Search Results for: people

February 27, 2017

UK firm asks 16,000 employees whether their jobs could be done by robots ⁰

UK insurance firm Aviva has asked 16,000 of its employees whether they believe their jobs could be done better by robots. The consultation process will see those people who answer yes retrained for a new role within the business. Research by Oxford Martin School recently warned that 35 percent of jobs in the UK were in danger of automation over the next 20 years. Insurance underwriters were at the top of the list, rated 98.9 percent at risk. Despite frequent warnings that automation will disrupt a wide swath of industries, many workers believe that their own job is safe. This is in spite of warnings such as that from Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, who claimed recently that automation could put 15 million British jobs at risk, equivalent to nearly half of the 31.8 million people who work in the UK. Most recent research backs this up. A White House report from 2016 concluded that between 9 percent and 47 percent of all American jobs are vulnerable, including around 80 percent of jobs paying less than $20 an hour. Image: SoftBank Robotics

February 24, 2017

White paper: a new world of learning environments ⁰

by Oliver Ronald • Briefing, Insight Briefings, Premium Content, Workplace design

The traditional structures of work and education were forged in the fires of the Industrial Revolution. They shared many characteristics. They were rigid, hierarchical and based on a patriarchal approach to achieving their aims. In education, this manifested itself in the traditional didactic form that was, until recently, seen as the ideal model, based on teachers, tutors and lecturers imparting knowledge and learning to their pupils and students as part of an agreed curriculum and to an approved timetable. How well this process turned out was checked with periodic testing. For some time now, people have been questioning this structure and, with it, the design of learning environments. Over the past few decades, we have not only developed the technologies to allow us to learn in new ways, we have also developed a far better understanding of the processes involved.

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February 23, 2017

Digital transformation and flexible workforce will help drive growth, say senior managers ⁰

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

Implementing new technologies over the next 12 months is of primary importance for senior managers, with nearly two-fifths of finance directors saying digital transformation is one of their greatest priorities. Against a backdrop of economic uncertainty, chief financial officers (CFOs) are focusing on increasing profitability (41 percent) and driving overall company growth (39 percent) in the year ahead, according to research from, Robert Half Management Resources which claims that CFOs and finance directors (FDs) will assume more responsibility for balancing traditional financial responsibilities with developing business strategy. The use of temporary and interim professionals also looks set to continue with a third of CFOs and FDs planning to use temporary staff for business transformation projects to either fill vacated positions or support active expansion. In the long-term, 31 percent of finance executives plan to actively add new permanent positions to implement the company’s digitisation and automation efforts over the next 12 months.

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February 22, 2017

MPs criticise the Government’s response to gender pay gap recommendations ⁰

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, Legal news, News, Workplace

If the Government will fail to achieve its goal of eliminating the gender pay gap in a generation if it continues to ignore the evidence which it is being given, a cross-party committee of MPs has said. The Women and Equalities Committee is disappointed with the Government’s response to a series of recommendations it put forward last March, which it says shows that the Government is not effectively tackling the structural causes of the gender pay gap. While the Government’s recognises the business case for reducing the gender pay gap and acknowledges structural factors contributing to the pay gap, including women doing jobs for which they are overqualified, concentration in part-time work, and being penalised for taking time out of work to raise children; it rejects most of the Committee’s seventeen evidence-based recommendations for addressing these issues. Instead it highlights gender pay gap reporting, as “key to accelerating progress,” and maintains that current policies on Shared Parental Leave, flexible working, and supporting women back into work are adequate.

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February 22, 2017

New book offers a roadmap for workers in the age of smart machines ⁰

by Neil Franklin • News, Technology

University of Virginia Darden School of Business Professor Ed Hess and Katherine Ludwig have released a new book, Humility Is the New Smart: Rethinking Human Excellence in the Smart Machine Age (Berrett-Koehler, January 2017), where they wrestle with the defining workplace question of our era and offer workable solutions for employees to stay relevant. In the book, Hess and Ludwig argue that workers of the world stand at the brink of an unprecedented transformation, as a coming age of smart machines promises to eliminate tens of millions of jobs across the socioeconomic spectrum. The transition to an era of widespread automation will be tumultuous for both companies and employees, and its effects on the fabric of society have not yet been fully considered by workers, government entities or global corporations.

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February 21, 2017

We need to rethink everything we know about self-employment and the gig economy ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News

The rise in self-employment is being led by workers in relatively ‘privileged’ high-skilled, higher-paying sectors such as advertising and banking rather than the gig economy. Their considerable tax advantages over employees, rather than new technology and the gig economy, are central to the rapid growth in self-employment, according to a new analysis published by the Resolution Foundation. Self-employed workers in the larger but slower growing ‘precarious’ sectors that have dominated the recent public debate, enjoy a much lower tax advantages over employees but still miss out on important pay and employment rights. The analysis shows that 60 per cent of the growth in self-employment since 2009 has been in ‘privileged’ sectors, despite them making up just 40 per cent of the self-employed. The fastest growing sectors have been advertising (100 per cent growth), public administration (90 per cent), and banking (60 per cent). The remaining 40 per cent of the growth in self-employment has come in more ‘precarious’ sectors, such as construction and cleaning. The Foundation notes that despite the focus on Uber in recent years, the sector that includes taxis is actually only up 7 per cent since 2009, a third of the 22 per cent growth in self-employment up as a whole.

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February 21, 2017

Older workers increasingly marginalised at work despite their growing numbers ⁰

by Neil Franklin • Wellbeing, Workplace design

Older workers are at risk of being marginalised in the workplace according to a new survey of office workers from workplace consultants Peldon Rose, which claims that there are significant differences in the wellbeing, attitudes and motivations of the workplace’s oldest and youngest employees. The over 50s now account for more than 30 percent of the UK’s working population (9.4million people), but according to the study older workers are the least content of all employees with less than a quarter (23 percent) of the 55+ age group feeling appreciated by their company and 80 percent suffering from or having suffered from workplace stress. In contrast, the workplace’s newest recruits, the under 25 year olds, are the office’s most positive employees with over half (55 percent) feeling appreciated by their company and 60 percent – the lowest of all age groups – suffering or having suffered from workplace stress.

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February 17, 2017

CIPD calls for more ethical approaches to pay and reward ⁰

by Sara Bean • Legal news, News, Workplace

The CIPD and the High Pay Centre have launched a formal partnership to advocate fairer and more ethical approaches to pay and reward. Together they are calling for a major re-think of corporate governance to improve CEO pay transparency and ensure boards recognise their broader responsibility towards the workforce when decisions on executive pay and business investment are made. In their joint response to the Government’s green paper on corporate governance, which seeks views on how to curb excessive CEO pay and boost employee voice at board level, the CIPD and High Pay Centre point out that if FTSE 100 CEO pay continues to increase at the same rate for the next 20 years as it has for the last two decades, the average ratio between a CEO and average pay would increase from about 129:1 to more than 400:1. The CIPD chief executive Peter Cheese argues in the report that current levels of executive pay undermine both trust and sustainability and making small adjustments to current system isn’t the right approach.

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February 17, 2017

Employees demand end to rigid structures and siloed working practises ⁰

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, News, Workplace

Employees would like more freedom and flexibility at work with over half believing that the structure and culture of their workplaces are holding them back from doing their job more effectively (55 percent and 53 percent respectively). That’s according to new research from ILM, which has launched a new report calling for workplaces across the UK to foster a more collaborative culture in order to boost business success. The research found that more than a third (34 percent) of UK employees felt they worked in a regulated and controlled structure. When asked how they’d like to change their company culture, the top answer was more freedom and flexibility (35 percent) followed by more innovation and creativity (32 percent). Three quarters (74 percent) of employees say they would like more freedom at work. Although employers tend to agree with the need for teams to have more freedom, with two in five (40 percent) saying they’d like a more flexible culture, more would prefer to champion innovation and creativity (46 percent), indicating a disconnect between the way that businesses and their people are keen to work.

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February 16, 2017

Germany most popular country for career relocation, despite lack of flexible working ⁰

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

Nearly three quarters of European employees would consider career opportunities abroad, with Germany voted the most desirable place to work claims a new study of nearly 10,000 working adults across Europe. According to research by ADP which looked at how employees feel about the future of work, international competitiveness and talent management, European employees have a strong appetite for international work, as almost three quarters (74 percent) would consider other countries for career opportunities. At 21 percent, Germany tops the list of most popular places to relocate, with the United Kingdom (15 percent) and France (12 percent) in second and third place; with North America surprisingly coming in much further down the list in 12th place. Despite their popularity, Germany, the UK and France aren’t particularly strong in any of the areas measured in the survey, such as skills and development, flexible working options and stress in the workplace.

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February 15, 2017

UK employment rises to record levels (and productivity is up too) ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • News

The UK’s employment rate rose to 74.6 per cent in the final three months of last year, the highest rate recorded since data started being collected in 1971, according to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics published today. The data also showed that UK productivity grew by 0.3 percent in Quarter 4 of 2016, following an increase of 0.4 percent in Q3, and that average earnings were 2.6 per cent higher over the fourth quarter compared with the same period in 2015. The growth in employment is seen to reflect a decline in the proportion of adults who are inactive but not seeking work. The unemployment rate remained at 4.8 per cent, the lowest level since 2005. The number of people in full-time employment rose by 45,000 in the three months to December. This was partly offset by a 7,000 fall in the number of people working part-time.

February 14, 2017

Level of wellbeing higher for those who ‘wind-down’ into retirement ⁰

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

New research into the effect of retirement on wellbeing commissioned by The What Works Centre for Wellbeing claims that those who gradually reduce their working time with more flexible hours improve their levels of wellbeing. The study looked at all existing research and found that part-time working towards the end of our careers improves life satisfaction. It advises that employers should support older workers to ‘wind-down’ into retirement with bridging jobs or reduce their working hours to avoid poor wellbeing, a new international study reveals. However, the research highlights that this depends on whether employees had control over when they retired, rather than being forced out through ill health or restructuring. If people take up bridging jobs because of financial strain, their wellbeing drops. Even after accounting for income and health, wellbeing is higher for those who have control over the timing or plan for their retirement, and voluntary retirees derive greater pleasure from free time in retirement. On the contrary, wellbeing is lower for those who are involuntarily retired, especially due to health reasons.