In this our first news round-up of 2006 HR Zone reports on revelations over unpaid overtime, why women must wait 200 years for equality and the reasons behind the jobs creation slowdown.

W/C 3/1/06
Workers do it for free
Last year almost five million employees worked one day a week for free. This is the claim of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) who calculated that 4,759,000 employees clocked up the hours in unpaid overtime in 2005.

Launching the build-up to their third Work your proper hours day to be held on 24 February 2006 the TUC said that some progress was being made. The percentage of people working at least an extra hour a week unpaid has fallen slightly, and is now at its lowest level since 1992 (19.4%).

TUC General Secretary, Brendan Barber said that the aim, however, was not to turn into a nation of clock watchers:

“In smart workplaces, people work fewer hours. The run up to ‘Work Your Proper Hours Day’ is a great opportunity for bosses to show staff that they want to start tackling their long hours culture. And on the day itself managers can say thanks for their staff’s hard work by taking them out for a coffee or a cocktail.”

Workers in the Capital topped the charts for those putting in the longest hours.

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Women must wait 200 years for equality
According to the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) women must wait 200 years to gain equal power in Britain.

Only 11% of directors at FTSE 100 companies are women, 20% are MPs and 16% are local authority council leaders.

Thirty years on from the Sex Discrimination Act just 9% of women form the senior judiciary, 10% of senior police officers, and 13% of editors of national newspapers.

Progress, however, is being made in some areas. Women make up 33% of professional bodies and 33% of national arts organisations.

Jenny Watson, Chair of the EOC, called upon the leaders of all three main political parties to make equality a priority. Flexible working, she said would also provide a pivotal role in helping women get to the top:

“At work, where women’s skills are vital to our economy, we know that the rigid, long hours culture still makes it almost impossible for women – and an increasing number of men – to balance work and family life. We need to increase our productivity as a nation. Yet four in five part-time workers, overwhelmingly women, are in jobs below their potential, partly because of the dearth of flexible working at senior levels.”

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IiP offers green light to improvement
A traffic light-style test, launched today by Investors in People, aims to help employers have a more prosperous 2006.

IiP is urging employers to detox their workplace by identifying and tackling issues that could undermine their organisation over the year ahead.

The online test aims to help employers examine current policies/practices and identify opportunities for improvement.

Ruth Spellman, chief executive of Investors in People, said: “Employers may have only a brief window for action before the general pressures of day-to-day business erupt once more. I urge them to act now to detox their workplace; the effort they put in and the changes they make could have significant benefits on business performance, in the next twelve months and beyond.”

The web-based test will guide employers through multiple choice questions exploring life within the workplace and give them a green/amber/red rating based on how their workplace measures up to good practice contained in Profile, the IiP development tool.

Profile builds on the Investors in People Standard to provide a path for further improvement, so employers can continue challenging themselves and keep developing in line with evolving business needs/opportunities.

To use the web-based test, visit www.investorsinpeople.co.uk

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Skills priority for workers in 2006
Broadening skills and gaining promotion have topped a poll of new year’s resolutions.

More than four-fifths of UK employees mix work-related new year’s resolutions with the standard January promises of healthy eating, fitness and lifestyle change, the Thomson Netg poll found.

The top three work-related resolutions were:

• Aim for promotion: Increased responsibility and salary was the number one resolution for the majority of UK professionals as 2005 drew to a close.




• Broaden skills: Many felt that in order to move up the career ladder and increase their chances of promotion, they needed to strengthen their existing skill set through new qualifications and courses.




• Update CV: In order to get promotion, a large number of workers planned to spend January updating their CVs to reflect successes over the past year and include new experiences and skills.

Mike Summers, director at Thomson NETg said it was encouraging to see work-related goals featuring so highly in the survey.

“Our poll highlights that the UK is clearly a nation of achievers who want to progress up the career ladder,” he said. “In today’s competitive market, employees are realising that, in order to attract the attention of management and achieve that work-related resolution, they need to broaden their experiences and knowledge.”

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Jobs creation to slow
Despite an expected strengthened economy jobs creation in 2006 will slow. These are the claims of professional body the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) who predict the new year will go down in history as the worst for productivity growth since 1990.

Report author, Dr John Philpott, Chief Economist at the CIPD said: “Employers shied away from job cuts in 2005 as the economy slowed, hoping for better economic news round the corner. This contributed to record levels of employment and the creation of 300,000 extra jobs by the end of the third quarter of the year, despite economic growth remaining below trend.

“Job seekers who might have been expected to gain from stronger growth in 2006 instead look likely to feel the pinch as employers look to cut costs through slower recruitment, more redundancies, or efforts to raise productivity amongst the existing workforce.”

Philpott said that despite continual job shedding in the manufacturing sector, large numbers of redundancies were not to be expected. Some cuts could be expected, however, in sectors such as public administration where the Gershon efficiency savings will have an impact, he said.

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’Bad jobs’ is root cause of absence
Healthy Work: Productive Workplaces a new report written by the Work Foundation cautions that problems including sickness absence, dependence on welfare benefits and low pay have roots in ‘bad’ jobs – jobs say the authors that give employees little voice and control.

Joining forces with the London Health Commission the Work Foundation is urging the Government to make 2006 the year of the healthy workplace.

At the heart of the problem, says the report are Government agencies and departments who fail to work together to tackle the problems.

Coats and Max, the report authors suggest that better co-ordination across Government and an enhanced role for public institutions such as ACAS and the Regional Development Agencies would be an important way to tackle this.

Max said: “There is no debating the connections between employment and health – and, crucially, health inequalities. There are some laudable Government initiatives, but what is urgently needed is strong political leadership to drive forward a truly progressive agenda – and a deeper understanding of how quality of life and economic growth can and should be mutually reinforcing.”

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Co-op gives into pension pressure
Retail and financial services group, the Co-operative Group is the latest organisation to close its final salary pension scheme.

According to the BBC report, from 5 April all staff could be transferred to a new scheme based on the average salary over their career. Employees will contribute 6% of their pensionable earnings and the Co-op around 16% in the replacement scheme.

A spokesman for the Co-op told the BBC the changes would make the scheme affordable in the long-term, while still offering staff a high quality occupational pension.

The news has angered unions.

“This is not a good way to start 2006,” said Ron Webb, national secretary for transport at the T&G union.

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Skills shortages boost pay in higher education
Higher education faces a shortage of teachers in maths, science and engineering with employers willing to pay more for academic staff qualified in these subjects, according to research by Lifelong Learning UK.

The skills shortages also extend to generic skills such as management, computer literacy and team working.

The LLUK report, based on data collected by the Higher Education Statistics Agency, reveals the number of permanent staff teaching engineering and related subjects fell by 14% between 1995/6 and 2003/4. For maths, chemistry and physics, there were decreases of 10%.

Employers responded to the skills shortages by increasing pay so that, by 2003/4, a typical physics lecturer could expect to earn £5,970 more than the average academic. Chemistry lecturers were earning £4,640 above the median for academic staff while, in maths and engineering, lecturers received respectively £3,970 and £2,400 above the norm.

The study showed there were 214,940 full-time and 103,585 part-time staff working in 171 institutions across the UK.

It is expected to assist workforce planning by universities and other higher education institutions.

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Business faces uncertain climate warns CBI
The CBI has warned that business faces an uncertain climate as it awaits key Government decisions on the economy, pensions and energy. CBI president John Sunderland said: “Businesses like clarity when planning future investment decisions, but as we enter 2006 there are a great many policy balls up in the air. If the Government drops any of these, British jobs and British competitiveness will suffer.”