August 31, 2018
Employers urged to err on the side of caution when the staff commute counts as work
A call for employers to pay staff for the time they spend emailing while commuting has opened up the debate on what constitutes working time for employees. Researchers from the University of the West of England who found that commuters used free Wi-Fi provision on their journey to and from work to ‘catch up’ with work emails, have argued this supported the argument that the commute be counted as work. Until now, there has been little research to evaluate the impact free Wi-Fi provision has had in the UK, despite government encouragement for companies to provide access on transport networks. Traditionally, the government has been more concerned about the benefits of free Wi-Fi for business travellers, but the research team believe that the impact on commuters may be more important. When the researchers looked to Scandinavia to see how commuting time could be measured differently, they found that in Norway some commuters are able to count travel time as part of their working day.
Young people leaving education and looking for work may be missing out on potential employment opportunities by failing to consider Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and the advantages they offer, new research from Santander UK claims. ‘Gen Z’ and Millennials do not believe SMEs offer the same job security or salary as large businesses, meaning just a third (35 percent) of young people leaving education in 2018 want to work for smaller employer, and an even smaller proportion, just one in six (18 percent), want to work for a start-up or micro business. The most popular career aspirations for Generation Z and Millennials are to work for a large firm (51 percent), the public sector (51 percent) or a global multinational (49 percent), because of a perceived lack of job security (56 percent). There is also the belief that SMEs offer a lower salary (46 percent) and fewer opportunities for progression than large companies (33 percent). Yet the majority (70 percent) of SMEs are actively recruiting for entry level roles, whether that be graduates (43 percent), further education leavers (36 percent) or school leavers (35 percent).
The majority of employees are disappointed with their company’s lack of investment in technology, and despite the fact three quarters (76 percent) want to request flexible working – almost half still don’t have the option of working more flexibly, a new report from a technology company claims. According to the survey by technology company Ingram Micro Cloud UK, in collaboration with technology company Microsoft, despite the fact that Millennials and Centennials are often thought to be the driving force behind changing workplace practices – and are often derided in popular discourse for having unreasonable and unrealistic expectations – the calls for change are coming from all segments of the workforce. However, 85 percent of Millennials admit to procuring their own workplace technologies such as instant messaging, Skype, file hosting and sharing tools (all available from Ingram Micro Cloud) that aren’t supported or provided by their employer, which raises major security issues, acco.
