CIPD

Work-life balance is one of the seven dimensions of job quality covered in the CIPD’s UK Working Lives survey. Initial findings from the survey reveal two interesting findings. One is that work-life balance seems to be regarded as less important by working people than other dimensions such as having good pay and benefits or an interesting job. The other being that, unlike love and marriage or a horse and carriage…

Our new Megatrends report documents the increase in self-employment seen in the UK. In the 1950s, just 6% of jobs were self-employed. Since then, as shown in the chart, self-employment has reached 13% of all jobs.

Self-employment seems to have undergone two ‘growth spurts’ – most dramatically, during the 1980s and early 1990s; and in the period from 2008 to 2014/15.

The first of these leads us to…

Today is World Day for Safety and Health at Work.  Too many people leave home each day to go to work, never to return.  Looking at the ILO website, the period between 2010 and 2012 saw around 20,000 fatal occupational injuries each year – that’s nearly 70 a day.  And bear in mind there are many missing observations.  Even where data are reported, they may well be incomplete.  The annual death toll is in four figures…

Last week’s ONS statistics for labour productivity for the final quarter of 2015 provided proof, if still needed, that the UK’s productivity malaise continues.  The strength of job creation meant that output per hour worked fell by over 1% in a single quarter, more than reversing the slight improvement seen in the previous two quarters.  As shown in the chart below, our productivity go-slow is close to entering…

Today is the International Day of Happiness.  It was declared by the United Nations at the instigation of Bhutan, the small Himalayan kingdom where the stated aim of government is maximising Gross National Happiness.  But it reminds us that employee well-being, then described as staff welfare, is where CIPD and the HR profession began.

The pioneers of the profession (nearly all women) started their work in factories towards…

Last Tuesday was International Women’s Day and the theme was “Pledge for Parity”, which encouraged all of us to take concrete steps towards achieving gender parity.  It was backed up by a report from Ernst and Young that updated a previous World Economic Forum report which showed it would take 117 years to achieve global gender parity in the workplace if current trends were maintained.  In other words…

Last week, CIPD and the Resolution Foundation launched our new report on how employers expect to respond to the National Living Wage (NLW).

To recap, the NLW comes into force on 1 April.  It sets a new, higher minimum wage rate for workers aged 25 and over of £7.20 per hour, compared with the current National Minimum Wage (NMW) adult rate of £6.70 per hour.  That’s a 7.5% pay increase.  According to the…

By Mark Beatson, Chief Economist, CIPD - originally issued 2 September 2015, now with graphics restored

Our recent report on over-qualification and skills mismatch, written by Craig Holmes and Ken Mayhew, has generated a vigorous debate - which is what a discussion paper should do – even if the result has sometimes been heat as much as light.

Holmes and Mayhew emphasise the importance of being clear on terms, how…

Optimism about prospects for pay this year seems already to have dissipated.  The latest CIPD Labour Market Outlook survey, published on Monday, reported a downward move in employers’ forward-looking pay expectations, with the median pay change falling from 2% to 1.2%.  According to XpertHR, the median pay rise anticipated during the 2015/16 pay round among the private sector employers they surveyed was 2%, unchanged…

Hardly a week goes by without at least one news headline about the ‘skills crisis’.  This week’s example is a Financial Times article on the skills crisis said to be looming in the heritage renovations sector as older experts approach retirement and apprenticeships stay unfilled.

Shortages of skilled people in all sorts of roles are apparently holding back economic growth.  This 2014 survey of employers…

There’s been a lot of discussion about productivity during the last few years: both trying to explain why labour productivity has hardly increased since 2008 and working out what can be done to increase the UK’s productivity.

CIPD asked employers questions about productivity in its summer 2014 and summer 2015 Labour Market Outlook surveys, analysed in reports available here and here. In these reports, we…

Most people regularly feeling under excessive pressure at work say it has a negative effect on their individual performance

Health and well-being at work were hot topics at last week’s CIPD annual conference and exhibition, especially on the Wednesday following Professor Sir Cary Cooper's keynote address, which also happened to be National Stress Awareness Day.  As it happened, the CIPD’s summer 2015 Employee…

By Mark Beatson, Chief Economist, CIPD

Last week our contribution to the Great Business Debate was published.  It is part of the jobs, pay and progression thread, which is asking whether business does enough to help people into work and help them get on at work.  We looked at what employees thought, using questions in recent Employee Outlook surveys.  The strapline is in the final paragraph “… between a half and two thirds…

For the first time, the CIPD’s spring 2015 Employee Outlook survey included questions on organisational culture, what it feels like to work in a particular organisation.

People who didn’t work on their own were asked ‘How would you describe the culture prevailing in your organisation at the moment?’  They were then asked to choose one of the following descriptions:
• An organisation with a family…

Last week I took part in an ESRC-sponsored seminar at Newcastle University on the regulation of work.  The seminar explored a number of different perspectives on regulation in the workplace.  My own talk focused on how regulation affects firms and whether it was a stimulant (creating the conditions for modernisation of the workplace and the employment relationship) or an irritant (placing unnecessary and unwanted demands…

Last week’s remarks by Professor Sir Cary Cooper at the British Psychological Society Annual Conference re-ignited debate about the impact on our lives of work-related emails and other forms of contact outside office hours, and whether employers should choose (or be compelled) to impose limits on such forms of contact.  This issue hit the news last year when the German Labour Minister announced plans to restrict…

Yesterday, I attended the annual Voice and Value conference, co-hosted by CIPD and the London School of Economics.  The conference heard a range of perspectives from academics and practitioners, including a debate on whether legal rights to employee voice should be strengthened.

I don't recall anybody at the conference arguing that employees having a voice was a bad thing.  Nevertheless, if you regard the highest form…

The economic forecast prepared by the Office for Budget Responsibility that accompanied the Budget has not changed greatly from that published alongside the Autumn Statement just over 3 months ago.  A bit more pessimism about world trade growth and the Euro area have been offset by reduced expectations for oil and commodity prices and thus for inflation as a whole, with the result that expected growth in 2015 is now 2…

Yesterday CIPD launched its new research report on gender diversity in the boardroom at an event in the West End.  There was a lively and thoughtful discussion, especially around the issue of whether some form of statutory quota should be introduced, compelling big companies to appoint a minimum proportion of women to their boards.  This might seem like a bit of a diversion.  As Jo Swinson, Minister for Women and Equalities…

In my last blog, I presented recent CIPD survey data which showed that over a third of employees (35%) said they rarely find time for training and development - slightly higher than the 33% who disagreed with this statement.

The 2010 National Adult Learner Survey for England asked respondents to make choices between (hypothetical) learning activities and this data was used to work out the factors that employees think…

My last blog talked about the UK's weaknesses in basic skills - literacy, numeracy and problem-solving - and how population ageing will make it more important for us to learn throughout life.

Our Manifesto for Work said that future governments will need to take the lead in building a culture and infrastructure that supports lifelong learning.

We talk about culture because changes to the content of education and…

Last Tuesday, I attended two meetings in different Government Departments where I was able to brief stakeholders on the work CIPD was doing to tackle important problems, but which also showed just how much there is for all of us to do in turning population ageing from a challenge into a spur for better, richer, more fulfilling – and, yes, longer – working lives.

In the morning, at the Department for Education…

Today is International Human Rights Day, and it is 66 years to the day since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the UN General Assembly. The original declaration has since been supplemented by numerous conventions that extend and amplify the original statement, taking account of changing views on what those rights should be and tackling specific forms of human rights violation.

Articles 23 and 24…

I'm back in the office after spending some of last week at the CIPD Annual Conference and Exhibition (ACE) in Manchester followed by a weekend in Berlin which happened to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

I was at ACE to co-present a session entitled 'Megatrends: what the changing economy means for HR'. I set out some of the short term and long term trends affecting the economy and…