May 14, 2018
Employers face increasing challenge in finding the right person for the job warns CIPD
Employment prospects in the UK are improving, as the number of vacancies in the UK economy remain well above historic average levels, but the CIPD is warning that employers’ demand for skills and labour may not be met by supply. The latest Labour Market Outlook from the CIPD and The Adecco Group shows that employers’ near-term employment expectations have risen to a five-year high. This continued growth in demand for labour, while highlighting employer optimism, is set to lead to a further tightening of the UK labour market for employers, making it harder for them to find the skills and labour they need. Almost two-thirds (61 percent) of employers in the survey said that at least some of their vacancies are proving hard to fill. By comparison, just over half (56 percent) of employers reported that they were currently having difficulty filling vacancies in their organisation during the same period in 2017. In response, more than a quarter (28 percent) said that they are raising wages to tackle their recruitment difficulties. The report authors also suggest that offering staff more flexible work and collaborative spaces could help with recruitment and retention.
Companies will need more, not less people, in the near-term to meet the demand stimulated by automation, claims a new report from ManpowerGroup. The report – Robots Need Not Apply: Human Solutions in the Skills, found that 91 percent of employers in the US will maintain or increase headcount in the next two to three years as industries shift to more advanced, automated processes. The report provides a real-time view of the impact of automation on headcount, the functions most affected and the soft skills that are both of greatest value and hardest to find. Frontline and Customer-Facing functions anticipate the most growth as organisations place higher value on customer service and human interaction. Manufacturing and Production functions are close behind. Back-office functions that are routine or add less value to customer interactions are under greatest threat as organisations implement new technology to drive efficiency. In this Skills Revolution the best blend of high-tech and high-touch will be the combination of human strengths with technical and digital know-how: 61 percent of companies say communication skills, written and verbal, are their most valued soft skill followed by customer service, collaboration and problem-solving.
Organisations are failing to get the basics right when it comes to providing the digital and virtual systems that support employees in their roles, despite an evolving technological landscape and rise in flexible working, a new report has claimed. Data released by Leesman analyses how organisations can better support employees by offering the technology tools and infrastructure that enable people to work in a flexible way. In Deloitte’s 2018 Tech Trends report issued at the beginning of 2018, there was a heightened focus on how disruptive technologies will help businesses achieve larger strategic and operational goals and drive greater value. It predicted that within the next two years, more companies will embrace the emerging ‘no-collar workforce’ trend by redesigning jobs and reimagining how work gets done in a hybrid human-and-machine environment. However, Leesman’s findings show that, as of yet, organisations are failing to get the digital basics right. According to its latest dataset (Q1 2018) 23 percent do not agree that they have the technology tools and infrastructure that enable them to work in different locations across the office or from different locations outside of the office.
One in four working people aged 55+ with a health condition are considering leaving work as a negative culture and bureaucratic procedures put many off speaking to their employers until a crisis point. This is according to a new report from Ageing Better, ‘Health warning for employers: supporting older workers with health conditions’, which claims that employers are not properly supporting older workers experiencing long-term physical and mental health conditions. Health is the most important factor affecting older workers’ decisions to stop working before reaching State Pension age. Ageing Better’s research finds that early access to support, small adjustments to the workplace and working patterns, and empathetic management are crucial to enabling people to manage their health at work and remain in employment. But the research also found that workers are often put off speaking to employers until the last moment due to poor workplace culture and overly bureaucratic procedures.
It should come as little surprise that graduates who have undertaken an internship are more likely to have honed the skills businesses needs, one of the main findings of the Institute of Student Employers (ISE) annual Development Survey, which launches today (28 March 2018) at the ISE Student Development Conference. The report found that 63 percent of employers believed graduates who had undertaken work experience had the required soft skills, yet less than half (48 percent) thought this of graduates in general. According to the report the five most common graduate skills gaps are; managing up (5 percent of employers believed graduates had this skill); dealing with conflict (12 percent); negotiating/influencing (17 percent); commercial awareness (23 percent and resilience (31 percent). This is why closing skills gaps is a priority for businesses with 74 percent of employers taking specific actions to tackle the issue in 2017. Changes to recruitment and on-the-job training were the most common actions and 16 percent of organisations improved their internship development programmes specifically to close skills gaps.
UK office workers are under a tremendous amount of stress, and much of it is directly related to the way their work is being managed. That is the conclusion of a report by Workfront, which finds that office workers are becoming frustrated and burned out by poor work tools, processes, and communication. Four out of five office workers confessed that they feel burnt out and 73 percent expect their stress levels at work to increase in the near future. Nearly three quarters (74 percent) admit to feeling unrecognised and un-useful at work. With lack of communication and not knowing what others are working on (37 percent) cited as the number-one pain point across the board for stressed UK workers, it’s clear that businesses need to break down current silos, allowing people to engage more freely with senior staff members and see how their efforts impact the wider team. The study found that poor communication and visibility into work is UK workers’ number-one pain point in terms of work stress. It also reveals that 42 percent of office workers put in more than 6 hours of overtime per week and that 7 out of 10 office workers expect their stress levels at work to increase into the future.
