Government considering a ‘sick note’ crackdown to get more people into work
The Department for Work and Pensions is looking at ways to reverse the rise in the number of people unable to work due to long term-sickness, according to the Telegraph newspaper. One idea under consideration is to encourage doctors to focus on how people can work with support. This is linked to the Chancellor’s focus on getting people off out of work benefits and into employment. He’s expected to make an announcement about this in the budget on Wednesday 15 March 2023.
Fit notes replaced sick notes in 2010 and give GP’s the opportunity to say if an employee ‘may be fit for work’ or ‘is not fit for work’. An evaluation into fit notes found that 12% of patients were given fit notes with a ‘may be fit for work’ assessment.
It’s not clear whether the scheme being considered will adopt a similar methodology.
Over half of employers are struggling to fill some vacancies
The CIPD’s Labour Market Outlook found that 57% of employers have hard-to-fill vacancies, and 29% anticipate significant problems in filling these over the next six months. Education is one of top sectors who are most impacted.
The same survey found that a majority of employers are planning to upskill staff, others are raising pay or increasing the duties of existing staff to fill these vacancies.
Government recommends 3.5% pay increase for teachers
The DfE has recommended a 3% pay rise for experienced teachers in 2023/4. Combined with the increase in teachers’ starting salaries, across the board, teachers will receive an average 3.5% increase. The pay review body responsible for setting teachers’ salaries can suggest a higher settlement.
TUC publishes analysis on gender pay gap
The TUC has recently published Analysis: Gender pay gap, which highlights that the gender pay gap for all employees is 14.9%. The analysis is based on data on employee earnings in 2022 taken from the latest ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings. It indicates a number of factors that influence the gender pay gap, including:
- Age – the gender pay gap for older women is largest with women aged between 50 and 59 having the highest pay gap (20.8%), followed by women aged 60 and over (18.4%) and then women aged between 40 and 49 (18.1%)
- Sector – the gender pay gap persists even in female-dominated sectors like education (22.2%) and healthcare and social work (14%).
UCU sending all colleges a freedom of information request asking for pay details
The UCU has started to send out its annual FOI requests to all colleges asking for information about pay and conditions for the academic year 2021/22.
The DfE have already collected workforce data for this period. However, it’s not yet available and colleges will need to comply with these requests within the required period of 20 days. The union has said that it will continue to collaborate with the DfE as they believe that ‘it’s in the sector’s interests that there is a single workforce dataset for FE’. Let’s hope that this is the last year colleges have to respond to both requests.
Third of employers seeing more employee grievances
According to recent research, nearly a third (30%) of employers have seen an increase in the number of grievances over the last two years.
The top three reasons for employee grievances are bullying or harassment (67%), relationships with managers (54%) and relationships with colleagues (49%). However, 37% of respondents reported pay and grading as the main cause of grievances.
Health and wellbeing support comes out top in workplace benefits table
Health and wellbeing support with 24/7 access to a personal doctor, was the number one employee benefit for almost half (48%) of UK workers in 2022, according to new data from HIVE360. Health and wellbeing services were also popular, notably access to personal mental health counselling services and a crisis support helpline. The data is based on Hive’s app based platform.
Committee looking at human rights protection at work
The Joint Committee on Human Rights has opened an inquiry looking into the manner in which rights guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights are protected and upheld in workplaces across the UK. It has invited written evidence on a series of questions relating to topics such as freedom of association and right to strike, the right to privacy, freedom of thought conscience and religion, labour market exploitation, retained EU Law, and international human rights treaties.
The inquiry was launched on Friday 10 February 2023 and will accept evidence until Friday 24 March 2023.
Information Commissioner publicly naming most organisations it investigates for data breaches
In recent months the UK’s data protection authority, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), has begun publishing information about organisations that have been subject to reprimands, complaints, and various other concerns that have been brought to its attention. Many organisations had previously assumed that information would not be made public.
Read more – March 2023
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