Search Results for: management

UK employers concerned for future of the post Brexit economy despite booming jobs market

UK employers concerned for future of the post Brexit economy despite booming jobs market

by • News, Workplace

Employer confidence in the UK economy has moved into negative territory, according to the latest JobsOutlook survey by the Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC). The net balance fell from +6 per cent last month to -3 per cent in the latest report, as 31 per cent of employers now expect the economy to worsen and just 28 per cent expect it to improve.  Employers are still looking to hire, with one in five (19 per cent) planning to increase permanent headcount in the next three months.  Confidence in making hiring and investment decisions remains positive with a net balance of 10 per cent, but is at its lowest for the past year.  In addition to signs of deteriorating employer confidence, consumers are also becoming more pessimistic. The GfK’s index of consumer confidence fell to -12, equalling last year’s post-referendum low.

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The reason you may not be successful at work could be down to pure blirtatiousness

The reason you may not be successful at work could be down to pure blirtatiousness

by • News, Wellbeing, Workplace

This may seem obvious, but your personality must fit with your network in order to be trusted and successful, new research from UCL School of Management and Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, claims. Otherwise, your friendships might clash with your job. A common situation at work is to have two sets of friends who are not friends with each other. Both sets demand time, attention, and even favouritism from the person in the middle, known as the friendship broker. These expectations put pressure on the broker who must respond with whatever personality resources he or she has available. Some people are able to call upon personality resources that are well adapted to the goal of maintaining trust among their separate and potentially conflicting sets of friends. Other people find themselves unable to maintain trust as they move between different cliques.

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Precarious flexible working lives create toxic relationships between managers and workers, claims study

Precarious flexible working lives create toxic relationships between managers and workers, claims study

by • Flexible working, News, Wellbeing

Millions of British workers are having their health and home life put at risk and are having to beg for extra work to make ends meet because bosses are not offering them regular work patterns, a new study from Oxford and Cambridge Universities suggests. According to the study, Powerful times: Flexible discipline and schedule gifts at work published in the journal Work, Employment and Society, around 4.6 million people are subject to ‘precarious scheduling’ from employers which means that their hours are so inconsistent and unpredictable that they cannot make plans, leading to stress and problems in their home lives. The researchers said that many workers now find themselves in ‘degrading’ relationships with managers in which they are obliged to constantly ask for more work and changes to allow them to care for children and plan their domestic and recreational lives.
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How workplace design shapes and reflects organisational hierarchies

How workplace design shapes and reflects organisational hierarchies

by • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design

The roots of the open plan office can be traced back to the 1960s when post-capitalism was beginning to emerge as a political and intellectual movement. The social and political upheaval that followed World War Two and the emphasis on the autonomous, motivated and engaged worker combined to inspire designers and architects to develop a new and more “modern” way of working. A mode of work characterised by an increased emphasis on social relations and flattened hierarchies. The open plan office was heralded as the ‘office of the future’; a progressive, transformative and near utopian design concept which would enable its occupants to thrive and succeed in a more socialist world. Yet the proponents of the open plan do not appear to have been fulfilled in large corporate businesses in the UK. I’d like to suggest that this failure is not a design fault but rather a problem caused by a clash of ideologies. Upon closer inspection, it appears that these larger corporations have not fully been able to shift into the social-democratic model of collaborative, open working styles.

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Ethnic diversity in FTSE 100 leadership pipeline improves for first time in four years

Ethnic diversity in FTSE 100 leadership pipeline improves for first time in four years

by • News, Workplace

A new study from recruitment consultancy Green Park claims that the leadership pipeline, supplying the highest tier of management in FTSE 100 companies now includes the highest level of ethnic minority talent for four years. According to the study, progress is being made with ethnic minorities moving up the management funnel, though at five percent of those in the pipeline it still is not a fair representation of British society. While the pipeline is improving there remains a question over whether minorities can break through the glass ceiling, as the top roles in companies remain a closed shop for ethnic minority and female leaders. There has been a decrease of 18 percent in the number of ethnic minorities holding positions at Chair, CEO and CFO level in FTSE 100 companies.  Almost six in 10 (58 percent) main boards in the FTSE100 currently have no ethnic minority presence. This is a slight improvement on the 62 companies that recorded all-white main boards in last year’s report. Yet it calls into question whether the target set in Sir John Parker’s consultation document that no FTSE board should remain mono-racial by 2020 will be met.

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Shake up of working culture and practices recommended to reduce pay gaps

Shake up of working culture and practices recommended to reduce pay gaps

by • Flexible working, News

All jobs should be advertised as available for flexible working, and greater support should be given to fathers to play more of a role in child care, in a shake-up of culture and working practices to reduce pay gaps, the Equality and Human Rights Commission said today. The call comes as the Commission’s strategy for tackling gender, ethnicity and disability pay gaps is released. A strategy to reduce pay gaps in Britain makes six recommendations outlining the action needed by government, in society and in our businesses to improve equality in earnings for women, ethnic minorities and disabled people. According to the EHRC, offering all jobs as flexible will remove the barriers faced by women and disabled people, who are more likely to have to negotiate flexible working or accept part-time jobs that are often low-paid. Creating work places with flexible cultures will increase opportunities for everyone, giving people greater choice about the role they play both at work and home. More →

Millennials less likely to work remotely as they feel prohibited from working flexibly

Millennials less likely to work remotely as they feel prohibited from working flexibly

by • Flexible working, News, Workplace

There is growing sentiment among younger workers that flexible working is less a right – as outlined by the Government in 2014 – and more a ‘selective benefit’ for a choice group of employees. New research by Michael Page claims that two thirds (67 percent) of millennials believe employees with families are more encouraged to work flexibly than their single colleagues, and 6 in 10 (61 percent) feel the same flexible working privilege appears to apply more to senior co-workers, with junior team members more often discouraged from flexible working initiatives. Nearly half (43 percent) say it is a benefit reserved for management and senior leadership only. As a result, more than 8 in 10 (84 percent) office based millennial employees do not work from home in an average working week – with 82 percent of those saying they are not able or allowed to. This is despite the fact that three quarters (76 percent) of UK office workers confirm that their employer offers flexible working options.

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Seven ways in which flexible working is making our lives more rigid

Seven ways in which flexible working is making our lives more rigid

by • Comment, Flexible working, Technology

One of the main reasons why books such as Catch 22 and 1984 make such mediocre films, is because celluloid struggles to capture the books’ preoccupation with the ways in which language can be used to subvert meaning and rationality. We don’t always have to lean on the bookcase to see how this works. It’s been evident recently in the coverage of the massive growth of zero hours working worldwide, although they have now been banned in New Zealand. There are now up to 1.5 million people on zero hours contracts in the UK and the adjective most commonly associated with the practice in the media coverage has been ‘flexible’, despite the fact that from the perspective of the majority of the people working on such contracts they are anything but. It’s yet another example of the subversion in our use of the term flexible working. It’s Doublespeak; an expression which means something completely different to, or indeed the opposite of, the thing it is describing.

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Large majority of facilities managers believe BIM will have a significant impact on their role

Large majority of facilities managers believe BIM will have a significant impact on their role

by • Facilities management, News, Technology

Building Information Modelling (BIM) has the potential to deliver significant benefits to the facilities management industry, according to the results of a new survey published by The British Institute of Facilities Management (BIFM). The FM Awareness of Building Information Modelling survey, developed in partnership with Liverpool John Moores University and the Zurich University of Applied Sciences, aims to establish a benchmark of the current perceptions of the impact of BIM on the FM sector and the benefits and challenges it presents. The report’s key finidng is that eighty-three per cent of respondents believe BIM will help support the delivery of facilities management, with the same number indicating it is already having an impact, or will do so, in the next five years.

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Men more likely to experience work-related mental health problems

Men more likely to experience work-related mental health problems

by • News, Wellbeing

New research from mental health charity Mind claims that men are twice as likely to have mental health problems due to their job, compared to problems outside of work. One in three men (32 per cent) attribute poor mental health to their job, compared to one in seven men (14 per cent) who say it’s problems outside of work. Women, on the other hand, say that their job and problems outside of work are equal contributing factors; one in five women say that their job is the reason for their poor mental health, the same as those who say problems outside of work is to blame (19 per cent).

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Over a quarter of employers are struggling to keep their workforce engaged

Over a quarter of employers are struggling to keep their workforce engaged

by • Facilities management, Flexible working, News, Wellbeing, Workplace

Nearly one in three (28 percent) of employers are struggling to keep their employees engaged, claims new research from totaljobs, with staff spending too much time internet browsing, being constantly late and chatting with colleagues. Over half of employers said lower productivity (59 percent) and internet browsing (55 percent) were clear signs of lower engagement they were seeing in the workplace. Worryingly, 62 percent said poor performance was a common problem as a result of a lack of engagement. Almost half (48 percent) of employers also report disengaged employees continue to arrive late and leave early, while 41 percent said chatting with colleagues suggested a lack of workplace engagement. The same number again said taking too many breaks during work hours might also indicate disengagement, as well as employees appearing distracted. But when it comes to tackling a lack of employee engagement, one in two employers (51 percent) said clear communication, via email, newsletters and team meetings for example, was an effective strategy to improve engagement. Nearly half (46 percent) of employers said setting out clear objectives for both individuals and teams was also effective.

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Workplace menopause study claims women need more support from employers

Workplace menopause study claims women need more support from employers

by • Flexible working, Wellbeing, Workplace

A new report from the UK Government and University of Leicester has called for menopause-friendly workplaces and culture change programmes. In what the authors claims is the most comprehensive study of its kind, the report claims that ‘many women tend to feel that they need to cope alone’ – because of ‘a reluctance to speak up at work’. The report ‘The effects of menopause transition on women’s economic participation in the UK’ was funded by the Government’s Equalities Office. The research, published by the Department for Education, was carried out by Joanna Brewis, Andrea Davies and Jesse Matheson of the University of Leicester School of Business and Vanessa Beck of the University of Bristol School of Economics, Finance and Management.

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