Employment Law Birmingham News

New figures have shown that employers are struggling to hang on to workers, despite the turbulent employment market, with more than 283,000 managers walking away from their jobs in the 12 months to September 2011.

The 2012 National Management Salary Survey, published by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) and XpertHR, collected data from 38,843 individuals across 160 UK organisations. The survey revealed that nearly one in ten managers (9.4%) resigned from their jobs last year – more than twice as many as quit the year before (3.9%). Overall labour turnover for management roles – those resigning, retiring, transferring internally and being made redundant – has also increased dramatically, almost doubling from 10.5% in 2011 to 20.3% this year.

Christopher Kinsella, Acting Chief Executive of CMI, says: “Employers are struggling to recruit and to retain high quality managers. One in ten managers resigned from their jobs last year, presumably for better offers elsewhere. However, there is a risk that a substantial proportion of these managers left the profession altogether, a grave situation when UKCES/Government data estimates that the UK needs 544,000 new managers by 2020.”

The TUC has warned against reducing consultation rights during collective redundancy exercises, claiming that it could cost jobs, damage workforce morale and increase unemployment.

The government is considering whether the 90-day consultation period, which applies when more than 100 jobs are at risk of redundancy, should be reduced to make it easier, quicker and cheaper for employers to lay off staff. The TUC argues that cutting back these consultation rights would be detrimental for employers, employees and the wider economy.

Longer consultation periods provide time for employers and unions to explore all alternatives to redundancies, including identifying new orders, efficiency savings, restructuring, and recruitment freezes.

According to the TUC, the 90 days minimum consultation periods provide time for effective redeployment exercises, to ensure any selection processes are fair and for employers and unions to agree redundancy packages which assist workers in getting training and paying bills until they find new employment. It also provides time for union learning reps and government agencies to provide access to training, advice and job search support to those at risk of redundancy.

The TUC believes any reduction in the 90 days minimum consultation period will send a signal to employers that they need not prioritise exploring ways of saving jobs. This could lead to increased unemployment and more reliance on the welfare benefits, and would also have a detrimental impact on local economies and communities - particularly those areas of the UK where unemployment is already high and where there are limited job vacancies.

The latest Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) quarterly Labour Market Outlook (LMO) survey has found that the first quarter of 2012 will be the most difficult quarter for the jobs market since the recession, as a greater number of private sector firms surveyed are planning to make redundancies.

The report’s net employment balance, which measures the difference between the proportion of LMO employers that intend to increase total staffing levels and those that intend to decrease total staffing levels in the first quarter of 2012, has fallen to -8 from -3 since the autumn 2011 quarter. This is the report’s worst figure since spring 2009.

The results also suggest a further widening of the north-south divide in job prospects. The net employment balance for the south of England has improved modestly to -1 from -4 in the past three months. London is the only region in the UK to register a positive score (+3). In contrast, employment prospects in the north have fallen to -20 from -17 over the same period.

This follows the most recent official Labour Force Survey unemployment statistics which showed that the north east of England (+2.3%) and the north west of England (+1.2%) saw the largest unemployment increases in the 12 months to November 2011.

Other key findings of the report include:

• Organisations that are planning to make redundancies expect 4% of their workforce on average to be made redundant.
• Six out of ten LMO employers are not planning to create any new roles in the next three months.
• Looking ahead to the next five years, LMO employers anticipate an increase in demand for roles in business and development (28%), sales and marketing (24%) and IT staff (20%).
• Business support functions have borne the brunt among those employers that say they have been prevented from creating new roles during the past two years.