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Previous Issues
April, 2011
March, 2011
February, 2011
January, 2011
May 2011
1) 1) Embedding diversity is a commercial imperative, finds Opportunity Now survey
2) Making your workplace mentally healthy
3) Gender gap of £6,500 for women's pensions
4) The culture shift required to achieve equality in the workplace
5) Government launches consultation on modern working
6) Equality Act attempts to clear up disability discrimination laws
7) Best practice: Employers urged to create a ‘pipeline’
8) Anger as new parental leave law 'flies in face' of pledge to cut red tape
9) Gender & The Workplace: What do women really want from work?
10) Flexible fathers: Fitter, happier, more productive
1) Embedding diversity is a commercial imperative, finds Opportunity Now survey
Despite the difficult economic climate, employers see the creation of more inclusive and diverse workplaces as a business imperative that will give them competitive advantage, according to a new benchmarking survey from Opportunity Now, the workplace gender equality campaign within Business in the Community. Diversity is increasingly appearing on the boardroom agenda, the poll finds. Nearly all employers (96%) have a board-level leader who champions the importance of equality and diversity.
Making your workplace mentally healthy
In times of economic hardship, it is often the workforce that bears the brunt of doing more with less. Paul Farmer, chief executive of mental health charity Mind, believes that employers must do more. Love it or loathe it, most of us spend the greater portion of our lives at work and it should come as no surprise that what we experience every day in the office, workshop or on the factory floor can have an enormous impact on our wellbeing. Anyone who has spent time in a company where there is poor management, difficult communication, excessive workloads or even bullying will know how demoralising these issues are when they affect your work day in, day out. Likewise, those of us with a good employer can feel that their job contributes to their satisfaction with life. While for some employers the idea of satisfied employees seems like an add-on to business needs, the mood and culture of the workplace couldn't, in fact, be more crucial. Looking after your employees is a business responsibility, and has a huge impact on the productivity of staff, sickness absence levels, costs and profits of an organisation.
Gender gap of £6,500 for women's pensions
Women may be striving for equality in the workplace, but are still second-class citizens when it comes to pension provision, according to new figures.These show that women retiring this year will get a pension that is £6,500 less than that paid to men. According to Prudential women retiring this year can expect an annual income of £12,900. In contrast a man retiring can expect an income of £19,400. There is some good news for women though as this "gender gap" is narrowing. The same study published last year showed that women's pensions were lagging men's by £7,400. Vince Smith-Hughes, Head of Business Development at Prudential said: "It is good news that average retirement incomes for women have risen, but unfortunately the gender gap remains stubbornly wide.
The culture shift required to achieve equality in the workplace
Most organisations don’t know how many disabled people they employ, how many gay people work for them or which faiths make up the staff group. All they do know with any degree of certainty is the age and gender profile of their organisation, plus maybe some information on ethnicity. The reason for this is that staff have proved very reluctant to disclose what they consider to be highly sensitive information about their sexuality, a disability or even their faith for fear of prejudice and discrimination. People can see if you’re black but not if you’re gay or hard of hearing. Why tell them if you don’t have to? If you don’t know who you have employed, how do you know if your recruitment policies and practices are fair? How can an employer demonstrate that their workforce is in fact representative? How would you know if discrimination is taking place?
Government launches consultation on modern working
The Government has launched a consultation on plans to introduce a new system of flexible parental leave from 2015 as part of its plans to create a modern workplace for the modern economy. Theresa May, Home Secretary and Minister for Women says, “Britain’s workplace laws are in need of modernisation. We have made great strides in addressing explicit discrimination in the workplace, but disadvantage persists. The solution to these challenges, though, is not more bureaucracy, top-down intervention and politically correct quotas, but policies that go with the grain of human nature and maximise flexibility and choice. That is why we will extend the right to request flexible working to all and introduce a new system of flexible parental leave both of which will contribute to our commitment to closing down the gender pay gap. But where there is evidence of discrimination we will punish it, so we will introduce mandatory pay audits for companies that are found guilty of pay discrimination.”
Equality Act attempts to clear up disability discrimination laws
The new Equality Act provisions seek to balance competing interests concerning disability in a legal minefield. Anne Pritam, a specialist in employment and partnership law, looks at why the Act came about. Discrimination laws are like buses; you wait for ages then three come along at once. In the 1970s and 1980s, employers only had to be concerned with ensuring racial and sexual equality. But a rash of European legislation compelled the UK Parliament to enact legislation covering disability, sexual orientation, religion/belief and age.
Best practice: Employers urged to create a ‘pipeline’
Crude discrimination against women in the workplace, prevalent in the 1970s and 1980s, might be largely gone. But unconscious biases remain and, because less obvious, are harder to deal with, according to campaigners for women in business. Flexible working, job shares and remote or home working are often seen as the answer to the family and caring responsibilities women take on. But a deeper change in corporate attitudes is needed. “There are lots of myths about why women leave,” says Susan Vinnicombe, professor of organisational behaviour and development management at Cranfield School of Management. “Management think it’s for lifestyle reasons – having children – but it is not just a children issue. Women don’t leave at just one point in time in their career.” A lot of attention has focused on increasing the number of women on company boards. But to achieve a breakthrough at senior level, companies need to start earlier in the career, from recruitment through to retention, development and promotion. They must create a pipeline of up-and-coming female staff who will be ready for the top jobs.
Anger as new parental leave law 'flies in face' of pledge to cut red tape
The Government has been accused of “saying one thing and doing another” after bringing in new employment rules less than a week after announcing a review of workplace law. Business Secretary Vince Cable and Home Secretary Theresa May today launched a “modern workplaces” consultation, outlining at least four changes to employment law. The proposals include overhauling the parental leave system, new flexible working rights, measures to promote equal pay and changes to sick pay and holiday pay following recent European court judgements. The “complicated” rules come less than a week after chancellor George Osborne pledged to tear up parts of employment law to reduce red tape. The private sector is already struggling to create enough jobs to offset public sector redundancies and companies warn extra regulations will stifle the ability to take people on.
Gender & The Workplace: What do women really want from work?
There is always a price to pay for making it to a top job in business. Plenty will deem the sacrifice worth the outsized pay and prestige – but proportionately, more women than men will make the opposite call. So what is it about women’s ambitions, motivations and expectations that explains why, despite their ability, many choose not to pursue their careers all the way to the top? Women have made astonishing academic gains over the past few decades and are flooding into professions that were once the preserve of men, from medicine to business. Graduate entry into the UK workforce is now roughly equal between the sexes. The issue, though, is that women leave in disproportionate numbers in mid-career – a “leaking pipeline” identified in Lord Davies’s review, Women on Boards. This partly explains the low representation of women on UK FTSE 100 boards at just 12.5 per cent, according to the Cranfield School of Management.
Flexible fathers: Fitter, happier, more productive
Research suggests that when fathers choose to work flexibly, it's good for them and good for their employer... One of the key aims of the Government's new parental leave proposals is to make it easier for parents to share childcare responsibilities. The argument usually made for this is that it will promote equality in the workplace, by reducing the burden on working mothers. But it may also have a positive effect on fathers too: according to new research by Working Families and Lancaster University Management School, fathers who work flexibly are happier, healthier, and more committed to their employer. Sounds like a win-win, right? The research, which is based on a two-year Lottery-funded study of over a thousand fathers, found that those working flexibly in the private sector 'have better physical and psychological health, are less stressed and are more committed to their employer' than the general average (although interestingly, that wasn't true of the public sector - perhaps because these people feel their jobs are particularly under threat).
