Management and leadership skills in the British workplace are lagging behind those of the rest of the leading developed countries, according to a new study.

A series of ‘ineffectual and uncoordinated’ government policy reviews over the past two decades have done little to improve matters, says the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD).

The CIPD suggests that the government speeds up changes to skills in the workplace as part of the forthcoming growth review.

Key recommendations in the report Good Management – A New (Old) Driver for Growth include:

• Improving voluntary human capital reporting

• Promoting tools and support already available and identify best practice

• Cross-departmental collaboration and longer-term political commitment, including a new focus on management and leadership skills in in line with business requirements

• Sector Skills Councils and Local Enterprise Partnerships should promote leadership and management as ‘skills for growth’ essentials
• Clarity on the management and leadership skills required and the training and qualifications available

• Integration of more people management elements in existing training

• A review of public sector management and leadership capability and development to let the government lead by example

Katerina Rüdiger, the CIPD’s skills policy advisor and author of the report, said: “Headline grabbing proposals which call for making it easier to ‘sack the slackers’ are at risk of masking the real question of why are so many UK workers still underperforming?

“The reason is not stringent employment legislation as the UK has one of the most deregulated labour markets across OECD countries, but a crisis of management and leadership skills.

“Firing underperforming workers does not address the root cause of this problem; the government should instead focus on supporting employers to improve management capability.

“One third of the UK’s workforce has managerial responsibilities so it’s not difficult to see the potential for improved management and leadership capabilities to unlock productivity and address the problem of workplace performance in a way that works for everyone: employers, individuals and the UK economy.”

The best placed people to promote diversity and equality in the workplace stand accused of blocking the way of change in many organisations.

HR professionals are one of the biggest barriers of fairness and inclusion at work, argues Stephen Frost, head of diversity and inclusion at the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games.

Speaking at the annual Wainwright Trust event in London, he blamed HR professionals for playing a part in a ’scandal’ and called on them to lead change.

In a scathing response to a question during a debate, he also slammed people “masquerading” as diversity heroes who are really managing the status quo.

Frost advocated judging people on achievement rather than their public pronouncements.

“There has been a lot of progress on improving equality in the last 30 years, but there is still more to do,” said Frost. “My job is to create change and that is what I’m driven by. I think it’s a scandal that HR professionals who should be the biggest agents for change in the workplace are often the biggest blockers. So I would like to get HR to focus on and lead on the issue of diversity and inclusion.

“Anybody doing diversity work will know that by necessity it is hard,” he continued. “There’s a real tension between doing the necessary creative best to encompass all the variables and people and diversity and on the other hand needing rigorous outputs including bringing about change. This tension has to be managed and I don’t think HR and diversity people are doing a great job of that. I’d say if you can create change you have to.”

Frost urged employers to seize the forthcoming London 2012 Paralympics as a chance to push for better jobs opportunities for the disabled.

The Wainwright Trust campaigns for equality in the workplace.

How employers should deal with lazy or unproductive workers has long been a cause of argument with their colleagues who work hard to earn the same money.

The problem is turfing them out results in paying redundancy or compensation if the case goes to an employment tribunal.

Now a ‘leaked’ report suggest bosses can sack slackers and pay fixed rate compensation as a fine for clearing what they might consider dead wood.

The trouble is that dead wood could well be you or one of your family unfairly dismissed simply because the employer can fire you – and factoring in the cost of dismissal might be a small price to pay for some firms.

The good news is workers sacked for discriminatory reasons will still have the option of an unemployment tribunal.

For the rest of the country’s 29 million employees, effectively the employer can pay a small fine for pushing them out of their job, no questions asked.

Redundancy payments are not quite the golden egg that many envy.

A worker under 41 is paid £400 for every year worked with an employer up to a maximum 20 years – a total of £8,000. Workers over 41 are slightly better off at £600 compensation for every year worked up to the same 20 year limit – adding up to £12,000.

Unfair dismissal payments are a lottery. The cap is £68,400, but the average payment is much less, depending on the reason. This is generally on top of any redundancy payment.

Under the leaked proposal, the right of unfair dismissal is swept away along with the £68,400 compensation payment.

So will this proposal become law?

It depends. What you can see is government in action. Employers have sat across dinner tables and chatted at their lodges and clubs with policymakers and politicians.

The result is an anecdotal report claiming scheming employees take advantage of charitable employers and ‘things would be much better if we could just pay them off, old chap’.

The facts are that no research is in the public domain suggesting lazy employees take their bosses for a financial ride.

The leak is putting the report out for consultation through the back door.

The principle of fair play would suggest that this report is a policy no-goer, but if workers do not make enough noise, it might just coast through unnoticed to the statute book.

The places where British ex pats most want to live are also among the countries where people are most dissatisfied with their lifestyles and financial outlooks.

Surprisingly, people in the UK are generally more satisfied with their lives, according to research by the European Union.

The report looked at a range of lifestyle and financial factors, like jobs, the economy and healthcare.

The findings showed that overall, countries in the north and west of Europe, including the UK, fared better than those in sunnier climes – with the tiny island of Malta at tenth the only place to buck the trend.

Luxembourg, Austria and the Netherlands came out top of the satisfaction survey – with the UK ninth of the 27 EU states.

After Malta, the remaining 17 states all returned a negative result – including France (13th) and Spain (16th).

The three countries at the bottom of the table are Hungary, Romania and Greece.

Overall, the research concluded that the whole continent is dissatisfied with their lives – although things have improved a little since last year.

“Even if they are still negative when evaluating the general situation of their country, Europeans seem to feel that the economy is recovering, but that daily life is more expensive than it was last year,” said the Special Barometer Social Climate report. (LINK: http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_370_sum_en.pdf )

“Optimism that things will improve in the next twelve months has increased. Europeans are still struggling with serious difficulties, but their expectations for the near future are improving.”

The countries least satisfied with their governments are those that have experienced the worst economic problems – Greece, Romania, Latvia, Ireland and Portugal.

Luxembourg records the highest score, followed by Austria, Sweden, Estonia and Germany.

Several non EU surveys have returned France and Spain as the favourite European destinations of British ex pats – with the USA and Australia topping the charts for outside the EU.

Public services across the UK are treating the disabled poorly, and in some cases ignore their rights.

A scathing report from the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman highlights some recent investigations and lays out how public bodies should handle complaints.

Public bodies that are marked badly for dealing with individuals are the NHS, the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service, and the UK Border Agency.

The cases investigated included:

• The UK Border Agency paid £5,000 compensation for the distress, humiliation, intimidation and anxiety arising from stopping and strip searching a lone traveller with learning difficulties and a mental health condition when he passed through customs.

• An NHS Trust acknowledged the failings in care and treatment of a profoundly deaf mother suffering from epileptic seizures who later died in hospital.  The trust paid her mother £1,000 compensation.

• A woman in her 40s, who has learning disabilities and epilepsy. She is cared for at home by her parents and needs significant support with her personal care and everyday tasks. She was admitted to hospital and her parents complained about the standard of care in the hospital. The Trust apologised and paid £2,500 compensation.

“The cases in the report highlight the difficulties faced by disabled people in accessing public services and the lack of awareness in some public bodies of their statutory obligations, which can lead to poor service and unfair treatment,” said ombudsman Ann Abraham.

“The cases also show the role that the ombudsman can play in both righting individual wrongs and driving improvements in public services.”

“I hope that this report will be helpful to people, and their representatives, who may be considering whether to refer such cases to the ombudsman; and will also help bodies in jurisdiction understand how we will consider complaints made about them.”

The ombudsman offers a free complaints service for anyone in dispute with a government department, a range of other public bodies in the UK, and the NHS in England.

A free copy of the report,  Report on complaints about disability issues  including details of the five investigations, is available

Comic Relief is pouring funds in to relieving the stigma of suffering from mental health problems for millions.

Campaign group Time To Change is picking up £20 million of combined funding from the comics and the government.

Comic Relief will contribute £4 million, the second time the charity has awarded its largest UK grant to the group.

The money will be spent on a campaign to ease discrimination against those suffering from mental health issues.

Care Services Minister Paul Burstow said: “One in four of us will experience some form of mental health problem during our lives. Unfortunately, people often have to cope with stigma and discrimination alongside their condition, in their families, their classrooms and their work places.

“Time to Change is already making a big difference. Coping with a mental health condition is difficult enough without the added burden of overcoming discrimination too. That’s why I am committing up to £16 million over the next three and a half years to Time to Change to help fight the negative attitudes people have towards mental health conditions.”

Time to Change runs events and campaigns to help young men and women pick up new skills and improve their mental health and confidence, while campaigning to change public behaviour towards people with mental health problems.

Comic Relief Chief Executive, Kevin Cahill, said: “Comic Relief has a long standing commitment to helping people with mental health problems across the UK and has been working on this particular campaign since 2007.

“Four years on, we’re really starting to see some positive results – but we understand change takes time, and this next phase of the campaign will build on the success to date and the important lessons we have learned so far.

“All too often people with mental health problems are blighted by the prejudice, ignorance and fear that surround it and Comic Relief is committed to working with Time to Change to overcome this.”

Employers are urged to remove barriers at work to meet the needs of the disabled following Jane Cordell’s discrimination case against the Foreign Office.

Ms Cordell is profoundly deaf and needs full time lip speaking support.

She has worked for the Foreign Office since 2001. From 2006 until January 2010, she held the post of First Secretary at the British Embassy in Warsaw, Poland. She worked with a full-time lip speaker to help her to fulfil her role.

She was offered the Deputy Head of Mission post in Kazakhstan – conditional on an assessment of reasonable adjustments under the Foreign Office’s reasonable adjustments policy that required special consideration of any adjustments of £10,000 or more.

The adjustments were costed at £695,000 for a two-year posting and £990,000 for three years.

Ms Cordell estimated they would cost no more than £200,000.

The post was offered to someone else because of the costs and the risk that continuity of lip speaking support could not be guaranteed in Kazakhstan.

Ms Cordell claimed this was discrimination based on disability. The claim and subsequent appeal were dismissed.

Mike Smith, commissioner at the Equality and Human Rights Commission, who chairs also chairs the group’s disability committee, said: “The commission supported Jane Cordell because we know how important it is that reasonable adjustments are provided to let disabled people participate realise their potential.

“I am concerned that this appeal sends the message that disabled people should not expect to get to the top of their profession, if they have significant support needs. I call on the government and employers to develop new and creative ways of delivering support for disabled people, so that everyone in employment can maximise their contribution to both their employer and society.

‘”Later this year, the commission will launch the next phase of our Working Better programme, which will show employers how to design new ways of working and use flexible working practices to open up better opportunities for disabled people.”

Minorities are not getting in the picture at art galleries and find themselves written out of history at museums.

Despite equality laws helping the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community making great strides elsewhere, most galleries and museums have done nothing to include them in exhibitions.

The claim was made by Richard Sandell, head of museum studies at the University of Leicester, to delegates at Nowhere to Hide, a session at the Museums Association conference in Brighton.

Sandell was discussing how equality laws oblige publicly-funded organisations to adequately represent groups like LGBTs.

He alleged many museums and galleries viewed telling LGBT stories as ‘risky’, even though recent shows were well supported.

“There’s a real possibility that the financial climate may inhibit museums on equality,” he said.

During the discussion, he told the conference even though groups were reticent to put on LGBT shows, more exhibitions representing their stories had opened in the past five years than the previous 50 years.

Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery curator artist Matt Smith, relayed his experiences of putting on ‘Queering the Museum’ last year.

“I focused on visual jokes, camp, double meanings, pathos and subterfuge,” he said. “People could find a trail throughout the museum. It was important that we didn’t have a gay exhibition off in a room to the side.”

Smith believes many museums and galleries have an excess of exhibits that have a LGBT link that could be exploited to tell a story.

Meanwhile, employment judge Joanna Wade told the conference that representing minorities is not just about sex but demonstrating the focus and commitment of an organisation to staff as well as the public.

“Having an enshrined commitment to equality could offer protection during employment tribunals and would also show funders that you’re the right kind of organisation to fund,” she said.

“I wish that sexual orientation was simply a normal and interesting part of a museum’s life. I wish people didn’t get scared that it was all about sex.”

This article is filed under retirement age abolished 65 years: , Legal, Leadership, Minorities, Equality Act 2010, equality strands, Protected charactersitcs, Role models

What is diversity? See http://www.diversityleaders.org/our-services/what-is-diversity

Do you want more than what Equality Training or iversity Training Courses can deliver? See Diversity at Work in the workplace http://www.diversityleaders.org/our-services/training-a-events

For more content Diversity Leaders Magazine http://paper.li/diversitylead/1308375628

Leadership Voice Magazine Key topics : Leadership, Discrimination, Diversity

The latest casualty of the government’s relentless employment law review are unfair dismissal laws.

Under new rules, employees have had their qualifying time with an employer doubled from 12 months to two years.

The new regulation will come in to force from April 2012.

The government expects to see a massive decline in “weak and vexatious” claims for compensation brought by disgruntled workers.

Consultation suggest around 2,000 less claims will go before employment tribunals as a result of the change.

Business Secretary Vince Cable said: “The priority of this government is to increase growth in our economy. We have one of the most flexible labour markets in the world but there is more we can do to give British business the confidence it needs to create more jobs and support the wider economy to grow.

“Businesses tell us that unfair dismissal rules are a major barrier to taking on more people. So today we have announced that only after working for the same employer for two years can an employee bring an unfair dismissal claim.”

The move is part of an 18 month scrutiny of employment laws – and more changes are expected over the next few weeks as the government campaign focusses on 160 different business regulations.

Other laws the government is looking at revising include collective redundancies, employment agencies, immigration checks, the National Minimum Wage and statutory sick pay.

Some employment organisations fear relaxing employment laws will let unscrupulous employers take advantage of workers.

Dr John Philpott, chief economic adviser at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development  said: “While watering down unfair dismissal rights can boost recruitment and improve job prospects for young people and the long-term unemployed, the short-run impact is limited by the weak labour market, while in the long-term any positive effect on hiring is likely to be offset by a corresponding increase in the rate of dismissals.

“Evidence on the effects of employment protection legislation suggests that while less job protection encourages increased hiring during economic recoveries it also results in increased firing during downturns.

“The overall effect is thus simply to make employment less stable over the economic cycle, with little significant impact one way or the other on structural rates of employm

This article is filed under retirement age abolished 65 years: , Legal, Leadership, Minorities, Equality Act 2010, equality strands, Protected charactersitcs, Role models

What is diversity? See http://www.diversityleaders.org/our-services/what-is-diversity

Do you want more than what Equality Training or iversity Training Courses can deliver? See Diversity at Work in the workplace http://www.diversityleaders.org/our-services/training-a-events

For more content Diversity Leaders Magazine http://paper.li/diversitylead/1308375628

Leadership Voice Magazine Key topics : Leadership, Discrimination, Diversity

ent or unemployment.”

Age discrimination should finally end at the stroke of midnight on September 30, 2011, as the default retirement age is consigned to history.

Abolishing the default retirement age takes away the right of an employer to sack a worker who has reached the age of 65 years old.

Although the move is more to do with pension reforms than equality laws, the result is welcomed by consumer groups like AgeUK, who campaign for the rights of the over 50s.

Many groups claim employers are prejudiced against older workers and manipulated the default retirement age to sack them.

Reticence to employ older workers is reflected in the latest unemployment statistics.

They show that those aged 50 and over who have been out of work for two years or more has exceeded 100,000 for the first time  – almost double the number just two years ago.

Age UK’s director of charity, Michelle Mitchell said: “The end of the default retirement age is a  victory for older workers who for too long have been consigned to the scrapheap for no reason other than prejudice.

“There is still a long way to go before older workers are treated as equals in  the  workplace. We have seen a  very small  improvement over the last five years but, as the statistics show, not nearly enough. We hope that, by taking away the arbitrary “best before” date for employers, attitudes towards older workers will quickly evolve to look at their skills and experience, not their date of birth.

“With an ageing population traditional rigid ideas about retirement are changing.. Many people will want to work longer for personal or financial reasons and prejudice should  not  lock them out of the workplace.”

AgeUK wants the government to push home the message that employers should give jobs to older workers with a campaign highlighting the benefits of experience.

“Particularly worrying is the increase in the number of older people who have been out of work for two years or more,” said Mitchell.

“Older workers must be given improved access to training and back to work support to maximise their skills and appeal to employers.  Otherwise, employers have an excuse to overlook a significant sector of the population when it comes to staffing.”

This article is filed under retirement age abolished 65 years: , Legal, Leadership, Minorities, Equality Act 2010, equality strands, Protected charactersitcs, Role models

What is diversity? See http://www.diversityleaders.org/our-services/what-is-diversity

Do you want more than what Equality Training or iversity Training Courses can deliver? See Diversity at Work in the workplace http://www.diversityleaders.org/our-services/training-a-events

For more content Diversity Leaders Magazine http://paper.li/diversitylead/1308375628

Leadership Voice Magazine Key topics : Leadership, Discrimination, Diversity