November 22, 2017
Address gender and economic barriers to tech revolution says BT
Young people from less privileged backgrounds and females face greater barriers to joining the tech revolution, a new report suggests. Tech know-how: The new way to get ahead for the next generation, from BT and Accenture could boost the next generation’s tech skills and help charge social mobility and economic growth. The study found individuals with higher levels of tech know-how earn more as their career progresses, with a ‘tech literacy wage premium’ of £10,000 per year. The implied salary increase if people develop their skills could add approximately £11 billion to UK GDP by 2022. However, young people whose parents have higher levels of education are 26 percent more likely to see themselves as ‘expert’ or ‘creative’ users of tech in the next five years; and those whose parents fall into the top two education levels expect to earn salaries that are 19 percent higher than the bottom two. The report also highlighted a stark gender divide as young men receive 46 percent more encouragement from parents and teachers to build their tech skills than their female counterparts, and are 17 percent more likely to report having had sufficient training at school.
Line managers can improve the performance of their teams by focussing on building their strengths, rather than trying to fix their weaknesses, claims new research published by the CIPD. 
Most private sector workers are still not pushing for pay rises, despite falling real wages and low unemployment, according to the latest quarterly CIPD/The Adecco Group Labour Market Outlook survey. Only a quarter (24 percent) of employers in the private sector say they are under some or significant pressure to raise wages from the majority of their workforce, while almost four in ten private sector firms (38 percent) say they face no pressure at all to raise wages. The most common reason given by private sector employers (23 percent) for the lack of pressure to raise wages is a recognition among workers that the business cannot afford more generous pay increases, underlining the productivity challenge many firms face. The survey of more than 2,000 UK employers shows a slightly higher proportion of private sector employers (36 percent) cite either some or significant pay pressure to raise wages for certain roles, particularly among high and middle-skilled jobs.
Banking and finance companies within the FTSE 100 have increased gender and ethnic diversity at board level, but there remains a question over whether minorities can break through the glass ceiling, as many of the top roles in banking and finance companies (Chair, CEO & CFO) remain a closed shop for ethnic minority and female leaders. This is according to a new study from Green Park which claims the leadership pipeline, supplying the highest tier of management in FTSE 100 banking and finance companies, now features the highest level of ethnic minority talent in four years, including 15 percent of professionals with a non-white background compared with 5 percent of leadership pipelines for FTSE 100 companies overall and 6.5 percent in 2014. The banking and finance sector has also met the target set by Lord Davies that 25 percent of board members should be female. However, this has been updated by the Hampton-Alexander Review to a target of 33 percent by 2020, which suggests that banking and finance companies will still need to do more to increase the proportion of female leaders in their leadership pipelines.
Businesses are concerned about the pace of commitment to improving the UK’s infrastructure, and a record number of firms are dissatisfied with the state of infrastructure in their region. With the UK currently ranking 27th in the world for the quality of its infrastructure, nearly all (96 percent) of businesses in the 2017 CBI/AECOM Infrastructure Survey see infrastructure as important (of which 55 percent view it as critical) to the Government’s agenda. From the Clean Growth Strategy and the £500 billion infrastructure pipeline to its decision to build a new runway at Heathrow and press ahead with the A303 tunnel, the Government has made clear its commitment to British infrastructure. However, only one in five firms is satisfied with the pace of delivery (20 percent) and almost three quarters (74 percent) doubt infrastructure will improve over this Parliament. This lack of confidence is attributed primarily to policy inconsistency (+94 percent of firms) & political risk (+86 percent). The digital sector is the exception, however, where 59 percent of firms are confident of improvements.
