Britons did a whopping two billion hours of unpaid overtime last year – worth a record £29.2 billion to the UK economy. Or put another way, that’s roughly equivalent to a million extra full-time jobs.
This means that this year’s Work Your Proper Hours Day falls on Friday 24 February. If workers who regularly put in unpaid overtime worked all their hours from the start of the year, the 24th Feb is first day they would get paid. Read more…
posted 05/01/2012
Blogging, tweeting, or keeping your friends up to date on facebook all blur the boundaries between our work and personal lives, but employers and workers alike are still struggling to adjust.
Arbitration service ACAS has issued new guidance to employers on how to manage the challenges and risks of social networking, from workplace bullying, recruitment, performance management to defamation and disciplinaries. It’s clear many employers need the prompt – research last year showed only 16% of UK employees were aware of any company guidelines in this area. Read more…
posted 29/09/2011
If you’ve ever felt fed up with your boring suit, or hideous uniform, spare a thought for Chen Nong, who has to wear the same stripey t-shirt every day to get his job done. Read more…
posted 20/09/2011
Work more than 40 hours a week? You’re 6 times more likely to ‘burn out’ than those who work fewer than 35.
New research from the Aragon Institute of Health Sciences in Spain shows that long hours increases the risk of “burnout syndrome”: long-term exhaustion, a loss of interest in your work, and high levels of irritability. Read more…
posted 30/06/2011
Almost one in 5 UK business admits using internships as a source of cheap labour.
17% of employers said they had taken on interns in order to get work done more cheaply in a survey carried out by YouGov on behalf of Internocracy, a social enterprise working for better internships. And 95% of the 218 businesses questioned said that interns were very useful to their organisations.
These statistics show clearly how businesses are benefiting from the work done by interns eager to gain that vital work experience. But anyone doing real work deserves to be paid in real money, not just in ‘learning opportunities’. Read more…
posted 06/05/2011
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