At a glance: reward and benefits headlines this week 3-9 December 2021

Here are the headlines you might have missed between 3-9 December 2021.

Christmas shopping fever: 77% spend online in work hours
Employee Benefits: In the run up to Christmas, do you find that your attention starts to drift away during your working hours and you find yourself surfing the web looking for the best online deals? Turns out you’re not the only one. Office equipment supplier Officeology.com’s poll of 1,000 UK staff with part and full-time jobs, which asked how often people online shop or browse during work hours in the run up to Christmas, found that 77% admitted to doing this during their working day and almost one in four shop online at least once a week. Read Story.

5% of young staff cannot be tempted back to office
Employee Benefits: Younger workers aged 25 or below are the most motivated to return to the office, with only 5% saying they could not be tempted back, according to new research. Career development and mentoring platform PushFar has revealed stark generational divides in attitudes towards remote working in its survey of 600 UK professionals, finding that there is a clear divide between age groups over what would motivate them to return to the office. Read Story.

Business leaders won’t hire someone with a known disability
HR Review: Business leaders say they are not familiar enough with support and costs for disabled workers so are unlikely to hire them.  Research from recruitment firm PageGroup said a quarter of business leaders admit that their company does not have processes in place to improve disability inequality. The news comes on International Day of Persons with Disabilities, today. Read Story.

Flexible Working Taskforce offers hybrid working advice
Personnel Today: Employers should engage with staff, managers, trade unions and employee representatives to understand the early lessons of hybrid working if they want to implement successful office-home arrangements, new guidance has said. The government’s Flexible Working Taskforce – which includes representatives from organisations including the CIPD, Chartered Management Institute (CMI), the British Chambers of Commerce and Working Families, among others – has published practical guidance aimed at helping employers develop fair and sustainable hybrid practices. Read Story.

Over a million workers don’t plan on retiring- Canada Life research
Corporate Adviser: Over a million UK workers believe that they will never retire, while 17.1m working adults – 44 per cent – think they will work past their state pension age, according to research from Canada Life. The research found that the main concern UK adults have when considering working past the state pension age is being unable to enjoy their later years, a concern for 34 per cent. Read Story.

Salary and pension are of low importance to UK workers compared to 12 months’ ago
Incentive & Motivation: Salary and pension are less important to prospective and existing employees compared to 12 months’ ago, with flexibility and wellbeing benefits now of the most importance. This is according to employee experience expert WorkBuzz’s ‘The State of Employee Engagement 2021’ report, which delivers the latest insights from over 300 organisational leaders, HR professionals, and industry experts. Read Story.

‘Increase statutory sick pay to save Christmas for low paid workers’
Personnel Today: Hundreds of thousands of workers in hospitality, retail, and the arts – sectors normally very busy during the festive season – receive no statutory sick pay, a situation that could contribute to high Covid rates this Christmas. The TUC warned that new tougher self isolation rules could lead to more infection over the holiday period as workers are left with little choice but to work when ill with the Omicron variant. Read Story.

Men will interrupt workplace sexism with a supportive manager
HR Review: Men will call out a sexist comment if they feel their manager is open to hearing their ideas. It comes from a study by the global not-for-profit Catalyst, which campaigns for better workplaces for women. Catalyst spoke to more than 2,000 men in the UK and other parts of Europe and found the behaviour of managers is the most important aspect to removing sexism from workplaces. Read Story.

Businesses have made 'almost no progress' on gender pay gaps, says think tank
People Management: Businesses’ attempts to reduce the gender pay gap in the UK have made “almost no progress”, according to a think tank. Research from the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS), funded by the Nuffield Foundation, found that the average working-age woman in the UK earned 40 per cent less than her male counterpart in 2019: just 13 percentage points (or 25 per cent) lower than in the mid 1990s. Read Story.

Menopause is forcing women to retire early, government adviser warns
People Management: Women who are forced to exit the workforce early because of menopausal symptoms could be missing out on important pensions earnings later down the line, a government adviser has said. Andy Briggs, the government’s business champion for older workers, told The Mail on Sunday: “To leave the workplace in your fifties – when we know that you’re far less likely than someone younger to return to work – has a huge impact on your retirement income.” Read Story.

Ethnicity pay gaps persist but young people are optimistic
Personnel Today: The Ethnicity Pay Gap Report 2021, produced by PwC’s global consulting business Strategy&, analysed 2020 data from the Office for National Statistics and showed that while, on a basic level, the overall pay gap between white people and those from minority ethnic backgrounds has now closed for the first time since 2012, numerous imbalances remain when comparing people from different ethnic groups on a like-for-like basis. Read Story.

Steep rise in poor performance cases as employers clamp down
Incentive & Motivation: New data reveals a sharp rise in performance management issues, with UK employers opening up 44% more cases since July where capability is an issue. Evidence shows that the reasons managers are increasingly tackling under-performance issues is most strongly attributed to poor productivity and poor work quality. Read Story.

Employers should adopt phased 12-week returns as long Covid cases rise
Healthcare & Protection: Employers should be using phased returns over 12 weeks or more for workers suffering from long Covid, as an insurer has revealed a significant jump in claims for the condition. Last week ONS data showed the number of long Covid sufferers had increased by 100,000 in a single month to hit 1.2m across the country. Read Story.

Report highlights emerging 2022 work trends
Facilitate Management: A new report says more companies will seek flexible working and temporary staff to fill skills gap in 2022. The white paper by Redwigwam, an online workplace platform, focuses on the changes in workforce/staffing over the last eighteen months and offers a realistic picture of what 2022 is likely to be like for employers and workers. Read Story.

Gender earnings gap still high at 40%
Employee Benefits: Gender pay gap submissions down 50% on last yearThe average mid-working-age UK woman earned 40% less than her male counterpart in 2019, research has revealed. The study, which was carried out for the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ (IFS) Deaton Review of Inequalities, found the gender earnings gap was just 13 percentage points lower than in the mid-1990s. Read Story.

Just 8% of employers publish disability pay gap
Employee Benefits: Employee Benefits poll - fewer than one in 10 organisations currently publish their annual disability pay gap, according to our research. Only 8% of respondents to an online survey said they made the data available to the public on a regular basis. Read Story.

Nearly half of UK employees are ready for a workplace metaverse
Workplace Insight: Research released by Owl Labs suggests that nearly half (47 percent) of the UK population want companies to adopt the metaverse – a highly immersive virtual world that recreates opportunities for work, socialising, entertainment, and education – in the workplace. Read Story.

Working from home can increase work-family conflict for women in traditional gender roles
Workplace Insight: New research by the University of Kent claims that working from home can increase feelings that family responsibilities hinder work responsibilities, but only for women in traditional gender roles. Despite its advantages, such as less commuting and more flexibility, the study published in the journal Community, Work and Family discovered that working from home can increase rather than decrease feelings that work and family demands conflict with one another. Read Story.

UK broadcasters pledge to avoid BAME acronym
Personnel Today: The BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and ViacomCBS, which runs Channel 5, have agreed that use of the BAME acronym for people of black, Asian and minority ethnicity should be avoided, wherever possible, in their content and corporate communications. ITN, which produces news programmes for ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5, also confirmed a move away from the acronym in its newsrooms and other communications. Read Story.

Not enough employers have mental health support in place after Covid
HR Review: Research from an online learning platform FutureLearn.com has found that a majority (68%) of businesses in the UK had no mental health support in place before the pandemic. Fewer businesses have mental health support since the pandemic. Since the pandemic, this number has dropped to 58 percent. Read Story.

Employees missed out on benefits during coronavirus pandemic due to 'perception gap'
HR Magazine: Despite a majority of companies (69%) increasing their spending on benefits during the pandemic, nearly half (45%) of employees felt they hadn’t received the support they needed from their organisation. While nearly all (88%) companies adapted their benefits to help employees deal with the pandemic, only 22% of employees realised their benefits had changed, research by Mercer Marsh Benefits (MMB found). Read Story.

Young workers would take a pay cut for better employee experience
HR Magazine: Nearly half (48%) of Generation Z employees (ages 18-24) said they would switch jobs for a better employee experience, even if it meant taking a pay cut. A similar proportion (44%) of millennials (24-34) said they would do the same. A report by digital workspace company LiveTiles found younger workers feel increasingly undervalued, ill-equipped, and disconnected from their workplace. Read Story.

Furlough must come back before Christmas, say business leaders and unions
HR Review: The government is facing pressure from unions and business leaders to bring back the furlough scheme. It comes after the announcement of Plan B measures at Downing Street last night. Business leaders and unions warned if companies and their workers did not get help in the hardest-hit sectors of the economy, it could damage the progress made since pandemic restrictions were eased.   Read Story.

UK companies face ‘Big Quit’ over employee perks
Corporate Adviser: A total of 40 per cent of employees, or 11.7 million workers, say they would consider switching employers to get better employee benefit, according research from Unum. The research, by Unum and the ONS Labour Market Survey, found that employee benefits are important to recruiting and retaining top talent, according to 78 per cent of SME decision-makers. However, only 37 per cent have reassessed their employee benefit offerings since the pandemic began. Read Story.

Omicron: Working from home guidance confirmed in England
Personnel Today: Boris Johnson has announced that people in England should work from home if they can from 13 December as the government confirmed it was triggering ‘plan B’ of its Covid-19 winter response. The prime minister announced fresh restrictions in order to curb the spread of the highly-transmissible Omicron variant. “Employers should use the rest of this week to discuss working arrangements with their employees,” said Johnson, “but from Monday you should work from home if you can. Go to work if you must, but work from home if you can. Read Story.

Only one in four workers say their employer effectively fostered company culture during Covid, poll finds
People Management: Just a quarter of workers believe their employer has been effective at fostering a company culture since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, a report has found, with experts putting the blame on remote working. The poll of 2,500 UK workers, conducted by OC Tanner, found that just 26 per cent say their organisation had been particularly effective in building company culture since the beginning of the pandemic. Read Story.