November 21, 2018
Go Home On Time Day highlights one of the least discussed workplace issues
Today is National Go Home on Time Day (in Australia at least) and the 10th annual report by The Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work published to coincide with it estimates that Australian employees will work 3.2 billion hours of unpaid overtime for their employers this year, worth an estimated $106 billion in wages. It’s refreshing to see a figure applied to this issue, because most of the stuff we get tends to highlight how much time employers are losing to the myriad of distractions, responsibilities, foibles, preferences, cock-ups and ailments that come with giving jobs to humans. An issue we satirise here. (more…)
A sudden reversal in the growth in the number of both EU and non-EU migrants in employment in the UK could hit employer plans to take on more staff and worsen skills and labour shortages, according to the latest quarterly Labour Market Outlook from the CIPD and The Adecco Group. While the net employment balance – a measure of the difference between the proportion of employers who expect to increase staff levels and those who expect to decrease staff levels – has remained extremely positive at +22 (compared to +23 in Q3 2018), among employers which currently have vacancies, seven in ten (70 percent) report that at least some of their vacancies are proving hard-to-fill, higher than in Summer 2018 (66 percent) and Spring 2018 (61 percent). 
Despite political and economic uncertainly and the aftermath of the global monetary crisis in 2008, London remains a leading global financial centre, with nearly a quarter (24 percent) of the capital’s office take-up attributed to banking and finance occupiers over the last ten years. London is by far the most active banking centre in Europe, according to the latest research from global real estate advisor CBRE. According to the report, 1.1 million people were employed in the UK financial services sector in 2017, of which 34 percent were in London. 
Today is World Mental Health Day and new research from Bupa has found that concerns over mental health is not confined to adults, as a third of employees say they worry about their children’s mental health while at work. The research, conducted among working parents of 4-18 year olds reveals that children’s mental health is among parents’ greatest concerns, on par with physical health and academic performance. The only concern that ranks higher is future financial prospects. 
Almost half (49 percent) of UK workers are in jobs they are either under- or over-skilled for, according to new research from the CIPD. Its report ‘Over-skilled and underused: Investigating the untapped potential of UK skills’ surveyed 3,700 UK employees and found that more than a third (37 percent) of workers have the skills to cope with more demanding duties than they currently have. At the opposite end of the scale, one in ten (12 percent) employees said they lacked all the skills needed to carry out their job effectively. This means that as many as half (49 percent) of UK workers could be in the wrong job, based on their skill level. The UK has one of most skilled workforces in the world, with 42 percent of workers qualified to degree level, yet it also has the highest proportion of jobs within the OECD which require no qualifications at all.
Last year John Cridland 
October 26, 2018
We need to move on from the stigma of mental health to finding solutions
by Gary Helm • Comment, Wellbeing
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