From the employees’ point of view, flexible working can be invaluable. Being able to drop the kids off at school without worrying about being late or leaving early to give an elderly parent a helping hand, so that they can carry on living independently in their home home, can be great motivating incentive to give 110 per cent to the job.
Home Secretary Theresa May, in her role as Minister for Women and Equalities, yesterday gave a speech in which she said that flexible working should be an option for all employees, not just parents and cares.
She said some of Britain’s most innovative and successful SMEs were already showing that flexible working was good for their businesses as well and pledged: “We will extend the right to request to all, helping to shift behaviour away from the traditional nine to five model of work that can act as a barrier to so many people and that often doesn’t make sense for many modern businesses.”
All of which sounds pretty sensible, you might think, in a world that has come a long way from the tradition of jobs for life and where balancing home and work commitments can require the skills of a contortionist. Employees who would welcome the same right to request flexible hours as parents and carers are unlikely to feel that way because they are lazy or workshy: there’s going to be a good reason for them wanting to work in a way that’s a bit out of the ordinary or might even see them losing out financially due to reduced hours.
So some workers might find the reaction of the Institute of Directors (IoD) to Mrs May’s comments a tad disappointing. Alistair Tebbit, the IoD’s spokesman, says Mrs May should let businesses decide for themselves how they manage their staff rather than creating new employment rights.
He adds: “The people running businesses have a vastly better idea of how to manage their employees than any government minister. A government truly committed to being pro-enterprise would be thinking about abolishing the existing right to request flexible working.”
Fighting talk, Mr Tebbit, and no doubt there are many businesses out there that would firmly agree. Some of these will also probably be the employers that expect a great deal of flexibility from their staff without much going back the other way.
Perhaps the answer is for employers and employees to work together to find the working arrangements that suit them best. In today’s tough times, there are many people so glad to have a job that they’ll put up with rigid working arrangements and an old school management style. But when the economy is back on track and workers have a few more options, bosses that fail to be flexible might just find their staff voting with their feet.
For more information, please visit www.glazers.co.uk
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( 3 / 733 )The news that Prince William and long-term girlfriend Kate Middleton are to marry next year is surely something that only anti-royalist or republicans could fail to welcome. Even they would have to be pretty churlish if they didn’t wish William and Kate well for the future, in the same way as they would any young couple planning a life together.
With news of the engagement less than 24 hours old, the debate has already started about what kind of wedding would be appropriate in this age of austerity. As is only to be expected, there are convincing arguments for both sides.
The latest unemployment figures are due out today and they’re unlikely to bring much joy. The economic recovery must sometimes still seem a very long way off for families struggling to cope with the financial and emotional challenges of redundancy or a fruitless search for work, for public sector organisations facing massive spending cuts, for small businesses fighting to keep their heads above water in difficult trading conditions.
With those circumstances in mind, a Charles and Diana-style St Paul’s Cathedral, pews packed with the great and the good from around the world, a public holiday for the nation and parties on every other street might seem a little insensitive and a lower key ceremony more in tune with the times.
But just hang on a minute. On Monday, David Cameron said in his foreign policy speech to the Lord Mayor’s banquet in London that to protect and build Britain’s place in the world, “when it is harder than ever for this country to earn a living, we need to mobilise all the resources we can”.
What more powerful resources could there be to mobilise than a stonking royal wedding, done with all the panache, professionalism, pomp and ceremony that is a hallmark of our nation at its best?
And what better way could there be to make sure the eyes of the world are on us? Charles and Diana’s wedding attracted a global TV audience of 750 million people and in these tech-savvy times, William and Kate could expect even more to be tuning in.
Republicans may disagree, but if a royal wedding isn’t a perfect opportunity to remind the world that Britain is still here, it’s still Great and it still means business, it’s hard to think of a better one.
For more information, please visit www.glazers.co.uk
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( 2.9 / 471 )The Institute of Directors (IoD) releases its UK economic forecast for 2011 today and it’s a bit of a mixed bag.
On the one hand the, IoD forecasts growth in GDP of 1.2 per cent next year and warns that if that figure proves correct, Chancellor George Osborne may need to find more spending cuts – or tax rises – to meet his budget deficit targets.
On the other, while the institute says that there’s a need for greater realism about weakness elsewhere in the economy, there’s too much doom and gloom surrounding the October Spending Review.
And while there are what it calls “headwinds” holding back the economy, there are also “tailwinds” pushing it forward – corporate finances that are generally in good shape, for example, and private sector job creation – which the IoD believes should be enough to prevent a double dip recession, provided consumer and business confidence doesn’t begin to slide.
A bit like the curate’s egg, then, the IoD forecast is good in parts and it won’t be until this time next year that we know whether they have hit the nail on the head.
The IoD says that the conditions produced by “an extraordinary financial crisis, fiscal explosion and the introduction of unconventional monetary policy” mean that the level of economic uncertainty is very high.
And it admits: “In such circumstances, economic forecasting becomes what it always has been, an issue of feel and judgement,” which is perhaps something that many of us have long suspected.
So an interesting exercise might be for us all to make some predictions about the UK economy in 2011 and watch how accurate we are over the coming months. Our own “feel and judgement” is that a good percentage of us are probably as likely to get it right as the experts.
For more information, please visit www.glazers.co.uk
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( 3 / 786 )There’s nothing like getting advice straight from the horse’s mouth, if that rather quaint old phrase still means something in today’s tech-obsessed world.
So Business Secretary Vince Cable has taken steps to ensure that he’s very much in the swing of things when it comes to business and enterprise policies with the launch of a new Entrepreneurs' Forum.
Up to 26 business people will sit on the forum, including Jan Fletcher, whose wide-ranging commercial interests include property investment and development, natural health products and restaurants, Flowecrete Group chair Dawn Gibbins and Bravissimo founder Sarah Tremellen.
Mr Cable says he is delighted with the quality of the new team and is looking forward “to bouncing ideas off them and hearing their views”…although maybe not as much as his forum members are looking forward to speaking their minds on how the entrepreneurial climate in the UK can be made more friendly towards start-up and new businesses.
One area the forum will be looking at is increasing the rate of female entrepreneurship, something its membership should be well qualified to advise on.
As Mr Cable so rightly says: "People with the courage to start up a business will be crucial to driving the growth of the economy. Start-ups create jobs, stimulate innovation and provide a competitive spur to existing businesses to encourage them to increase their productivity.”
Although it’s a little disappointing that the forum’s first meeting is not expected to take place until early in the year, taking steps like this show that the government at least appears to be serious about breaking down the barriers that prevent people from starting a business. And doing that is a piece of horse sense that nobody could argue with.
For more information, please visit www.glazers.co.uk
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( 3 / 879 )With the global economy facing headwinds from all directions, there was some relief to be had from this week’s G20 summit where the threat of a damaging ‘currency war’ between nations appears to have receded.
In the run-up to the event, much of the spirit of co-operation that characterised the immediate aftermath of the ‘credit crunch’ two years ago appeared to have evaporated. While the USA was under pressure for running a massive trade deficit and devaluing its currency through quantitative easing, China was being similarly pressured for holding its currency at an artificially-low level.
Following talks at the summit in Seoul, South Korea, the leaders agreed to avoid ‘competitive devaluation’ and also pledged to come up with ‘indicative guidelines’ on how to correct distortions in currency and trade.
While it is to be welcomed that the heads of state at least agree on the problem, reaching a solution will not be easy. One of the biggest issues in the weakness of China’s currency, the yuan, which critics say gives the country’s exporters an unfair advantage as well as allowing the country to amass huge foreign reserves.
China has responded that it will allow the yuan to gradually appreciate, but only when global economic conditions are right. Proposals for a four per cent limit on deficits or surpluses were blocked by China and Germany – the two biggest exporters in the G20.
While other countries’ concern at the Chinese position is understandable, it is difficult to criticise them for holding their currency down when other countries, such as the USA and UK, have effectively done the same through interest rate cuts and quantitative easing.
While the immediate threat of a currency war may have receded, this issue may crop up again in future as countries’ put their own interests ahead of those of the global economy. However, the fact that governments at least recognise such an outcome would not be desirable is positive news.
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