The Work Clinic

Ethics | Whose responsibility?

2008-07-02T08:21:10Z

According to a report by CIMA (Chartered Institute of Management Accountants) and the IBE (Institute of Business Ethics), 84% of finance professionals believe that business has a moral obligation to address global issues. Over half of the respondents stated that 'environmental impact' is more important to their companies now than it was two to three years ago. While this commitment is laudable, there seems to be a lack of practical action on show - just a third of the organisations surveyed even report on ethical performance or corporate social responsibility. Even fewer (30%) of the respondents actively collect ethical management information, despite the fact that nearly half of those who fail to do so think their organisations would benefit from it.

On a more personal level, the results were reinforced by the respondents' views on their own roles, with over half (59%) saying they contribute to their organisations' ethical performance, and 73% believing that ethical performance will become a formal part of their role in the next few years.

And if management accountants have latched on to an idea, it must be big. But is it really up to the business world? Why should they spend their profits on curing society's ills? Shouldn't this be up to the government? Surely companies with money to spare should be reinvesting it in their staff - training them, providing good working environments, paying them more?

Homophobic bullying | Schools need to do more

2008-07-01T08:44:17Z

TUC general secretary Brendan Barber has called on the government to include lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) equality education in the school curriculum, as the only way to address homophobic bullying in schools. According to Barber, schools need to protect their pupils from homophobic bullying, and promoting LGBT equality in the classroom is the best solution. Barber said: "While the UK's education system ought to be in the vanguard of the fight against homophobic discrimination, all too often it is in fact part of the problem. Whereas our schools and colleges have done much to counter racism and sexism, the same cannot be said when it comes to tackling homophobia. Despite some notable exceptions, too many educational establishments are breeding grounds for the worst kind of casual prejudice".

He added that a survey by campaign group Stonewall last year found that "almost all LGBT pupils reported hearing homophobic abuse. No less than two thirds reported being the victims of bullying. And perhaps most alarming of all, one in six said they had been subjected to death threats".

Barber concluded that "Schools and colleges are not doing enough. Fewer than a quarter have categorically said that homophobic bullying is wrong. And while 99 per cent of schools told the Stonewall survey they had general anti-bullying policies, just six per cent had anti-bullying policies that dealt with LGBT issues".

Back to the floor | Job-shadowing

2008-06-25T08:19:29Z

Senior management are often seen as being out of reach, inaccessible and having little concept of what goes on among the lower ranks. Workers ask, rightly, how people with little or no knowledge of how the work is done can make the decisions. Sending them back to the shopfloor is one way of jogging their memory, ensuring that they communicate with more junior staff and showing those staff your commitment to them and their viewpoints.

As part of the recent Adult Learners' Week, The Royal National Lifeboat Institute (RNLI) sent its HR director, Ali Peck, back to the floor. Instead of plotting HR strategies, Peck joined the housekeeping team and found herself maintaining the on-site overnight accommodation used by RNLI volunteers trained at The Lifeboat College - from making beds to cleaning rooms and communal areas. Peck's efforts were part of the RNLI's job-shadowing scheme, which gives staff an opportunity to get hands-on experience of colleagues' jobs. Staff can choose to shadow a range of jobs from across the organisation - including chief executive. Almost 70 staff took part this year. As Peck says, "Most of us have an idea about what other people's jobs entail but actually doing the job - even for a short time - is a real eye opener".

In the face of such enthusiasm, it seems odd that so few companies offer job shadowing schemes. What is there to fear? Are they worried that people might suss how little the chief executive does, or that the lower ranks might get it into their heads that they too could do the 'big' jobs? Or are companies simply too tight to allow staff to step away from their work long enough to benefit from schemes like this?

Flexible working | IT lagging behind

2008-06-24T08:11:40Z

Research conducted by online recruitment specialist www.theitjobboard.co.uk reveals that although 61.1 percent of IT professionals work flexible hours, almost half (45.2 percent) of these do not believe the IT industry has adapted itself to a flexible working culture. Flexible working was classified as working from home, working less hours/part time, flexi-time and working a four and half day week.

Nearly one fifth (17.4 percent) went as far as saying that they felt flexible working had a negative effect on their career progression, with several respondents believing that employers saw them as less committed to their job because they were not in the office for the standard working day. In addition, 22.6 percent had considered going back to work on a non-flexible basis because of the constraints imposed on them by this way of working.

When looking for a new job, IT professionals considered flexible working the second most important criteria after salary. When asked to rank the individual factors they believed to be 'Very important', 64.1 percent of respondents said salary, 57.4 percent stated flexible working, 50.3 percent chose location and 41.7 percent selected career progression.1

Of the 38.9 percent of respondents that did not work flexible hours, over four fifths (81.5 percent) were not offered the option by their employer, despite 90.2 percent saying they would like the choice to do so. 65.4 percent felt their work life balance suffered through non-flexible working conditions.

Alex Farrell, managing director at www.theitjobboard.co.uk comments: "With the current skills shortage in the technology industry, employers need to act now to encourage and retain talent in their IT departments. The option to work flexible hours is clearly high on the agenda for IT professionals. It is is worrying therefore to see that many organisations do not offer it, and that many of those that do are not perceived to be getting it right."

The European Commission calculates that by 2010 there will be a shortfall of 300,000 positions in the region's technology sector. Farrell continues: "A key factor in tackling the skills crisis is to encourage more women into the traditionally male domain of the IT workforce. It is widely acknowledged that a flexible working policy is essential to many female IT professionals because it allows them to balance the demands of their career with family and childcare commitments - employers have no time to lose in introducing this practice."

Other key findings from The IT Job Board research include:

Of the people working flexible hours, 25.3 percent did so because their employer allowed it, 24.9 percent said it was a lifestyle choice and 19.7 percent wanted to avoid busy travel times.
34.2 percent of the IT professionals that did work flexible hours worked from home and 32.2 percent worked part time. Only eight percent worked flexi-time.
However, of the respondents that did not work flexible hours but would like to, 42.7 percent wanted to work from home and 31.5 percent were interested in flexi-time. Just seven percent said they wanted to work part-time.

Currently, only parents with children who are under six or disabled are entitled to request flexible working. However, in May this year, the government announced plans to extend flexible working rights to all parents with children under the age of 16, a move which will give an extra 4.5 million people the right to ask to work flexible hours.

914 people undertook the IT Job Board survey, which was carried out between 16 and 29 May 2008.

Working outdoors | Health and safety

2008-06-23T08:07:40Z

Research conducted for BT Wireless Broadband has revealed that the majority of city workers are tied to their desks and see natural sunlight for less than an hour per day. Nearly a quarter (22%) see less than twenty minutes during the working day.

Nearly two thirds (65%) of workers admit they are depressed at the thought of not being able to get away from their desk to see more daylight. And there are even some who would consider throwing a "sickie" to boost their daylight exposure.

Dave Hughes, BT Retail's director of wireless broadband, says: "Out of the office no longer means 'out of touch' and workers can stay just as productive when not chained to their desks. The number of Wi-Fi enabled devices flying off the shelves coupled with widely available hotspots provides the tools to support remote working. Let's just hope the British weather plays along this summer!"

Stephen Alambritis, of the Federation for Small Businesses, foresees this lack of fresh air as becoming a real drain on productivity: "Lack of sunshine or outdoors activity has an enormous effect on morale, and productivity is likely to drop at the same time. With a wide variety of internet access options available to office workers, and more bosses approving remote working, there's never been a better summer for those workers stuck at their desks to get some productive time in the sun for their boss and themselves."

BT's top tips for keeping your work secure working outdoors:

1. Don't flash your devices around. Find a sensible and safe location to work in
2. Activate your computer's firewall before going outdoors
3. Take care that no-one is looking as you type in passcodes/PINs and so on
4. Password-protect any important files. Alternatively, do not take confidential documents out and about with you
5. Use a secure connection wherever possible - details of this can be found next to the network name. Also, ensure that you disable your device's ability to automatically connect to a network, or it could connect you to an unsecure one
6. Disable "file and printer sharing", as this leaves your computer more vulnerable to hackers
7. Keep your operating system and your anti-virus software up to date
8. Try to use webmail services wherever possible, rather than use Outlook or Apple Mail directly. This allows you to take advantage of the added security these sites provide
9. Finally, it's important for both you and your device to stay cool - don't stay in the sun too long, or your laptop could overheat and you may lose important work.

Taking risks | Tackling the recession

2008-06-20T11:45:31Z

People's appetite for risk-taking in the workplace is likely to increase if the economy enters a recession, according to research released by international leadership development organisation Common Purpose. Over half of all working adults surveyed already consider themselves to be risk-takers and 43% think it will be important to take more risks to help their organisation survive a recession.

The survey also found that only 13% of people avoid risk at all costs in their jobs. Common Purpose added that taking calculated risks is very different to acting rashly, and that risk is an inseparable part of entrepreneurship and innovation.

According to Julia Middleton, chief executive, Common Purpose, "An economic downturn is not the time to shy away from risks. Leaders need to be brave and bold, and to look in new places to capture the opportunities for growth and innovation. Looking into other people's worlds is a good place to start." Middleton recommends that, during a recession, we:

• Be brave. Taking a step into the unknown, within or beyond your existing role, takes courage - courage to start and courage to continue
• Prepare. Taking risks involves building an understanding of the issues, challenges, risks and the other stakeholders involved
• Avoid focusing on our area of specialism to the exclusion of all else. Avoid losing sight of the broader context
• Build a diverse network of people and use them to help formulate our plans - their different views and experiences may enable you to see things in a new light
• Keep an eye on the medium and long-term as well as short term fixes: Don't destroy tomorrow's value today.

But how are organisations to generate in their staff the self-confidence needed to take risks? It's difficult enough to do this at the best of times, never mind in the run-up to a recession, when the media is bombarding us with doom and gloom. And leaders taking risks could have a very negative effect on an already jumpy and paranoid staff.

Childish recruits | Are we infantilising our children?

2008-06-12T11:51:03Z

According to the authors of The Dangerous Rise of Therapeutic Education, Dennis Hayes and Kathryn Ecclestone of Oxford Brookes University, today's focus on building up students' self-esteem is 'infantisiling' them, and leaving them unable to cope with life on their own.
Hayes says: "Turning teaching into therapy is destroying the minds of children, young people and adults. Therapeutic education promotes the idea that we are emotional, vulnerable and hapless individuals. It is an attack on human potential".

Hayes and Ecclestone have also drawn attention to the increased presence of parents on campus, and the need for substitute parents, such as counsellors and support officers. Says Hayes "Everyone looks for a difficulty to declare, like the hundreds of students who register themselves as dyslexic. Being dyslexic used to be something that people hid. Now students wear their difficulties as a badge of honour".

The recent introduction into schools of happiness and wellbeing lessons as part of the SEAL - Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning - programme, has caused further concern. According to Frank Furedi, professor of sociology at the University of Kent, formally teaching children to express their emotions "inflates the importance of feelings to the point where they eclipse what is supposed to be going on in the classroom".

And what happens in today's classrooms will of course manifest itself in tomorrow's workplaces. We are constantly complaining about the lack of skills among our younger recruits, so why is the government encouraging them to waste their study time on wishy-washy New Age topics, rather than ensuring that they learn something useful? Shouldn't emotional development be the families' responsibility? And where do employers stand? How are they meant to deal with a generation of recruits unable to spell but more than willing to express their innermost feelings in public?

Surfing at work | Time wasting or morale boosting?

2008-06-10T08:30:58Z

Research by the CBI has found that the average employee spends an hour and a half surfing the net at work each week - costing the economy £10.6bn annually.

And while many businesses view personal internet use as 'a modern-day tea break', others have been forced to sack staff for abusing the privilege.

The CBI survey mentions an insurance company which fired a worker for spending entire days playing a 'swords and sorcery' role-playing game.

The study, which covered 502 organisations, employing more than one million workers, also found that nearly two thirds of employers think staff regularly use office time to look at non-work sites. It estimates that around ten days a year are lost this way, at a cost of £939 per employee.

Nevertheless, it would appear that many companies see reasonable use of the web at work as a morale booster. only 14% of firms restricted web access altogether.

According to the CBI's John Cridland, "Many firms feel as long as the job gets done, there is no problem with staff surfing for personal use."

But where should we draw the line - and how? Is it a case of 'allowing' an hour's surfing per week? The difficulties with this are two-fold - policing internet usage could bring up issues of trust, while being seen to condone staff wasting company time might not impress the shareholders ...

Ethnic minority women losing out | Recruitment failing

2008-06-09T10:45:12Z

Equal opportunity campaigner the Fawcett Society's Seeing Double campaign has published the final report of the Routes to Power research study on ethnic minority women leaders. Based on interviews with 23 of the most senior ethnic minority women in Britain, the report reveals that organisations are still struggling to recognise and reward expertise when it is found in ethnic minority women.

Among the findings:

There are only two ethnic minority women MPs, and there has never been an Asian woman MP
There are only 168 ethnic minority women local councillors in England - less than 1% of the total
There is only one senior ethnic minority woman in the judiciary
Around 3% of the senior civil service are from ethnic minority backgrounds, and only a third of them are women
Ethnic minority women make up just 2.3% of public appointments
Of the 961 directors of FTSE 100 companies, only 8 are women of non-European descent

According to the report, a gap between race equality legislation and social attitudes is producing two new forms of organisational discrimination - tokenism, where ethnic minority women are being used as tokens so that organisations can be shown to be embracing diversity, and typecasting, where ethnic minority women are being streamed into specialising in ethnic minority or gender issues. Tokenism and typecasting were seen to be most severe in politics and in the public sector.

Without resorting to positive discrimination, how are employers to improve the situation? What can organisations offer women from ethnic minority backgrounds? And what can be done to convince girls from ethnic minorities to opt for a career in business?

Complaints | Constructive or just plain whingeing?

2008-06-06T08:45:00Z

We may like to think that the 'whingeing pom' is a figment of the antipodean imagination, but we have to admit, however grudgingly, that it's true. And according to Julian Baggini, author of Complaint: From Minor Moans to Principled Protests, we should be putting this most British of skills to good use.

Baggini points out that the likes of the votes for women and the US civil rights campaigns began with what was essentially public complaint. Complaining, he says, "is the starting point to creating a better world". He adds that "Complaining can be an ice-breaker or a way to communicate, such as discussing the weather. When you complain, you're asserting your belief about the way things should be. We express our values when we complain."

If we're not the type to channel our complaints into campaigning for a better world, Baggini recommends that we keep our everyday gripes in proportion.

And it may come as a surprise that the most common complaint isn't, after all, the weather ...

Top ten complaints:

Bad luck or fate
Personal ill health
Things have generally got worse
Spouse/ friends/ partners
Weather
Religious leaders
Cost of living
Public transport
Corrupt politicians
TV

Big Brother Nine | an employer's nightmare?

2008-06-05T08:34:04Z

As one door closes, another opens. As The Apprentice fades slowly from our screens, series nine of Big Brother hits them. And we're already wondering what misfits Endelmol will have dredged up, and looking forward to a rainy summer spent wondering how they can hold down a job, never mind function within society beyond the BB house.

The lessons of the last eight series haven't been learnt. Prospective housemates don't seem to have realised that the best they can hope for is a couple of months of Z-list glory before heading back to their day jobs. Nor has it occurred to them that their antics will be watched by a whole host of would-be (or in this case, 'won't-be') employers.

As Sarah Turner, employment law partner at Turner Parkinson, points out, most employers would not consider allowing a member of staff to have a potential three months off work to spend as a Big Brother contestant, not least because of the risk of the housemate bringing the company into disrepute: "Businesses generally recognise that any Big Brother-generated media attention will be negative, since most people that go on the show are keen to move up the fame rankings, rather than up a career ladder."

Participation in the show also raises questions of how an employee represents their company outside working hours. As Beverley Smith-Jagger, director at Chester's Sellick Partnership says: "It is hard for employers to impose any real guidelines on their staff if they meet a client by chance on a Saturday night. We encourage our clients to trust their employees to be professional and have the common sense to not behave in a manner that might have a negative impact on their company's image."

Sarah Turner adds that "What people get up to in their private lives, unless it impacts on their job, is largely their own business. It will be hard for an employer to dismiss a member of staff without hard evidence that their actions have damaged the reputation of the company. That said, all employees owe a duty of good faith and fidelity to their employer, which means that they cannot act in a manner contrary to the interests of the employer."

Worth remembering next time you considering donning your sparkly bikini and matching cowboy boots to queue for a Big Brother audition.

Happiness at work | City & Guilds happiness index

2008-06-04T09:41:47Z

When it comes to salaries at least, it would seem that size doesn't matter. A City & Guilds survey of 1000 adults has shown that fewer than half of them stayed in a role because of the size of their salary.

Work-life balance and good relationships with colleagues are apparently far more important, and according to Bob Coates, managing director of City & Guilds, "With a clear impact on the bottom line, improving workplace happiness is rising up the business agenda. Employers cannot afford to ignore it."

Coates adds that "Companies can no longer rely on those established reward and recognition policies that fail to resonate with employees or combat stress levels in the workplace. By taking such a blinkered approach, they risk the rise of an unmotivated and unproductive workplace, or of potentially losing their staff to competitors."

According to psychologist Cary Cooper, the survey results provide "a call to action for the business community to rethink its reward and recognition strategies and consider employees' needs on an individual basis. A flexible approach is needed if businesses are to create a happy, and by association productive, workforce."

As part of the survey, City & Guilds came up with a 'happiness index', which indicated how happy people are at work. Drum roll, please, for the happiest professions (and the not so happy) ....

Beauty therapists
Hairdressers
The Armed Forces
Catering (including chefs)
Retail staff
Teachers
Marketing/ PR
Accountants
Secretaries/ receptionists
Plumbers
EngineersArchitects
Journalists
Mechanics
HR
Call centre workers
IT specialists
Nurses
Bankers
Builders

Childcare trends | Grandparents on duty

2008-06-03T14:26:18Z

Losing our much dreamt-of retirement to poverty-related longer careers is one thing. But losing it to our grandchildren is another matter entirely. A Government report has revealed that parents are shunning inflexible and expensive state childcare in favour of dumping their offspring with Grandpa and Grandma while they head off to work. It's a case of 'all hands on deck', with even neighbours being pressed into childcare duties.
The report, commissioned by the Department for Children, Schools and Families, has found that for many parents the high cost of nurseries means that it's hardly worth their while working. Yet the number of parents taking advantage of free nursery places is much lower than the government had anticipated.
According to experts, parents find the childcare provided by the government inflexible and institutionalised. Says Jill Kirby of the Centre for Policy Studies, "This research confirms what a lot of independent studies have been showing for some time, that families don't want to use formal and registered childcare of the kind which triggers government subsidies. The kind of care the government has been seeking to promote is not in the child's or the mother's interests".
Kirby concludes "If parents are working, the childcare they want is a kind that most closely resembles their own, and that's extended family care or part time and informal care."
The experts seem to have plenty to say about the rights of children and parents, but precious little about those of grandparents. Having brought up their own children, and had their own careers, surely the least they can expect is to enjoy their own retirement.

Background checks | Latest BBC embarrassment

2008-06-02T15:08:17Z

You've got to hand it to the BBC - they are rewriting the rule book when it comes to inventive ways of spending our license fees. £36m over budget on website redevelopment? Boring. Phone voting scandals? Old hat. They're much more creative these days.

It transpires that an artist was hired for his graffiti skills, to add some authenticity to the walls of Albert Square, home to their soap Eastenders. Fine, you say - admirable attention to detail. But so great was the beeb's desire for the real McCoy that they managed to hire the leader of a highly-organised graffiti gang ...

Appearing in court, rather than on BBC1, this week, 25-year-old Andrew Gillman was responsible for adorning 11 of the Eastenders set's walls with graffiti - including the Argee Bharjee Indian restaurant (scene of 'special' nights out for the soap's characters) and fish and chip shop Beale's Plaice. Less amusingly, Gillman and his gang, the DPM Crew, also decorated trains across Britain and as far afield as Amsterdam and Paris. Ever enterprising, the crew even took part in a 'graffiti workshop' in the Czech Republic, in order to teach 'young fans of street art how to use spray paints.'

Gillman used a false name - Eddie Jones - in his BBC job application. Let's hope that this latest embarrassment leads to more rigourous background checks. Endless re-runs and round-the-clock reality TV we can just about live with. Having our license fees find their way into criminals' pockets, we can do without.

Poor business leadership | Training not up to scratch

2008-05-29T10:21:03Z

According to a new survey by business leadership consultancy DDI and the CIPD (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development), British business leaders are not up to scratch - and HR teams are failing to provide the training needed to bring them up to the required standard. Only 41% of the UK HR managers surveyed rated their leadership development programmes high quality. And only 42% of the UK leaders questioned were satisfied with the training offered to them.
The report also found that just 44% of UK executives rate other leaders within their organisations as very good or excellent.
According to the HR respondents, poor leadership development in the UK can be blamed on organisations failing to hold senior managers accountable for leadership development. Other problems identified were the failure of organisations to measure the results of leadership development and hence failing to learn from mistakes, and a lack of consistency in the way programmes are deployed.
Vanessa Robinson, organisation and resourcing adviser, CIPD, says: "HR professionals have a major role to play in helping leaders and senior managers realise the pivotal role they must play in proactively supporting leadership development activities. As well as acting as role models for those on high potential programmes, they must also play key roles in identifying future leaders. A lot of effort is going into developing leaders, and a lot is going right. But this report shows that when it comes to delivering outcomes from leadership development, UK organisations could do better."
It all begs the question - why are we filling leadership positions with people who aren't up to the job?