Flexible Working On The Increase Despite a requirement by some employers for their staff to return to working in the office, the number of job adverts with flexible working involved has increased by 62% compared with this time last year according to a new survey by Flexa. A number of high profile companies have recently moved to try and increase the amount of time spent in the office by their staff, with a reduction in flexible working. Back in February, for instance, Dell decided to categorise its workers as either being hybrid or remote. Whereas hybrid workers would be required to attend the ..read more

Sick Notes: Plans To Move Responsibility Away From GP’s The Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, has announced plans to move responsibility for assessing fitness to work and the issuing of sick notes away from GP’s to “specialist work and health professionals“, as part of plans to address what he referred to as the development of a “sick note culture“. The announcement relating to sick notes on the 19th April 2024 comes as sickness absence rates and the number of people who have become economically inactive have reached record levels. The most recent statistics from the Office for National Statistics ..read more

26% Of Workers Subject To Non-Compete Clauses As we highlighted in a previous article, the Government announced back in May 2023 that it planned to legislate to limit non-compete clauses to 3 months post-termination of employment. However, despite that, there have been no further developments since that announcement, and it appears unlikely that anything will happen this side of a general election Nevertheless, new research conducted by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has found that 26% of all workers are subject to non-compete clauses, and of those that are subject ..read more

Gender Pay Gap: Early Analysis Finds Fall To Record Low Early analysis of the gender pay gap data for the 2023/24 reporting year by the Guardian has found that there has been a fall in the gender pay gap to a record low for the period since gender pay gap reporting became compulsory in 2017/18 for employers with 250 or more employees. The deadline for public sector employers to report their data was the 30th March 2024, with a snapshot date of the 31st March 2023. For private sector employers and voluntary organisations, the deadline was the 4th April 2024, with a snapshot date of the 5th Apri ..read more

Civil Service Sickness Absence Rate Increases A new report has found that sickness absence in relation to civil servants increased from 7.9 average working days lost in the year to the 31st March 2022, to 8.1 days in the year to the 31st March 2023. Other findings were:- In terms of the 8.1 days, 4.4 days related to long term sickness absence (up from 4.3 days the previous year) and 3.7 days to short-term sick leave (up from 3.6 days the previous year) 49% of civil servants had no sickness absence Mental health issues represented the main cause of long term sickness absence (45%), whilst ‘res ..read more

Four-Day Working Week Trial Declared A Success One Year On One year on from the completion of the UK’s 6 month four-day working week trial, new research has led to the trial being declared a success. The Trial The 6 month four-day working week trial was launched on the 6th June 2022 by the campaign group, 4 Day Week Global, which was founded by New Zealand entrepreneurs, Andrew Barnes and Charlotte Lockhart. The trial was run in conjunction with Oxford and Cambridge academics and others. 61 companies comprising of over 2900 employees participated. Employees of the participating ..read more

Skills Shortages New research compiled by the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) involving interviews with 167 employers has found that whilst the recuitment market cooled over 2023, UK employers are still encountering skills shortages in terms of being able to hire workers with the right skills set. REC Report Small firms with less than 50 employees are experiencing the most severe problems with skills shortages according to the REC report, with 81.5% encountering problems. However, larger firms have also experienced problems with skills shortages as well, with 57.1% of medium siz ..read more

Career Committing New research conducted by Instantprint has found that 2024 is shaping up to be a year in which the majority of employees elect to remain with their current employer and not to change jobs (a trend dubbed as ‘career committing’). The trend is in marked contrast to a few years ago, where research found that a much higher percentage were looking for a job change (the so-called ‘great resignation’), but that quickly led to the ‘the great regret’ in which various surveys found that between 72% – 80% regretted their job change The new survey on career committing found the following ..read more

Sickness Absence Rates At Highest Level Since 2004 New research just published by the Ulster University Economic Policy Centre (UUEPC) has found that sickness absence rates are at their highest since 2004. The research found the following:- The overall sickness absence rate in the UK increased by 0.7% from 1.9% in 2019 to 2.6% in 2022, the highest rate since 2004 (2.7%). The rate represents an increase of 0.4% compared to 2021, when the rate was 2.2%. The rate of 2.6% equates to 185.6 million days lost due to sickness, an increase of 47.4 million since 2019. On average, workers took 6 days of ..read more

52% In HR Either Now Or Are Comtemplating Using AI New research conducted by WorkBuzz has found that 52% of HR professionals either now use artificial intelligence (AI) in their jobs or are contemplating doing so. This 52% consisted of the following:- 24% stated that they were either already using AI or would be at some point within the next year 28% were actively considering using it Whilst the average across the economy is 52%, the figure falls to 49% in ‘deskless’ industries – those sectors or job roles where employees do not primarily work at a desk or in a traditional office setting. Co ..read more