Listed below are the biggest stories you may have missed this week.
‘Are you planning ahead for a return to work?’
XpertHR has made the point that many firms may not be focusing on right now. “Are you planning ahead for a return to work?”
XpertHR said:
It may still seem some way off, but employees who have settled into working from home will at some point need to readjust when workplaces reopen. Some organisations are already planning ahead, with a professional services organisation looking at support for when we return to the office.
Lockdown has led to vacancies almost dropping by half
Since the lockdown was implemented last month, the number of job vacancies has dropped by almost half.
This is according to research from the Institue for Employment Studies (IES) funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) and with data analysed by Adzuna, that discovered the number of job vacancies has dropped by 42 per cent since the lockdown began. This being the largest monthly job decrease in vacancies posted in 20 years.
House of Lords writes to Treasury with a list of IR35 concerns
The House of Lords has written to the Treasury, with a list of concerns it has regarding the roll-out of IR35, which it hopes the Government will address before the roll-out of IR35 in 2021.
The letter was written by Lord Forsyth of Drumlean and sent to Jesse Norman, a financial secretary to the Treasury. Lord Forsyth chairs the Finance Bill Sub-Committee which was announced on 04/2/20 and has a specific focus on the extension of off-payroll working rules.
UK employees happy to remote work as long as necessary
More than half of UK workers are happy to continue working from home as long as it is required in order to combat COVID-19.
This research comes from Moneypenny, an outsourced communications provider, who found that 52 per cent of UK employees are happy to work from home as long as it is required.
Remote working leads to physical pain due to lack of office set-up
Just under half of the employees who are remote working are experiencing physical pain due to poor home office set-up.
This is according to Ascenti, a physiotherapy group report ‘Are Home-Workers Sitting Comfortably’ which found that 49 per cent of remote workers are experiencing back, neck, shoulder and hand pain due to working at home. The report found that the main reasons leading to worker’s physical pain are being forced to use sofas, beds and bean bags instead of desks. Also, less movement is involved whilst working at home, as there are no colleagues to speak to.
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Darius is the editor of HRreview. He has previously worked as a finance reporter for the Daily Express. He studied his journalism masters at Press Association Training and graduated from the University of York with a degree in History.
