Half of adults confess to inferior IT skills
Almost half of all adults feel their computers skills are in need of improvement, according to a new report by IT giant Microsoft.According to the report, almost a third of adults say they have poor or no computer skills and one in six workers feel they lack the IT skills needed to do their job […]
Ask the expert: Payments on redundancy
Esther Smith, partner at Thomas Eggar, and Martin Brewer, partner at Mills & Reeve, advise on whether an employee, when made redundant, is owed a tax-free payment in lieu of notice. The question:We have just made one of our employees redundant. We terminated his contract and gave him pay in lieu of notice, plus holiday […]
The truth about diversity
Andrew Mayo carefully approaches the issue of why he is tired of today’s obsession with the ‘diversity agenda’, explaining that diversity is about the celebration of difference, not statistics. I am going to take a big risk in this article. I am going to come out into the open. I know I am not supposed […]
Questions asked as Skills Pledge commitment dips to 13%
Just 13% of employers have signed the Employer Skills Pledge, a voluntary commitment from companies to support all employees in the development of basic skills.A recent report from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) suggests that over half of organisations’ learning and development work has not been influenced by the skills agenda. In […]
Unions spearhead wellness campaign
The Trades Union Congress (TUC) is behind a new campaign to offer improved occupational health assistance to the 2 million employees that fall ill because of work, every year.Together with unionlearn, the TUC is publishing a new guide to occupational health for union safety reps with the aim of training 15,000 of them to find […]
Worker sacked over ‘dead flowers’ accuses HR of being ‘petty’
A worker for supermarket chain the Co-op claims she was pushed out of her job over a row about a bunch of out-of-date flowers.Mary Whitner gave a bunch of wilting flowers to a customer when they failed to scan.According to the report by the BBC, Whitner was told to “resign or be sacked”, after 23 […]
‘F-ing and blinding’ is turn off for bosses
Too much swearing is putting bosses off with one in 10 admitting to sacking an employee for foul language.A poll by TheLadders.co.uk, as reported in Online Recruitment, shows that almost half of employers would fire an employee for using bad language.A foul mouth occupies the top and second place in a ranking of the worst […]
Digital era sparks growing cowardice
Sacking staff by text or delegating a difficult task by email are just some of the reasons social experts say we are becoming a nation of cowards.According to a new report out by the Post Office, 73% of people admit to delegating difficult tasks at work by email and text, whilst 52% use these forms […]
HR and finance professionals brought together at event
A joint event hosted by the HR Society and the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) will uniquely bring HR and finance professionals together to challenge the mantra that people are our most valuable asset. The event will be hosted at Chartered Accountants Hall in London, where delegates will hear the views […]
Being polite is not the same as being nice
I wanted to share a quote with you that really made me think. In an article in the Daily Telegraph about customer service, Andrew McMillan, the customer service manager at John Lewis said: “…Up to a point you can take an intelligent person and train them to be polite. But you can’t train a person […]
Risking it all? Preventing accidents at work
Sticks and stones will break your bones … and so will slips, trips and falls. Annie Hayes looks at the very real costs of minor accidents at work and discovers that the ‘trivial’ can quickly spiral to the ‘serious and costly’. From ‘minor’ to ‘major’According to official figures from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), […]
Legislation update: ‘Young’ employee wins age discrimination claim
Employment solicitor Richard White considers a case where a younger worker brought a claim for age discrimination, and succeeded. The Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006 protect both young and old from age discrimination, but most of the tribunal claims so far have been brought by older workers. The first fully contested decision involving a younger […]
Teachers’ strike costing businesses millions
The first teachers’ strike in 21 years has forced many working parents to either stay away from work or find childcare, resulting in a huge cost to businesses.Members of the National Union of Teachers (NUT) are striking over the government’s proposals to impose further below-inflation pay increases on teachers.The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) has […]
Is a team building day just a ‘day out’?
Staff training and team building are often seen as either a waste of time or a valuable part of working relations. Ian Sasse gives a series of useful tips on how to get the best from them. Picture the phrase ‘team building’ and you could be forgiven for seeing images of bouncy castles, quad bikes […]
The importance of performance management
Dale Bartram explains why performance management should be number one on the business agenda. Why implement formal performance management?Arguably, all businesses operate performance management to a degree, so why take the time to put a formal process in place?Creating and maintaining a comprehensive and uniform performance management programme enables HR to align line managers and […]
HR tip: Employee relocation too far away
These questions are being answered by Learn HR, a market leader in the provision of HR and payroll training and nationally-recognised professional qualifications. Question:"An employee is relocating his home from our town to a village 20 miles away. We feel that this is too far away. How do we stand?" HR tip:You may take direct action […]
HR slides down league of best jobs for mums
HR has been ranked sixth out of eleven in a league table of the best jobs for mums returning to work, with almost half complaining of ‘unfair’ treatment in the sector, post return.This is according to a new survey by the Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA).Teaching topped the poll, closely followed by the […]
Think tank exposes cost of education under Labour
An entire generation of almost 4 million pupils has failed to gain their expected qualifications of five good GCSEs, including english and maths, according to a new report.The Bow Group, the right wing think tank which develops policy and publishes research for the Conservative Party, has published a new report as part of its invisible […]
Job boards fail SMEs
New research claims that online job boards are failing small and medium sized employers (SMEs).Whatjobsite.com found that over half of the job boards surveyed provided little or no online information about their candidate audience. Karl Schweppe, MD of whatjobsite.com, said: “Job board operators shouldn’t assume that direct employers will automatically pick up on the subtleties […]
Lack of skills cost £1.45 billion a year
Workers are missing out on a whopping £1.45 billion a year because numeracy and literacy skills are inadequate.Learndirect, which provides numeracy and literacy skills training and qualifications, recently launched the ME-Q Index, which shows how much money Brits are losing year on year due to inadequate maths and english, comparing towns and cities across the […]
