Catch up on the week in HR including the pay gap figures that make for grim reading, transsexual worker reaps payout award and why loud mouths win out in training ‘wants’.

W/C 7/11/05
Pay gap figures make for grim reading
The Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) has warned that the gender pay gap will continue for another generation, the alert comes in reaction to official pay statistics released this week.

The 2005 Annual earnings survey, issued by the Office of National Statistics, shows that the full-time gender pay gap is 17.2% – a reduction of just 12.2% since the Equal Pay Act came into force 30 years ago. The pay gap between women working part-time and men working full-time is 39.5% and has barely changed in 30 years, say the EOC, who also warn that the pay gap is contributing to a shortfall in women’s retirement income, which is just 57% of men’s.

Jenny Watson, Acting Chair of the EOC said: “The latest pay gap figures are grim. Thirty years on from the Equal Pay Act coming into force, the law has reached the limits of its usefulness. Unless radical new action is taken, another generation of women can expect to suffer the injustice of unequal pay.”

Watson is urging the government to encourage employers to address the problem, through the introduction of a requirement on the private sector to promote sex equality and eliminate sex discrimination.

And part-timers, worryingly seem to bear the brunt of inequality when it comes to pay. According to the EOC women in part-time employment earn nearly 40% less than full-time men.

Watson commented: “This has created a part time underclass. An EOC investigation found that 5.6 million part-time workers today are working below their potential – stuck in badly paid, low-level jobs, with little hope of career progression.”

While welcoming the news that the full-time gender pay gap has narrowed slightly, Brendan Barber the Trades Union Congress General Secretary said: “Part-time women are still as badly paid as ever.”

TUC call to ban workplace bullying
Around two million people have been bullied at work in the past six months, many of them by their managers, according to the TUC.

The union body is calling on the government to change the law to prevent millions more workers becoming the new victims of the UK’s office bullies.

According to the TUC’s research, bullying accounts for the loss of some 18 million working days each year.

TUC general secretary, Brendan Barber, said: “Employers should be tackling bullying just as they would treat any other workplace hazard.

“All workplaces, whatever their size, should have a policy which states that harassment and intimidation is unacceptable and that those who delight in the victimisation of others will be treated severely.

“The victims of bullying need to be listened to and supported, not dismissed as workplace wimps.”

Transsexual worker reaps payout award
Marlene Davidson, a former employee of budget airline, Flybe has won her case for sexual discrimination.

Davidson, who worked for the airline for four years had no cause for dispute with her employer until she started a sex change procedure that led to bullying.

Marlene, formerly living as Malcolm began the process of changing sex in 1997 and was immediately subjected to torment and was told to use the disabled lavatories.

Reported by the Times, Davidson was overlooked for promotion five times and finally resigned in 2003 complaining that she had been forced out by discrimination.

Quoted in the paper, Don Darby, Flybe’s personnel manager, said that he had been ‘dumbfounded’ to learn that Ms Davidson was undergoing a sex change.

The payout awarded by the Exeter employment tribunal is thought to amount to £25,000.

Loud mouths get training ‘wants’
According to a Trades Union Congress (TUC) report those most in need of training aren’t getting it while those with a loud voice are.

Training, who gets it? reveals that a third of businesses do not offer training to their staff and almost two fifths (39%) of the workforce received no training last year.

Three fifths (60%) of employers offered some form of training to their professional staff in the past year. However, less than half (45%) of employers made the same offer to their staff in manual jobs.

But according to the report it is these staff that have the greatest skills gap and are missing out on vital training opportunities.

The report also reveals that the more confident staff are likely to receive training. Sixty two per cent of companies expect the responsibility for training to shift more to the individual employee in the future. For workers in semi-skilled and manual occupations the opportunities to present training wants to manager is less likely than those in higher skilled jobs.

The TUC who highlight the role of union learning reps in breaking this cycle evaluated what £2,000 could buy:

• 4.2 days project management training




• 3.3 days financial training for non-financial managers




• 3.3 days senior advanced manager training




• 1.5 years of a part time degree/HND




• one sixth of an MBA




• two adults achieving an NVQ Level three (training over 18 months)




• 15 people on three day quality assurance training

TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said: “This report shows that if businesses really want value for money from their training then they must find out what their staff need. Token gesture training for the masses and expensive training for the elite will not address the real problems of workers unable to keep up with the fast changing modern world of business.”

Schools get £125m for e-learning
English schools are set to share in £125m e-learning credits to spend on educational software, the government has announced.

Schools have the freedom and choice to use the products that are best suited to their pupils’ and teachers’ needs to help them to make even better use of powerful tools such as laptops, interactive whiteboards and high speed broadband in learning and teaching.

The £125m is on top of the £75m announced as part schools’ overall capital allocations in November last year and will only be available for spending on Curriculum Online approved products and services.

Schools minister Andrew Adonis said: “This extra investment will help us create tomorrow’s classrooms today – giving children the tools they need to learn in the 21st century. Children embrace technology and use it everyday in their lives. There is now a considerable body of evidence showing that bringing appropriate technology into the classroom helps engage minds, capturing the imagination of both learner and teacher.”

IIP champions set example for business
Eight organisations have been named as this year’s Investors in People Champions.

The programme recognises those employers that have boosted the performance of their businesses through the way they manage and develop their employees.

This year’s successful Champions range from large businesses including, Prudential UK and Yell to smaller employers such as Friends Road Medical Practice in Croydon, and Rivington and Blackrod High School in Bolton.

Each has demonstrated consistent commitment to people development as a way of delivering their organisational goals, now and in the future.

Announcing the successful organisations, Skills Minister Phil Hope said that all eight were “at the cutting edge of workforce development”.

For more on this story see: TrainingZONE

LSDA looks at barriers to learning
Employees with poor basic skills and few qualifications are the least likely to take part in learning activities at work, despite having the greatest need for education and training.

The finding comes from a new report from the Learning and Skills Development Agency (LSDA), which examines the obstacles to workplace learning and initiatives to break down these barriers.

According to the LSDA, there is no single factor that acts as an obstacle to workplace learning, the research concludes. But there are a number of barriers that, when combined, are significant.

For more on this story see: TrainingZONE

New DDA guide for educators
A new guide from the Learning and Skills Development Agency (LSDA) aims to help educators ensure that the legal rights of disabled learners are exercised safely, without health and safety concerns getting in the way.

The guide, I don’t want to sue anyone … I just want to get a life, looks at new rules under the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA), which mean that educational organisations must remove barriers to learning activities for people with disabilities.

It offers advice on risk assessments and managing risk for disabled students, based on the practical experiences of teachers, tutors and managers who took part in 20 action research projects exploring issues concerned with the implementation of the DDA.

Under the DDA, education providers must make “reasonable adjustments” and avoid treating disabled people less favourably than others. But the LSDA warns that achieving this without breaching health and safety regulations needs careful consideration. The guide stresses the need for a flexible, common sense approach.

For more on this story see: TrainingZONE

Free e-learning to beat workplace bullies
Conciliatory service Acas has launched a new free online learning course to help employers understand and prevent bullying in the workplace.

The online course shows employers how to recognise and deal with bullying, as well as harassment, and provides good practice advice on the best way to develop clear and accessible policies.

The topics covered include:
* Definitions of bullying and harassment.
* Recognition and prevention.
* How to deal with bullying and harassment.
* The consequences of inaction.

For more on this story see: TrainingZONE

Regulator criticised in £3 million pension scheme theft
Officials from the former Occupational Pension Regulatory Authority (OPRA) have been criticised for failing to communicate effectively in a report into the theft of nearly £3 million from an occupational pension scheme.

The Hosker Report, published by the Department for Work and Pensions, investigated the way OPRA handled the theft of £2,918,917 from the CW Cheney and Son pension fund by five men using puppet trustees.

Following a prosecution by the Serious Fraud Office, the five men – Kevin Sykes, Simon Maya, Trevor Farrell, Altaf Sayed and Ian Selby – are serving a combined total of 26 years in prison for the theft. A sixth man, Cassius Powell, was found not guilty of conspiracy to steal. In a separate DTI case, Kevin Sykes was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment, to run concurrently with his SFO sentence, in relation to fraudulent trading as a ‘creditor resistance strategist’.

For more on this story see: AccountingWEB

Branson tops poll for most admired … again
For the third successive year, Sir Richard Branson, chairman of Virgin Group has emerged as the clear winner of the National Business Awards 2005 gong: British businesses’ favourite business achiever.

The entrepreneur beat a hall of fame, dead and alive for the top position. Out this year went Sir Terry Leahy, Steve Jobs and Stelios Haji-Ioannou.

The 2005 top ten business achievers:

• 1. Sir Richard Branson (Virgin Group)




• 2. Bill Gates (Microsoft)




• 3. Henry Ford




• 4. Dame Anita Roddick (The Body Shop)




• 5. Jack Welsh




• 6. Sir John Harvey-Jones




• 7. Walt Disney




• 8. Philip Green (Arcadia)




• 9. Michael Gerber




• 10. Sir Joseph Roundtree

Ufi doing a “good job” but could still do better
Ufi has done a “good job” in establishing learndirect, but the organisation needs to streamline its administration and put more resources into services to learners, according to an audit report.

Sir John Bourn, head of the National Audit Office said: “learndirect is a major innovative feat that within a few short years has become the largest education provider of its type in the world. It is attracting large numbers of learners who otherwise would not have undertaken learning.

“Management and administration costs have reduced with time but still take up too large a portion of the budget. They need to be streamlined so that more money can go into services for learners, and to increase the emphasis on small- and medium-sized businesses.”

For more on this story see: TrainingZONE

Brits revel in record management prowess
Brits take just 10 minutes to seek out information while their friends across the pond take a day or even more to do the same.

This is according to a survey taken at the AIIM European Conference and Expo show in London and the ARMA International Conference and Expo in Chicago.

The results show that workers in the US retain information for around three years while those in the UK consider everything from office photocopying to SMS messages as records that should be kept for ever.

And Brits also came out on top for more sophisticated means of storing information. Over half of the respondents use software while 20% of US respondents claimed that all the information they needed could be found in ‘the grey box in the corner.’

British bosses are also less reliant on using administrative assistants with just 15% making use of one, while 44% of US respondents do so.

For information on the Data Protection Act see: www.informationcommissioner.gov.uk