Blogs

It’s that time of the month when the People Management magazine lands on our doormats and instantly becomes a coaster/placemat on which to sit our cereal bowls. Well, not this time! Same as last month – I’ve read through it so that you don’t have to. I’ve picked out what I think are useful gems of information to help keep your HR and L&D knowledge up to date and/or bits of information that will be useful for people studying DPG’s CIPD programmes.

1. For those interested in reward, equity and fairness and possibly the impact of managers on reward, there’s a short article from which you could bag a couple of quotes around the superficial nature of executives’ pay cuts during lockdown. Page 6, “COVID exec pay cuts ‘superficial’. Read time: 1 minute.
2. More on reward: if you are looking for stats you could link to gender pay gap or equity and fairness there’s a short article on page 7 that looks at how COVID has negatively impacted Mothers. “Mums losing jobs and hours”. Read time: 30 seconds.
3. Boohoo has been caught up in a Leicester storm that could serve as an example of an almighty employer branding fail. Page 7, “Garment Factory woes”. Read time: 30 seconds.
4. Stats including 9.6 million furloughed at a cost of £34.7bn as well as numbers on redundancies can be found on Page 8. These could be useful for strategic PESTLE/SWOT There’s not a lot I found useful beyond the third paragraph, plus the photo of the infuriating Tim Martin meant that I couldn’t look at this article for much longer anyway. “Redundancies: Is any sector safe?”. Read the first three paragraphs in under a minute.
5. Brexit – remember that? So, if you haven’t got A-level equivalent education and minimum potential earnings of £26,500 you can’t come to work in the UK. Well, it’s not quite as cut and dried as that but straight away this is worth digging into deeper if you are interested in labour markets, recruitment and talent planning But if you graduate with a degree you can stay – for a while at least. Page 10 is worth reading to see where things are up to now before the goalposts undoubtedly get moved again. “Temporarily forgotten all about Brexit?”. Read time: 5 mins.
6. Page 15 contains a recent employment law case that sees individual workers having the same rights as agency and employed workers. “Royal Mail loses appeal over agency workers’ employment status”. Read time: 2 mins.
7. “Why is HR so white?” starts of with some useful (and shocking) figures on page 23 with more on page 26. You don’t need me to tell you that diversity and inclusion is a hot topic right now. I think we should all read this article. Read time: 15 mins.
8. “The great return to the office” starts on page 28 but the interesting stuff, about tech keeping offices safe and what other countries are doing, begins on page 30 so I’d skip to that part and speed read the article to see if there is anything there that you don’t already know. On page 32 there is a short FAQ section on the employment law around return to work – but it’s probably things you already know. Speed read time: 3 mins.

Just 8 this week from me. There is lots of other great content in the magazine so if you disagree with the points I’ve picked out then I’d love to hear from you – discussion is good!

9. That said, I’ll leave you with this article which is not from the magazine: “people with a greater capacity to pursue short-term pleasures were … happier in their lives”, this is according to a recent study explained in the BPS digest. So, whilst it’s great to keep an eye on long-term goals, be sure to treat yourself to that Friday feeling. Read the proof here: https://digest.bps.org.uk/2020/08/17/small-pleasures-are-just-as-important-for-our-wellbeing-as-long-term-goals/

I need a new title for these posts - any suggestions?