news from workSMART

As staff struggle back into work following the heavy snows, there’s confusion in some places as to how employers should treat time lost through bad weather, with some people being told they’ll lose pay for time missed, or have to take annual leave to cover it. Whilst there’s actually no general legal right to be paid if you can’t come into work because of the weather, a lot of companies do have ‘bad weather’ policies so that employees who are genuinely kept away from work by dangerous weather and lack of transport still get paid. Read more…

posted 03/02/2009

The TUC has calculated that 5.24 million people across the UK worked unpaid overtime in 2008, bringing its total value across the UK to a record £26.9 billion – the highest number since records began in 1992.

If you’re one of them, you might be missing out on extra £5,139 a year if you’d been paid for the additional 7 hours and 6 minutes that you’re on average putting in.

The biggest increases in unpaid overtime have taken place in London, the East Midlands and Eastern England. The South East and Scotland have been better at keeping up their work life balance though, with the number of people working unpaid overtime actually falling slightly.

If the average unpaid overtime worker did all their unpaid work at the start of the year, the first day they would get paid would be Friday 27 February, which we call ‘Work Your Proper Hours Day‘ – a light-hearted awareness day for staff to work their proper hours for at least one day a year and for employers to thank their staff for regularly putting in all those extra hours at work.

But while some of this increase is due to the longs-hours culture that still dogs too many British workplaces, the recession will now be making many people scared of losing their job in the year ahead and joining the ever-growing dole-queue.

It’s understandable people are going to be putting in extra hours if they think it can help protect against redundancy or help keep their employer in business. But this doesn’t mean people should ignore excessive working.

Friday 27 February should still be used to think through working hours. Long hours are bad for people’s health, and employers should never forget that each extra hour worked makes people less productive once they’re over a sensible working week.

We think the recession should, if anything, provide a spur to make workplaces more productive, and for managers to get staff to work together more effectively, not just compete for who can stay the latest.

Find out more about Work Your Proper Hours Day 2009.

posted 08/01/2009

With many employers cutting back on workplace festivities this Christmas, seasonal cheer may be in short supply in Britain’s offices.

Given that staff may end up having to do more themselves this year, we’ve redeveloped our online secret Santa tool, to make it easier to arrange low price gift giving amongst your colleagues. You tell us your colleagues’ names and addresses and it will do the rest, pairing people up with someone, but keeping it all hush hush as to who bought what for who.

Give it a go now at www.worksmart.org.uk/santa – It’s a fun, inexpensive way of keeping the Christmas spirit alive in workplaces that might not have had much to smile about recently.

You can also use our online greetings cards to send a personal Christmas message to friends and colleagues. You’ll find a selection of Christmas themed cards in our ecards section.

And to help those at work over the festive break, we’ve put together a guide to the pitfalls of working through Christmas and the New Year. Banned from sticking up tinsel, or worried you’ll have to work through Christmas lunch? We’ve got answers for your festive problems.

And of course, all of us at workSMART want to wish all our users a very happy Christmas and a great start to the working year in 2009.

posted 09/12/2008

As Get Safe Online Week draws to a close today, we’ve got a new interactive toolkit to help improve workers’ Internet security awareness and skills. According to Get Safe Online’s 2008 Report, a worrying 66% of Internet users have the same password for multiple websites, 23% have posted confidential or personal information online, and 17% have opened email attachments from an unknown source, potentially putting themselves at risk from viruses or other malicious software.

This could have a huge impact on the firms they work for, who may stand to lose valuable commercial or customer data, or lose money through damage or downtime due to attacks, not to mention getting people into trouble – whether or not they know what they’ve done wrong.

The benefits that the Internet brings to UK business are growing every day. Social media and networking are increasingly important to people’s professional and personal lives. But employers have to put time and money into making sure their staff are aware of the dangers associated with working online, or they could just be pouring all the money they spend on the rest of their computer security systems down the drain.

So, to do something about this, we’ve got together with GetSafeOnline.org and the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS) to produce Not Safe For Work? – a free online toolkit for people at work in the UK. It has video interviews from industry experts, quizzes and reading lists, and can make you a personalised advice prescription, tailored to your own Internet usage.

Have a go now, it could tell you something that will save you a lot of grief.

And hey, let’s be careful out there!

posted 21/11/2008

You only need to turn on the telly for a few minutes at the moment to see we’re in a very worrying period for the economy and hence for our jobs – Redundancies and hardships for certain business sectors are making the headlines daily. The real situation is complex though, and if you’d like a little more of the facts and trends behind the more “hell in a handcart” style headlines, you can check out the TUC’s new Recession Report, which plans to track economic and employment developments every month, to give you an inside track on what’s going on.

But if you’d just rather browse the web in denial, we can (with tongue firmly in cheek) recommend a helpful utility called Recessionblocker.com, which simply screens out any of the gloomier words that might upset you when reading the news.

posted 19/11/2008