The government has launched a website aimed at helping working parents to find flexible working roles.
Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd revealed in the Sunday Express last weekend that the site would be launched this week.
It will use technology to gather more than 50,000 job adverts for full- and part-time roles across an array of sectors, all specifically designed with flexible working in mind.
Global specialist recruitment group Hydrogen Group has seen net fee income increase 4% year-on-year despite challenging conditions in Asia and continued Brexit uncertainty, according to unaudited results for the half-year ended 30 June 2019.
The results, released this morning, reveal NFI rose to £15.3m from £14.8m in H1 2018, with profit before tax up 19% to £1.4m from £1.2m over the same period. The group posted a decline in group revenue of 9% in constant currency to £64.1m from £68.6m in H1 2018.
NFI for EMEA – which includes the UK – was broadly flat at £8.6m from £8.7m in H1 2018, while in Asia Pacific NFI fell 16% to £4.9m from £5.5m over the same period amid challenging market conditions in Hong Kong and Singapore.
However, US NFI grew 233% in constant currency to £1.9m from £500,000 in H1 2018, driven by the group’s life sciences and technology practices.
CEO Ian Temple commented: “The performance is a testament to both the operating model that we have developed and our agile business model that has allowed us to pivot investment into higher-growth markets, particularly in the US.”
New analysis from the UK’s leading independent job board, CV-Library, reveals the best UK cities for graduates to live and work in, based on a number of circumstances regarding pay, living costs and future prospects.
The findings reveal the following:
The state pension age should be raised to 75 within the next 16 years to help boost the UK economy, according to a Tory think tank.
In a new report, the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) has proposed an increase of the pension age to 70 by 2028 and 75 by 2035.
The pension age is already set to increase to 67 by 2028 and to 68 by 2046 – but the organisation, co-founded by former Conservative leader and work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan-Smith, wants to see a faster increase.
The CSJ’s latest report said evidence suggested the UK was “not responding to the needs and potential” of an ageing workforce, with hundreds of thousands of people aged 50 to 64 seen as “economically inactive”.
It recommended helping older people “access the benefits of work” by giving support to them and employers, such as increased access to flexible working and training opportunities.
The organisation proposes that the pension age should be increased once this support is in place.
In 2017 the government announced plans to increase the state pension age to 68 between 2037 and 2039.
However the CSJ wants to see faster increases, and believes the cost of benefits would be reduced by employing more older people while it would boost the UK’s gross domestic product (GDP).
Flexible working should be the default position for all employees, rather than it being up to individuals to request.
That is the call from Conservative MP Helen Whately, who introduced a flexible working bill in Parliament on Tuesday.
It would help close the gender pay gap, assist parents to share childcare, and help businesses keep staff, she said.
Anna Whitehouse, founder of the campaign Flex Appeal, said it was “a huge moment”.
Ms Whately’s Ten Minute Rule Bill was given approval to go to a second reading on Wednesday.
Introducing her bill, she argued that unless employers had a sound business reason for having specific working hours, firms should introduce flexibility to every job.
“The 40-hour, five-day working week made sense in an era of single-earner households and stay-at-home mums, but it no longer reflects the reality of how many modern families want to live their lives,” she said.
“At the moment, too many women are reluctantly dropping out of work or going part-time after having children because their employers won’t allow them flexibility.
“This entrenches the assumption that men are the breadwinners and women are the homemakers.
“As a result, men don’t get to spend as much time as they might like with their children, women miss out on career opportunities, and the country loses out on the contribution they could and would like to make – if only they could do slightly different hours or work some days from home.”
The Department for Education has set up a panel of experts to develop new professional qualifications for teachers in England, to help them progress their careers.
The panel will advise on the scheme, which is to be introduced during the academic year 2020-2021.
The focus is on those who want to progress in non-leadership roles.
But unions said there was a lack of transparency about how the experts were recruited to the advisory panel.
The qualifications form part of the teacher recruitment and retention strategy in England, which was launched in January.
School standards minister Nick Gibb said the new qualifications would provide recognition for those teachers who want to develop their skills and progress their careers.
“Our ambition is for teachers to be able to do so without having to pursue traditional leadership routes, instead expanding their expertise in vital areas such as curriculum or behaviour management,” he said.
Richard Gill, chairman of the Teaching Schools Council, said: “There is a need to ensure that the current programme of qualifications meets the needs of the current educational landscape.
“These new bespoke qualifications will provide practitioners with an excellent opportunity to develop and progress their careers, building stronger and more effective classroom practice without the need for them to follow traditional leadership roles.”
But the announcement has drawn criticism from teaching unions.
Zero-hours and “gig economy” workers who have shifts cancelled at short notice could be paid compensation under new government plans.
The proposal is part of a package of measures aimed at improving the rights of low-paid flexible workers.
Under the proposals, they could receive the full value of the shift cancelled or three times the hourly minimum wage for each hour cancelled.
The government is canvassing views on the proposals over the next 12 weeks.
The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said one in six low-paid workers on flexible hours received no more than a day’s notice of a cancelled shift.
In addition, nearly 40% of all UK workers said their hours varied from week to week, with 1.7 million people saying they were very anxious that their working hours could change unexpectedly.
Business Secretary Greg Clark said new business models had opened up “a whole new world of working patterns and opportunities”.
He added: “It’s vital that workers’ rights keep pace with these changes, reflect the modern working environment and tackle the small number of firms that do not treat their staff fairly.”
The proposals are intended to build on an earlier set of reforms introduced in December last year.
Those were based on the findings of a review into modern working practices led by Matthew Taylor, a former aide to ex-PM Tony Blair and chief executive of the Royal Society of Arts.
As part of that process, the Low Pay Commission was asked to look into the issue of “one-sided flexibility”, and their ideas are at the heart of the latest consultation.
Bryan Sanderson, who chairs the commission, said it was “delighted” that the government was taking it further.
“The proposed changes, part of a package of policies we suggested, have the potential to improve work and life for hundreds of thousands of people,” he added.
But the TUC said the proposed changes did not go far enough.
General secretary Frances O’Grady said compensation would be “a step in the right direction”, but repeated the TUC’s call for zero-hours contracts to be banned.
How much are you worth? Or rather – is the answer to that question equal to the sum paid into your bank account by your employer?
If not then you need to ask for more, and that means you have to negotiate with the person who pays your wages. It’s something that puts the frighteners on a lot of people. It shouldn’t.
“No one ever got fired for asking for a pay rise” said Pip Jamieson founder of the professional networking site, The Dots. “In fact rather the opposite – asking for more money shows ambition and shows you want to stay with the company.”
But there are good ways of asking for a pay rise and there are bad ones. So here are some dos and don’ts when it comes to asking for a bigger salary.
Go to a salary comparison website or talk to a recruitment agency or your Human Resources department (HR) to find out the kind of pay your job should be getting. You need hard evidence to back your pay rise – sales targets reached, contracts signed, goals met. Remember, it’s surprising how little the person who decides your salary, especially in a big organisation, may know about what you do.
“Work at it,” says Dulcie Shepherd Swanston, author of It’s Not Bloody Rocket Science and founder of the business training company Profitably Engaged. “The sort of qualities you need for getting a pay rise are the same sort of qualities you need for being a good employee.”
Tessa Fyson had been working in the NHS for six months when she decided to ask for more money.
“When I got asked the inevitable question, ‘Why should we give you a pay rise?’ – I froze!” she said. “Any type of meeting with management can make you nervous and I lost all ability to speak. It made me feel and look incredibly naïve and I was told to think of the reasons why and then come back.”
Ms Jamieson insists employees should see pay as a commercial contract, not a favour, which should be negotiated seriously.
So you should not argue that you need the money to pay the rent or buy Prada handbags on a monthly basis.
But Lou Goodman, marketing director at the employment website Monster for the UK, Ireland and Benelux cautions: “It’s always worthwhile for a company being empathetic about your personal life, because if they lose an employee, the resources needed to find, recruit and train up someone new can be considerable.
“But in the end, pay should reflect someone’s performance and the performance of the company itself.”
“National go home on time day” might not sound like a legitimate holiday, but in today’s hardworking culture, it could be a necessary one.
Burnout is now a recognised medical condition and according to a recent study of 2,000 UK employees, one in four people feel that overworking prevents them from improving their mental wellbeing.
Additionally, 36 per cent said they’re unable to improve their physical fitness because of their working hours.
On Friday 21 June, people around the UK will be encouraged to stick to their contracted hours and leave work on time.
Read on for everything you need to know about National go home on time day, from who invented it to why we need it.
A four-day working week could save UK businesses an estimated £104bn a year, according to new research.
A survey of more than 250 companies indicated that adopting a shorter working week could add to businesses’ bottom lines through increased staff productivity, as well as improved physical and mental health.
Furthermore, the study conducted by Henley Business School, suggested it could also lead to a cleaner environmental footprint.
Henley’s Four Better or Four Worse paper exploring the growing trend for a four-day working week found that nearly two thirds (64 per cent) of those who have already adopted the scheme reported improvements in staff productivity.
The research also found that this working style increased overall quality of life for employees, with more than three quarters (78 per cent) of businesses saying staff were happier, less stressed (70 per cent) and took fewer sick days (62 per cent).