. The campaign has been backed by 376 firms so far and seen the number of disabled people in work increase by 238,000. With research this week from the Centre for Economic and Business Research and Averline, revealing that small employers still had 520,000 vacancies that they were unable to fill because of a lack of relevant skills; Minister for Disabled People, Justin Tomlinson, challenged businesses to consider the boost untapped disabled talent could bring to their workforce.

July 27, 2015

Fifth of new mothers claim to experience workplace discrimination

by Sara Bean • Legal news, News, Workplace

One in five new mothers experienced harassment or negative comments from their colleagues, employer or manager when pregnant or returning from maternity leave, a new report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission claims. It also found disturbing evidence that around 54,000 new mothers may be forced out of their jobs in Britain each year. The findings are based on a survey of over 3,200 women, in which 11 percent of the women interviewed reported having been dismissed, made compulsorily redundant where others in their workplace were not, or treated so poorly they felt they had to leave their jobs. If replicated across the population as a whole, this could mean as many as 54,000 women losing their jobs each year. Despite this perception, the majority of employers claimed they were firm supporters of female staff during and after their pregnancies and find it easy to comply with the law.

July 22, 2015

OECD nations need to urgently address the coming digital workplace

by Mark Eltringham • News, Technology, Workplace, Workplace design

There is now an urgent need for the world’s growing number of digital economies to shift their focus to how they help people to manage their own transition to a new form of digital workplace. That is the main conclusion of a new report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The OECD Digital Economy Outlook 2015 claims that while most countries have moved from a narrow focus on communications technology to a broader digital approach, they now need to address the significant and growing risk of disruption in areas like privacy and jobs. The report – which covers areas from broadband penetration and industry consolidation to network neutrality and cloud computing in OECD countries says more should be done to offer information and communication technology (ICT) skills training to help people transition to new types of digital jobs.