March 11, 2019
UK employers struggling with recruitment and retention of service workers
The recruitment and retention of manual and elementary service workers has become a significant challenge for UK employers, claims a new study. The research by Quinyx in collaboration with Development Economics and Censuswide, found that factors such as low pay and a lack of flexibility are key issue, resulting in nearly half (49 percent) of UK employers finding it difficult to recruit these workers, and the same percentage reporting challenges around retention. Issues with recruitment and retention were discovered to be most acute in industries such as hospitality, catering & leisure and retail. In addition, larger businesses (those with a workforce of 250 to 500) are more likely to face challenges compared to smaller-sized businesses. Regionally, businesses in London and the East of England are most likely to struggle to recruit workers into manual or elementary service roles. The findings come at a time when UK employers are expressing growing concern around access to manual and elementary service workers post-Brexit.
Many built environment businesses are adopting increasingly ambitious sustainability commitments reports the UK Green Building Council in its third annual report ‘Leading the Way’. This presents trends and analysis from research conducted as part of UKGBC’s annual Sustainability 360 Reviews, which look at sustainability trends and insights amongst UKGBC’s 50 industry-leading Gold Leaf member businesses.
By failing to properly explore what service provision is offered in the event of a serious incident such as flood or fire, businesses are leaving themselves vulnerable to a failing of business continuity, a new survey from Regus suggests. The survey found that 40 percent of businesses rely solely on what their workplace recovery provider tells them, or what is in their contract to protect them from a crisis. The lack of testing of recovery facilities by businesses also leaves them open to further disruption, with businesses at risk of finding that, in reality, the location they have been allocated is too small, with seats only available on a first-come-first-served basis, leaving business-critical staff unable to work.
March 8, 2019
On International Woman’s Day – why advancing women is still not a business priority
by Sara Bean • Comment, Legal news, News, Workplace
It has probably not escaped your notice that today is International Woman’s Day, which for Workplace Insight means a plethora of studies on the topic of women/jobs/salaries and ways women might work differently to men. We’ve decided not to waste anyone’s time and ignored most of them (particularly the patronizing ones on how ladies are so intuitive) but managed to find a few kernels of information. First, the good news that women have doubled their share of top jobs at technology companies, pulling in higher salaries than men last year, according to executive search firm Odgers Berndtson. More →