March 11, 2019
UK employers struggling with recruitment and retention of service workers
The recruitment and retention of manual and elementary service workers has become a significant challenge for UK employers, claims a new study. The research by Quinyx in collaboration with Development Economics and Censuswide, found that factors such as low pay and a lack of flexibility are key issue, resulting in nearly half (49 percent) of UK employers finding it difficult to recruit these workers, and the same percentage reporting challenges around retention. Issues with recruitment and retention were discovered to be most acute in industries such as hospitality, catering & leisure and retail. In addition, larger businesses (those with a workforce of 250 to 500) are more likely to face challenges compared to smaller-sized businesses. Regionally, businesses in London and the East of England are most likely to struggle to recruit workers into manual or elementary service roles. The findings come at a time when UK employers are expressing growing concern around access to manual and elementary service workers post-Brexit.
We might think that an inability to absorb the vast amount of information generated by our fellow humans and their machines is something of a modern phenomenon, but we’ve always known we can have too much of this particular good thing. Distringit librorum multitude, wrote Seneca in the First Century. An abundance of books is a distraction.
With the rise of both cloud-based technology and the worldwide gig economy, the last ten years of the 21st century have seen some near-revolutionary changes in workplace practice. Entrepreneurs everywhere have been more than happy to make use of these developments, taking advantage of the new business models these changes have brought. For example, IDG found that 
Despite the fact that a large number of employees continue to be relatively sedentary during their working day, there a growing demand for benefits that could help them achieve a healthier lifestyle, claims new research from Personal Group. More than 40 percent of employees surveyed want health insurance to be added to their workplace benefits programme; more than a third (34 percent) would like their employer to introduce discounted gym memberships, and more than one in four (28 percent) want to have access to rewards linked to physical activity. Almost a quarter (24 percent) want physical health-based incentives, such as interdepartmental step challenges or competitions added to their company-wide benefits programme. However, data shows that 70 percent of those surveyed who sit down to work only get up from their desk or workstation every hour at best, and 38 percent only move every two hours or more. Furthermore, a large proportion of employees eat at their desk or workstation on a regular basis (32 percent) and the majority choose to drive to work (60 percent) over walking (15 percent) or cycling (3.5 percent).
March 8, 2019
On International Woman’s Day – why advancing women is still not a business priority
by Sara Bean • Comment, Legal news, News, Workplace
It has probably not escaped your notice that today is International Woman’s Day, which for Workplace Insight means a plethora of studies on the topic of women/jobs/salaries and ways women might work differently to men. We’ve decided not to waste anyone’s time and ignored most of them (particularly the patronizing ones on how ladies are so intuitive) but managed to find a few kernels of information. First, the good news that women have doubled their share of top jobs at technology companies, pulling in higher salaries than men last year, according to executive search firm Odgers Berndtson. (more…)