December 6, 2017
Just half of UK businesses have the right skills to combat a cyberattack
Only half (50 percent) of UK companies believe they have the right skills to address a cyberattack, despite some high profile cyberattacks this year against the NHS, Uber and Equifax. A lack of cybersecurity skills may be due to a wider skills gaps facing the UK tech industry, claims new research from IT jobs board, CW Jobs. Nearly a third of tech employees reported feeling they were insufficiently trained in coding, cybersecurity and cloud migration. The gaps in employees’ skills is translating to the businesses they work for with 23 percent saying their business is missing programming and cybersecurity skills. A little over half (51 percent) of IT workers said that cybersecurity was included in their training, and almost one in four (23 percent) say they are not confident in handling a cyber security attack. Despite the growing threat and lack of in-house expertise, only half (50 percent) of employers look for cybersecurity skills when recruiting new IT talent. However, despite awareness around the risk of cybersecurity and the lack of preparedness, only 22 percent of employers are currently training their existing staff in cybersecurity.
The future workplace will replace familiar, rigid hierarchies and departments with small, collaborative networks of teams and the lines between individual organisations and ecosystems will blur as companies increasingly cast their net wider to innovate. This is one of the predictions made in a Fujitsu-commissioned whitepaper ‘
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.
December 19, 2017
We need to have an honest conversation about presenteeism
by Steve Brewer • Comment, Flexible working, Workplace design
We have talked before about the risks of over thinking problems. It is not just something that consultants, designers and the workplace intelligentsia are guilty of – everyone does it. It is why we do not switch off when we are ill and still insist on going to work. We over think the consequences of not being in our workplace. Likewise, many traditional line managers simply cannot get their head around their teams working from home. After all, modern management mantras all talk about creating a great atmosphere in which teams all work together – in the same space at the same time? We all tend to over complicate most things and that is one of the main reasons in the UK we struggle with the concept of working from home. A consequence of this is the rise in presenteeism, which is mainly linked to illness, people ignoring how bad they feel and because of a perceived pressure, still turning up for work.
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