Week Starting 26th April

New Scheme To Help Unemployed Find Jobs In The NHS

A new initiative to help unemployed people find work in the National Health Service has been announced by Work and Pensions Secretary Andrew Smith.

The scheme called Ambition:Health will give people the chance of support and training to help them into jobs in the NHS. The pilot programme is targeting areas of high unemployment* which also have NHS skills shortages. It will also offer in-work support to encourage career progression.

Mr Smith said : “Ambition is a carefully targeted, sector-based initiative that has already helped around 2,000 people into sustainable jobs in construction, energy, IT and retail."

“The programme has also helped employers alleviate skills shortages and recruitment difficulties in their sectors."

“Ambition:Health provides an opportunity for the Government to achieve a number of objectives through effective collaboration between its agencies. For example, once Jobcentre Plus has helped participants find work, they will receive further support and training through the Learning and Skills Council."

“And the NHS is acting not only as employer, but also as a key delivery partner, working to tackle skills shortages that can have an impact on the delivery of services to patients,” added Mr Smith.

* The pilots start on Merseyside in September 2004 and in South Yorkshire in the New Year. The South Yorkshire pilot will initially be focused in the Barnsley and Rotherham area. It is expected to expand to Sheffield and Doncaster at a later date.

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Financial Pressures Triggering Return Of The Extended Family

Pension under-funding, the spiralling cost of residential care and pressures facing first time buyers will lead to radical changes in the way families live and the revival of the multi-generational household – where three generations live under the same roof.

Skipton Building Society’s new ‘Financing Your Future' report identifies that the number of extended financial families1 (EFFs) in the UK is set to treble over the next 20 years. The report projects that in the next two decades there will be around 200,000 EFFs in existence – compared to the current estimated 75,000.

The report states that pension under-funding, coupled with increasing life expectancy, will play a key role in this renaissance and force many to consider more communal living arrangements. Previous research by Skipton Building Society3 revealed that a third of grown up children are prepared make the ultimate sacrifice and invite their mums and dads to live with them to guarantee their comfort in later life.

Further influencing this comeback is the cost of residential care. Annual costs of £20,000 per annum or more, will quickly wipe out inheritances and provide an incentive for a ‘granny flat' – as an attractive alternative to state care.

But it's not just retirees shaping the restructuring of future households – homebuyers are also playing a part. The high cost of property and the impact of graduate debt are delaying first time buyers entering the market by three to four years, resulting in many staying at home longer to save for a deposit.

Also highlighted as a factor influencing families to pool their resources under one roof is the cost of childcare. According to the Daycare Trust, the typical cost of a full-time nursery place for a child under two is £128 a week, more than £6,650 a year; up 6.7% in the last year. For many parents this can be one of the largest monthly outgoings, restricting mortgage spending and preventing people from moving up the property ladder, which in turn will prompt parents and grandparents to buy one large home and have free child-care on tap.

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Departmental Differences Could Delay Age Legislation Till Mid 2007

According to a report in the Financial Times, differences between the Department of Work & Pensions and the Department of Trade & Industry over the issue of retirement ages are threatening to delay the implementation date of the age legislation.

The DWP are said to be championing the end of fixed retirement ages as proposed in the Pensions Green Paper in order to encourage flexible retirement and the extension of working lives. The DTI are depicted as being inclined to bow to strong pressure from employers to set a normal retirement age of 65 – around which individuals and employers could discuss either earlier or later departure dates.

The solution officials have come up with apparently, is to hold a separate, additional consultation on the question of retirement ages alone. Doing so would delay the publication of the draft regulations and the associated consultation period, which means the finalised age regulations could not be placed before Parliament until Spring 2005. Even without the disruption that a General Election next April/May would throw into the timetable, it is unlikely the regulations would be passed before the Summer Recess at the earliest. If they were to come into effect as planned on 1st October 2006, employers would only have 15 or 16 months to prepare for their introduction - not the 2 years they have been ‘promised’ by the Government.

So, if this Government sticks to that commitment, it could be at least mid 2007 before discrimination on the grounds of age in employment and vocational training becomes outlawed. A change of Government might add even more delay.

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CIPD Calls For Flexible Working Rights For All

In response to the Prime Minister’s announcement that the Government plans to extend flexible working rights to carers (see below), the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, one of the UK's leading research organisations on work-life balance issues, has urged the Government to consider extending the right to all workers.

Mike Emmott, Head of Employee Relations comments, "The CIPD welcomes this as further evidence that the Government is considering extending the right to request flexible working. However we should prefer the Government to be bolder. The evidence suggests the existing arrangements are working well. In practice nearly 3 out of 4 employers say they are willing to consider request for flexible working from all employees, not just parents. This reduces the likelihood that some employees will feel badly treated because they believe that others are being given preferential treatment. In a recent CIPD survey, just under half of organisations (47%) reported that many employees who are not entitled to the right resent those who are.

"Where individuals can establish a positive work life balance, both employers and employees benefit. This does not necessarily depend on how employees spend their time away from the workplace, or on the specific demands placed on them, though caring responsibilities - whether for younger or older family members - will often be particularly important. We shall continue to argue for the statutory right to apply to all employees, not just to particular groups."

TAEN fully supports the CIPD’s position.

In A Parent's Right to Ask published last October, the CIPD investigated how employers have reacted to the new right. It revealed that almost two in three employers who have received statutory requests have agreed to at least half of them, either in the form submitted by employees or in modified form. Nine out of ten employers say they have had no significant problems complying with the new right to ask, with cost an issue for just 1%. And 60% of employers say that the current package of family friendly rights has not tipped the balance too far in favour of working parents.

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Week Starting 19th April

Carers To Win Right To Request Flexible Working

The Prime Minister has announced the Government’s intention to extend the right to request flexible working to the 3 million people who are working but who also act as carers for sick or elderly relatives.

The announcement was greeted coolly by business leaders who stressed firstly that employers cannot cope with any more regulations at the moment and secondly that the Government had given them an undertaking not to review or extend the legislation until 2006.

The Prime Minister acknowledged this, “ We have promised to review the impact of the legislation and make no further changes until after the review in 2006. But, subject to that, I believe that our priority should be to extend the right to request to work flexibly to carers of elderly or sick relatives,” he said.

There are just under 6 million such ‘carers’ in total and the Government hope that many of the 3 million or so who are not currently in paid employment may be encouraged to enter it as a result of the extension of this right to them. The flexibility employees can request can be in the form of going to part-time work, job sharing, working from home, staggered hours or compressed days (e.g. fitting five days work into four days).

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Hope Grows For Members of Failed Company Pension Schemes.

Faced with strong pressure from MPs from all parties, the Government looks like its now prepared to compensate the 60,000 or so members of company pension schemes which have collapsed since 1997. Both the Prime Minister and Andrew Smith (Secretary of State at the Department of Work & Pensions) have given clear hints that the Government has now changed its mind on this issue.

There is cross-party support for this move - an Early Day Motion calling for compensation has so far been signed by over 290 MPs – including 206 from the Labour Party

The Pensions Bill now going through Parliament will set up a Pension Protection Fund safeguarding members of failed schemes in future, but as currently drafted it does not allow for retrospective compensation.

Ros Altmann, a leading pensions policy advisor and TAEN trustee, who has been campaigning on behalf of the workers concerned said, “This is wonderful news. Compensation cannot come soon enough for those poor people whose lives have been devastated.”

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Small Businesses – Alive, Healthy & Confident

Small firms in the UK are increasing their sales, employing more people and are confident about the future according to the largest survey of small businesses ever undertaken.

The survey ‘Lifting the Barriers to Growth in UK Small Businesses’ was conducted on behalf of the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) amongst it members and paints a picture of healthy and confident small business sector benefiting from a growing economy. A quarter of the 18,000 respondents started their businesses within the previous 3 years.

FSB members employ 1.25 million people in the UK and 43% of FSB members report an increase in employment since 2002 compared to 16% reporting a decline.
57% saw their sales volume increase in the previous financial year and nearly half report an increase in profitability.

Looking to the future, over 50% of respondents are looking for moderate or rapid growth over the next two years compared to just 5% who want to down-size or shut up shop.

The survey also found that small businesses are continuing to struggle with red tape and that they are unwilling to lose the UK’s opt-out from the 48 hour working week. However, they are prepared to consider moves to a more flexible retirement age.

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Single NHS Job Website Being Rolled Out

The NHS is continuing to recruit around a quarter of a million new employees a year.
To help speed up the process and make it easier to find out what jobs are available, a new single NHS job website is being rolled out across the UK. The service allows jobseekers to search and apply for NHS jobs online.

Around 100 NHS employers around the country have confirmed dates for taking up the service. The first to join between now and the end of May, are in the North West, West Yorkshire, London and the South East, the South West.

The site address is : www.nhs.uk/jobs

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Week Starting 12th April

Best Employment and Unemployment Figures since 1975

Employment is growing and unemployment is falling. Vacancies are high and rising and redundancies are low and falling. These are the headlines from this month’s Labour Force Survey covering December to February 2004.

During those 3 months, employment rose by 183 thousand on the previous quarter and 318 thousand on the year. ILO unemployment was down in the latest quarter and on the year. Claimant unemployment was down in the latest month and on the year.

There were 28.330 million people in work in December to February, a new record high. The LFS employment rate is 74.9%, up 0.4 percentage points from the previous quarter. This is one of the highest rates on record.

The level of ILO unemployment was 1.43 million, down 33 thousand in the last three months and 76 thousand on this time last year. The ILO unemployment rate has fallen from 4.9% to 4.8% this quarter and is 0.3 percentage points lower than a year ago.

The latest Jobseekers Allowance claimant count figures show 882.2 thousand claimants in March 2004, a fall of 4.2 thousand on the month.

The proportion of the population who are economically inactive – those who do not have a job but are not actively seeking or available for work – is 21.2%, down 0.1 percentage point over the last year.

Over the last year the redundancy rate per thousand employees shows a fall of 1.8 to 5.7 per thousand employees. This is the lowest figure recorded since the current series began in 1995.

ONS’s vacancy survey estimates there were 591.5 thousand unfilled vacancies in the quarter to March 2004, up 31.1 thousand (5.5%) on the same period last year. Jobcentre vacancies in March 2004 were 293,539 compared to 239,904 in the same month in 2003. This increase may partly reflect the success of Jobcentre Plus in attracting vacancies from employers.

Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Andrew Smith, welcomed the figures. He said: “The labour market continues to improve month after month. The number of people in work has reached a new record high, up by more than 300 thousand over the last year. With nearly three quarters of working age people in work, the UK has the best performing labour market of the major world economies…..”

“….The UK has weathered the recent global economic slowdown without a rise in unemployment. Our success in keeping unemployment low means the employment demands of a growing economy will increasingly be met from other sources, such as the economically inactive. The level of inactivity is falling, but there is more to do. The development of Jobcentre Plus represents the first concerted effort by any government to provide active support to all benefit claimants of working age to help them return to work.”

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Over 50% of Employers Expect To Recruit In Next 3 Months

The latest quarterly HR Trends and Indicators survey published by the Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development (CIPD) reveals that 53% of employers surveyed plan to recruit in the current quarter. Recruitment intentions are strongest in the finance and public administration sectors.

The CIPD is urging action to:

• Increase the proportion of economically inactive people returned to the jobs market
• Boost training of existing employees to tackle skills shortages
• Recognise the necessity for employers to recruit migrant workers at a time when the supply of labour is short and demand looks set to rise.

Duncan Brown, CIPD Assistant Director General, said:

"With officially recorded unemployment at record low levels, and employers planning to step up recruitment in the coming quarter,organisations are going to find it increasingly difficult to recruit suitably skilled staff. This could lead to upwards pressure on wages.

"The challenge for policy makers is to take urgent action to get some of the record numbers of economically inactive people back into the jobs market to reduce the pressure on the jobs market, while also taking the heat out of the debate caused by the increasing necessity for employers to recruit migrant workers.

"The challenge for employers will be to retain existing staff, invest in training to boost the skill levels of existing employees, or ultimately to find ways of offering the most attractive packages to fill vacancies in an increasingly competitive jobs market."

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1.3 Million Additional Jobs By 2012

A new report is predicting 1.3 million additional jobs will be created in the UK by 2012 - virtually all will be part-time and the majority will be taken by women.

The number of men working full-time is predicted to remain fairly stable but the number of men working part-time is expected to increase substantially as flexible working becomes more widely established.

The sectors expected to see most of the additional jobs by 2012 are business and other services (1.25 million) and distribution and transport (400,000), whilst between them the primary, utilities and manufacturing sectors are expected to lose 650,000 jobs.

The occupations which are expected to increase significantly by 2012 are managers and professionals, associate professionals and technical, customer and personal services. But job losses are predicted amongst skilled trades, transport and machine operatives, admin, clerical and secretarial.

Across all occupations replacement job demand is expected to be 10 times higher than additional job demand in the decade to 2012. And there is expected to be a net change in employment of around 13.5 million job openings – the majority being caused by retirement.

The report from the Institute of Employment Research at Warwick University has been published by the Sector Skills Development Agency.

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Firms Facing Management ‘Black Hole’

A new poll from HR website HRGateway suggests that because of the pace of organisational change, many UK firms are facing a ‘black hole’ when it comes to management skills. A poll of HR professional visitors to their website found over 70% were either ‘very’ or ‘fairly’ worried about the situation.

Mark Crail, from IRS Employment Review reckons the problem stems from one of loss of organisational memory or knowledge rather than skills, although training is a big issue.

He said, “ Many managers at all levels have been removed from firms and with them has gone company history. These organisations are left with a discontinuity between the past and present which causes problems when looking to move forward.”

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Top Firms Nearly Double Their Pension Contributions Over Past Year

According to the latest report from consultants Watson Wyatt, FTSE 100 companies had on average increased their contributions to their employees’ defined benefit (final salary) pension schemes by 95% last year.

However despite the increase the pension fund deficits for FTSE 100 companies remain at an estimate £60 billion because pension liabilities are also continuing to increase. Experts estimate it will take many years to eliminate the deficits – even if these increased levels of funding continue unless there is a dramatic improvement in stock market performance.

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Week Starting 5th April

A Mixed Picture On Flexible Working

The right for parents of young or disabled children to request flexible working
from their employers was introduced a year ago. There has been a rash of surveys released to mark the first anniversary and they present a mixed picture on the success of the measure so far.

According to the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) awareness of the law is high. It says 58% of eligible parents know of its existence and that only 11% of smaller businesses are refusing such requests, however research commissioned by Microsoft suggests that 61% of workers were unaware of this right and that 30% of smaller businesses are refusing such requests.

The DTI says 24% of parents with children under six have requested some form of flexible working from their employees and that 77% of them have had their requests accepted. But it admits only 37% of women who are eligible to ask for them have done so whilst only 10% of men who are eligible have requested them.

Research by Working Families found that many firms were refusing requests for unlawful reasons and some managers had been told that if their requests were granted they would have to relinquish their management positions.

According to Lloyds 33% of firms are offering flexible working to all employees, not just parents, whilst Industrial Relations Services claim the figure is 45%.

Patricia Hewitt, Secretary of State at the DTI heralding the success of the new law said, “ ….despite the well known business benefits of flexible working, sceptics still warned of economic disaster when we introduced the new laws last year. A gloomy picture was painted depicting job losses, businesses facing the wall and no one requesting flexible working. Of course they’re the same people who criticised the National Minimum Wage. They said that would cost a million jobs. Instead, a million and a half new jobs have been created.

Its been a good first year for flexible working, but there is still a long way to go ”

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UK Demand For ‘Knowledge Workers’ Seriously Exaggerated

The Government would like 50% of young people to go to university, gain degrees and become ‘knowledge workers’. However according to some leading academics the UK is already producing too many graduates and the demand for ‘knowledge workers’ has been greatly exaggerated.

A study of the UK’s 28 million jobs found that nearly 50% of them are highly routine and that less than a third (32%) were knowledge based. This compares with Government estimates that 70-80% of the workforce are knowledge-based workers.
The study found the demand for low-skill work far outstripped the need for more graduates.

One of the study’s authors (Anthony Hesketh from Lancaster University) commented, “ We have tended to think that there has been an explosion in the number of jobs requiring knowledge workers. In reality, the situation is that the growth has stalled. Lower skilled jobs have expanded at far faster rates than knowledge-worker jobs.”

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Financial Services Employment Prospects Improving

Expectations for job growth in the Financial Services sector are the strongest for 4 years according to a new survey from the CBI and Pricewaterhouse Coopers. Optimism within the sector is continuing to rise following a strong increase in business volumes and profitability for the fourth consecutive quarter.

Asked whether they were more optimistic about the business situation in their sector than 3 months ago, 51% of companies said ‘yes’. Companies are expecting profitability to increase faster over the next quarter than since September 2000.

Whilst job cuts were expected in the sector during the first 3 months of this year, employment actually increased.

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