Government and campaigns
The King’s Speech (2010) won 4 Academy Awards. The King’s Speech (2023) will unlikely be as acclaimed. In his first speech delivered as King, Charles III delivered a somewhat sparse programme of upcoming legislation. Focusing on growing the economy, strengthening society and keeping people safe, the speech was light on detail. However, King Charles did set out the government's aims to increase the number of high-quality apprenticeships, set out frameworks for emerging industries such as AI and deliver the NHS workforce plan. There was also the clear intention to introduce legislation to limit the impact of strikes with the Minimum Service Level Bill. As with all these announcements, the devil is in the detail, and the REC Campaigns team will be keeping a close eye on further updates from relevant departments. All eyes now on the Chancellor, ahead of the Autumn Statement on 22 November.
On 8 November, the government published its response to the Retained EU employment law reforms and Calculating holiday entitlement for part-year and irregular hours workers consultations. The response provides some welcome clarity for REC members on calculating holiday pay, holiday entitlement and record keeping and recognition that there is an increasing amount of atypical working in today’s labour market, and legislation should better reflect that. Rolled up holiday pay will be introduced for irregular hours and part-year workers, so even though government has confirmed there won’t be a single annual leave entitlement, this will remove the need for two calculation methods for employers who choose to use rolled up holiday pay. Pay will be calculated on a worker’s total earnings in a pay period – which is in keeping with the current method of calculation. Alongside the response, the draft regulations - the Employment Rights (Amendment, Revocation and Transitional Provision) Regulations 2023 were also published. These provide clarity for calculating holiday pay for flexible workers in light of the Harpur Trust case, with the 12.07% calculation set to be written in. These are expected to come into force on 1 January 2024.
Acas has launched a consultation on a new draft statutory Code of Practice on handling requests for a predictable working pattern. This is in response to the new Workers (Predictable Terms and Conditions) Act 2023 coming into effect in Autumn 2024. The REC has already had a number of conversations with ACAS about this, and we’ll be feeding into the consultation, which is open until 17 January 2024. Please get in touch with Patrick on patrick.milnes@rec.uk.com for more information or to share your views.
This week, we met with the Learning Curve Group (LCG), which specialises in offering high-quality skills training. They are actively involved in the "Future Skills Program," an "initiative designed to help soon-to-be-released prisoners with sector-specific training and valuable employer connections, giving them the tools they need to secure work upon release". They are actively seeking partnerships in the Yorkshire area working in the Hospitality, Construction, and Warehousing sectors. If your organisation can provide support, please contact our EDI lead natasha.mpofu@rec.uk.com for more information.
Campaigns Advisor, Usman Ali, recently attended a meeting with other industry experts and Roads and Local Transport Minister, Richard Holden MP) to discuss how best to promote the freight sector and where priority issues around skills, decarbonisation, and infrastructure projects were discussed.
It was a good chance to share latest REC data from the sector. We will continue to liaise with DfT as the Future of Freight work develops. If you would like to hear more about this work or share any insights, please contact Usman on Usman.Ali@rec.uk.com.
In light of the HGV Driver shortage in 2021 and to better understand the barriers and enablers to HGV recruitment and retention, the Department for Transport (DfT) commissioned the National Centre for Social Research to undertake a Rapid Evidence Assessment (REA) of published academic research papers. The paper, published in October, and can be accessed here. The key findings only validate what REC members have been saying around the lack of safety and security around rest-stop facilities, unsociable working hours and intensity of work within the profession. Unsupportive management, and negative public perceptions of the driving and logistics industry also come up. The National Centre for Social Research want more evidence in the following three areas:
1) What are the most important barriers to the profession and what needs to be tackled first?
2) How do the above enablers and barriers vary depending on demographics (e.g., age, gender, ethnicity etc) and size of operators (e.g., SME or big business)?
3) Need for latest initiatives and best practice when promoting HGV Driver recruitment.
DfT is preparing to respond and want to hear from REC members. If you would like to feed in, please email Usman.Ali@rec.uk.com.
The REC’s latest Report on Jobs signalled that temp billings have once again increased during the month of October. Overall staff demand stabilised this month after showing a slight decline in September. Average starting pay for permanent staff continued to increase and temp average hourly pay saw a further rise during October. Permanent labour supply continued to increase once again, and recruiters frequently mentioned that staff supply had risen due to companies restructuring workforces and redundancies.
The latest Labour Market Tracker shows that the number of active postings in the week of 16-22 October 2023 was 2,150,083 – a 7.9% increase compared to the previous week (9-15 October 2023). This reflects higher time-to-fill in a few sectors with remaining shortages. There were 171,633 new job postings in the week of 16-22 October 2023 which shows a slight softening on previous weeks but emphasises that – while labour market demand has softened – vacancies are still high by historical standards.
Look out for our upcoming JobsOutlook which will be published on 29 November.
Our Labour Market Tracker (LMT) continues to provide an accurate and timely analysis of the labour market. The media took different takes on the latest LMT; some, such as the BBC and The Times focused on it showing employers waiting longer than usual to hire workers for the festive period, The Daily Telegraph take shows ‘Demand for doctors and nurses doubles as ill-health grips Britain’ and Community Care reported that the ‘Number of UK social worker job postings falls for fourth consecutive month, figures show’. Separately, with AI in the news so much recently, REC Chief Executive Neil Carberry writes in SIA that if 2023 was the “OMG” of recruitment years because of its unrelenting ups and downs, he hopes a touch of “FOMO” next year will push many recruitment firms to switch on to technology.
Join us at the REC inaugural EDI Summit in just 3 weeks. Meet our Keynote Speaker, Recruitment Lead at McKinsey's. Akida John-Ambrose> She is a champion for diversity and inclusion in hiring. and leads McKinsey's experienced professional and MBA hiring in the UK, Ireland, and European business schools globally. She'll discuss her experiences in less diverse sectors, their impact on productivity, and her approach to fostering inclusive environments. Register for the event here.
Share this article