The ride-sharing leader has faced lawsuits in many markets it has entered but has often chosen to settle most of them. In a relief to more than 5000 drivers in North Carolina however, a settlement has come late, but sure. Uber paid $1.3mn in settlements in its oldest class lawsuit till date. The incumbents will be receiving anywhere between $50 and $5000 dollars. The lawsuit, originally filed by Michael Hood, blamed Uber for bypassing basic minimum wage laws by labeling their driver partners as independent service providers. The lawsuit was filed in 2016 and was later supported by thousands of drivers.
Indeed, the job posting platform is indeed asking recruitment companies in the U.S. and Canada to pay for aka sponsor their job listing. The October 2018 announcement is now in effect from this January and will impact the headhunters, recruitment firms, staffing and hiring agencies. Indeed says that the move is to curb down the problem of duplication, location blasting, inaccurate job descriptions. The focus for the now expanding job posting platform is to create equity and give the job search experience a boost for the users. The sponsored jobs will be up-listed and the users are free to click or not to click on them. Experts believe that the announcement is a large scale ripple effect of low unemployment and talent crunch in the industry.
Britain’s impending divorce with the EU has dried up the permanent recruitment rates in the country. The recruitment rate in December 2018 was the slowest since April 2017 and all fingers point at the Brexit conundrum as the main culprit. This finding is a part of a report by Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC), supported by accountants KPMG report that sees a slowdown in the growth of the starting salaries for three months in running. Neil Carberry REC, Chief Executive opines that it is no surprise given the economic uncertainty giving a classic cold stare to hiring initiatives, a club that with talent shortage and the scene for a slowdown is set.
Compliance kept the HR on their toes and was pretty much a primary prerogative through the entire length of 2018. This New Year too will see compliance taking a big dole of the HR headspace. While many of the deregulation promises by The Trump Administration has held solid ground, there are others who have taken the throne of slack, as a direct response. The state and government bodies are pushing for employee-friendly laws, but with #Metoo, high-profile and viral walkouts and third-party assistance as mediums to expose alleged wrongdoings, the HR is walking the tight rope of compliance. With a rather foggy stance of Washington on Compliance, the road ahead looks challenging.
“Binge gamers”, “me me me millennials” and “unfocussed office prankster” that is what The British Army wants. The words are from The U.K. Ministry of Defense call for service in a $600 million multiyear advertising campaign. Major Gen. Paul Nanson says that the advertisement is a part of poster, video and radio campaign that wants to put aside the stereotype and rebrand Generation Z and millennials as compassionate, focused and confident. The target age group for the recruitment drive is 16 to 25 and the campaign is facing the flak from the politicians for being humiliating to the young people. The British Army is looking at the campaign to fill the recruitment gap as per NPR.
Bjorn Erland, VP of People and Experience at Yum Brand’s Taco Bell Chain says, “The last 18 to 24 months, it’s been very competitive, no matter what time of year”. And his counterparts in other food and restaurant business have to agree as they are having a run for their money to compete with the high minimum wages set by Amazon, Target and other retail giants. The cycle of hiring the retail temps at half the wage as the holiday rush gets over is broken this year. 2018 saw just 19% of 15 to 17 years old with a job compared to a whopping 50% in 1968. 18 to 21-year-olds too did not paint a jolly picture with just 58% employment compared to 80% in 1968. Increased wages and a lack of potential employees can be a tall mountain to climb as many of the fast food franchisee do not favor raising wages to keep the menu prices down.
In recent research conducted by more than 1,000 enterprises in the US, Microsoft emerged as the winner as a fair and just company/ employer in North America. This research combined several functions such as higher compensation over market pay and included metrics like environmental fines (the top companies paid the least) and Equal Employment Opportunity fines. Microsoft beat the likes of IBM, VMWare, Alphabet, and Intel. The rankings are largely considered as one of the most comprehensive in their rankings of large companies as corporate citizens who care the most about the matters and issues that matter the most to US citizens.
Ex Personnel Analyst of the Disney Cruise Line, Anthony Mc Hugh, recently dragged the media giant’s arm to court over sex-based discrimination and sexual harassment. According to the plaintiff, his female supervisor constantly undermined him, indulged in sexual relationships with multiple other employees and even stole his ADHD prescription drugs. Mc Hugh also claims that he was ignored for promotion which was instead given to female staff, alongside being called a “stuffy old fart” by several senior members of the organization. He stated that when he complained to the HR department about his predicament, he faced severe retaliation and was eventually fired.
The world’s largest online professional network has been known to publish some of the most comprehensive researches ever, in the corporate world, and this time, the focus was on the soft skills that are the most in-demand among American employers, even as the nation faces one of the tightest skilled labor markets in its history. Creativity topped the list, followed by the ability to persuade stakeholders and customers, team playing and collaboration and adaptability to technologies and newer roles, in that order. Time management and multi-tasking, though not on the top of the list, remained some of the other crucial skills in demand.
HireRight, the global background screening firm recently released its research report on how tech-savvy and experience focused SMBs were in their technology implementations in recruitment. Micro and small companies seemed to be the biggest laggards in the use of technology in candidate experience during their hiring processes, at only 45% and 53% respectively. In contrast, 73% of large companies use technology and social media to improve their candidate experience. The rates for mobile-oriented hiring were even more dismal, at 15%. Small businesses can derive huge benefits in performance and costs from optimized usage of these platforms, the way large organizations are, the report recommended.
UK’s corporate overlords are in the news again, for the wrong reasons again, and are likely to be stirring up hornet’s nest again about their earnings. In recent calculations by the High Pay Centre, the bosses of the biggest firms in the UK earned the equivalent of the average worker’s annual pay within the first four days of the year. This follows closely on the heels of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, who are lobbying for a complete overhaul of executive compensation in the country, at a time when pay disparity between classes and genders have reached all-time highs and continue to climb in double digits YoY.
The government shutdown in North America is getting uglier with each passing day of its existence. With more than 3,00,000 and 8,50,000 people affected directly and indirectly respectively, the new infliction seems to be unemployment benefits that have risen to a four-week high during the holiday season. While most have been furloughed, many contract workers have also been affected to a great extent, with no signs of revival in sight. Unemployment benefit claims are largely considered one of the most accurate indicators of a market’s and an economy’s overall health. Meanwhile, the standoff between the president and the Congress over budget for his promised wall along the Mexican border.
While we can brush off any ‘Terminator’ like robot rising and taking over humanity situation as of now, the routine tasks and the once with lower skills will fall into Automation’s lap. The World Bank report which stated this also said that going forward human jobs will have more social skills and automation is all slated to change the job-scape. While the old routine jobs will go automation driven, the very technology behind it will create new jobs. The number of jobs created because of automation will supersede the jobs lost due to it and the world economy will look at full employment by 2030.
Staying steady on the frontline for big names can earn employees an all-expenses-paid college degree. Some of the big names in America like Walt Disney, Taco Bell, Yum Foods and Discover are keen on sending the frontline workers back to school. The companies believe that the benefits outweigh the cost and a $ 5,250 federal tax exemption once the employee completes the course is just one of the benefits. Jon Kaplan, Discover’s VP of Training and Development says that 80% of the company’s call center and field staff are not graduates. The programs are a great employee retainer and some of them go ahead to fill the higher ranks in the organization.
“No funding, no E-Verify,” Montserrat Miller, partner office of Arnall Golden Gregory, in Washington DC could not have been more precise while describing the current shutdown of E-Verify. The federal electronic employment eligibility verification service lies unmanaged and the website www.e-verify.gov lies un-updated as it awaits fund in the wake of the partial shutdown of the US government starting December 22, 2018. The next term in the House of Representatives will be run by the Democrats, who have plans to bring into action legislation to fund DHS that supervises E-Verify. But with the majority Republicans deciding not to vote for anything that President Trump does not support, the funding can be a bumpy ride. While employers still have to file Form I-9 within three business days of an employee joining, the DHS said it won’t penalize the holding or limbo cases while the online services remain down.
The American government’s shutdown is now past its week, and the consequences are grim if anything. On its tenth day, with hundreds of thousands of employees directly affected and staring at the face of unending uncertainty over the chances of it being dragged on even further, the employees of nine government agencies are now exploring other employment opportunities or even selling their assets in their efforts to survive. The shutdown, which has affected more than 750,000 workers, directly and indirectly, is the consequence of a standoff between President Trump and the Democrats over fund allotment towards a wall in Mexico.
The world’s largest e-commerce portal has announced its plans to hire 25, 000 employees for it’s Washington D.C. facility. Almost all of them would be technology workers, escalating the war for talent that several large American defense contractors and their vendors are already facing, even further. While Amazon has not yet announced any specifications or job descriptions, it is already a well-known name in the employer market, with more than 18,000 army vets and family members in its workforce. Recruitment specialists in the region are already speculating that the vets working in Lockheed Martin and Booz Allen Hamilton, will be poached.
Spencer Neumann, the former ex CFO of Disney and the recent ex- CFO of Activision, is all set to add media streaming behemoth Netflix to his repertoire of employers. According to a recent announcement, Netflix is hiring him as their Chief Financial Officer. According to a recently published Bloomberg article, however, Neumann was fired from his job and placed on paid leave of absence for reasons not related to financial performance. While the buzz is that his suspension may be due to disciplinary action, Neumann is one of more than a dozen senior executives who has been fired for non-performance related causes over the last twelve months.
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The average American workforce is aging significantly and will need to learn to rely on older workers in less than 5 years, according to a recent report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The reasons cited primarily comprise the significant fall in birth rate and better life expectancy, as workers continue to shun retirement and keep their employment. For employers, it could be a double-edged sword, since they need to increase their flexibility and adaptability while focusing on productivity and technologically viable. On the other hand, older employees tend to work harder and be more loyal and understanding. This was especially true for the SMB workforce.
According to a recent article in the British Publication The Guardian, the government of the UK needs to look into the plight of the workers in the ‘Gig’ economy to combat grueling work conditions and extreme hours. In the age of multiple ‘gigs’ or assignment based employment, worker’s rights have been claimed to be severely trampled on, especially in larger companies like Amazon, where ambulances have been called into the company’s warehouses 600 times in three years. Referring to a review by a think-tank that proposed 53 remedial measures to protect the workers, the publication advocated penalties for the employers who mistreat staff and deprive them of humane work conditions.
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