The latest HR news from the Personnel Today team. Breaking news stories are added around 10 times each working day. You can host our news on your own HR intranet or website, with our News Syndication Service.

More than 5,000 employment tribunals are said to have been avoided after the launch of Acas' pre-claim conciliation service, the arbitration body has claimed. Acas helpline advisers have referred some 8.034 cases to the pre-claim service since its l  More...
17 March 2010 15:40

Skills shortages remain a worrying issue for many UK companies despite millions of people being unemployed, research revealed today. Almost one-third (31%) of the 209 companies surveyed by the Alliance of Sector Skills Councils said that it is not  More...
17 March 2010 15:11

The Local Government Association (LGA) has insisted that the pay of council chief executives is already open to public scrutiny after a report from the Audit Commission called for more transparency in severance packages. The Audit Commission report,   More...
17 March 2010 14:38

Employers' groups have cautiously welcomed today's announcement of a surprise fall in unemployment figures, but warned that the statistics mask some "worrying trends". The official statistics for the three months to January show that unemployment   More...
17 March 2010 11:39

The unemployment rate fell by 0.1% in the three months to January 2010, marking the first quarterly fall since the three months to May 2008, official figures revealed today. The number of unemployed people fell by 33,000 over the quarter to reach 2.  More...
17 March 2010 10:44

KPMG is set to fill another 2,800 jobs this year on top of the 700 positions already being advertised, Personnel Today has learned. Michelle Quest, head of people at the professional services firm, said the company planned to return to pre-recessi  More...
17 March 2010 10:24

The dispute between British Airways (BA) and Unite will become international today when representatives of the union meet with counterparts at Teamsters, the powerful US trade union, to discuss the looming cabin crew strike. Teamsters members have t  More...
17 March 2010 09:17

A City lawyer who had claimed £19m in compensation over workplace bullying has settled for an undisclosed multi-million-pound sum. Gill Switalski, 54, who earned £140,000 a year at F&C Asset Management, had already won her claims for sexual disc  More...
17 March 2010 09:06

The government scheme aimed at encouraging low-paid employees to save for their retirement could be a "disaster", experts have warned. The call came after the government revealed that all contributions into the National Employment Savings Trust (Nest  More...
17 March 2010 08:52

Five new national skills academies, covering rail engineering, logistics, green building services, biotechnology, and composites, are to be launched, the government announced today. The new bodies, funded by £12m of public investment matched by the p  More...
17 March 2010 08:38

Royal Dutch Shell has announced a further 1,000 job cuts on top of the 1,000 already slated to go this year. The move, announced by chief executive Peter Voser as he unveiled the oil giant's annual figures , follows the removal of 5,000 posts last  More...
17 March 2010 08:26

Kraft has pledged that there will be no compulsory redundancies at Cadbury manufacturing sites for the next two years, after apologising for reneging on a pledge to keep the UK firm's Keynsham plant open. Giving evidence to MPs today, Marc Firestone  More...
16 March 2010 17:16

Business groups and campaigners have broadly welcomed the government's move to encourage employers to offer all jobs flexibly - as long as it is not enshrined in law. Work and pensions secretary Yvette Cooper has revealed that, from later this year,  More...
16 March 2010 17:02

UK companies are wasting almost £4,000 per employee – or 8% of their payroll costs – by failing to deliver their pay policies efficiently, research has revealed. Analysis of corporate pay rates, by HR consultancy Mercer , shows that over-  More...
16 March 2010 16:23

MPs are to quiz Kraft executives today, following the US food giant's takeover of confectioner Cadbury. The Business, Innovation and Skills Committee is to take evidence from Kraft executive vice-president Marc Firestone, as part of its investigatio  More...
16 March 2010 10:36

  The "relentless flow" of complex employment law is stifling UK competitiveness and risks future job creation, the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) warned today. A new BCC report, Employment regulation: up to the job? , is published a da  More...
16 March 2010 09:28

Council chiefs found to be 'under-performing' are receiving huge payoffs, before moving to other councils, the local government watchdog has found. But the commission said the main reason for the deals - which affected almost onethird of chief exec  More...
16 March 2010 09:12

Campaigners calling for jobs to be given to British workers are today protesting outside a power station in Pembrokeshire. The demonstration, at a power station under construction in Pembroke Dock, is the latest in a campaign launched by a Facebo  More...
16 March 2010 09:11

Striking British Airways staff will be unable to picket the airline's Heathrow base due to 'picketing protocol'. The 1,000 cabin crew planning to strike were expected to picket Terminal Five , but as this is on privately owned land, writes th  More...
16 March 2010 08:56

The Trade Union Congress (TUC) has expressed concerns about older people being trapped in long-term unemployment. With the next unemployment statistics due out tomorrow (Wednesday), the TUC said it will be looking closely at the figures. S  More...
16 March 2010 08:38