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Using the cloud to address the digital skills gap

itpro@futurenet.com (ITPro) — Wed, 27 Apr 2022 15:54:37 +0000

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This whitepaper explores the state of the public sector in this new hybrid working world and how the cloud can be used to narrow the skills gap standing in the way of transformation.

Download now to learn how to support public sector staff and boost retention in our increasingly digitised environment.

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IT Pro Panel: Tackling technical recruitment

Adam Shepherd — Mon, 28 Feb 2022 08:00:07 +0000

Digital technology has become the foundation of a huge proportion of modern businesses, so it’s little wonder that recruiting the right talent to maintain and expand that technology is near the top of the priority list for IT leaders. Digital transformation is exploding, and demand for qualified staff is at an all-time high.

As part of last month’s IT Pro Panel feature, we asked our community of expert IT leaders what their top priorities are for the coming year, and a substantial amount reported that plugging skills gaps within their organisations and ensuring a steady stream of new technical hires was going to be a strong focus.

IT Pro Panel: Planning for 2022

This month, we decided to dig into the issue of technical recruitment, looking at why it continues to be so important for businesses, and sharing our panellists’ top tips for attracting and retaining talent. Interestingly, however, while this is a significant part of their strategy for the year, it’s not a new element; for most of our panellists, the rate of technical recruitment isn’t projected to significantly increase compared to previous years. Instead, it’s the result of steady growth in organisations’ digital maturity.

It’s the candidate’s market

“We have a fair amount of software engineering roles open at the moment,” says Moonpig’s head of cyber security Tash Norris, “and whilst we're filling them at a good pace (thanks to some superb in-house recruiters), we are constantly growing. Finding all the software engineers we want is definitely a challenge.”

Guide Dogs CIO Gerard McGovern reports that across his department, more than 10% of roles are currently vacant. One of the main factors that makes filling them more complicated is the extreme level of competition in the market – which means staff have the luxury of being much more selective about where they work.

“The challenge is that over the last two years it’s been both easier and harder to get the right people,” he says; “easier in that everyone recognises that we don’t need people to be physically in the office to work, but harder because everyone else has realised that too.”

“For me, the key thing is to remember that in the talent acquisition journey, you're selling the job as much as the candidate is selling themselves,” says Manila McLean, CIO of Newcastle Building Society.

The growing importance of digital services also means that businesses are no longer just competing with rivals in their industry or vertical for staff. As William Hill CIO Killian Faughnan notes, “for a lot of the skills currently in demand, almost everyone is a competitor for talent,” and this means that filling vacancies is no longer the one-sided effort that it once might have been.

“It feels very much like the candidate’s market and I've certainly felt the need to be more 'sales-like’ when talking to candidates,” Norris says, “focusing on highlighting the unique challenges I'm looking for the role to solve rather than just how our benefits might be better than someone else's. I do think we all have to work harder on how we sell our businesses and our problems to candidates. Our most effective recruiters are basically excellent sales folk!”

“Promoting the total employer proposition is so important,” agrees McLean. “As a mutual and a purpose-led organisation we highlight this, along with total remuneration packages, flexibility and the opportunity to work on some really interesting and challenging projects.”

Buying into the culture

LafargeHolcim EMEA CISO Jose María Labernia also points out the importance of a strong gender balance within the workforce as a recruitment tool. By leaving unaddressed biases in hiring practices or creating an unwelcome environment for female candidates, organisations may be cutting themselves off accessing large amounts of talented professionals.

“The technical competencies are essential, but they’re just the foundations,” McLean says. “It's important to get the right cultural fit. Our diversity and inclusion agenda is really important and we try to demonstrate that we're an inclusive employer throughout the process. I encourage the team to offer candidates to meet a range of stakeholders that they'd be working with so that all parties have the opportunity to check the chemistry before anyone commits.”

Solving cyber security's diversity problem

This focus on wider business culture represents a growing trend within technical recruitment in particular; as salaries rise throughout the industry, organisations are now having to rely on other elements to differentiate themselves from candidates. Factors may include workload variation, corporate social responsibility positioning and increased personal development.

“We’re finding the tech recruitment market challenging,” McLean admits. “As Tash says, it's definitely a candidate’s market. There’s pent up demand across the board and a general increase in demand for tech skills. About 8% of the roles in our tech team are vacant, and the average time to offer is around one month, which isn't bad – although there are outliers with specific skill sets, such as DevOps and digital product owners.”

Recruiting for specific skills is an eternal challenge for technical organisations, and for Labernia, the high level of specialisation he requires from his new hires combined with the rising demand has made recruitment “very difficult”. He says technical certifications are a good way to determine whether someone meets the minimum requirements for an initial interview, with further technical tests as a further option over the course of the process.

Arrested development

As William Hill consolidates its IT platforms and migrates away from legacy systems, it’s also reducing the diversity of skills it’s looking for. Faughnan, though, reveals this has been a double-edged sword in some ways. “On one hand,” he says, “this is a good thing as it allows for easier internal personnel development and/or movement, but it’s also a challenge, as it means you’re fishing in a smaller pool of candidates.”

The issue of finding skilled employees is compounded further when, as in Moonpig’s case, a specific blend or combination of competencies is needed. It’s finding these multidisciplinary candidates that can be a particular struggle, says Norris, particularly when the skills in question aren’t often used in tandem. She points out that while .Net developers aren’t hard to find, finding an organisation where .Net and AWS are used to equal levels is rarer.

Moonpig’s solution has been to stop looking for candidates that already have all the necessary skills it requires, and to instead prioritise looking for potential recruits that have demonstrated their ability to pick up the skills in question on the job.

“We've got a number of roles open across tech,” Norris explains, “and there's really been a push for all hiring managers to be clear on the problems they're trying to solve so that we can be as flexible in the job description as possible!”

McGovern, meanwhile, expects his biggest recruiting pain point to be finding developers for Salesforce and Jamstack, and notes working in the charity sector can introduce even more difficulties in this regard than those already faced in other areas.

How to become a developer: A beginner’s guide

Much of the current candidate crunch being experienced by technical organisations comes down to pipeline shortages; there simply aren’t enough developers and engineers in the hiring market, and a popular solution to this factor is to explore alternative candidate pools. Bringing existing employees into the IT function from elsewhere in the business is a common tactic for doing this, but an increasing number of organisations are also taking advantage of graduate programmes and apprenticeships to bring in more fresh blood.

“We’ve had good results with both approaches,” says McGovern, “and some bad results too. We’ll still continue with both, though.”

Most of our panellists use a mixture of both strategies, acknowledging that both have their own unique benefits. They also require different strategies to manage and often require more proactive onboarding and management than recruits brought in through more traditional routes.

“Similar to the others here, we also have a variety of channels for bringing in new people,” Faughnan says. “Graduates can be an excellent source of new recruits. They require a lot of investment in terms of time, but yield great results. It's a bit of a longer-term process which sees them picking up their own projects internally, presenting to senior management, reporting progress, et cetera, so there's a lot of ongoing investment around how to operate in a business, how to synthesise information and present what's relevant.”

How apprenticeships are fuelling the future of UK tech

Softening the edges

As previous IT Pro Panel discussions have indicated, these soft skills are essential to building a career as an effective IT leader, and Norris highlights the fact that this is one key area in which cross-training existing employees has an advantage over graduate schemes.

“I find graduates and apprentices can have well developed technical skills,” she says, “but it takes time to develop the business context, communication & stakeholder management skills that come naturally to someone cross-skilling or moving laterally.

“I personally think strong stakeholder management skills should be considered as valuable as a technical skill as it's hard to craft and just as valuable – if not more so. I have a mix of both in my team and I strongly believe that's what makes us most effective,” Norris continues, adding “we'll continue to invest in both routes”.

Regardless of where companies source them from, finding enough candidates to fill open vacancies is enough of a challenge already without having to replace staff leaving the business. For obvious reasons, all of our panellists give equal importance to retaining existing team members, with a variety of suggested strategies for how to keep technical staff happy and fulfilled in their roles.

Humanities versus STEM: The forced dichotomy where no one wins

Pay and benefits packages are understandably key to this, but as with recruiting fresh talent, keeping hold of existing employees often comes down to giving them an environment in which they feel engaged and stimulated.

“In terms of retention, creating a good mood while in the office is key, together with a career plan in which each individual can have a say,” says Labernia, “and obviously the best possible package that would allow any other offers received to be disregarded.”

“It would be wrong to not consider financial compensation as important, especially in such a competitive market,” Norris adds. “I think, however, ensuring there are projects set at the right level of challenge and a clear direction of travel for the individual in terms of promotion paths is really important.”

Chasing your dreams

One interesting tactic being adopted by many engineering and development organisations is to allow team members to pursue personal projects outside of their normal duties. Giving them this time can not only make staff feel valued and supported, but also allows them to flex their creativity in ways their everyday role may not, which may benefit the organisation in the long run.

Every other Friday, both Moonpig and Newcastle Building Society give their tech teams the opportunity to work on personal side projects, development objectives and hackathons. The only proviso is they need to loosely tie these projects into the organisation’s tech stack or business challenges in some way. Both Norris and McLean report the initiative has been a hit with employees and has helped foster a positive internal environment.

“R&D time is definitely powerful for maintaining talent,” Norris says. “We've seen some neat things come out of the time, and it's been a good hook for enticing recruits.”

There are always going to be instances where it’s impossible to hold onto someone, on the other hand. If a developer wants to change careers and go into teaching, for example, no amount of salary increases or benefits upgrades are likely to convince them to stay, and as McGovern points out, sometimes you just can’t retain everyone.

“All you can do is create an environment that makes people happy, with great culture, continuous development and interesting projects to work on,” he says. “People will always leave, for various reasons; we just try to make sure it’s not for a reason that we could have changed.”

“All of the points above regarding internal retaining, cross-training, and internal mobility play a part,” notes Faughnan. “Though, as Gerard said, sometimes there's not much to be done. In those cases, it's just important you're happy for their success, and learn what you can from their departure. How you treat people on the way out is at least as important as how you treat them on the way in.”

“When people leave,” McGovern jokes, “we always order a card from Moonpig saying ‘sorry to see you go but you’re dead to us now’!”

Technical recruitment remains a pressing concern for all our panellists, and indeed for the IT industry at large. The insatiable demand for capable developers, engineers and product specialists continues to expand at pace, and often it seems that it’s all organisations can do just to keep up with it. At the same time, IT leaders must also balance this with keeping existing employees challenged and motivated in order to retain them.

Why IT recruiters should look for experts from the military sector

Amidst all this, it may seem like an impossible situation to resolve, but our panellists remain hopeful that the situation is moving in a positive direction. As Faughnan advises, the best way to ensure that your business is in the best position when it comes to securing talent - as with so many other things - is to put into it at least as much as you hope to get out.

“Invest your best people's time into it,” he says. “If you do it right, then the people you're interviewing could be your next cohort of best and brightest.”

Podcast transcript: Why techies shouldn’t become managers

IT Pro — Fri, 10 Sep 2021 06:30:11 +0000

This automatically-generated transcript is taken from the IT Pro Podcast episode ‘Why techies shouldn’t become managers’. To listen to the full episode, click here. We apologise for any errors.

Adam Shepherd

Hi, I'm Adam Shepherd.

Jane McCallion

And I'm Jane McCallion.

Adam

And you're listening to the IT Pro Podcast, where today we're talking about careers.

Jane

When it comes to jobs, there's a common mantra: 'do what you love, and you'll never work a day in your life'. It's a philosophy that many people subscribe to. But what happens when the job you love turns into something else?

Adam

That's the problem faced by many IT professionals, when their technical ability drives them up the career ladder into a management role that has more to do with people than it does with tech. But does a good technician make a good manager? Or is it better to hire dedicated leaders with appropriate skills?

Well, I would argue no, because that's going to happen sooner or later, eventually, you know, the, the tech world moves at such a rapid pace that as basically as soon as you take someone out of the trenches, and away from the kind of coalface of day to day IT operations, within, I would argue six months to a year, that person's knowledge will have started to become a little bit outdated. But how you get around that as a manager, is you surround yourself with people who are specialists and who are still, you know, on the on the cutting edge and working in the thick of it, and you rely on them for the technical side, you know, you say to them, right, you know, we we have X problem, you know, whether it's increasing server uptime, or making your database queries more efficient, or scaling up your IT to serve more regions, whatever it might be. You go to your team, and you say, right, this is the problem. How do we fix it? What tools do we need? What optimizations can we make? And then your job is to coordinate that and manage that process.

Jane

Yes, yes, that word again. Yeah, and you know, and also, there is always the option to immerse yourself still in you know, IT stuff. While it may not be your day to day, and you not might not be down at the coalface as it were, you can still read itpro.co.uk, other news sites, or the BBC. But yeah, you can still read industry news, you can still talk to peers, all that kind of stuff. None of that is cut off from you.

Adam

No, but it's worth pointing out that the amount of, if you like, extra curricular learning that CIOs and senior, senior IT people have to do in order to keep on top of trends is just astonishing. You know, there's a, there's a decent chance that many of the people listening to this episode will be doing so in their off time, in order to keep their hand in, effectively. And incidentally, hello, thanks for listening.

The IT Pro Podcast: Why techies shouldn’t become managers

IT Pro — Fri, 10 Sep 2021 06:30:08 +0000

In the business world, we often talk about ‘climbing the career ladder’ - and the unspoken implication is that everyone wants to eventually reach the top. In most organisations, this means ascending to some form of senior management or executive role, but what about those that would rather stay where they are?

For many IT professionals, reaching a certain level of seniority results in graduating from managing technology to managing people, but the two roles require considerably different skillsets, and good technologists do not always make good leaders. In this week’s episode, we look at the question of whether IT teams should be managed by people with technical skills, as well as examining why technical staff end up with management responsibilities and asking whether it’s possible to stay out of senior management without sacrificing progression and compensation.

Highlights

“we've spoken a lot, and you've spoken, about slightly putting the burden on IT employees; it's also behoven upon their employer to think about how can they reward people who, for whatever reason, are not going to move up to management, whether that is because the employer doesn't think that they're the right fit for that role, or the employee themselves doesn't want to do it. And so I think that does require something of a rethink of how they handle employee progression beyond just upwards; what does sideways look like?”

“And yeah, there's a good few examples of leaders taking the opposite approach, in fact, and stepping back from executive and management roles to focus specifically on technical tasks. Recently, the co-founder of HashiCorp, Mitchell Hashimoto, stepped back from being co-CTO, to being an individual contributor. He previously stepped back from his role as CEO to be co-CTO, and he's now stepped back again, because he just doesn't enjoy leadership as much as he loves coding and being an engineer - and that's fine.”

Read the full transcript here.

Footnotes

Podcast transcript: How umbrella companies exploit IT contractors

For many IT professionals, the decision to move from a permanent position to a contractor or consultant role has given them more flexibility, better earning potential and a healthier work-life balance. There are those, however, who use legal loopholes to prey on IT contractors, lining their own pockets by cheating both them and HMRC out of rightful earnings.

In this episode of the IT Pro Podcast, we’re joined by James Poyser, InniAccounts CEO and founder of OffPayroll.org, to discuss the role that umbrella companies play in the IT industry, and why regulation is needed to stop unscrupulous umbrellas from dipping their hands into the cookie jar.

Highlights

“One of the challenges is the umbrella market is unregulated. And even the head of a professional body who represents umbrella companies has described it as the Wild West; it's full of opportunists. And contractors for many umbrellas are seen as a commodity that needs to be exploited.”

“When we talk about these umbrella rates, it's that daily rates are advertised before any tax, and it wouldn't happen anywhere else. If your teenage kids are going to get a temporary job flipping burgers at McDonald's, it would be a gross rate of pay, after all the employment taxes have been paid. But for some reason, it's kind of okay in IT to advertise these rates before things like employers National Insurance and the apprenticeship levy are taken off. So those are the kind of things we want to see stopped, and for a fair rate of pay to be advertised.”

“The IT contractor community is very tightly knit; contractors know one another, they ask each other for recommendations. And if one of them has a bad experience with an umbrella company, it's going to be on that WhatsApp group, it's going to be shared. And those kind of things will start to ripple through the IT contractor community. And hopefully, conversely, the recommendations for the good umbrellas will also go out through the community as well.”

Read the full transcript here.

Footnotes

IR35 news: HM Courts & Tribunal Service faces £12.5 million IR35 bill
IR35 insurance: What is it and do you need it?
The IT Pro Podcast: IR35 - what happens now?
What is IR35?
IT Pro 20/20: How regulation is shaping innovation
Most tech workers plan to leave their roles in the next 12 months
Blaze your career path with these seven high-tech freelance jobs
IT Pro Panel: The truth about talent

Data scientist jobs: Where does the big data talent gap lie?

Zach Cooper — Tue, 17 Sep 2019 09:32:00 +0000

Data science is one area of the digital sector that is desperately short of talent. In fact, IBM thinks data science will account for 28% of all digital jobs by 2020, but worryingly, the same report revealed that on average, each of these places remains unfilled for up to 45 days due to a lack of talent equipped with the necessary skills.

"Machine learning, big data and data science skills are the most challenging to recruit for, and can potentially create the greatest disruption if not filled," according to IBM's The Quant Crunch report.

The Royal Society found that demand for workers with specialist data skills in the UK has more than tripled over the last five years to 231%, comparable to a general increase of regular workers of 36%.

And with the European Commission forecasting that 100,000 new data-related jobs will be created in the region by 2020, the fact there aren't enough people with the right skills to fill the role is certainly worrying.

What has triggered the data scientist skills gap?

Simply put, there aren't enough data scientists to go around - the demand for data analysis has grown exponentially over the last few years, and there aren't enough people being trained to meet the demand.

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This growing gap between demand and available talent has meant that almost half of all European companies are thought to be struggling to fill their data scientist positions, according to recent data published by O'Reilly Media.

The report found that European organisations are heavily investing in products that help improve the accessibility and usability of data. Specifically, 59% are building platforms that allow for data integration and extract, transform and load (ETL) processes. Similarly, 53% said they were already working on data science platforms, while 53% said they were prioritising data preparation and cleaning, something that is core to the development of AI and analytics services.

However, the lack of talent is holding back progress. As much as 47% of the region's organisations are currently struggling to fill their data science roles, with 37% also struggling with data engineering positions. That's compared to just 25% for security-based roles.

The findings are broadly in line with data published by Gartner, which found that organisations are not only unable to source talent for full-time positions, but also do not have enough data scientists consistently available throughout the business.

The amount of data businesses are generating compared to even just a few years ago is staggering, and it's growing fast, with Forbes stating that 90% of data present in the world today was produced in the last two years alone. IDC thinks a mammoth 163 zettabytes of data a year will be generated by business by 2025.

There are more and more devices coming onto the market that scrape data, including wearables, smart home/office devices and that doesn't even include the rising number of people using the internet to shop, interact with brands and more, generating business insights that are powering business decisions.

Although the amount of data is impressive and is a positive thing, what isn't so positive is that data is useless without it first being analysed and then used to inform business transformation. Without the manpower to work out what all of the information means, analytical insights which add value to the business can't be deduced. Rather, if an organisation lacks the tools to coerce information from harnessed data, they may even be better placed abolishing data initiatives and cost-saving, to a degree. Simply, an investment in data tools must be matched by an investment in personnel.

How can data scientists benefit businesses?

Data scientists transform masses of data into analytical insights which help businesses make faster, more informed decisions.

Approximately 80% of the data generated over the next five years will be unstructured, highlighting the need for analytical tools operated by skilled personnel in order to extract insights. Using such tools, data scientists drag numbers and statistics into tables to form predictive models that can simulate a variety of possibilities.

Armed with the knowledge of the potential outcomes that each course of action can result in, businesses can select whichever solution aligns best with their initiatives. Logical, best-case scenario actions can be prescribed that improve overall performance. Moreover, as businesses build a record of performance metrics, an internal database of business-insights is formed, with which businesses are able to base decisions on recurring trends.

Boiled-down, the skill-set of a data scientist consists primarily of mathematics and statistics, programming knowledge and analytical thinking. Automated programmes can replicate these skills in the modern day, however a significant advantage of the data scientist is that they can think creatively. In this emerging field, it is certain that data science can be used in presently undiscovered ways to create further insight.

The possibilities are endless. A creative data scientist may forge new methods of gathering, interpreting and analysing to produce a profitable data strategy. According to Bernard Marr, "the corporate data superstars of the future will be people who can find new data to solve business problems and come up with new and innovative methods of applying data statistics".

In this, it can be said that the impact of data science is only as good as the data scientist. And with the skills gap only widening, sourcing such talent comes at a cost.

What is industry doing to help close the skills gap?

The European Commission has made a commitment to try and fill the data scientist skills gap across the whole of Europe by running sessions exploring what businesses can do to try and make the problem less severe, addressing the demands of organisations and using the data they collect to gain key insights about their customers and how to grow their business.

Businesses are also starting to react to the country's data scientist shortage and are collaborating with other firms and educational establishments to try and close the gap before it becomes too large to manage.

For example, data management and analytics firm SAS has teamed up with HSBC and the Data Lab to introduce an MSc course in Data Science for Business. The course will run at the University of Stirling and has been designed for those looking to start their career in data analytics. It teaches students how to use advanced analytics and apply these skills to real-life scenarios.

"There is a shortage of graduates emerging with the skills to apply the technical aspects of data science and use analytics to make sound business decisions," Dr Kepa Mendibil, course leader of the MSc in Data Science at the University of Stirling's School of Management said.

"Through this course, we have focused on the practical challenges that organisations are experiencing by merging disciplines to develop a teaching programme that makes the link between business, management and data analytics."

The Office of National Statistics is also innovating to ensure the country has the resources it needs, collaborating with universities across the country to implement data science courses, with both MSc and short courses.

Although closing the data scientist skills gap is not something that can be solved immediately, it's important businesses and the government work together to ensure they are making steps towards creating a better-equipped workforce.

The Royal Society's report recommends a fundamental change in education. To provide young people with the necessary platform to pursue data-specialist roles, transferable skills such as communication and problem-solving should be embedded into the national curriculum. And to ensure the skills gap does not completely spiral out of control, the change is needed within the next ten years.

A two-pronged approach is needed - teaching young people about the merits and opportunities of data - starting as early as possible and training existing staff how to analyse data to ensure the true meaning of information companies hold isn't simply lost forever.

What does the data scientist role entail?

While data scientists are in high demand, the role can differ quite substantially from company to company, explains data scientist Jessica Kirkpatrick, at tech recruitment firm Hired.

"In simple terms, data science is taking the scientific method and applying it to a business' data set to derive insights that help the company make strategic decisions," she says. "However, that can mean a wide variety of things in terms of day-to-day duties."

While one data scientist might be tasked with taking raw data from an application or website, for instance and organising it in a database in a way that makes it easy to analyse, another might find themselves running A/B tests on a website to see which version performs better with users.

"For example at Hired, we might pilot a new interview scheduling tool with a small group of clients and see how this new feature affects their ability to hire candidates," Kirkpatrick adds.

"We then compare how efficiently this test group is able to hire candidates with the rest of the clients who do not have access to the tool. This allows us to understand if the tool helps our clients or not and if we should add it as a permanent feature to our product."

But the role is increasingly focused not just on the data, but on company strategy, Kirkpatrick explains, helping executives identify the most efficient areas of the business and which areas require extra resources, or where companies should scale down.

"We have been seeing an increase in [the number of] Chief Data Officer roles in recent years, because companies are realising that it's important to have someone with deep analytical knowledge of the business in the boardroom," Kirkpatrick says.

Four tips for effective business collaboration

Esther Kezia Thorpe — Tue, 27 Aug 2019 11:03:00 +0000

Effective communication internally and externally is becoming a business differentiator. Employees will only want to work with you if the tools you provide are as good, if not better than, the technologies they use at home, while customers will only do business with you based on the experience you provide.

For these projects to be successful, board members and senior management must lead collaboration efforts and do more than just removing office walls and going open plan.

A collaborative culture gets the best work flowing, which makes fostering one vital. When teams feel comfortable and able to share ideas and thoughts freely, higher quality work gets done at a faster rate.

Here are four tips to help develop effective collaboration within your business.

Invest in your people and technology

Improving the employee experience is a key aspect of enabling more effective collaboration within the organisation. The success of collaborative technology depends entirely on employees changing the way they think about work for it to function.

Collaboration is key Collaboration: The expert view

Rather than just dropping new technology and processes on employees, companies need to ensure their staff understand what the intended goal is and why these tools are being implemented; educating the workforce about the benefits is pivotal to get them on board.

However, collaboration needs should be considered before running headlong into investment. Many business and IT leaders fail to consider whether the technology is truly needed, what it can do and if it's feasible long-term, let alone whether it fits in with the company's culture.

Reduce the number of tools being used

While the consumerisation of communication technology provides a wide range of options, it has also resulted in a complicated and crowded range of tools that IT management must deal with. Adding more tools in an ad hoc way leads to siloed work environments, a significant increase in administration costs and user frustration.

Learning new things is always hard, and for most people, the choice between spending time learning how to do things a new way or saving time and simply doing it how it's always been done seems like a no-brainer. Having too many tools leads to less time available to train staff to use them effectively, and can lead to skill gaps within the workplace.

Security is another key reason to reign in the number and types of tools in use at the organisation. To streamline communication, security needs to be planned strategically, but not overly be disruptive or restrictive to the end user.

Embrace the evolving workplace

In a recent report by BT, 73% of office workers in large organisations would prefer their IT department invested in mobile technology rather than technology for their office desk. Put simply, a nine-to-five office culture doesn't suit everyone, and employees are putting flexibility higher on their job wish list.

Remote working and flexible hours shouldn't be an obstacle to effective collaboration. In fact, true business collaboration means going global. Technology has played an important role in challenging the traditional concept of work, and simple tools like instant messaging, video conferencing and smartphone screen sharing all support collaboration and communication across the company.

However, there needs to be a balance between a collaboration free-for-all and a completely shut-down infrastructure. The future's most successful organisations will listen to what employees want, then settle for a standard set of collaboration tools so that collaboration silos are avoided.

Building an open, flexible working culture and putting the right technologies in place will empower employees to make their own decision about how they work best together in teams, and in turn, this will bring about effective collaboration and top-quality work from your employees.

Shared storage

Although flexible working throughout the organisation both geographically and across timelines does increase business collaboration, it also creates new challenges which can hamper productivity.

A clear by-product of agile working is that employees are less likely to be in the same physical environment when working together on projects, even at critical times. Consequently, workflows can be impacted by frustrating set-up times, along with the need to ensure all the correct files are located and uploaded, and the time spent exporting work to the next silo. Simply put, technology is needed for the benefits of the evolving workplace to be fully realised.

Advances in shared storage provide the organisation capacity to eliminate these issues and support a collaborative working environment. Modern networked systems which provide shared storage have unprecedented capabilities when it comes to permitting multiple users simultaneous access to the same programs and files. Rather than waiting for one part of a project to be completed before beginning another, employees can synchronise their workflows to advance projects at a faster rate. Having data constantly accessible allows dispersed teams to work more closely, meaning they can be more productive.

IT Pro Panel: The truth about talent

Adam Shepherd — Mon, 01 Jul 2019 06:00:00 +0000

Forget about cloud migrations, digital transformation and AI deployment - there's one foundational problem that modern IT departments have been wrestling with since the earliest days of the industry, and one that continues to challenge them to this day.

IT Pro Panel: Why collaboration platforms are so hard to deploy IT Pro Panel: The CIO's guide to software IT Pro Panel: The realities of business AI

Modern IT departments continue to struggle with locating, recruiting and retaining talented technical professionals - which is partly why a European Commission report from 2017 estimated that by 2020, there will be more than 500,000 unfilled IT positions throughout Europe.

But why is recruitment such a struggle? What are the biggest challenges, and how can organisations start improving the talent pipeline and closing the skills gap? In this month's IT Pro Panel discussion, we spoke to some of our expert panellists to get their take on the IT industry's ongoing talent crisis.

"A complete nightmare"

For Liam Quinn, director of IT at Richmond Events, recruitment is a "complete nightmare". Hiring a new developer took almost five months; Domino's UK CISO Paul Watts says that his experience is similar, with technical vacancies taking an average of six months to fill.

"Recruiters are not very good, but using LinkedIn is like opening the door to a tsunami," Quinn says. "We don't have in-house recruiters, so it all falls on me."

Quinn's disdain for recruitment agencies is shared by ICC Wales' IT manager Chris Stanley, who says that they don't understand the job roles and related technologies that they're asked to recruit for. Quinn adds that they also over-promise, with a tendency to be poor at listening and communication.

While Quinn laments the fact that he has to handle all of the recruitment personally, the reverse is true for Stanley. Although he creates the job spec and conducts the interviews, the bulk of the candidate selection is performed by his company's internal recruitment officer. "It's not ideal as I would rather do it directly," he says, "but I don't have the time or resource to do it myself."

Quinn and Stanley both have relatively small teams, numbering nine and six people, respectively. Watts, meanwhile, deals with an IT organisation of around 100. However, all three of our panellists reported that their teams were split roughly fifty-fifty between specialists and generalists.

According to Stanley, this solves one of his primary recruitment challenges - namely that technical staff who have experience working with the specialised systems used by the hospitality industry are hard to find. Instead, he's forced to recruit generalists and get them working with vendors to build their proficiency. "They aren't mainstream," he says, "so it's challenging."

"It all comes down to there being so much technology," he says, "and these technologies are all used for every business role you can think of, so IT generalist will be one of the main roles for the foreseeable future."

"I'm planning to go hybrid in the security function to an extent," Watts agrees, "allowing people to start generalised, cross-skill and look to specialise where relevant and useful over time."

Skills to pay the bills

The area of skills represents one of Watts' biggest issues when it comes to talent. "The market is tough, skills are short in key areas and location is a big factor," he says. He cites security and cloud as two particularly challenging areas at the moment.

"The argument I hear is that the skills are there but people feel roles are inaccessible to them, in some cases because role specs are badly put together," Watts notes. "I do feel there is a shortage in certain niche areas. I wonder whether industry could do more to give academia a better outlook on skills demands over a rolling 24-36 months - ditto for vocational schemes."

Quinn, on the other hand argues that finding staff who have the right cultural fit is often as challenging as finding staff with the right technical background.

"There's lots of technical people around, but finding those that fit into the culture of the larger organisation is difficult. The majority of applicants we get when they come for an interview still fit the old IT stereotype and we're too small a team and company for that to work."

Similarly, Stanley notes that a candidate's attitude is increasingly becoming the most important factor when recruiting for technical positions, alongside qualifications and skills. However, all three of our panellists highlighted issues with the current careers pipeline.

"I met with an IT services owner a couple of months ago, and he is driving a campaign in South Wales to get IT leaders in the area to start to visit schools and colleges to promote IT as a career due to a lack of IT workforce locally," Stanley explains, noting that the majority of students still see IT "as an 'uncool' job".

"There certainly needs to be better alignment between academia and industry," Quinn agrees. "The various code schools don't seem to understand what is needed in the real world and they code by example, not around initiative and creativity."

The Brexit question

Much has also been made of the potential negative effect that Brexit could have on the availability of talented staff, as tougher immigration restrictions prevent European developers and technicians from moving to the UK. However, none of our panellists are particularly concerned about the impact of Brexit on the number of skilled workers.

Although half of Stanley's team are originally from overseas - or more than half, he jokes, if you count England as 'overseas' - his current staff are all UK residents, he says, so Brexit won't present any immediate issues. "Recruiting may be more of a challenge," he admits, "but this is an opportunity for the UK to invest in and promote job roles in all industries."

Watts was more pragmatic about the possibilities, arguing that it's impossible to predict the impact of Brexit until companies know what kind of Brexit we're likely to have. "To be honest, speculating about it is hurting industry as much as the event itself," he said.

"Who knows what will be involved in Brexit come the end of the year," Stanley added.

If you're a senior IT decision-maker and you'd like to apply to be part of the IT Pro Panel, please email panel@itpro.co.uk.

Best free project management tools

Dale Walker — Wed, 01 Aug 2018 10:23:00 +0000

Whether your business runs formal projects such as product launches or updates, software rollouts as part of a digital transformation strategy, or you just need to keep track of everyday resource and time-limited tasks, project management tools should be a vital part of your business's IT set up.

They vary in feature set, from basic task tracking to fully-fledged resource, time and cost management platforms, with collaboration, accountability and every single detail your teams need access to built in.

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Like their features, project management tools can vary significantly in price, with those offering basic functionality often free or with free trials, allowing you to try for a limited time before you buy. But with so many to choose from, how can you find the tools you need to power your business and make projects run as smoothly as possible?

We've rounded up the top project management tools to help you choose one right for your business before you commit.

LiquidPlanner

LiquidPlanner is a project management tool that's built upon schedules to ensure projects run smoothly. It allows businesses to plan, track, schedule, collaborate and manage resources across multiple projects, so everyone involved knows what's expected and when.

LiquidPlanner also includes key insights on resource availability alongside other data-driven observations, allowing for in-depth project management. There are three plans available, suited to different sizes of organisation and each is billed annually. Each supports a different number of active tasks and users, with the small business/standard plan offering the fewest (250 tasks and five users).

Freedcamp takes a more traditional approach to project management, helping keep all the admin in one place, as well as tracking project progress. The free version is pretty basic, but you can add modules on to help cover your entire business process, including CRM, meaning Freedcamp can scale as your business grows.

Like Trello, it uses a Kanban board-style UI, allowing you to drag and drop tasks as they progress through the project. Task lists are present to keep your teams organised, and it can even create Gantt charts to help you present your progress to stakeholders.

Platforms: iOS, Web

Bitrix24

Bitrix24 is more than just a project management tool - it's a collaboration platform for your business. In each project group, you'll find all of the files related to that specific project, while all tasks can be assigned or delegated to colleagues at any step of the process, with a Kanban board view option if you prefer.

You can track how much time an employee has spent on each task, with task counters available to keep track. Projects can also be shared online, so clients and those outside the organisation can track progress and contribute too. Bitrix is free for up to 12 users with a storage limit of 5GB, but that's enough for most small businesses.

Platforms: Android, iOS, Web

Producteev

Producteev, as the name suggests, seeks to make teams more collaborative and therefore productive, helping businesses make decisions on the spot to guarantee continuity.

You can set priorities for tasks, colour code them and add custom descriptions according to where they fit in your overall plan. You can also include deadlines to ensure they're completed on time. Each task can comprise subtasks too, with a tick box available for each, so teams can keep track of where they are on a wider task that may comprise several parts.

Every task can be transformed into an email to quickly assign it to someone, and of course, you can upload files via Box, Dropbox or from your device.

Platforms: Android, iOS, Web

Main image credit: Trello

Just Eat's hungry for talent, searching for 150 tech workers

Clare Hopping — Fri, 20 Jul 2018 07:35:00 +0000

Just Eat has announced it's planning to recruit 150 more members of staff into its tech team, meaning it can work on boosting user experience.

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The company said it plans to take on new employees across roles including associate engineers, principal engineers and technology managers. They will work together to come up with new tech innovations to directly benefit customers, making it easier to find and order food from local restaurants.

Just Eat will also be able to come up with performance-based strategies, based on the information it collects from its 28,900 restaurant partners in the UK.

"As the market leader in online food delivery, technology and data is absolutely central to the service we provide to our 22.8m customers and 87,500+ restaurant partners globally," Fernando Fanton, Just Eat chief product and technology officer said.

"It's our job to understand and serve the Just Eat customer. Adding 150 people to our tech team in the UK this year will turbo-charge the great work we have already done to personalise the app experience and help us serve every customer's takeaway moment."

Just Eat explained it's already started on its tech recruitment drive, appointing more than 200 engineers, developers and data scientists over the last year and a half to start rolling out its data-led strategy, with the additional 150 team members joining its Bristol and London-based offices.

"We are constantly looking for ways to push technology boundaries and look forward to bringing even more highly skilled and talented individuals to our world class team as we continue our mission to create the world's greatest food community," Fanton added.

Two years ago, Just Eat was one of the first food delivery brands to test automated deliveries in an attempt to get food to customers faster. The company used Starships Technologies' robots that feature a PIN-protected compartment so no one can steal the food as it's whizzing its way to its recipient.

Best HR software

Zach Marzouk — Thu, 10 May 2018 06:15:00 +0000

HR needs to cover a whole range of functions within an organisation including employee management, talent acquisition, payroll, development and performance.

Similarly, HR software is a complicated area, with numerous products available to manage different elements of your business.

Here we have rounded up some of the best tools around to help your HR department (or managers) to choose the software which will allow you to carry out HR tasks with the least amount of fuss.

Namely

Namely covers all HR bases, including payroll, benefits and talent management, from one easy-to-use interface. It's not industry-specific, which may be a negative if you work in a specialised or highly-regulated industry, but on the flipside of the coin, it means it's a competent solution for any large business.

With a highly-configurable drag-and-drop UI, which can be perfectly matched to your business's policies and processes, it's definitely worthy of a mention in our top HR software list., purely because not many other options offer such a wealth of features and personalisation in one solution.

Its most useful asset is storing employee information securely - a major bonus with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) coming into force - including the time off they've had from their allowance (plus any other absences), performance management, a calendar, task manager and a social news feed.

The perhaps less endearing features are that it's quite expensive compared to competitors and will take a little longer to set up - but that's expected with HR software that's specifically tailored to your business, rather than an off-the-shelf product.

Although it has its uses for mid-size businesses, it's probably a little too on the pricey side for small firms and startups.

Bamboo HR

First up is Bamboo HR which covers an entire employee lifecycle and lets you manage everything related to employees. This could be applicant tracking for jobseekers, an employee database which keeps tabs on everyone in the business, absence and sickness monitoring, holiday and leave tracking, performance management and some benefits administration.

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Bamboo HR's interface is extremely easy and simple to use and even provides an API to integrate it with other HR software you might have already. Despite this, this useful software comes at a price and is an expensive option compared to others that can do the same.

Sage People

Even though this is not one of the best-featured HR platforms which lacks a payroll admin or scheduling functionality, Sage People (formerly Fairsail HRMS) has a spot in our best HR software roundup since it supports an astounding number of users (up to 13,000) which means it's perfect for you if you have a large organisation. Additionally, it can be customised to an organisation's needs and is suited for international organisations too. Even though it might miss out on a couple of key elements, it does integrate with third-party platforms so it won't miss out on much thanks to this.

iCIMS Talent Platform

Mose HR platforms excel at one element, while other features are not so fully-focused. This is certainly the case with iCIMS which, as the name suggests, has recruitment and talent acquisition at its core. It really is the best in its category, with iCIMS Recruit, iCIMS Connect and iCIMS Onboard working together to ensure your organisation onboards the best candidates and retains them for their entire lifecycle at the organisation. Although it doesn't match up with the all-in-one solutions, it's definitely worth being mentioned in our roundup.

Kronos Workforce Ready

Kronos Workforce Ready is a modular HR system, giving the organisation the option to stitch together just the modules they need or implement the entire platform to cover everything a business would ever need to keep on top of their HR processes.

It covers recruiting, onboarding, performance management, compensation planning, time and attendance, scheduling, absence management and payroll, with all data updated in real time to make sure everyone is on the same page. A free mobile app allows HR staff to access everything when they're away from their desk too, so you won't have to keep staff waiting when they're waiting for information.

Workday

Workday offers all the core functions you'd expect from an all-in-one HR tool, from recruitment and talent acquisition to learning management, benefits admin and payroll services in one easy to use suite.

It also includes an employee database, including somewhere to store employee contracts and keep an eye on their progress at the organisation. Its mobile recruiting app is an excellent addition for recruiters, allowing them to find and approach potential candidates even if they're not at their desk.

Image source: Sage People, ICIMS, Bigstock, Workday

Over half of IT workers are unhappy in their current job

Adam Shepherd — Wed, 14 Feb 2018 10:00:00 +0000

More than half of IT professionals are unhappy in their current roles, new figures have revealed, citing issues with corporate culture, wages and job progression.

According to a recent survey of over 1,200 workers by job site CV-Library, despite over 90% of respondents saying that it's important to love your job, over 56% of IT staff confessed that they were dissatisfied with their current roles.

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The principal thing staff cited as the reason they were unhappy was poor workplace culture, with almost 47% of staff flagging this as the primary reason for their dissatisfaction. 34% also flagged a lack of room for job progression and low wages as major concerns.

"It's worrying to learn that so many IT professionals are unhappy in their current roles. Job satisfaction plays an important part of keeping staff motivated and productive," said CV-Library founder Lee Biggins. "As an employer, it's vital that you are able to spot the signs of dissatisfaction or low morale and combat these issues right away. Tackling these early on can help to get staff back on track and start enjoying their work again."

"It's clear that company culture, pay and progression are important to professionals in the industry. Be sure that you're offering fair and competitive packages and that these tie in with creating a great working environment. Hosting social events is a great way to help staff blow off steam and build good relationships with their co-workers. This also goes a long way towards creating a great company culture."

Despite being unhappy with their employment situation, more than 65% of respondents said that finding a new job wasn't the best way to resolve it. Instead, the most popular option was speaking to a manager, as well as identifying what is making you unhappy, adopting new responsibilities and improving your work-life balance.

"It's great to see that IT professionals aren't giving up without a fight," said Biggins. "Being able to speak openly about your job is important and as such, employers need to keep the lines of communication open if they hope to address any issues in a timely and effective manner."

Top 10 reasons to consider flexible working

keumars.afifi-sabet@futurenet.com (Keumars Afifi-Sabet) — Fri, 17 Nov 2017 07:30:00 +0000

Over the coming weeks and months, more and more of us are going to be working remotely, and flexibly. This means varied working hours and fundamentally different work patterns.

Whether we're stationed in our home offices, or perched on the sofa, flexible working certainly has its merits - with or without COVID-19.

While technology and hardware might be in place, it's often the social and work-life-balance aspects of home or flexible working that poses the greatest challenges. These elements are, however, the source of benefits of flexible working, too.

Although it may not suit everybody, it's likely we'll be isolated to our homes for many weeks to come. Regardless of the realities of today, here are the top ten reasons why flexible working is the way of the future for working - whether you work for a massive enterprise or a small startup.

Cost savings

For any business, renting office space is a major cost factor, yet on any given day, large numbers of desks may be left empty as employees visit customers, attend meetings or work remotely. This makes more flexible arrangements, like hot-desking, far more efficient, and could save companies a vast amount of their office costs.

Working from home could save employees cash too. Indeed, a great majority of people can save money by from neglecting to travel, making their own lunches, or buying less work-friendly clothing. All that adds up, especially given that the salary freezes many companies have already implemented mean many won't be seeing extra cash anytime soon.

Morale

Flexible working is widely believed to improve work/life balance and enhance employee happiness, as it's a much more employee-centric policy. This can be expected given the added sense of freedom and responsibility with which home-working is imbued. There are also benefits of increased productivity, reduced absenteeism and improved staff retention.

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Workers may tend to show an increase in their productivity levels, as well as a fall in stress-related illnesses and, subsequently, days they have to take off, after adopting home-working. Anything that employers can do to save staff time and money, of course, lends itself to an added sense of relief, which improves morale, and can lead to better job performance.

Productivity

Many people feel they work better surrounded by the comforts of home without the distractions of the office, but much of that depends on personality and the type of job you do. That said, there's no avoiding the fact that you save on commute time unless you have a very, very congested hallway.

Indeed, a study by Avaya suggested flexible workers save 39 working days a year by avoiding their commute and a fifth use that time to do more work. How charitable of them.

Work-life balance

Flexibility is a straightforward way to improve work/life balance. Many workers desire to combine working from the office with working from home. For some, they're comfortable blending the lines - but for others, they still retain a distinction between both spheres. There's more to life than work, after all, and that time that's saved regardless of work habits can help employees spend more time with their families or take up hobbies, let alone anything else they'd like to do. People value their time so much that many surveyed said they'd take a salary cut to be able to work when and where they choose.

Green

Cutting that commute time is good for the planet too. All those avoided journeys add up. If every commuter worked from home one day a week, not only would the travel networks be less congested, but fewer cars and trains would mean fewer emissions being released.

Staying competitive

Whether you work for a large enterprise or an SMB, your competition is global. While the UK has made great strides in introducing flexible working over the past few years, it trails behind Nordic countries and Germany, where 40% of employees use teleworking, compared to 20% in the UK, according to figures from Work Wise UK.

A 2017 Millennial Survey from Deloitte showed that there are competitive rewards, finding that those in organisations that offered flexible arrangements were rewarded with higher levels of loyalty from its employees. It also found that in highly flexible working environments, only 2% more millennial workers saw themselves leaving their job within two years than those anticipating staying beyond five, compared to those in the least flexible organisations where the gap reached 18%.

Equality and diversity

Companies with flexible working hours that let people work from home have a wider pool of potential employees. Flexible working is good for anyone with small children or other commitments, while being flexible on location could help introduce disabled or even distant employees to your workforce, letting firms hire based on who really is the best for a job, not who has the time for it.

The tech is already in place

Not all job roles can be carried out away from the office, but many people spend their days parked at the same desk, in front of the same computer screen. Dish out laptops instead of desktop machines and most employees will easily be able to connect to the office via their own broadband network. Collaborative apps are free and easy these days, but do keep an eye on security as it is harder to keep systems safe from beyond the firewall.

Tech firms are well ahead of the curve on this one, so there's just no excuse not to be a bit flexible.

Government regulations mean you have to

That said, the government has passed laws requiring companies to consider requests from parents to work flexibly. Rather than being forced into it, why not offer it as a benefit to everyone, regardless of their family situation? Singletons in the office will appreciate being included too.

Business continuity

Disasters, transport strikes, traffic hold-ups or just bad weather might mean employees can't get into the office. Any company with a flexible working plan could keep its operations going, with workers set up to toil from their homes. Companies without such a set-up are more likely to run into difficulties - and if incidents happen which affect a sizeable proportion of the office, it could disrupt more than just the bottom line.

While coronavirus has brought flexible working and all its benefits and drawbacks into the limelight, it’s not a new idea. The 2019 IWG Global Workplace Survey provided evidence of the benefits of flexible working, which range from greater talent retention to greater agility. The survey reported that 68% of businesses had a flexible workspace policy and 85% of respondents said flexible working patterns had increasing productivity in their company.

During lockdown, numerous studies have found that a majority of homeworkers are happy to stay flexible rather than return to the standard 9-5. With an estimated savings of about £2.1 billion a week across the UK due to reduced travel and meal expenses, more free time, and the ability to create your own routine, it’s clear why more people than ever would like to have some sort of flexible working arrangement.

And now, with varying safety protocols for returning to the office, such as maintaining social distance and implementing staggered work hours and in-person days, it’s clear that agile working will be the most viable business model going forward.

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But no big change is without its challenges, and technology is a major challenge for remote working. CIOs, CTOs, and IT departments must approach technology from a more activity-based angle, choosing what tech will work best for each business, department, and individual role.

Fortunately, with an almost limitless range of options, IT decision-makers can select the devices that will deliver maximum flexibility for their employees, from convertible laptops to traditional desktop packages to ‘Bring Your Own Device’ policies.

This guide runs through what different platforms and devices can offer to help you decide what best fits the specific needs of your organisation.

Laptops

In the flexible office, the laptop becomes the go-to computer. They're affordable, reliable, powerful and robust, with a variety of screen sizes giving you options for different types of workers and their differing requirements. As their size increases, ease of portability goes down, but they compensate for that by offering increased usability and performance.

Laptops are an increasingly popular choice for organisations whose employees are working from home right now or usually spend a lot of their time on the move. While they might not seem like the best option for teams who need to run demanding native applications, the latest in enterprise laptops can generally handle pretty impressive workloads. They also have the connectivity to work with external screens and peripherals, so shouldn't be counted out - even for the most advanced power users.

Convertibles

2-in-1 devices and pro-level tablets with detachable keyboards suit a wide variety of users, giving you a great balance of extreme portability, long battery life, the choice of traditional or touch and pen-driven interfaces, and enough power to be seriously productive.

As the world gets back into gear, they are a great affordable option for the travelling executive, and for any organisations with agile working practices. As organisations reimagine their working spaces and schedules for social distancing, their portability might be particularly useful.

While smaller screens and form factors can limit applications, many still have either built-in connectivity or docking options to support peripherals and a bigger screen.

Desktops and workstations

Even in the flexible office, the desktop isn't dead. Software development, design, video, CAD, scientific and financial applications still thrive on the most powerful multi-core processors, GPUs and bigger screens, though mobile workstations are growing cheaper and more capable with every generation.

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With roaming profiles in Windows, there's also no reason why some hotdesks or work environments shouldn't be kitted out with desktop PCs, so that when the task demands a bigger screen or better performance, there's hardware to support that. Plus, with a new breed of high-performance but compact computers, power no longer means finding space for a large machine.

Mobile devices

The shine might have worn off standalone tablets, but for certain tasks and certain roles, for example in sales, support, or logistics, they're still a very portable and practical choice. Smartphones are even more crucial in the modern era, becoming a hub for communications that complements a laptop, convertible or PC.

For some businesses, this will mean corporate-owned and issued devices, while others will adopt a secure policy for Bring Your Own Device (BYOD). It is worth remembering that these devices will still need supporting infrastructure, including charging points, fast wireless networking and access to secure, business-ready cloud-based services and apps.

The technology mix that enables businesses to remain agile and use all the latest digital tools will have some element of BYOD. Although there are security concerns to be aware of, having a BYOD strategy which enables employees to make full use of personal devices can be both a good way of saving budget, and allowing innovation through devices staff are comfortable on.

Printers and MFPs

(Image credit: IT Pro)

Huge fleets of laser printers and rooms full of copiers have no place in the office of tomorrow. It's all about efficiency and consolidation, handling your workloads on fewer devices using less energy and less space.

Multi-function printers make much more sense, covering printing, copying and scanning capabilities within the one device and providing the on-ramp and off-ramp for more effective digital workflows.

For larger monthly workloads, glossy marketing or client-facing materials, laser remains the technology of choice. However, ink-based technologies can give you printers that are smaller, less obtrusive and cheaper to run.

Whatever you opt for, keep an eye on security, reliability, and total cost of ownership; the cheap office laser you buy now could prove expensive in the long term if it means downtime or a serious security breach.

Offer a mix

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The reality for many businesses is that individuals and teams will have a wide range of requirements, and there is unlikely to be one-size-fits-all solution. A truly flexible office will balance the hardware requirements of staff with portability to give those who can work out of the office the option to do so.

But flexibility doesn't have to mean setting up your entire office to work remotely - at least not at first. A range of devices can be offered - for example desktops with roaming profiles to allow hot desking, alongside a supply of laptops which can be used where necessary for remote or out-of-office work.

Flexible working and the right to make flexible working requests has existed in UK law since the Employment Rights Act 1996 was updated in 2014 with the Flexible Working Regulations 2014. There are many obvious benefits to flexible working for employees, including increased productivity, but what are the benefits to businesses? Meanwhile, when employees apply for flexible working, how should leaders consider whether such requests should be granted?

Although employees don't automatically have the right to work flexibly (which could mean tweaking working hours, job sharing or working from outside the office at times), they do have the legal right to formally request a change in normal working conditions.

As long as an employee has worked at the organisation for at least 26 weeks and have not made a flexible working request in the last year, they are eligible to have their request considered by their manager. These requests must be written and dated by the employee. All requests must state they have been placed under the statutory procedure and include details of the conditions of their request, including the date they wish to start working flexibly.

All requests must also state how the change could impact their role and what measures will be taken to ensure their position is covered in the same way it is in their current contract/arrangement.

The employer must deal with any request within three months and in a "reasonable manner", although the law relating to requests doesn't define what is reasonable. According to ACAS guidelines, employers should arrange a meeting to discuss the request as soon as possible. This is not a statutory requirement but is good practice.

The meeting should find out what changes the employee is seeking and their reasons. It is good practice to allow the employee to be accompanied at such meetings by a colleague or union representative.

The law requires the whole process to be completed within three months of the request being filed; this should also include any appeals if the request is rejected.

If a request is accepted, this will mark a permanent change to an employment contract.

If a request is rejected, there should be a sound business reason for doing so. The reason for rejecting a request should be one of the following:

the burden of additional costs
an inability to reorganise work amongst existing staff or recruit additional staff
a detrimental impact on quality or performance
a detrimental effect on ability to meet customer demand
insufficient work for the periods the employee proposes to work
planned structural changes to the business

Appeals and tribunals

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If an employee appeals a rejection, It should be arranged that this appeal is heard by a different manager/partner wherever practical. Again, the employee should be allowed to be accompanied at the appeal hearing by a colleague of their choice.

If the appeal is upheld, any notification must specify changes to an employee's contract and the date from which these changes take effect. If an appeal is refused, it must be explained on what grounds the refusal is based and why they apply to the case.

An employee may take things forward to a tribunal if an appeal is rejected. However, the tribunal won't look at the business reason for rejection but will instead attempt to determine whether the correct procedure was followed; whether the request was taken seriously, whether the decision was based on correct facts, and whether the reasons given were within the ones permitted under legislation.

If the tribunal finds the employer at fault, it can order the decision to be reconsidered and can award up to eight weeks' pay.

Flexible working during the coronavirus pandemic

The coronavirus pandemic and the subsequent need for self-isolation mean that an increasing number of employees will be working from home in a flexible manner.

According to the recent guidelines for employers and businesses issued by the UK government, companies are advised to ask their staff to work at home, while especially vulnerable employees (e.g. those with preexisting respiratory conditions and those who are older or pregnant) "should be strongly advised and supported to stay at home and work from there if possible".

Although the guidance warns that if "anyone becomes unwell with a new, continuous cough or a high temperature in the business or workplace they should be sent home", this is not only reserved for the ill. It is arguably better to take precautions now and encourage your team to practise social distancing - after all, flexible working has plenty of benefits, especially for parents of small children, whose normal school or childcare arrangements might have been cancelled because of the pandemic.

Moreover flexible working during these difficult times might lead to a boost of morale among employees and help them become more productive. But above all, it keeps your employees safe, and that should be your business' priority at the moment.

With many homes in the country now getting full-fibre broadband and high-speed broadband, many now question the need to be in the office at all. The benefits of flexible working are there for all to see.

Having to turn up to an office at nine and leave at five doesn’t help the average worker that may need to do the school run or look after an elderly parent or attend an appointment to see a doctor.

With flexible working, employees can work the hours they want (within reason). If the tasks are completed by a reasonable deadline, everyone should be happy, boss and worker. Many forward-looking organisations now see that flexible working is nothing to fear and many potential recruits can raise the subject in interviews without feeling they could lose a prospective job. Flexible working is a wonderful way for businesses to retain talent and keep everyone happy!

There are many studies that show that trusting a person to do their job on their own pays dividends for the business. It's not a case of slackers getting an easy day off. Results from AAT research showed that employees often clock extra hours of work every week when trusted to work remotely.

Driving a car to work every day is bad for the environment. Using a train may be more friendly for the environment, but Covid-19 means that could be an effective way to catch a fatal bug. Why not let your workers turn commuting time into something more profitable for the business!

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Coronavirus and home working

At the time of writing, the world is gripped in the grasp of the coronavirus pandemic. What started out as an outbreak of the COVID-19 virus in China has torn across the world and has reached Europe and the US.

In an attempt to slow the spread of the virus, many organisations have gone into lockdown, with their staff sent to work from home. Those that had a remote working scheme in place will have found making such a move a fairly frictionless process; IT Pro, for example, makes heave use of remote login processes, cloud-based document sharing, and the likes of Slack to work and communicate in a collaborative manner despite the team being miles upon miles apart.

Of course, this does require a business to have the right tools and equipment in place to enable employees to work from home, such as capable laptops, cloud-based services access, and the right communications software. But it also requires employees to 'buy in' to remote working, with both managers and other staff being active in open and clear communication and have defined objectives and processes in place to avoid miscommunication that can happen when people aren't able to speak face-to-face.

For companies that don't have a remote working scheme in place, it might seem a bit late to set up one. But in the midst of a pandemic any action to help keep staff safe yet also empower them to be productive will be a boon.

Benefits for employers

Increased productivity

Different people are better at working at different times of the day. For example, some people may be more productive early in the morning, while others may be night owls. Removing standard business hours' and giving the go-ahead for staff to work when they feel most productive will mean you are getting the most from your employees every day.

Reduced sick leave

More motivated staff, who are able to work the hours that suit them best will mean employees are healthier and happier. Stress will be reduced, which in turn can help their physical health. In a study by Unison, the number of sick days taken by employees fell from 12% to just 2% when a flexible working policy was introduced.

The potential sustainability benefits of flexible working The social impact of remote collaboration

More skilled workers

When offering flexible working as a benefit, you're more likely to attract a wider pool of candidates to a role, especially if you're open to full-time remote working. Not only does this mean you can appoint staff across the country, but if you need a specific skill that is experiencing a shortage in the UK, you can look further afield.

Reduced office space costs

A report by Vodafone revealed that 61% of companies that have employed a flexible working policy have managed to increase profits since introducing new terms and although much of this is a result of increased productivity, cost savings is also a contributory factor. If you have fewer employees in the office, you'll also find your costs will reduce on office equipment, support services and other shared resources such as energy bills, reception staff and facilities.

Reduced staff turnover

If employees feel they are valued by the firm, which includes allowing them to work from where they wish and when, they are likely to have more job satisfaction, which in turn means they're less likely to be searching for a job. Happy employees are loyal employees

Benefits for employees

Reduced travel costs

Without the commute to work, employees can save a considerable amount of money on travel. Many train operators now offer flexi tickets to help those who don't head into the office every day, giving them the same discounted fares for three or four days a week as those who have a ticket for seven days a week. For example, C2C's Flexi-Season ticket allows you to buy ten tickets upfront with a 5% discount against buying the same amount of anytime day return tickets. You'll need to use the tickets within six months of buying them, but that will be no problem for those who only head into the office a few days a week.

Reduced childcare costs

If you have the benefit of working from home, you can also reduce costs on childcare. Whether your children are school age or younger, the fact you can take the commute out of the equation could mean you save money on breakfast or dinner club for your children, childminding or nursery costs. If you are a keen multitasker, you could eradicate childcare costs completely on the days you are able to work from home too.

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More downtime

Trading a commute to and from the workplace for a handful of steps to the dining room table is giving employees more personal time to relax, resulting in an overall better work/life balance. Commuting is considered one of the most stressful events in existence, and unfortunately is also one which most of us regularly experience.

If left unaddressed, the stress it causes can fester into other, more damaging mental health issues. Maintaining a positive work/life balance allows employees to feel much more positive about life generally, benefiting their health and wellbeing. The flexibility of remote working practices in many modern enterprises ensures that if work/life equilibrium is preliminarily not achieved, employees have the power to adjust their allocated days accordingly.

More job satisfaction

Given the freedom to adapt their working hours and/or location, employees report a stronger relationship of trust with their employers, resulting in a higher rate of job satisfaction.

Employees value being valued; if employers not only accommodate needs and wants put forward by staff, but go the extra mile to ensure they enjoy their day-to-day by listening and involving them in the decisions affecting their career, it's likely to instil a feeling of loyalty towards the organisation too - benefiting both parties.

51% of UK employees want more flexible work options

Esther Kezia Thorpe — Wed, 15 Nov 2017 07:26:00 +0000

The office, as millions of us know it, is evolving. The rigid, structured layouts, the cubicles, the desks, chairs and cabinets that have been a familiar presence for decades are no longer fit for purpose. In fact, in many cases they're holding companies back.

For some small businesses, there's no need for a physical office any more, but even many medium and large-sized enterprises are taking a good, hard look at the workplace and thinking of ways to make it more effective, turning it into a place that supports the way they work now, not the way they used to.

It's not just companies looking to change the way they work, but also their employees. Mercer's Global Talents Survey 2017 reported that 51% of UK employees wanted more flexible work options, and 49% wanted their employer to focus more on health and wellness.

This is backed up by a recent European Workforce survey by ADP which discovered that 37% of the workers surveyed stated that they wanted to combine working with the office with working from home.

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So what has caused this shift in what we prioritise in working life? More millennials and generation Z workers are entering the workforce, motivated not just by wages and career advancement, but by their work/life balance and their social needs. According to ADP's survey, these two factors came behind pay and remuneration when respondents were asked what mattered most, with workers in the UK going above the global average of 28% for work/life balance to 33%.

One way to improve this much-desired work/life balance is for companies to allow their employees more flexibility, giving them more choice over when and where they work. This kind of flexibility isn't just of benefit to workers, but also to their employers.

When Deloitte surveyed millennial workers for its 2017 Millennial Survey, it found that those in organisations that offered more flexible arrangements rewarded their employers with higher loyalty. In highly flexible working environments, only 2% more millennial workers saw themselves leaving their job within two years than anticipated staying beyond five. In the least flexible organisations, the gap reached 18%.

The same survey found that those working in a flexible environment were twice as likely to say that it had a positive impact on organisational performance and general wellbeing.

A new kind of office

What does all this mean for the office? If the corporate desire for flexibility is put together with the worker's personal desire, it is no surprise that more open, flexible workspaces become so important. They don't just empower flexibility, but also collaboration, giving people the space and facilities they need to work together in whatever teams or ad-hoc partnerships they need to.

Flexible workspaces and hotdesks promote agility by breaking down the silos and enabling people to connect. More formal, closed-off meeting rooms and boardrooms will always be a necessity, but more companies are embracing informal meeting spaces with comfortable seating and a more relaxed feel.

The changing office isn't just about furniture and layouts, but also about having the technology in place to support them. For many workers, it will be out with the desktop PC, in with the lightweight convertibles and laptops, though there will still be users for whom more powerful workstations - either desktop or mobile - will be a requirement.

Cloud-based services, communication and collaboration tools will have a critical role to play, as companies look to knit teams and departments together, full-time or part-time, in the office or at home. Secure, wireless technologies are also becoming crucial, enabling workers to operate in any space and with whatever facilities they need to, seamlessly.

Royal Society advocates action over computing GCSEs

Joe Curtis — Fri, 10 Nov 2017 13:55:00 +0000

The Royal Society has laid bare the problems facing tech skills development in the UK, with a shortage of teachers and low uptake of key subjects exposed in a new report.

While 70% of pupils attend schools offering GCSE computer science, a total 54% of secondary schools don't list the subject at all, the After the reboot report found.

"Our evidence shows that computing education across the UK is patchy and fragile," the report read. "Its future development and sustainability depend on swift and coordinated action by governments, industry, and non-profit organisations.

"Neglecting the opportunities to act would risk damaging both the education of future generations and our economic prosperity as a nation."

The new English, Welsh and Northern Irish GCSE in computer science saw entries rise from 60,146 in 2016 to 65,205 in 2017. Scotland's entry numbers for the equivalent National Qualification in computing science are more stable, at around 7,400 entries.

But the outmoded GCSE in ICT, which the computer science GCSE will soon replace, still accounted for 55% of all computing qualification entries for 16-year-olds.

As a result, "there is a risk that there will be a drastic drop in the number of pupils studying computing as ICT is phased out," the report claimed.

An analysis of Ofqual GCSE exam figures by the British Computing Society this summer also found that a drastic drop off in ICT entries wasn't being offset by an opposite jump in computer science entries.

The Royal Society's report found that only 11% of Key Stage 4 pupils choose to take GCSE computer science, compared with 14% of Key Stage 4 pupils choosing ICT.

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A Department for Education (DfE) spokesperson said: "Computer science GCSE entries continue to rise more quickly than any other subject. We recently saw an increase in entries to STEM subjects for the EBacc and the number of girls taking STEM subjects at A-levels has increased by over 17% since 2010."

The report also raised concerns over teacher training, saying: "A majority of teachers are teaching an unfamiliar school subject without adequate support. Moreover, they may be the only teacher in their school with this task."

It found that the UK government only hit 68% of its computing teacher recruitment targets from 2012 to 2017.

The DfE's spokesperson said: "We want to ensure our future workforce has the skills we need to drive the future productivity and economy of this country and that is why the government made computing a compulsory part of the national curriculum.

"Since 2012, the department has pledged 5 million to the Network of Teaching Excellence in Computer Science programme, which has built a national network of nearly 400 computer science specialists schools can commission to provide bespoke training for their teachers."

House of Fraser rolls out self-service BI to optimise customer experience

Adam Shepherd — Tue, 31 Oct 2017 11:15:00 +0000

Business intelligence and analytics tools have enabled House of Fraser to dramatically transform its business, empowering employees from across the organisation to glean their own actionable insights on a self-service basis.

The department store chain has rolled out its new intelligence initiative, nGenBI, which is powered by data analytics platform MicroStrategy 10. Previously, the company's business intelligence team would physically print out and distribute grid reports in large quantities, resulting in contradictory data and inefficiencies.

House of Fraser's BI team was forced to spend substantial amounts of time building a single dashboard, speaking to other departments about their business needs and gathering other relevant data. By implementing MicroStrategy, however, individual departments are now able to easily generate their own reports and dashboards independently.

"By empowering people across the business with visualisation tools, MicroStrategy is enabling us to transform our business culture," said House of Fraser CIO Julian Burnett. "Our teams easily understand what the visualisations reveal to us about the state of our business and can apply that to the day to day as well as to the strategic choices we make."

"Using MicroStrategy's platform, our employees can pull together a data set, apply it to a data model and visualise it all within minutes," added Steve Limbirons, the retailer's business intelligence programme manager.

"That is a huge step forward for us. Self-service data discovery enables our business users, regardless of their technical skill or role, to take analytics into their own hands and quickly answer complex business questions on the fly."

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Now that the rest of the business can generate its own insights and reporting without needing to go through House of Fraser's BI team, the team is free to focus on more business-critical reports and on optimising the way that data is gathered and processed within the company.

Employees throughout the business have felt the benefits, too. Self-service data discovery has allowed them to analyse product returns data to drastically improve the returns process. Supply chain, marketing and store operations departments have also engaged with the platform, such as by using real-time information about customer visits to retail stores to optimise the in-store experience.

"MicroStrategy has enabled us to achieve a much clearer picture of the entire business and an understanding, for example, of the dynamics between people and space," Burnett said. "By visualising data from IoT and other sources, we can optimise these dimensions, improve the customer journey and ultimately drive growth."

Picture: Bigstock

Going paperless? Make your PDFs accessible

Esther Kezia Thorpe — Mon, 23 Oct 2017 14:08:00 +0000

There's not much that's more frustrating for your staff than trying to fill out an online document and finding they can't even highlight the text.

Whether it's speeding up train season ticket loan applications or making your last board minutes available to all employees, there's many advantages to going paperless, and only one of those is about costs.

As part of a comprehensive and integrated Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) strategy, organisations can stand out positively by providing compliant and accessible web pages and documents.

For staff with certain disabilities, barrier-free access to information is crucial, so accessibility should be at the top of your agenda. PDFs can help organisations offer this, looking the same no matter whether a worker is viewing the document on Windows, Mac, Linux or on the web. But you have to make sure your PDF is not only readable, but fully accessible.

For a PDF to be considered accessible, it must meet the following eight criteria:

1: Form fields must be accessible

Accessible PDF forms must contain fillable fields, as well as descriptions of these fields that can be read by a screen reading program. The fields must be called in a defined order using the tab key, so that people can fill out the form even if they are not able to use a mouse.

2: The document must contain text and must be searchable

A scanned paper document exists only as an image. Assistive systems cannot recognise it, and it also cannot be read aloud or presented in Braille. This type of file must therefore be converted into searchable text by an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) system. Normally, it is necessary to do some manual editing to correct recognition errors, and include additional information such as bookmarks or alternative text descriptions for graphics or images in the document.

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3: The document structure is created using tags, which define a logical reading order

Accessible PDFs have a hierarchical structure, clearly identifying headings, paragraphs, tables and lists. The structure of these tags creates a logical reading flow that assistive tools can use.

4: All links, graphics and form fields have a descriptive text

Accessible PDF documents contain alternative texts that describe the content of elements such as charts, illustrations, graphics, images, form fields, footnotes and links. Screen readers and other assistive tools can read this information and provide the user with an idea of the represented content.

5: The language of the document is defined

Some screen reading devices can read documents in different languages, with the correct emphasis and pronunciation. To use this function, the document must contain information about the language in which it was written.

6: The PDF document contains navigational aids

Links, bookmarks, headings and tables of contents all allow users to locate specific parts of the document directly, rather than having to plough through the entire text to find the information they want.

7: The security settings are configured correctly

Accessible documents must not be restricted in such a way that assistive tools are unable to access them. For example, screen readers may not be able to access content in documents in which copying text is prohibited.

8: The fonts used should contain characters that can be read

All information in an accessible PDF document should be presented in a way that allows assistive tools to extract and interpret it correctly. If fonts with special characters that cannot be read correctly are used, screen reader software will not be able to read the content.

Main image: Bigstock

Four secrets to agile success

IT Pro — Tue, 17 Oct 2017 14:39:00 +0000

60% of workers will spend more time out of the office than in it by 2020, according to Mitie's Executive Research Programme. The agile office of the future will be more attractive as an employer, which in turn means it's more likely to be more successful as a business.

But is there any such thing as agile utopia? There are many things holding organisations back and creating a disconnect between their agile aspirations and reality, and although many companies have recognised the need to adapt their workplaces, they face challenges in transforming the style, operation and presentation of their workplace.

So what approach should senior IT managers take when looking to create a successful agile working environment? Here are four secrets to agile working success:

1 - IT is not the only key

From an IT decision maker's perspective, the focus is often on the technical tools and solutions available to support digital transformation and futuristic work models.

However, although IT remains a core element in creating the successful office of the future, it's not the only thing to consider. Nor are IT professionals the only stakeholders; in many organisations, they increasingly need to work with a variety of business decision makers such as accounts, facilities or HR in order to deliver.

Organisations should have the three Ts at the front of their mind - technology, transparency and trust - when moving to a business that is fit for the future.

2 - Collectively change mindsets

Whatever the drivers of flexible working are, businesses can only reap the full benefits if the prevalent cultures and preconceptions are challenged, along with people management and working practices.

Flexible vs agile working What is agile development?

For flexible working to really benefit both the organisation and the employees, there needs to be a strong element of trust, both that employees working from home really are working, and that the manager will allow them to get on with the job in hand. This results in a smarter, more agile approach to working that focuses on achievements and results.

3 - Relevance for the many, not the few

Business leaders should be cautious about trusting just one group's opinion to ensure organisations remain relevant for most, if not all of its employees. It shouldn't be necessary to lean over backwards for a specific group of people, for example going to great lengths to attract millennials.

An open, collaborative culture where each person is encouraged and trusted, combined with strong management ensuring that these ideas lead to a fully holistic approach creates a win-win situation.

4 - The value of trust

Ultimately, trust remains something that is earned, not given, and organisations should pay attention to this as it applies to both sides of the agile working equation.

It is about recognising the value that motivated and trusted employees can deliver versus the value that is lost through a rigid and often archaic approach to work.

Agile working is here to stay, and provides a firm foundation for long-term organisational success by improving staff motivation and productivity, whilst also delivering savings in operational costs.

But while it heralds a brave new world for organisations and employees, its adoption is being hindered by concerns about loss of productivity and management control. In reality, with a properly managed and executed plan, the opposite outcome is achieved.

Samsung CEO quits claiming the company is going through an "unprecedented crisis" - but profits are up

Victoria Woollaston — Fri, 13 Oct 2017 09:05:00 +0000

Amid claims Samsung Electronics is facing an "unprecedented crisis", CEO Kwon Oh-Hyun has announced he is stepping down from his role.

In a statement to stakeholders, Kwon said: "As we are confronted with unprecedented crisis inside out, I believe that time has now come for the company [to] start anew, with a new spirit and young leadership to better respond to challenges arising from the rapidly changing IT industry."

He didn't specify details about the "unprecedented crisis" but his resignation comes following exploding batteries on the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 and a bribery scandal in which the Samsung heir Lee Jae-Yong was jailed in August for five years. Lee appeared in court to appeal this sentence earlier this week, denying the claims.

Yet despite the doom and gloom, the company also announced it is expecting profits to hit record levels in the third quarter. Reports suggest that for the July-September period, Samsung made a quarterly profit of 14.5 trillion won (9.6 billion), almost three times as much as the same period last year.

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Sales are expected to have risen by almost 30% year-on-year thanks to its Galaxy S8 and Galaxy Note 8, while Samsung's semiconductor business continues to bolster the company's bottom line as its flagship DRAM and NAND memory chips used in phones have had a surge in demand.

Commenting on the seemingly contradictory claims, Kwon said that the recent successes are "merely fruit of decisions and investment made in the past." The full earnings report will be released later this month.

Following the announcements, Samsung shares dropped to 1.42% at close.

Uber's HR chief never discussed sexism concerns with whistleblowing engineer

Joe Curtis — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 09:48:00 +0000

Uber's head of HR has never met with the engineer whose blog post raised the curtain on allegations of sexism and harassment at the ride-hailing firm.

Liane Hornsey, who joined Uber a month before Susan Fowler detailed various allegations of widespread chauvinism and systemic sexism at the company, admitted she hasn't met with Fowler to discuss the issues since in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.

She said: "I have said, very publicly, "Thank you" to her because she raised some stuff that did lead to change. I don't know whether there would be any benefit in meeting her. I'm seriously working for my employees today; she's an ex-employee."

Fowler responded on Twitter to remark: "She really, really doesn't like me."

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Hornsey, who joined Uber in January after Fowler left in December 2016, said Fowler's blog post "was very difficult for this company", and resulted in HR carrying out 200 "listening sessions", and a personal promise from her to answer every employee email within 48 hours.

Uber charged a former attorney general with leading an external review into Uber's practices, and accepted 47 recommendations his report made in June - the implementation of most of these is Hornsey's responsibility.

She said: "I truly believe we're making progress on all of them, with the exception of a couple that we've held off on." One is hiring a chief diversity officer, which she wants new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi to weigh in on, and another is reviewing Uber's cultural values, which also requires his input.

But Fowler, who had dismissed the external review as "optics" at the time, also criticised Hornsey's comments around having difficulty finding female engineers to interview for roles (another recommendation), after the HR chief said Uber had found and made contact with 1,800 of them.

"Did ya'll know that there are only 1800 women engineers? Uber has identified them all," Fowler remarked sarcastically.

Hornsey also said diversity is a priority for Uber's new CEO, who has already contrasted with former boss Travis Kalanick's style by admitting "we've got things wrong" in response to TfL's refusal to renew the ride-hailing firm's licence to operate in London last month.

Uber's ex-CEO appoints two new directors to its board

Zach Marzouk — Mon, 02 Oct 2017 09:30:00 +0000

Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick appointed two new directors to the company's board last week.

The decision was seen as a way to take advance action against a move by Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, who wants to restructure the board to gain more control, according to Reuters.

Kalanick appointed former Xerox CEO Ursula Burns and former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain to the positions.

In a statement obtained by Reuters he said: "I am appointing these seats now in light of a recent board proposal to dramatically restructure the board and significantly alter the company's voting rights. It is therefore essential that the full board be in place for proper deliberation to occur, especially with such experienced board members as Ursula and John." He did not specify which proposals he is against.

Uber told IT Pro it viewed the new appointments as a "complete surprise".

"That is precisely why we are working to put in place world-class governance to ensure that we are building a company every employee and shareholder can be proud of," the company said in a statement.

In June 2016, Uber's board of directors was increased from eight members to 11, giving Kalanick the authority to choose the three empty seats. When he resigned as Uber's CEO in June 2017 he appointed himself to one of the seats, and has now finally filled the other two.

A Reuters source said Kalanick's move came ahead of Khosrowshahi's plan to restructure the company's board, which will be voted on tomorrow, to give the new CEO control of four board seats as well as his own. He wants to transfer one of the two positions controlled by Kalanick to SoftBank, the private fund that is considering investing in Uber.

Khosrowshahi could then give the other seat to a person he chooses as well as three others which currently exist, according to the source. The plan also calls for a third of directors to be elected each year.

Neither Uber nor Kalanick has responded to request for comment.

Benchmark Capital, one of Uber's biggest investors, sued Kalanick for fraud in August. The venture capital firm was upset as it claimed it would not have agreed to give Kalanick the extra seats in June 2016 if it was aware of his "gross mismanagement and other misconduct at Uber". Kalanick faced numerous scandals when he was CEO of Uber, including claims of systemic sexism and harassment in the workplace.

Uber CEO Khosrowshahi is set to meet Transport for London's (TfL) transport commissioner Mike Brown this week in order to talk about why Uber's private hire operator licence was not renewed. Uber was told it will no longer be able to operate in London last month and had 21 days to appeal TfL's decision.

TfL said Uber was not fit to hold a private operator licence as it "is not fit and proper". TfL added that the company demonstrated a lack of corporate responsibility, which includes Uber's failure to report serious criminal offences and its approach to medical certificates.

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14/08/2017:Uber investors 'ask Benchmark to step down from board'

Three Uber investors have reportedly asked venture capital firm Benchmark Capital to step down from the ride-hailing company's board of directors, a day after the VC confirmed it's suing founder Travis Kalanick for fraud.

Benchmark's fraud lawsuit would see former CEO Kalanick ousted from Uber's board, and consequently a group of shareholders emailed other Uber investors and its board of directors, arguing that Benchmark should divest enough shares to no longer have board appointment rights, according toAxios.

The investors are Shervin Pishevar from Sherpa Capital, Ron Burkle of Yucaipa Cos and Adam Leber from Maverick, the publication reports.

In an email, obtained by Axios, they write: "We do not feel it was either prudent or necessary from the standpoint of shareholder value, to hold the company hostage to a public relations disaster by demanding Mr. Kalanick's resignation, along with other concessions, on a few hours' notice and within weeks of a personal tragedy, under threat of public scandal."

The investors fear that the lawsuit will cost the company "public goodwill" and impede the search for a new CEO. They point out Benchmark's investment of $27 million is worth $8.4 billion today and ask them to consider the employees of the company "who worked so hard to create such unprecedented value".

They requested: "...that Benchmark remove its representative from the Company's Board and move promptly to divest itself of enough shares in the Company so as to cease to have Board appointment rights. We have investors ready to acquire these shares as soon as we receive communication from Benchmark that they are willing to withdraw their lawsuit and sell a minimum of 75% of their holdings."

The investors also asked for the board to vote on the matter at the board meeting last Friday and said that if any other shareholders wanted to join their petition they were more than welcome.

A statement was sent out by Uber co-founder and chairman Garett Camp on behalf of all directors on Friday which said: "The Board of Directors is disappointed that a disagreement between shareholders has resulted in litigation. The Board has urged both parties to resolve the matter cooperatively and quickly, and the Board is taking steps to facilitate that process.

"At a time when thousands of employees around the world are working hard to serve our drivers and riders and continue to innovate, our priority remains to select Uber's new CEO as quickly as possible. We are fortunate to have several outstanding candidates who share our belief in Uber's great future."

Benchmark is suing Kalanick for breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty and fraud. It is reportedly not happy that Kalanick increased Uber's board from eight members to 11 while giving the former CEO the power to choose who fills those seats. The venture capital firm claimed it would never have agreed to the decision if it had known of the "gross mismanagement and other misconduct at Uber".

11/08/2017: Travis Kalanick sued for fraud in bid to oust him from Uber's board

Former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick is being sued by Benchmark Capital, one of the company's biggest investors, for fraud in a move that looks to oust him from the ride-sharing company's board.

The venture capital firm owns 13% of the ride-hailing company and is suing Kalanick, who owns 10%, for breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duty as well as fraud, according to Axios.

In its lawsuit, Benchmark claims that Kalanick tried to increase his power over Uber for his own "selfish ends". Benchmark is not happy with a decision from June 2016 where Uber's board was increased from eight members to 11, which gave Kalanick the authority to choose who takes the empty seats. Kalanick later naming himself as a board member once he resigned as CEO, whke a further two seats remained empty.

This move upset Benchmark, which the venture capital firm claimed it would not have agreed to giving Kalanick the extra seats if it was aware of his "gross mismanagement and other misconduct at Uber".

Benchmark said that by withholding that information, which includes everything from pervasive gender discrimination at the company to an Uber employee allegedly taking trade secrets from a competitor, it annuls Benchmark's vote to increase the size of the board.

It said: "Kalanick's overarching objective is to pack Uber's Board with loyal allies in an effort to insulate his prior conduct from scrutiny and clear the path for his eventual return as CEO--all to the detriment of Uber's stockholders, employees, driver-partners, and customers."

The VC firm was also one of the five major investors which demanded Kalanick's resignation back in June.If successful, Benchmark will kick Uber off its board of directors.

Benchmark is seeking to overturn the June 2016 vote which would mean the three extra board seats would be eliminated. This would remove Kalanick from Uber's board of directors. Benchmark has also asked for a preliminary injunction against Kalanick's continued involvement in the Uber board which would prevent him from being included in the ongoing CEO search.

A spokesperson for Uber told IT Pro that it is not commenting on this.

In June 2017, Kalanick officially resigned as CEO of Uber after bowing to mounting pressure from investors over his leadership of the company. He faced numerous scandals over recent months, which included claims of systemic sexism and harassment in the workplace. Benchmark was one of five major investors who demanded the he would resign.

He was Uber CEO since he co-founded the company in 2009 and helped it to grow to the company it is today, valued at nearly $70 billion. The company also has an ongoing intellectual property lawsuit with Waymo, Google's self driving car unit.

23/06/2017: Uber staffers petition to get ex CEO Travis Kalanick rehired

Some Uber employees miss Travis Kalanick, so much so that they have set up a petition begging for the former CEO to return.

According to an Axios report, a thousand Uber staffers have signed a joint letter to the board of directors, calling for the return of Kalanick, who left following a series of controversies (see below).

The report said the petition was circulated among Uber employees, with roughly 10% signing it in the first 12 hours.

"As the folks who've actually worked alongside Travis for years to help create Uber from nothing, we are extremely disappointed by the short-sightedness and pure self-interest demonstrated by those who are supposed to protect the long-term interests of our company," the letter reads.

"Yes, Travis is flawed, as we all are. But his passion, vision, and dedication to Uber are simply unmatched," it continued. "We would not be here today without him, and believe he can evolve into the leader we need. He is critical to our future success."

Business Insider also has a collection of quotes from staffers praising Kalanick for "inspiring an entire generation of entrepreneurs," his dedication and hard work, and his listening skills as well as his propensity to take selfies.

Not all agree, of course. Susan Fowler, a former Uber staffer who wrote a blog post last year revealing sexual harassment issues at the company, noted that seeing former colleagues defend the company was "sickening".

"My first sickening experience was seeing a bunch of my old teammates doing that Uber graffiti thing," she said in a Twitter thread. "Things got worse from there."

Why are women such a problem? Technology gender gap widens in the North Uber CEO ditches Trump council, Musk stays on Silicon Valley commits to inclusive recruitment

21/06/2017: Uber's Travis Kalanick resigns as CEO

Uber's long-embattled CEO, Travis Kalanick, finally bowed to mounting pressure from investors over his leadership by resigning from the company.

Kalanick, who was forced to take a leave of absence last week, faced criticism after numerous scandals emerged over recent months, including claims of systemic sexism and harassment in the workplace.

Five major Uber investors, including venture capital firm Benchmark, demanded on Tuesday that the CEO resign immediately, according to theNew York Times.

"I love Uber more than anything in the world and at this difficult moment in my personal life I have accepted the investors' request to step aside so that Uber can go back to building rather than be distracted with another fight," said Kalanick, in a statement published by the New York Times.

Kalanick has been Uber's CEO since he co-founded the company in 2009, helping to turn it into one of the most disruptive and influential transportation companies in the world, valued at nearly $70 billion.

But Uber has faced one problem after another over the past few months. The firm was subjected to both internal and external workplace reviews after former employee Susan Fowler claimed she had been the victim of sexual harassment, adding that her complaints were dismissed by the firm.

Uber has also been plagued with legal woes, including an intellectual property lawsuit from Google's self-driving car unit Waymo that has yet to be resolved, and the US Department of Justice launched an investigation in May after the discovery of the software 'Greyball', a tool that helped Uber drivers avoid authorities trying to clamp down on the service.

The ride-hailing firm has since committed to tidying up its practices, firing more than 20 employees as a result of the investigations and committing to workplace culture changes. Following that commitment, Kalanick took an indefinite leave of absence, however investors clearly felt this wasn't enough to reform the company.

Bill Gurley, who is a partner at Benchmark and also sits on Uber's board, was one of the earliest supporters of Kalanick, and paid tribute to his work in a tweet on Tuesday evening.

Kalanick's resignation comes at a time when Uber's future remains uncertain, as it could still face significant legal fallout from its case with Waymo. It is reported that the former CEO will remain on Uber's board of directors, and will likely retain some influence in the company as its majority shareholder.

14/06/2017: Uber's Travis Kalanick steps back from CEO role

Uber's CEO, Travis Kalanick, is to take a leave of absence following a damning review of management practices at the firm and the death of his mother.

Kalanick wrote to staff to explain his decision, which came after his mother died in a boating accident recently, while his father remains in a critical condition.

But his stepping back also coincides with the release of recommendations from a review into Uber's culture and management practices prompted by accusations of endemic sexism by former Uber engineer Susan Fowler, published in a blog post in February.

Recodepublished Kalanick's email in full, with the message reading: "Recent events have brought home for me that people are more important than work, and that I need to take some time off of the day-to-day to grieve my mother, whom I buried on Friday, to reflect, to work on myself, and to focus on building out a world-class leadership team.

"The ultimate responsibility, for where we've gotten and how we've gotten here rests on my shoulders. There is of course much to be proud of but there is much to improve. For Uber 2.0 to succeed there is nothing more important than dedicating my time to building out the leadership team. But if we are going to work on Uber 2.0, I also need to work on Travis 2.0 to become the leader that this company needs and that you deserve."

When Kalanick does eventually return, it will be in a diminished role after the company pledged to follow the recommendations of the review, conducted by former Attorney General Eric Holder's law firm, Covinton & Burling. In its report, the firm said there should be a review and reallocation of Kalanick's duties.

"The board should evaluate the extent to which some of the responsibilities that Mr Kalanick has historically possessed should be shared or given outright to other members of senior management. The search for a Chief Operating Officer should address this concern to some extent," the report said.

It also called for "key metrics" to be established to hold senior leaders to account during performance reviews, as well as increasing the profile of Uber's head of diversity, Bernard Coleman, renaming his role 'chief diversity and inclusion officer.

Covington urged Uber to add more independent seats to the board, and to create an oversight committee for ethics and culture, as well as making diversity and inclusion a factor in senior employees' compensation.

"Uber should ensure it has appropriatetools, including complaint tracking software, to keep better track of complaints,personnel records, and employee data," the report added, after Fowler alleged that her HR complaints about a superior were mishandled.

She reacted to the report on Twitter, saying: "They'll never apologize. I've gotten nothing but aggressive hostility from them. It's all optics."

The company has also seen another high-profile resignation this week, after leaked audio from a meeting of Uber's board to investigate the claims of sexism showed one of the male board members making a sexist joke.

Referring to the recent appointment of another woman, Wan Ling Martello, board member Arianna Huffington can be heard saying: "There's a lot of data that shows when there's one woman on the board, it's much more likely that there will be a second woman on the board."

Fellow board member David Bonderman responded: "Actually what it shows is it's much likely to be more talking."

Bonderman resigned around 12 hours after the audio was leaked, due to the "inappropriate" comment.

The full audio can be heard atYahoo News.

12/06/2017: Uber board agrees to sexism review culture changes

Uber's executive board has unanimously agreed to implement all the recommendations suggested by an external investigation, launched after allegations of systemic sexism and malpractice.

The recommendations are to be kept secret until they are formally shared with employees tomorrow, so it is unclear exactly what Uber board members agreed to on Sunday.

The Holder Report, overseen by former Attorney General Eric Holder, is the culmination of an investigation launched in February following allegations by former Uber engineer Susan Fowler. In a scathing blog post, Fowler alleged that she had been the victim of repeated sexual harassment, and that Uber had refused to remove the man in question due to his strong performance record.

"The Uber board met today with Eric Holder and Tammy Albarran," said an Uber board spokesperson. "The board unanimously voted to adopt all the recommendations of the Holder Report. The recommendations will be released to the employees on Tuesday."

A separate internal investigation, which looked at 215 cases of sexual harassment, bullying and unprofessional behaviour, resulted in the firing of 20 employees last week, including senior executives.

Holder's report, which is partly based on those 215 cases, is likely to include reforms to Uber's workplace culture, but may even suggest personnel changes. It is currently unclear whether Travis Kalanick is secure in his position as CEO, and the board may consider asking him to take a leave of absence, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal today.

The report also claims that Emil Michael, Uber's long-serving chief business officer is contemplating leaving the company as a result of the report. Recode reports that this is not accurate, but that the executive is under pressure from the board to resign.Uber has declined to comment to several publications about Michael's future.

07/06/2017: Uber has fired 20 employees after an internal review prompted by accusations of endemic sexism at the ride-hailing firm.

The widespread investigation, the findings of which were delayed more than a month, examined sexual harassment, bullying, unprofessional behaviour and more, with Uber revealing the terminations at a staff meeting in its San Francisco headquarters, according to aNew York Timesreport yesterday.

An anonymous employee told the publication that the firings are because of an internal investigation that occurred in the last few months, and that some of those who were fired were senior executives, although the company did not name those it sacked.

An Uber spokesperson told IT Pro: "All reported incidents to date have been investigated, and where they were corroborated we have taken swift, decisive action.

"We have been doing this consistently and with rigour for the past few months and will continue to do so as issues are raised. This is not a one time activity".

Uber investigated a total of 215 claims, which included discrimination, sexual harassment, unprofessional behaviour, bullying, harassment, retaliation and physical security. The majority of the claims were raised by team members located in San Francisco, although claims were raised in offices all over the world.

The spokesperson added: "Contrary to some reports, the 215 claims were not all related to sexual harassment, nor were the 20 terminations. They fell into one of the categories listed above."

Former Uber engineer Susan Fowler accused her previous employer of various sexism allegations in a blog post in February, which prompted a separate, external, review of the ride-hailing firm's culture, the results of which were expected towards the end of May, but are now expected to land next week.

Fowler accuseda more senior member of staff of propositioning her for sex and, when she asked a director what needed to be done about the dwindling number of women in the organisation, he allegedly said "that the women of Uber just needed to step up and be better engineers".

21/04/2017:Uber delays sexism report until next month

Uber's board of directors has granted an extension for a review investigating sexual harassment claims.

Former US Attorney General Eric Holder and Tammy Albarrn are leading the review into Uber's corporate culture, sparked by accusations of sexism from former employee, engineer Susan Fowler.

The board said in a statement that it had extended the review to "leave no stone unturned" and now expected a report by the end of May, after Holder failed to get the required interviews with executives key to the investigation.

The report had previously been expected by the end of this month.

"When Eric Holder and Tammy Albarrn began their review, we told them that they would have all the support and time necessary to conduct an intensive, thorough review of Uber's workplace and culture," board member Arianna Huffington said in a written statement.

"Eric and Tammy have asked us for more time to complete their assessment, which includes information received from hundreds of employees through interviews and anonymous online focus groups and reflects the global scale of the company's operations."

23/02/2017:Uber tells fleeing users it is "deeply hurting"

Amid growing backlash against practices at Uber, the company has attempted to smooth over relations with users by writing to those trying to abandon the service.

Uber has had a turbulent month, which began with accusations that the company took advantage of airport strikes during protests against President Donald Trump's travel ban on Muslim-majority countries. Now the resulting #DeleteUber campaign has been bolstered by a former Uber engineer's allegations of sexual harassment and systemic discrimination within the company.

Susan Fowler alleged that her manager propositioned her, and that HR fobbed off her reports of sexism. Uber CEO TravisKalanick described the content of the claims as "abhorrent" and has ordered a full review of Uber's diversity and culture in light of Fowler's claims.

Now, those deleting their Uber accounts receive a formal message outlining the company's desire to change, also reminding them they cannot recover their accounts once they are deleted.

"Everyone at Uber is deeply hurting after reading Susan Fowler's blog post," the letter states, which has since been shared on Twitter. "We believe in creating a workplace where a deep sense of justice underpins everything we do and it's everyone's number one priority to create change in the coming months and years."

The message appears to be a last ditch attempt to change the minds of those seeking to ditch Uber, but makes no attempt to force users to stay with the service.

Uber recently committed to a full internal review of Fowler's allegations, which claim she faced discrimination and sexual harassment from a senior manager, an employee who Uber apparently refused to reprimand because of his "stellar performance reviews".

Former US Attorney General Eric Holder and Uber board member Arianna Huffington will oversee Uber's investigation into the claims, and Uber has also promised to deliver its first diversity report in the coming months.

Uber has stated to IT Pro that messages were only sent to a small number of US customers, and that the letter has since been removed.

21/02/2017:Uber hires ex-Attorney General to probe sexism claims

Uber has enlisted the help of a former US Attorney General to investigate claims of sexism made against the company by a former employee.

Eric Holder, who held the office under President Barack Obama, will conduct a review of the complaints made by Susan Fowler, a former Uber engineer who alleged she had been the victim of sexual harassment by her manager, amid a string of accusations painting a picture of widespread sexism at the taxi app firm.

Claims range from female engineers being denied leather jackets because there weren't enough engineers to justify the spend, to her request to move teams being denied because a manager wanted to keep women on his team.

Holder, who Airbnb hired last year to help create new anti-discrimination policies for its online room sharing platform, will be joined by Tammy Albarran, his partner at Covington & Burling law firm, according to an internal staff memo by Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, seen by Reuters.

"Every Uber employee should be proud of the culture we have and what we will build together over time," said Kalanick in the memo. "It is my number one priority that we come through this a better organisation, where we live our values and fight for and support those who experience injustice."

Uber board member Arianna Huffington, chief human resources officer Liane Hornsey, and associate general counsel Angela Padilla will also help with the investigation, which will additionally assess diversity and culture at Uber.

Kalanick also revealed to staff that Uber will release its first diversity report within the next few months. The memo highlighted that 15.1% of employees at Uber are women, compared to the 18% at Google, 17% at Facebook, and 10% at Twitter.

In her blog post revealing the allegations, Fowler maintains that when she left Uber in December 2016, just 3% of 150 engineers in her division were female.

Kalanick has called the content of the allegations "abhorrent and against everything Uber stands for and believes in".

20/02/2017:Ex-Uber engineer accuses firm of systemic sexism

Uber has been accused of systemic sexism by a former employee, who alleged that sexual harassment claims were repeatedly buried by the company's human resources department.

The claims were made by ex-Uber engineer Susan Fowler, who worked in the company's site reliability engineering department from November 2015 to December 2016. She published a blog post on Sunday detailing a laundry list of troubling accusations against the company.

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick described the content of the claims as "abhorrent" and has ordered an urgent investigation.

One of Fowler's main claims centres around her first manager, who allegedly propositioned Fowler on her first day of working on his team. According to Fowler, when she reported him to HR for sexual harassment, she was told that it was his first offence.

That, combined with the fact that he "had stellar performance reviews from his superiors", meant that no action was taken against him, Fowler said. Instead, Fowler was forced to either switch to a team that she was less suited to or to stay on the team and accept that the manager in question would likely give her a poor performance review.

"One HR rep even explicitly told me that it wouldn't be retaliation if I received a negative review later because I had been 'given an option'. I tried to escalate the situation but got nowhere with either HR or with my own management chain," she wrote.

However, after talking with female colleagues, Fowler said she discovered that multiple women had lodged HR complaints against this manager, all of whom were told that he'd never had any incidents in the past.

"It became obvious that both HR and management had been lying about this being 'his first offense', and it certainly wasn't his last," she wrote. "The situation was escalated as far up the chain as it could be escalated, and still nothing was done."

This was far from the only example of workplace sexism detailed by Fowler. For instance, after promising leather jackets for all employees in the division, Uber reportedly informed female staff that they would not be receiving any because "there were not enough women in the organization to justify placing an order".

Eventually, the situation got so bad that Fowler decided to transfer to a different engineering organisation within Uber, but despite saying she met all the relevant criteria and having a "perfect performance score", she found her transfer blocked.

Senior managers within the company said that her transfer was denied due to "undocumented performance problems", but Fowler claims the real reason is that having a female engineer on the team made her manager look good.

In order to keep her on the team, she said, one of her performance reviews was retroactively downgraded - which meant that she was also no longer eligible for an Uber-sponsored position on a Stanford computer science program she was enrolled in.

After keeping extensive records of sexist incidents and filing numerous reports with the company's HR department, Fowler claims she was summoned to a meeting. "The HR rep began the meeting by asking me if I had noticed that I was the common theme in all of the reports I had been making, and that if I had ever considered that I might be the problem," Fowler wrote.

Uber's HR representative also allegedly said that "certain people of certain genders and ethnic backgrounds were better suited for some jobs than others, so [she] shouldn't be surprised by the gender ratios in engineering".

"Our meeting ended with her berating me about keeping email records of things, and [telling] me it was unprofessional to report things via email to HR," said Fowler.

Following this meeting, Fowler claims that her manager threatened to fire her if she continued reporting incidents of sexism to HR. She said that nothing was done about this threat, despite saying she then told HR and Uber's CTO, who apparently admitted that it was illegal. She claims the lack of action was once again due to the manager in question being "a high performer".

She added: "When I joined Uber, the organization [division] I was part of was over 25% women," she said. "By the time I was trying to transfer... this number had dropped down to less than 6%." On her last day, she said 3% of more than 150 engineers in her division were women.

Multiple women in Silicon Valley and beyond have taken to Twitter and the comments section of Fowler's blog to show their support and to share similar stories.

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has expressed his horror at the accusations, and promised a complete investigation into the issue. "I have just read Susan Fowler's blog," he said in a statement sent toIT Pro. "What she describes is abhorrent and against everything Uber stands for and believes in."

"It's the first time this has come to my attention so I have instructed Liane Hornsey our new Chief Human Resources Officer to conduct an urgent investigation into these allegations. We seek to make Uber a just workplace FOR EVERYONE and there can be absolutely no place for this kind of behavior at Uber - and anyone who behaves this way or thinks this is OK will be fired."

Amy Douthwaite, senior associate at Kemp Little Employment, told IT Prothe claims undermine schemes aimed at bringing more women into tech, saying: "Women are notoriously under-represented in the tech sector in the UK, leading to a number of recent initiatives to encourage more women into the sector; these sorts of headlines are unlikely to help change this."

She added: "As these allegations have been so public, this may lead to employees in the UK coming forward with similar complaints, which could in turn lead to grievances and Employment Tribunal claims if they are not resolved. Of course, any allegation has to be substantiated to be upheld, but evidence of the mistreatment of other employees could be used to support arguments of an ingrained cultural problem at Uber in claims by other similarly affected employees."

Trainline's new API wants to take the pain out of your business trip

Joe Curtis — Wed, 27 Sep 2017 12:43:00 +0000

Trainline is trying to solve the headache of international business travel by releasing an API designed to make it easier to organise business trips.

The API, live now for Trainline for Business customers, hooks in railway timetables from rail companies operating across Europe, enabling users to book all their journeys through one interface.

How Trainline can predict the price of your ticket Travelling forward in time: Trainline's ambitious AI plans

"International rail is complex, as services often need to be sourced from multiple suppliers, all with different technology standards and specifications," Alidad Moghaddam, European director of Trainline for Business, told IT Pro. "This makes procuring rail content on a global scale a time-consuming, resource-intensive and costly process."

He added: "The international API ... makes the integration of rail content more intuitive and simple. With complexity reduced, more travellers and businesses are likely to opt for rail over air journeys to reduce costs, decrease their carbon footprint and boost productivity on short trips."

Starting with 87 train companies across 24 countries, the API will add more areas and companies as it grows, allowing customers to access all this data via single interfaces from partnering travel management companies, online booking tools, and digital travel agencies.

Travel Planet has integrated the API into its own service already, launching it to customers soon. CEO Tristan Dessain-Gelinet said: "Thanks to the technology behind Trainline's international API, Travel Planet will be able to expand its offer in its 'Click&Control' platform and allow travellers to access rail providers throughout Europe. This is a big step forward for European train travel."

Trainline for Business has more than 20,000 customers, from enterprises to travel management firms and SMBs who use its platform.

The API is the latest innovation from the British tech firm, which recently announced predictive analytics to warn customers when their train fare will spike, and a chatbot that crowdsources passenger data to identify vacant seats for commuters.

Picture: Bigstock

HPE plans to slice 5,000 jobs to cut costs

Hannah Simms — Fri, 22 Sep 2017 09:17:00 +0000

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is planning on cutting 5,000 people from its workforce to cut costs in the face of growing market competition.

The Palo Alto based company plans to cut back up to 10% of its 50,000 employees starting at the end of this year, affecting people from the US as well as overseas, according to an anonymous source that tipped-off Bloomberg to to the cutbacks.

The job cuts could also potentially affect those in higher positions such as managers, and they come as part of a larger effort to save money within the company as Tim Stonesifer, the company's chief financial officer, said the plan is to save HPE $1.5 billion over a three-year period.

This new set of cut backs follows the somewhat recent division of HP, into HP Inc and HPE, which lead to the loss of 30,000 jobs in September of 2015 in a plan to save $200 million to $300 million annually by 2020, and the subsequent announcement in 2016 that HP Inc plans on cutting 3,000-4,000 jobs within the next few years.

HP split is 'no silver bullet for Meg Whitman's woes' HP will cut up to 4,000 jobs by 2019

HPE explained this is in an attempt to be more competitive in a changing industry, especially in the face of cloud technology, specifically those of Amazon Web Services and Google.

Additionally, chief executive officer Meg Whitman believes that by decreasing the divisions within the company, as it has by abandoning departments such as personal computers, printers, business services and key software units, HPE will become more efficient.

Earlier this month she stated that, "With fewer lines of business and clear strategic priorities, we have the opportunity to create an internal structure and operating model that is simpler, nimbler and faster."

Seven in 10 firms plan to increase use of contractors to plug skills gap

Rene Millman — Thu, 21 Sep 2017 12:30:00 +0000

Almost seven in ten CIOs (68%) plan to increase the number of contract workers to plug the IT skills gap over the next 12 months, according to a new survey.

The study, carried out by recruitment consultancy Robert Half, found that 43% of CIOs said that they are losing more IT staff to other opportunities compared to just three years ago.

The survey of 100 UK CIOs and IT executives found that an increase in job opportunities on the market (48%), stagnant career prospects (43%) and a desire for more diverse career experiences (39%) all contribute to increased levels of voluntary employee turnover. High workloads and stress (27%) and a poor work-life balance (18%) also feature as top reasons for employees to look for jobs elsewhere.

Skills gap could leave firms exposed to security vulnerabilities

The study found that businesses are facing a skills shortage of experienced IT professionals, with three in 10 (30%), struggling to find candidates with the requisite skills to do the job. Interestingly, 68% of CIOs said they plan to increase the number of contract professionals over the next 12 months, as they look to quickly fill gaps. This approach is most prevalent in IT security, networking and software/application development.

"As the technology landscape continues to evolve at a rapid rate, savvy technology professionals are looking for opportunities where they can continue to be challenged and add to their expertise," said Neil Owen, Director at Robert Half Technology UK.

"To compete effectively in the current job market, not only do businesses need to offer attractive salary packages but they need to sell candidates on the opportunity it provides their career. Outlining the career development opportunities, offering an exciting business model, staying at the forefront of innovation and using the latest technologies are all valuable factors for both attracting and retaining key employees."

Image source: Bigstock

Defeating sexism in tech

Caroline Preece — Mon, 18 Sep 2017 04:00:00 +0000

Ironically for an industry that looks so much into the future, it's long been true that too many within tech are stuck in the past when it comes to the perception and treatment of women and minorities that should be seen as peers, rather than outsiders.

Unconscious bias is still a huge problem for many companies, but there's also a much darker side to the story that's only just now being talked about with any sort of openness.

What happens when discrimination or sexist behaviour escalates to the point where victims must take action against someone at work?

Uber manager admits that sexism is "systemic in tech"

The general consensus when these matters are brought up is still that the person in question should report the abuse to HR or another relevant party within the company, and that this will resolve any wrongdoing quickly and quietly without any further harm to the accuser.

This, however, is not the case in many instances, as proven by the high profile accounts of former Kleiner Perkins employee Ellen Pao, and Susan Fowler, who worked as an engineer at Uber for a year.

As Pao details in an excerpt from her book Reset published in The Cut, she was frequently excluded in meetings, passed over for promotion and repeatedly propositioned by a colleague. Nothing about the latter issue was done, which is a dangerous trend which also appears in Fowler's account of her time with Uber.

Fowler wrote in a blog post: "When I reported the situation, I was told by both HR and upper management that even though this was clearly sexual harassment and he was propositioning me, it was this man's first offense, and that they wouldn't feel comfortable giving him anything other than a warning and a stern talking-to.

"Upper management told me that he 'was a high performer' (i.e. had stellar performance reviews from his superiors) and they wouldn't feel comfortable punishing him for what was probably just an innocent mistake on his part."

Changing company culture

Women like Pao and Fowler are often looked down on for publicising their alleged mistreatment and their reputations are dragged through the mud while the courts, the industry and the wider public play judge, jury and executioner on their characters.

This is now the fear of all women and other vulnerable employees who feel they have been discriminated against at work, treated unfairly because of their gender or sexually harassed. All of this is contributing to the comparative lack of females occupying top positions in tech, which widens the gender gap further.

Jo Morfee, director at Liverpool Girl Geeks, says: "It is essential that we attract and retain diverse workforces within the tech sector. If we do not, we will design and develop technology which is not fit for purpose.

"In Susan [Fowler]'s case, the more she reported the sexism that she was experiencing from her line manager, the more tenuous her position became. It seemed to negatively impact on the opportunities she was offered at Uber and she personally suffered as a result. Yet this does not need to be the case."

Many problems in this area are a direct result of company culture, which affects the behaviour of some male employees as well as how they react once a complaint has been made.

Cathy White, founder and director of CEW Communications and director of GeekGirl Meetup UK, says: "One of the biggest problems we have is the negativity that surrounds the victim who is willing to speak out or call out something bad that has happened to them in this industry.

"The fear is that they themselves will be judged, if they're a female developer will it become harder to get hired elsewhere? As a female founder, will I struggle to get meetings with investors for outing another VC's behaviour? This highlights one of the worst things in our industry - why do we feel we will be judged as the victim?"

Siobhan, who worked in marketing at an app development company in Manchester, told IT Pro that her company continued to foster what she dubbed a "'lad's club' working environment" even after her superior was fired for first sexually assaulting her, then breaking a window at her mother's house after she reported his behaviour to HR. Following her ordeal, she was dismissed two weeks after reporting sexist language used by the company's CEO.

"We really need to examine the culture of our organisations very closely," Morfee continues. "Taking a long hard look at your organisation can be painful, but ultimately the best thing to do is ask those minority groups to tell you honestly what their reality is."

What's the reality?

The advice for employees on Gov.uk recommends that those who believe they have been subject to discrimination at work complain directly to the person or organisation in question, organise mediation or alternative dispute resolution with a third party, or make a claim in a court of tribunal. Citizens Advice also recommends keeping a record of incidents to use as evidence at a later date if needed.

But managers and executives must do more. Despite Pao risking everything to shed light on her treatment at Kleiner Perkins, she still lost her case.

White adds: "One of the biggest things that should be changed is how we react to women (or anyone) who have been victimised. We should not judge, we should support. They are never to blame. If we become much more open to hearing these stories, whether that is peer-to-peer, on social media or in the news, we empower those who are brave enough to speak up."

It's way past time for the tech industry to start learning from its mistakes. The odd lawsuit against specific businesses or employees is one thing, but a widespread toxic culture of sexism and discrimination is another entirely. There's a skills gap in tech that can be filled with highly trained, highly capable women should they feel welcome and appreciated.

The most tragic aspect is that the answer is seemingly obvious - if women are listened to when they first make a complaint, and they feel safe and secure in doing so, then a huge number of cases need not be escalated. Things need to change, and it shouldn't be up to the victims to change them.

Some names have been changed to protect privacy.

Main image credit: Bigstock

Google is being sued for paying female employees less than their male counterparts

Hannah Simms — Fri, 15 Sep 2017 10:03:00 +0000

Google, which has been in the hot seat already this year when it was sued for compensation data, finds itself with another lawsuit dealing with employee compensation, or rather the lack of compensation and opportunities provided for the women it employes.

Former employees at Google recently filed a lawsuit against the company on the basis of gender inequality and discrimination. The plaintiffs, Kelly Ellis, Holly Pease, and Kelli Wisuri suggest that Google systematically keeps women in lower compensation levels than men with equal or lesser skills and education even though they do similar work.

Due to the extensive records that Google is required to keep regarding pay, job classifications, and other employment records, the plaintiffs hold that although it currently does nothing to fix the situation, the company should be well aware the discrimination occurring.

For example, Ellis, who had four years of previous experience, was hired as a software engineer at a Level 3 job position, a level at which Google typically hires recent college graduates. Meanwhile, a man who was hired at a similar time with similar experience, was hired at a Level 4 position.

Pease, who had worked for the company for several years, was kept on the lower "non-technical" ladder which holds less opportunity for promotions and less compensation than the "technical" ladder despite her multiple leadership positions and experience at managing those on the "technical ladder".

Wisurui, who worked in sales, claims to have done similar work to male counterparts in the Sales ladder; however, she was kept in the lower Sales Enablement ladder without the same opportunities for advancement and pay. All three of the plaintiffs resigned from Google based on their treatment based on their gender.

Uber manager admits that sexism is "systemic in tech" Women in IT feel underpaid

These claims alone provide evidence of the sexism happening in the workplace, but there is other evidence that suggest that their accusations hold truth as well. Around September 2015, OFCCP, Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, completed a statistical regression analysis of the company's compensations data for about 21,000 employees at Google's Mountain View office. The analysis revealed a difference of 6-7 standard deviations between pay for men and women in almost every job classification in 2015; that is quite a large difference of pay simply based on gender.

While all this evidence is hard to dispute, Google is definitely trying to do so. According to a statement made to The Register by Google's senior manager of corporate communications, Gina Scigliano, the levels in which employees are placed and the promotional opportunities offered are determined through extensive committees and checks to ensure that everything is decided fairly.

While this case may or may not prevail, the exposure of major companies preventing women from having equal opportunities as men, especially in the tech world, proves how far we still have to go to achieve gender equality.

Are apprenticeships the future of training in tech?

Nicholas Fearn — Mon, 11 Sep 2017 16:25:00 +0000

As technology advances and becomes more critical in today's interconnected world, there's a growing need for STEM specialists. Despite this, many in the industry fear there are simply not enough people with the desired digital skills to help drive forward connected innovation.

Despite recent advancements in education, there are still people who believe that governments and organisations aren't doing enough to train the tech pros of the future.

Apprenticeships, however, have emerged as a popular mode of training over traditional academic courses, offering people a vocational route into the industry.

Training of the future

American tech giant IBM is one of many companies in the industry to launch a popular apprenticeship scheme over the years. The company runs a 12-month programme designed for people who want to get a head-start in the technology world. Jenny Taylor, apprenticeship and student programme leader at the firm, is responsible for running the UK arm of the scheme.

The company launched the programme to help close the technology skills gap and to provide people with a way to enter the industry by learning on the job, Taylor explains.

"We believe apprenticeships are the future of training in technology and we have a very well established programme at IBM, she says. "We started our apprenticeship programme seven years ago ... and the results have been superb. Our apprentices have proved they can learn deep technical skills and are progressing rapidly up the organisational career ladder."

Although the scheme has had great results, she still believes degrees have a place in the industry when they're combined with apprenticeships.

"Degree offerings have opened up new recruitment channels for employers and offer an alternative to school leavers who may be choosing between a traditional University route and a degree apprenticeship. It's arguable that degree apprenticeships offer the best of both worlds, offering employment whilst studying at University, and there's less financial pressure in terms of student debt," Taylor says

Closing the skills gap

The Institute of Telecommunications Professionals, which provides a voice and accredited training for people in the sector, set up an apprenticeship scheme in 2013 to help companies attract quality talent. Since then, it's created almost 70 roles and worked with the likes of BT, Green Telecom, Level 3 Communications and Astro Communications. It also provides consultancy to member organisations on setting up schemes and the apprenticeship levy.

Crissi Williams, CEO of the Institute of Telecommunications Professionals (ITP), says that apprenticeships have the potential to fix the problem of the growing STEM skills gap. "In an industry driven by change, the ICT skills gap is widening and we are facing a digital skills crisis. With ever increasing pressure from consumers, the demand is growing all the time for new services and technologies but without the trained professionals to deliver," she tells IT Pro.

"We believe that apprenticeships are key to this issue; helping businesses to build, train and develop a workforce from scratch. Apprenticeships have come a long way with numerous options now available, including graduate schemes. Because apprentices are training as they work, it's a mutually beneficial partnership. We often hear stories of apprentices teaching the more seasoned employees about the latest trends and reverse mentoring."

The organisation has also found that apprenticeships are a cost-effective way for companies to train talent, mainly because there's third-party funding available to firms. "100% of the businesses we work with see apprenticeships as a cost-effective way to fill the skills gap. For smaller companies, government funding is available to ease the costs and for larger businesses who are already paying the Apprenticeship Levy it's essential they set up a scheme. There's still a poor take-up from larger companies, with 11,000 still yet to sign up for the government's digital account," she adds.

Marrying degrees and apprenticeships

There's no denying the fact that degrees aren't for everyone, but the same can be said for apprenticeships. Sometimes it's good to have the best of both worlds, and that's what French IT consultancy Capgemini is looking to do with its scheme. Working with Aston University, the company is running one of the country's first IT degree apprenticeship programmes. The first cohort recently graduated and 240 apprentices are currently on the scheme, who will graduate in five years.

Ruth South, head of graduate and apprenticeship programmes at Capgemini, says the company is looking to tackle all areas of training and sees apprenticeships as the future of tech training. "We've been running graduate programmes for many years and we're not planning to abandon those. However, we're also heavily invested in our own degree apprenticeship programme and by marrying studying and working simultaneously we've been able to see very real results," she says.

"Apprenticeships are still relatively in their infancy across the UK but as they become more common, school leavers will begin to see the advantages they have over traditional degrees particularly as they enter the world of work student debt-free and are able to get hands on work experience from the outset.

"We have already started to see individuals choosing apprenticeships over attending university for these reasons and as more and more fantastic apprentice role models graduate from the programmes they will continue to inspire the next generation. With the Apprenticeship Levy now in place, businesses have a perfect opportunity to invest in apprentices.

She adds: "At Capgemini ... we recognise that it's up to us to invest in the digital economy and grow the skills in this area, particularly from a female perspective, so we have a real drive to do more with the funds available."

At the end of the day, everyone's different and it's unlikely that degrees will ever become unpopular. However, apprenticeships have become a popular form of training in the technology world. They're giving people the opportunity to enter the industry and learn on the job while collecting a salary at the same time. Of course, such training is still relatively new, but we'll likely see more schemes emerge as time goes on.

Main image credit: Bigstock

Deutsche Bank CEO: Robots will replace thousands of jobs

Zach Marzouk — Mon, 11 Sep 2017 10:00:00 +0000

Deutsche Bank's CEO has admitted that robots and automation will likely lead to mass redundancies at the company.

John Cryan warned that a "big number" of staff working at his company will lose their jobs, as reported by The Guardian, adding: "The sad truth for the banking industry is, we wont need as many people as today."

Talking to an audience in Frankfurt, he said: "In our bank we have people doing work like robots. Tomorrow we will have robots behaving like people. It doesn't matter if we as a bank will participate in these changes or not, it is going to happen."

Cryan, who is currently restructuring the business, said accountants who "spend a lot of time basically being an abacus" would be replaced by machines.

Cryan also pointed at automation as a way to improve other jobs. He said it may take accountants three to four weeks to produce an account before they move on the other next one. "Wouldn't it be great, if machines could produce those numbers in just a few hours? Then accountants could analyse the numbers, form valid opinions what those numbers mean and not just produce them," he said.

When talking about how technological change will change banking, the Financial Times reported that the CEO said: "We have to find new ways of employing people and maybe people need to find new ways of spending their time.

"In our banks we have people behaving like robots doing mechanical things, tomorrow we're going to have robots behaving like people."

Cryan added: "We need to admit that what we had is nice but it's not necessarily for the future. We need more revolutionary spirit."

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Cryan also highlighted that Frankfurt could benefit from Brexit as it has the regulatory capability, law firms, consultants and an international airport to persuade business away from London.

He stated: "For months there have been discussions regarding which location is set to profit the most once London is no longer within the European Union. I cannot fully understand this debate because as I see it, the race had already been won before it even began."

Cryan said Frankfurt is the only European city which can take on London's business, but it needs "more attractive, urban residential areas, enough international schools and a dozen additional theatres and a few hundred restaurants".

A report released last week found that investors think Brexit will have a negative effect on the value of UK tech firms, but that the long term future has a more positive outlook.

Image source: Bigstock

Microsoft pledges legal support for its Dreamers

Clare Hopping — Thu, 07 Sep 2017 08:50:00 +0000

Microsoft is the latest tech giant to say it'll stand by 'Dreamer' employees if President Donald Trump's administration tries to deport them.

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) protection put in place by President Obama in 2012 protects young people who arrived in the US as illegal immigrants, giving them permission to work. But Trump plans to rescind the legislation, putting them at risk of deportation.

Microsoft made clear that it adopt a similar stance to Apple and Facebook for its 39 Dreamers, who it said should not be deported because they entered the country when they were children.

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"If Congress fails to act, our company will exercise its legal rights properly to help protect our employees," Brad Smith, president and chief legal officer at Microsoft, explained in a blog post. "If the government seeks to deport any one of them, we will provide and pay for their legal counsel.

"We will also file an amicus brief and explore whether we can directly intervene in any such case. In short, if Dreamers who are our employees are in court, we will be by their side."

Smith urged Congress to speed up the decision on how it will replace DACA, saying an agreement needs to be arranged to protect the 800,000 Dreamers in the US.

"Congress should adopt legislation on DACA before it tries to adopt a tax reform bill. This is the only way, given the number of legislative days Congress has scheduled over the next six months, we realistically can expect Congress to complete DACA legislation in time," he said.

Apple's boss Tim Cook said in a tweet that the company will fight for its own employees to be treated as equals, while Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg said the decision to end DACA is "particularly cruel to offer young people the American dream, encourage them to come out of the shadows and trust our government, and then punish them for it".

TUC: AI workers should help reverse pension age increase

Dale Walker — Mon, 04 Sep 2017 10:09:00 +0000

The benefits gained from the adoption of AI in the workplace should be used to improve work conditions and reverse proposed changes to the state pension age, according to the Trades Union Congress (TUC).

Historically, the rewards of automation, such as higher productivity and lower operating costs, have only benefitted owners and senior leadership rather than the entire workforce, argued the federation, which represents more than 50 unions in England and Wales.

In the Shaping Our Digital Future report, published on Monday, the TUC argued that although the workplace has seen significant disruption through digitisation and the use of robotics, workers have not been equipped to deal with the change.

Almost one in three workers were employed in manufacturing in the 1950s, the report said,, while one in twelve worked in professional and technical services.

These figures have since reversed, according to the report, but industrial-based roles lost through automation have not been replaced by jobs of similar quality, and wages in that sector remain 10% below the national average.

GDP could be 10% higher in 2030 due to benefits from AI, outlines research by PwC quoted in the report, and TUC argued that this could be used to help reduce the need for employees to work into their late 60s.

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"With the UK failing to make productivity gains in the last decade, we need to make the most of the economic opportunities that new technologies are offering," said TUC general secretary Frances O'Grady. "Robots and AI could let us produce more for less, boosting national prosperity. But we need a debate about who benefits from this wealth."

Proposals to increase the state pension age to 68 were controversially brought forward seven years to 2037 and 2039, expected to affect seven million people in their 30s and 40s.

Revenue generated from automation could be used to reverse this policy, according to the TUC, as well as allow businesses to improve pay and working conditions for their employees.

"Robots are not just terminators," added O'Grady. "Some of today's jobs will not survive, but new jobs will be created. We must make sure that tomorrow's jobs are no worse than today's. They must provide fulfilling work, with good pay and conditions."

This female startup invented a fake male CEO to expose the sexism of business

Alan Martin — Fri, 01 Sep 2017 10:31:00 +0000

I have something that gives me an inherent advantage in the world of technology, and sadly it's nothing to do with aptitude. It's that handy Y chromosome which gives me a whole series of invisible advantages from being higher on the pay scale to being given unfair deference in meetings. A gentleman may indeed make his own luck, but his biological roll of the dice should certainly be credited with an assist.

The key word there, of course, is "invisible". Although my beard and 6ft 4in frame may make my gender instantly apparent, there are plenty who believe that the playing field is entirely equal for men and women. To those people, here's an interesting case study to chew over, concerning Witchsy an online marketplace for art that doesn't fit in with Etsy's saccharine flavour of whimsy.

As explained to Fast Company, the company founders Penelope Gazin and Kate Dwyer discovered that the men they found themselves dealing with as they tried to get their business off the ground were pretty trying: terse and condescending, one developer even tried to stealthily delete code from the website when Gazin turned him down for a date.

This is when Gazin and Dwyer decided to hire a man: Keith Mann to be precise. Only Keith was purely fictional: an imaginary CEO hidden behind a wall of email text to placate their sexist business partners. "It was like night and day," explained Dwyer. "It would take me days to get a response, but Keith could not only get a response and a status update, but also be asked if he wanted anything else or if there was anything else that Keith needed help with."

"I think we could have gotten pretty bent out of shape about that," Dwyer continued. "Wow, are people really going to talk to this imaginary man with more respect than us? But we were like, you know what, this is clearly just part of this world that we're in right now. We want this and want to make this happen."

And they have. In its first year, Witchsy has turned over around $200,000 worth of art, giving content creators 80% of every transaction. The result is the Keith Mann has stepped down from the day-to-day fake running of the business to spend more time, no doubt, on the fake golf course.

BCS: Women disappearing from IT Women in IT feel underpaid

The phenomenon of men being taken more seriously than women in business especially technology is not a new one. Indeed, a 2006 study discovered that women are more likely to moderate the way they write emails so as to be seen as friendly, rather than awkward. This fascinatingly depressing Twitter Moment demonstrates what happens when men and women accidentally swap email signatures.

IR35 insurance: What is it and do you need it?

Joe Curtis — Tue, 29 Aug 2017 10:24:00 +0000

If you work in the public sector as a self-employed contractor, then IR35 might affect you. The legislation is designed to crack down on tax avoidance via what HMRC calls 'disguised employment', targeting contractors who set up limited companies, paying themselves dividends instead of drawing an income.

This means they don't pay National Insurance, and they aren't taxed like regular workers (though nor do they receive full-time employment benefits like sick leave and holiday pay).

For more details on what IR35 is and how it could affect you, read our article summarising the legislation.

So, if you're employed by a public body, and run a limited company through which you pay yourself in dividends, should you get IR35 insurance?

What is IR35 insurance?

The government renewed its focus on cracking down on disguised employment from April 2017, making public bodies responsible for ensuring their internal and outsourced staff pay what it deems to be the correct amount of tax.

This made IR35 a renewed priority for HMRC, which is consequently selecting more contractors to investigate their tax status.

IR35 insurance helps contractors find experienced legal representation to defend their tax status and represent their interests if they are selected for review - effectively, it's insurance in case you're investigated.

Typically, you can get insurance for two separate aspects of an investigation - the legal costs of defending yourself in an investigation, and the financial consequences of being found to be 'inside' IR35.

One contractor insurance broker, Qdos, offers such insurance. CEO Seb Maley explains to IT Pro: "Some policies only offer cover for the legal or defence costs involved in a tax or IR35 case. This means you get an expert fighting your corner from day one, managing the case on your behalf and dealing directly with HMRC.

"A popular extension to this type of cover is to also indemnify the IR35 liabilities, so if the expert loses the case, all of the backdated tax is covered."

Such costs include any interest added to unpaid tax, national insurance contributions, and penalties levied by HMRC.

Do you need IR35 insurance?

If the HMRC decides to investigate your tax status and you don't have insurance, you could end up paying a specialist far more to represent your interests. With investigations potentially taking years to conclude, this could leave you with a huge bill, even if you win.

"With IR35 at the top of HMRC's agenda, the need for insurance has never been greater," argues Maley. "IR35 is a complex and continuously evolving legislation which can easily be misinterpreted. Insurance brings peace of mind should a contractor be subject to an investigation by HMRC, with the option of covering any tax or NIC (National Insurance contributions) liabilities, interest and penalties should you be 'caught' by IR35."

Most HMRC victories in IR35 investigations come when the contractor lacks expert representation, according to Qdos.

Even if you soak up the penalties and backdated tax if HMRC decides IR35 applies to you, on average you'll end up paying 25% more tax on your future earnings, saysContractorCalculator, making insurance a relatively cheap way to make this outcome less likely, even if you don't think you'll be investigated.

"Thousands who have been through enquiries will testify that insurance has been a huge benefit, both financially but also in removing a great deal of stress from the process," Maley concludes.

What is IR35? Recruiters call for IR35 delay IR35

What else should you consider before deciding whether to insure yourself or not?

Firstly, review the nature of your employment to make sure you can't be accused of dodging IR35 tax status. In HMRC's eyes, there's a lot of difference between a so-called 'disguised' employee, and a genuinely self-employed worker. Your working practices should reflect these differences if so. For instance, if you offer your services via an intermediary - a limited company, a partnership, or even another person, you could be liable to pay IR35 taxes.

The nature of your contract is also essential in determining your tax status. HMRC uses three tests to check if you're 'inside' or 'outside' IR35, ContractorCalculator explains.

If a contractor's client tells them how, when and where to complete their work, the contractor is inside IR35. If a contractor can't offer a replacement worker to substitute for them when sick or on holiday, they're inside IR35. If a contractor is reliant on the client giving them work, and the client reliant on the contractor completing it, the mutuality of obligation test is fulfilled and the contractor is deemed inside IR35.

To check your IR35 status on these, you can get your contract reviewed by an expert contract review service to determine your tax status.

Uber donates $1.2 million to Girls Who Code, but not everyone is impressed

Alan Martin — Fri, 25 Aug 2017 11:32:00 +0000

Uber is, to put it mildly, a company with image problems. At the risk of making a horrendously unwieldy sentence, over the past few years the company has almost been banned from the iPhone, been accused of stealing driverless technology, made their drivers listen to anti-union propaganda, used software to dodge city officials, had its CEO caught on video shouting at one of his drivers and had to own up to his systemic problems with sexism. And breathe.

That's actually only just scratching the surface. Under the weight of this much scandal, it was unsurprising that CEO Travis Kalanick ended up stepping down earlier this year.

Those left behind have been moving fast to pick up the pieces, trying to rebuild the company's reputation among those who appreciate the convenience of an Uber but would prefer to keep their hands clean. Of all the accusations, it's the sexism charge that stuck the most, which perhaps unfairly leaves the timing of Uber's latest charitable donation looking more like a thinly veiled PR move than a genuine desire to help.

The company has pledged $1.2 million as a grant to Girls Who Code a non-profit organisation with the laudable aim of reducing the horrendous gender pay gap in the technology sector. New chief brand officer Bozoma Saint John who recently made Apple events much less fun by leaving will be joining Girls Who Code's board of directors as part of the partnership.

"I've said it quite a bit, but I believe in representation and that it matters," Saint John told TechCrunch. "And there's no better time than right now to talk about women in tech and women in these very specific ladders. We obviously want more leadership and want more women in tech, so we need to make sure the pipeline is strong."

New CEO plans to take Uber public within three years Tech North to offer girls free coding courses

It's a genuinely good cause, and a generous offer, but the company's recent history leaves the gesture feeling more than a little empty. And Uber will be more than a little irked to see that Susan J Fowler the former Uber engineer whose explosive blog post exposed the company's sexism issues was among those undermining its effectiveness at restoring Uber's image.

It comes back to that old philosophical quandary: if someone does the right thing for the wrong reasons, should you be happy? That depends on who you ask: for Uber's shareholders, the answer right now is "probably not".

RBS 'plans to cut 880 London IT jobs'

Joe Curtis — Wed, 16 Aug 2017 14:40:00 +0000

The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) is slashing its London IT function by 40% in a cost-cutting exercise it expects to complete by 2020, according to Unite.

The union claimed this 650-role reduction in permanent staff, coupled with a planned 65% cut in contractors of 230 roles, will equate to 880 lost jobs.

RBS didn't confirm the number of expected job losses, but its London IT staff will number 950 after the cuts. The union revealed another 300 UK IT role redundancies at the bank in May as the bank continues to downsize, though RBS said at the time that, coupled with new jobs, the figure actually stands at 92 redundancies.

Rob MacGregor, Unite national officer, said of the latest cuts: "By 2020 just a fraction of the RBS IT function will remain, leaving this organisation operating a skeleton service with the customers and remaining staff paying the price.

"RBS's fixation with cutting employee numbers, restructuring and offshoring work that could reasonably be done by displaced staff within the RBS IT community is unacceptable. This British taxpayer-funded bank should be concentrating on investing in jobs here in the UK, rather than wholesale cuts."

The government bailed out RBS in 2008's financial crisis, and still holds a 71% stake in it.

RBS: IT failure's sharp end

An RBS spokesperson said: "Inevitably as RBS becomes a simpler, smaller bank focused on the UK and Ireland, our technology function will undergo reorganisation and will reduce over time.

"As we develop long term plans for our technology business, we have in the interests of transparency, started to share our emerging proposals on a future operating model with Unite. We have not consulted on any headcount reduction, instead sharing a direction of travel with Unite which is subject to change."

They added: "Our proposed plans are designed to reduce the number of contractors we employ and strengthen our permanent workforce and while we are downsizing in London we are reinvesting in other UK hubs."

Picture: Bigstock

Intel makes slow progress on staff diversity

Dale Walker — Wed, 16 Aug 2017 11:26:00 +0000

Intel believes it remains on track to meet its 2020 diversity goal, despite evidence that its pace of hiring women and minorities has slowed.

Representation of white and Asian men, who make up the majority of the company's employees, has fallen just 0.3% since 2016, figures from Intel's 2017 Diversity and Inclusion report revealed. That's compared to a drop of 1.1% between 2015 and 2016. They still make up 64.6% of Intel's US staff.

In contrast, the number of Hispanic men and women in the company grew by only 0.1% for the year, reaching 8.3%, while the number of African-American and Native American people in Intel's staff ranks has flatlined, at 3.6% and 12.6% respectively.

Intel's overall staff count is estimated to exceed 100,000 roles.

That 0.3% drop in "non-URM" (white and Asian) males has largely translated to a slight uptake in female workers of all ethnicities, up 0.3% to 26%, but progress remains slow for a company that hopes to have employee diversity that mirrors that of the US population by 2020.

Diversity continues to narrow nearer the top, with white and Asian men still representing over 90% of mid to senior technical roles.

Laurie Anstis, senior associate solicitor at employment law firm Boyes Turner, said: "Firms such as Intel and smaller companies need to make sure that hidden biases are uncovered. It is important to ensure that maintaining diversity is a core belief, while expanding the talent pool that you recruit from. Companies could write down goals and challenge themselves and measure progress against these."

Intel said it's at the "halfway point in a five-year journey", and although it highlighted some positive signs, admitted it still has more to do. "Our overall gap to full representation in the US has narrowed from 2,300 people in 2014 to about 800 today - a 65% improvement that we're very proud of," said chief diversity officer Barbara Whye. "However, we have more work to do in achieving full representation by African-Americans in technical roles. We also know retention must remain a key focus."

Women make up just 15% of tech roles at Uber Diversity in tech: Why it's OK to be different

African-Americans at Intel total less than 4% of staff, but comprise 12.6% of the US population, according to United States Census Bureau data.

Intel revealed in June that it had pumped $4.5 million into a grant programme that supports the uptake of STEM subjects across universities and colleges, as part of a previously announced $300 million commitment to improving diversity.

Image: Bigstock

National Living Wage 'hits SMB profits'

Caroline Preece — Fri, 04 Aug 2017 10:51:00 +0000

Most small firms and startups affected by the National Living Wage are taking lower profits to accommodate it, according to the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB).

Nearly two-thirds of small firms who must pay the wage, first introduced last April, and updated this April to force employers to pay employees aged over 25 at least 7.50 per hour, are losing out on profits as a result, and two in five have raised prices in order to cope with it, the FSB's survey of 835 small business employers, conducted in June, found.

Furthermore, a quarter have cancelled or scaled back investment plans, and 22% have reduced staff hours, while 19% have hired fewer employees.

Mike Cherry, FSB national chairman, said: "Small employers have demonstrated their resilience in meeting the challenge set by the National Living Wage, with many cutting their margins, or even paying themselves less, to pay their staff more. In sectors where margins are tight, small firms are resorting to more drastic measures to cope with the NLW."

The rapid rise has impacted small businesses first because they were more likely to pay less than the required rate before it was introduced, though 57% said they were already exceeding the wage.

Less than 4% of respondents are now hiring more workers under the age of 25, who would be paid a lower rate under the National Minimum Wage, the FSB found.

"It's vital that the National Living Wage is set at a level that the economy can afford, without job losses or harming job creation," Cherry added. "Cost pressures on small businesses are building, and with most recent economic indicators underperforming, we are now facing the reality that the wage target [of 9 by 2020] may need to be delayed beyond 2020.

"To prevent the growing costs of employment from stunting job creation, the government should use its autumn budget to uprate the Employment Allowance and focus it on the smallest employers."

GDPR for small businesses: What it means for you

New charity app launched to plug UK skills gap

itpro@futurenet.com (ITPro) — Thu, 03 Aug 2017 15:18:00 +0000

A new charity app has been launched as an attempt to narrow the UK skills gap by connecting employers with skilled workers suffering from long-term health issues.

The app - ASTRID - would address the major need for more professionals with digital skills by enlisting those who may have trouble holding down a full-time job, but can still offer their expertise on a freelance or part-time basis.

A lack of skilled candidates is one of the biggest concerns for companies in the UK and globally, with a lack of trained employees in areas such as cybersecurity leaving many businesses exposed to potentially devastating threats.

The app was founded by David Shutts, who was diagnosed with stage four kidney cancer and spent the next two years developing ASTRID to help others in a similar situation.

More than 700,000 people of working age are living with cancer in the UK, according to Macmillan, and others are prevented from working by long-term illnesses such as heart disease and rheumatoid arthritis. Through this app, Shutts wants to create a win-win situation by giving these people the chance to return to work and helping companies in need of skilled individuals at the same time.

A recent study by Brocade revealed that a quarter of IT departments feel they aren't able to deliver on the current demands of their business because of a lack of skills, and 54% are concerned about the apparent lack of candidates there are to choose from.

In fact, Britain's digital skills gap is ranked as one of the worst in the world (31.6% share of cyber security job seekers), according to a study by job search website Indeed. Meanwhile, the US (66.7%) and Canada (68.1%) sit at more than double the UK's share.

Six ways boards can step up support for cyber security

Esther Kezia Thorpe — Tue, 25 Jul 2017 15:37:00 +0000

For organisations both large and small, cyber attacks are a constant concern, with a recent study revealing that 68% of business leaders feeling like their risks are increasing. Accountability for breaches and incidents now extends far beyond IT, and organisations are beginning to push cyber security responsibility into the hands of the executive team and board.

Business leaders don't want to be making headlines for being the latest victim of a data breach, and as a result, are actively trying to manage risk. Cyber threats represent the lion's share of potential harm, and strategies to deal with security need to be aligned with wider business priorities. A survey by the Enterprise Strategy Group showed that four in 10 executives and directors now want security status reports for cyber risk associated with end-to-end business processes.

So how can boards step up to the cyber security challenge and work effectively with CISOs?

Expand board expertise

Business leaders are beginning to understand that cyber security is an enterprise-wide risk management concern, not merely an IT issue. While the CISO role is evolving, the makeup of the board is evolving too.

Corporate boards are looking for increased technical literacy and are actively pursuing digital directors and advisors that can deliver high levels of both technical and business acumen.

All board members need to fully understand the role they play in overseeing cybersecurity and push for board-specific reporting and cyber security transparency. This combination increases the board's availability to ask the right questions and provide the right communication opportunities for the CISO.

Build collaborative relationships with the CISO

Collaboration is the essence of good cyber security practices, and that's why all parties need to work together to ensure clear lines of communication and incident preparation. One way to strengthen collaboration is for executive leaders and board members to be proactive about working hand-in-hand with CISOs. This will allow everyone to position themselves within the company and withstand the incessant onslaught of attacks.

Nearly one-third of board members are dissatisfied with the quality of information they get regarding cyber security risk, so CISOs and board members must work together to have meaningful conversations with all parties involved by telling them what information they want and how often they need it. An open dialogue about current threats, emerging attack patterns and incident response protocol leads to smarter decisions and better business outcomes.

However, the boards should also remember that cyber security doesn’t end with the CISO, but also the team of cyber security experts managed by them. Like many parts of the tech industry, cyber security is rife with difficult working conditions and stressful conditions, which enable a culture of toxicity and bullying. A recent survey found that 47% of cyber security professionals have experienced some degree of bullying behaviour in the office, something that Respect in Security co-founder Nikki Webb claims has been further magnified by the shift to remote working.

Moreover, reporting workplace harassment is often looked down upon due to the misconception that doing so means that the victim is disloyal to the company or the community. Respect in Security found that, of 302 professionals surveyed, 16% said they wouldn’t report an instant of harassment, either by choosing not to (9%) or because of fear (7%), and the lack of discussion surrounding harassment in the cyber security sector means that the issue is likely just the tip of the iceberg.

Last year, Jinan Budge, principal analyst for security and risk at Forrester Asia Pacific told IT Pro that a toxic work environment leads to lower productivity, making the organisation more vulnerable to cyber threats:

“The ultimate problem with a toxic culture is that it means you’re not looking after the organisation’s cybersecurity, which is effectively the team’s sole reason for being. I’ve seen this happen – teams are so busy dealing with in-fighting that they’re unproductive. Sometimes the biggest enemy is not actually the adversary, but the team itself,” he said.

Understand the impact of cyber threats

While many businesses have developed cyber security strategies and business continuity plans, the government's Cyber Governance Health Check showed that less than a fifth (16%) of the board had a comprehensive understanding of the impact of loss or disruption associated with cyber threats. That's despite 96% of them having a cyber security strategy in place.

Who should take ownership of your cyber security strategy? Is your company taking enough accountability on cyber security? What is cyber security?

In addition to showing support for a company's cyber security strategy and initiatives, boards should actively engage the CISO to work with them on other organisational approaches, such as incident response programmes, which need to be continuously reevaluated and updated to address increasing activity in cyber attacks.

Expect security reporting discipline

Security is now a key business function and should be treated that way. It is vital to ensure CISOs know what reporting metrics and benchmarks are valuable to the board by applying a reporting discipline with consistent benchmarks and actionable information.

Although approaches and formats may vary, board members look for regularity in reporting from CISOs. Some look for programme-level updates for defined benchmark presentations where any important changes are highlighted. Boards and CISOs, then, should work together to develop a functional reporting system which can be delivered regularly.

Be clear about your innovation needs

In an industry where every operational change is technology-driven, continual investment in new functions and capabilities to spark innovation is essential. At the same time, there is a balance to be struck between innovation and introducing technology that risks your business effectiveness, and this can create a state of constant security and compliance catch-up.

Business growth may be at the heart of most organisations, but the board is charged with helping to determine the trade-offs between risk and returns. Clearly communicated financial and operational risk tolerance prioritisation from the board and executive team will allow the CISO to effectively manage expectations.

Request regular attendance at meetings

Where CISOs were once asked to appear at meetings on specific occasions, CISO attendance at regular board meetings is now much more common. Boards should proactively allocate time at board meetings to hear from the CISO and examine future trends and risks as well as more immediate priorities.

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"Cyber security is a mainstream business risk, and board members need to understand it in the same way they understand financial or health and safety risks," said Ciaran Martin, CEO of the NCSC.

As cyber threats continue to evolve, it may not be possible to completely eliminate the possibility of falling victim to an attack. But with a proactive cybersecurity strategy in place that is supported by the board, research has shown that financial losses in the event of a successful attack are lower.

Google must share salary data in gender pay gap dispute

Nicole Kobie — Mon, 17 Jul 2017 10:25:00 +0000

Google must hand over its salary information to the US Department of Labor (DoL) to aid its ongoing investigation into whether the tech giant is paying female staff a fair wage, a judge orderedon Friday.

The firm must hand over a snapshot of salary data for 8,000 staff in 2014. Additionally, it must also provide contact information for these employees, with whom the DoL can potentially conduct interviews.

Judge Steve Berlin partly sided with Google, though, saying that it does not have to hand over all the data requested - the DoL had asked for wage information for 25,000 employees dating back 15 years. Berlin said that this request was "over-broad, intrusive on employee privacy, unduly burdensome, and insufficiently focused on obtaining the relevant information".

Google's VP of people operations, Eileen Naughton,said in a blog postthat she was pleased with the decision and, assuming the decision is final, that Google will "comply with the remainder of the order, and provide the much more limited data set of information the judge approved, including the contact information for a smaller sample of up to 8,000 employees".

Google has denied claims of gender pay discrimination made by the DoL, who said the company underpays its female workers. As Google is a contractor for the federal government, it can be compelled to hand over records of employee information, salary history and other data in accordance with compliance laws.

Despite this, the DoL claimed that Google had constantly failed to release the data, which forced the department to issue a lawsuit against the company in January 2017. Google claimed to be "surprised" after US allegations that a pay gap existed at the company.

The search giant stated in May that it was too hard and expensive to get together the information needed to prove it's addressing the gender pay gap. The tech company said it would take 500 hours and $100,000 to compile, though the DoL said Google could easily absorb this cost.

Silicon Valley has been a hotbed for allegations of discrimination and sexism recently, with companies like Uber and Oracle making headlines. The CEO and co-founder of 500 Startups quit at the beginning of July, following accusations that he made sexual advances towards many of the women involved in the startup scene. Uber's CEO, Travis Kalanick, also resigned in June afteracting late to address claims of systemic sexism and harassment in the workplace.

31/05/2017:Google: It would take us 500 hours to supply gender wage data

Google thinks it's too hard and too expensive to get together the information it needs to prove it's addressing the gender pay gap, according to the Guardian,following accusations by the US Department of Labor (DoL) that it's underpaying women.

Google has told US courts it won't be providing the pay records of its employees, saying it would take 500 hours and $100,000 to compile.

"This is obviously a very time-consuming and burdensome project," Lisa Barnett Sween, one of Google's attorneys, told the court. She added the company had already spent 2,300 hours, which has cost the company nearly $500,000 (390,000) to collate some of the records and partially comply with the requests.

However, the DoL's attorney, Ian Eliasoph, viewed this as a weak excuse as to why the tech giant wouldn't be able to come up with the documents.

"Google would be able to absorb the cost as easy as a dry kitchen sponge could absorb a single drop of water," he said, as quoted by the Guardian. He also brushed off Google's claims that providing the information was irrelevant to the government's audits of the company's working practices. "This claim requires putting one's head in the sand with respect to 30 years of law on pay discrimination," he said.

However, Barnett Sween countered that even asking for such information was unfair and should be under investigation by higher authorities. The company has apparently bowed down to the DoL's requests so far and having to bring on a third party to carry out the audit was unnecessary and too costly.

"Our courts must act to check this abuse of power," she added, suggesting Google thought it was unlawful of the government department to ask for it to provide such information.

22/05/2017:Google 'tried to halt gender pay case and ban reporters'

Google has tried to dismiss court proceedings into the tech giant's gender pay gap and attempted to restrict reporting on the case,according tothe Guardian.

The publication revealed details of the investigation following an interview with the US Department of Labor last month. It now reports that Google believes that interview violated ethics laws, and filed a motion for dismissal. According to the newspaper, the judge rejected that motion on the grounds of free speech. Google also reportedly tried to ban press from a hearing, but was unsuccessful at keeping reporters out.

Google's alleged complaint stems from Department of Labor solicitor Janet Herold telling the newspaper that it has "compelling evidence" of "significant discrimination" at Google, while the case is still ongoing, suggesting the department had already made up its mind about the pay issue and was no longer actually investigating.Attorneys are not supposed to make public statements that could "materially prejudice" proceedings.

The case hinges on an audit of Google's gender pay gap. The company has handed "hundreds of thousands" of files to the Department of Labor regarding its compensation of female employees, but the government claims it didn't provide the right details, including salary history and contact details.

Google hasn't yet replied to IT Pro'srequest for comment, but has previously disagreed with the salary differential claims, saying its own audits have shown no gender pay gap remains at the company.

11/04/2017:Google "surprised" at gender pay gap claims

Google released a statement today claiming surprise after US government allegations that a pay gap exists at the company.

The US Department of Labor claimed yesterday that Google systematically discriminates against female staff, during a court case demanding Google gives up salary data for its employees.

Eileen Naughton, VP of people operations at Google, responded to say the company has supplied "hundreds of thousands" of documents to the department, and that the accusations are baseless.

"We were quite surprised when a representative of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs at the U.S. Department of Labor accused us of not compensating women fairly," she said. "We were taken aback by this assertion, which came without any supporting data or methodology. The OFCCP representative claimed to have reached this conclusion even as the OFCCP is seeking thousands of employee records, including contact details of our employees, in addition to the hundreds of thousands of documents we've already produced in response to 18 different document requests."

Naughton said Google had shared its "top-level analysis" about the gender pay gap in 2016. She claimed that the annual analysis "is extremely scientific and robust" and that the methodology is available to other businesses.

Each year Google suggests an amount for every employee's new compensation based on "role, job level, job location as well as current and recent performance ratings" and the analysts who calculate the suggested amount "do not have access to employees' gender data".

Naughton explained: "Our pay equity model then looks at employees in the same job categories, and analyzes their compensation to confirm that the adjusted amount shows no statistically significant differences between men's and women's compensation."

Naughton said that "our analysis gives us confidence that there is no gender pay gap at Google" and she added that Google hopes to work with the OFCCP to resolve the issue.

10/04/2017:Google denies claims of gender pay discrimination

Google systematically discriminates against female staff, according to the US Department of Labor (DoL).

The department said it has found that the company underpays its female workers, according to a Guardian report, in violation of federal laws. Google denies the claims.

"The investigation is not complete," regional solicitor for the DoL Janet Herold told the Guardian,"but at this point the department has received compelling evidence of very significant discrimination against women in the most common positions at Google headquarters."

"The government's analysis at this point indicates that discrimination against women in Google is quite extreme, even in this industry," she added.

Regional director Janette Wipper testified in a San Francisco court last Friday that the department had discovered "systemic compensation disparities against women pretty much across the entire workforce", according to the Guardian.

Wipper claimed that a snapshot of salaries from 2015 showed evidence of disparities and that the government needed access to further payroll data, as well as confidential employee interviews, in order to successfully pinpoint the cause of the issue.

"We vehemently disagree with Ms. Wipper's claim," a Google spokesperson told IT Pro. "Every year, we do a comprehensive and robust analysis of pay across genders and we have found no gender pay gap. Other than making an unfounded statement which we heard for the first time in court, the DoL hasn't provided any data, or shared its methodology."

Google supplies services to the federal government as a contractor, meaning that it can be compelled by the government to hand over records of employee information, salary history and other data in accordance with compliance laws.

However, the DoL claims that Google has consistently failed to release the data, forcing the department to issue a lawsuit against the company in January. A company spokesperson told Reuters that the requests were "overbroad in scope, or reveal confidential data".

Google could face some serious consequences if the suit does not go its way; the DoL has asked the court to cancel all the company's existing federal contracts and bar it from future government business if it does not comply with the department's requests.

These accusations are the latest reference to Silicon Valley's systemic discrimination problem. Tech companies like Uber have found themselves in hot water in recent months over allegations that they are allowing sexist behaviour to run rampant throughout their organisations.

Women make up just 15% of tech roles at Uber Uber manager admits that sexism is "systemic in tech" Why are women such a problem?

BCS urges action over "worrying" drop in Computing GCSE numbers

Adam Shepherd — Mon, 19 Jun 2017 10:41:00 +0000

The British Computing Society (BCS) has warned that the number of computing students could fall by as much as 50% by 2020, with experts blaming the shortfall on a lack of government investment in teacher training.

Its warning comes after school exams watchdog Ofqual released figures last week showing that there has been only a 9% increase in the number of GCSE students taking the new Computing qualification, while fewer took the ICT course.

Although the number of GCSE Computing students has risen by 9% compared to 2016, hitting 69,350 pupils, entrants to the ICT course have fallen by almost 18% from 74,750 to 61,500, representing an almost 10% decline in the total number of students studying Computing.

"This is deeply worrying," said BCS education director Bill Mitchell. "Computer Science was only introduced three years ago and is still a new subject for schools. The number of students taking GCSE Computer Science should be growing very rapidly as schools improve their offering to students and students realise the relevance of the subject for whatever they might be doing in the future."

The new Computing qualifications is replacing the old ICT GCSE, which is being phased out after criticisms that it didn't do enough to give students digital skills. Whereas the ICT GCSE focused on generic IT skills, the new curriculum is more focused on fundamentals like programming and logic.

Experts blamed the 10% overall drop in numbers on a lack of investment in teacher training and support for the new curriculum.

"We must ensure that schools are properly equipped to provide the best possible options for students at GCSE and that includes Computer Science," Mitchell said. "Our view is that will only happen where we make sure teachers are getting the right professional development to make GCSE Computer Science a success."

Alongside the BCS, the Raspberry Pi Foundation played a substantial role in developing the new Computing curriculum, and has also put significant work into training teachers in how to properly approach teaching the subject.

Founder Eben Upton told IT Pro that the government is not doing enough to assist teachers in making the jump from teaching the old ICT course to teaching Computing.

"What this is an argument for is more teacher training - that it's not just enough to throw any curriculum at the wall and hope it sticks," he said. "It's not massively surprising, given the paucity of government investment in teacher training for the new curriculum, that the numbers aren't going up as fast as the numbers are going down for ICT."

"On some level, it's a shame that it's left to organisations like us and the BCS to do this, because it's a primary government function to make sure that the people of the country are properly educated. But insofar as the government is asleep at the wheel, we and the BCS and a number of other organisations have been pushing forward."

At AS-Level, students taking Computing dropped 47% from 11,800 in 2016 to 6,150 in 2017, while ICT numbers experienced a similar fall, from 15,300 to 8,700. A-Level Computing numbers rose 25% to 7,700 this year, though ICT dropped from 10,050 to 8,000.

Young Enterprise's chief executive Michael Mercieca echoed Upton's calls for the tech industry to help support the future workforce. "A decline in young people taking computer science courses is bad news for the future of the UK's digital economy," he said.

"Businesses are already grappling with huge challenges around cyber security and artificial intelligence and it's vital that our education system equips the next generation to fill these roles. It's time for industry to reach out and provide work more placements, support and training in schools to help inspire students to pursue careers in the increasing critical technology industry."

However, both Upton and Mitchell cautioned that more data is needed before any definitive predictions can be made about the general trend in Computing education. A-Level entrants to Computing-related qualifications saw a net jump of 10%, for example, and applicants to Cambridge's Computing course have doubled since 2012.

"Ultimately, if the government isn't going to invest in teacher training... we're kind of betraying the teachers, by expecting them to go from teaching ICT to teaching Computing with no support," Upton said. "So if the government isn't going to invest in teacher training, it shouldn't be surprised."

A Department for Education spokesperson told IT Pro: "We want to raise standards of achievement and participation in STEM subjects to ensure our future workforce has the skills to drive the productivity and economy of this country. That's why we have introduced the new computer science GCSE, which has been designed with input from industry experts to develop pupils' computational thinking skills needed for today's economy, including coding and important IT topics such as data storage, networking and cyber security."

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One in 10 UK new job vacancies are in the tech sector

Jessica Seamands — Thu, 15 Jun 2017 12:17:00 +0000

Over 10% of new jobs created in the UK were tech roles in the past year, with fields such as artificial intelligence and data science showing the most growth.

Job search portal Indeed has released data that shows hundreds of thousands of tech job openings on its website. But filling these spots has been difficult.

An abundance of new employment opportunities are opening up in London as a result of tech sector growth, according to Indeed, but it coincides with a shortage of tech talent, primarily concerning developer and senior roles.

Around 142,000 vacant tech jobs will exist by 2023, according to the Social Market Foundation, 22% of which will be new types of STEM roles.

But Brexit has raised concerns that London will no longer be able to compete as a tech and IT global capital once it has split off from the EU, if it does not allow freedom of movement.

Indeed's report found that demand for software engineers is rising quickly, especially in machine learning and data science fields, with those sectors recording 191% and 136% growth respectively since 2015.

But the job site also pointed to the fact that 44% of its 50 hardest-to-fill roles were for developers.

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Why agility is vital for security professionals

Zach Marzouk — Tue, 06 Jun 2017 14:47:00 +0000

Agility is an essential skill for security workers, according to cyber security chiefs from the likes of Skyscanner and Network Rail speaking at Infosecurity Europe 2017 today.

The term 'agility' can mean being flexible about the nature of their daily task as well as the method of working, according to Vicki Gavin, The Economist Group's head of continuity and information security.

She said: "Just because you're hired to be a security operations centre [SOC] analyst does not mean you will always be a SOC analyst. Being able to duck and dive pertains to what we do."

Mahbubul Islam, head of secure design at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), agreed and highlighted how a team should be ready to react to what a business needs as necessary.

"I would say it's a more disciplined, self-organising team who work together in various activities," he said.

For Stuart Hirst, head of IT security at Skyscanner, agility means doing things at pace and experimenting. He also underlined the importance of "failing forward, failing fast" where individuals learn to prevent the same mistake happening in the future.

Network Rail CISO Paul Watts identified an important factor as empowering security staff "who aren't asking for permission" who work with the business, not just for the business.

Gavin underlined how one of the backbones of agility is resilience "It's the unexpected we have to deal with and the only way to deal with that is being agile." She added: "It's the stuff you can't imagine that you have to respond to. From the top down they need to expect things to go wrong".

Watts agreed with this, and added that an agile security team sits everywhere within a business, saying: "Security is a collective responsibility; we are providing capabilities and education to bring the entire business in."

Skyscanner's Hirst added: "Everyone in security has the autonomy to pick up pieces of work and drive them".

How to hire a security staffer

Hirst looks for people who are experimentational and "ready to take on some chaos", saying this means people who are flexible enough to react to different situations.

On the other hand, Gavin said that often it's important to develop the individuals in your team from scratch, admitting: "One of the tricks we often miss is not developing people once we have someone on board."

DWP's Islam said that you have to give individuals the opportunity to develop based on the skills they have, while Network Rail's Watts highlighted that even if a candidate has the right technical skills, they need soft skills too. "I would bring someone like that into my team and develop them," he said.

Do companies need to change their hiring methods?

"Rethinking needs to happen" Gavin argued, adding that The Economist Group develops a list of must-have qualifications, while keeping an open mind if an exciting candidate has an unusual background.

In order to attract more people to the industry, Skyscanner has tried to embed itself in groups that exist in Scotland to try and attract people to the job specification, said Hirst. He also highlighted that there was a distinct lack of young girls going into security, and the sector as a whole, questioning why they aren't being encouraged to enter. "I dont have the answer" he said, "but we are trying to change things in the UK."

Gavin added: "We need to make sure that young people understand that the jobs of tomorrow will not exist today. When I joined the workforce, cyber security did not exist."

Picture: Bigstock

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Tesla's injury rates 'are double' the industry average

Dale Walker — Thu, 25 May 2017 10:18:00 +0000

Injury rates at Tesla's flagship manufacturing plant were 31% higher than the industry average during 2014 and 2015, according to a new report.

Findings published on Wednesday by California-based advocacy group Worksafe revealed that 8.8 non-lethal injuries per 100 workers occurred during those two years at Tesla's Fremont facility, compared to the 6.7 average across the rest of the automotive sector.

The report, which compared Tesla's numbers with data provided by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, found that in 2016 there were 8.1 injuries per 100 workers at the factory, and while average industry figures aren't yet available for the period, Worksafe predicted that this will similarly exceed the industry-wide rate.

The rates of serious injuries, those resulting in days away from work, were double the average industry rate in 2015, which is once again expected to be as high in 2016.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk did not dispute reports that injury rates were above the norm during an interview with Business Insider, but said the numbers have dropped since then.

However, this is not the first time Tesla has been criticised for its dangerous working conditions. Tesla factory worker Jose Moran published a blog in February, which described high numbers of injuries, long hours, which often included mandatory overtime, and a shortage of manpower.

"I believe Tesla is one of the most innovative companies in the world," wrote Moran. "Unfortunately, however, I often feel like I am working for a company of the future under working conditions of the past."

"A few months ago, six out of eight people in my work team were out on medical leave at the same time due to various work-related injuries. Worst of all, I hear coworkers quietly say that they are hurting but they are too afraid to report it for fear of being labeled as a complainer or bad worker by management," Moran added at the time.

IT Pro has contacted Tesla for comment. It has previously addressed concerns by claiming that it had made changes to improve its factory conditions, such as improving machinery to be more ergonomic and reducing the overall number of hours each employee works.

These changes have resuted in a 52% reduction in incident rates in the first quarter of 2016 and the first quarter of 2017 period, according to Tesla. Worksafe has said it is impossible to validate whether these claims are true, or what effect any changes have had on overall injury rates.

"Sufficiently reliable data are not available to make this evaluation, nor do we have access to the number of employee hours worked in 2017, which would be necessary to determine injury rates for this year," wrote Worksafe.

Picture: Bigstock

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Google hopes to encourage black coders at Howard University

Nicole Kobie — Fri, 24 Mar 2017 11:16:00 +0000

Google is looking to boost its diversity by setting up at Howard University, a traditionally black school in the US.

The number of women in tech is frequently discussed, but Silicon Valley's racial gap is even wider than its gender one. While 31% of Google's overall staff and 19% of technical staff are now women, its latest diversity figures show black employees make up only 2% of its overall workforce versus 59% who are white, 32% who are Asian and 3% who are Hispanic and 1% of technical staff. Progress has been slow: in 2015, 4% of new hires were black.

To address that, Google has previously actively recruited from the university, now extending that effort by offering a residency for 20 to 30 students at the university, dubbing the programme "Howard West".

"Rising juniors and seniors in Howard's computer science (CS) program can attend Howard West, for three months at a time," explained Bonita Stewart, VP of global partnerships, in a blog post. "Senior Google engineers and Howard faculty will serve as instructors. The program kicks off this summer and we plan to scale it to accommodate students from other HBCUs [historically black colleges and universities] in the near future."

The programme aims to address existing hurdles for black students that are keeping them from finding work in tech, Stewart said.

"The lack of exposure, access to mentors and role models are critical gaps that Howard West will solve," Stewart said, who herself attended Howard. "We've also heard that many CS students struggle to find the time to practice coding while juggling a full course load and part-time jobs. Left unchecked, systematic barriers lead to low engagement and enrollment in CS, low retention in CS programs and a lack of proximity and strong relationships between Silicon Valley, HBCUs and the larger African American Community."

Dr Wayne Frederick, president of Howard University, said the programme would help produce hundreds of "industry-ready" black computer science graduates; "future leaders with the power to transform the global technology space into a stronger, more accurate reflection of the world around us".

While Google's current employment stats suggest previous efforts haven't made much of a dent in its diversity gap, Stewart noted that 10 years ago "there was hardly any discussion of diversity in tech", whereas now the company understands the importance "for our workforce to reflect the diversity of our users".

Picture: Howard University student, courtesy of Howard University

What can companies do to improve diversity? Diversity in tech: Why it's OK to be different

How digital technology is making employees happier, healthier and more productive

Nicholas Fearn — Thu, 23 Mar 2017 05:00:00 +0000

There are many things that are critical in the daily running of a company. Business owners not only need to have the right funding and support networks in place to accelerate growth, but they also need the talent around them to make things possible.

Going it alone may be easier in the early days, but as a company grows and picks up new customers, the need to bring onboard new employees increases. But humans aren't robots and there are limitations when it comes to mental and physical health.

If you happen to run your own firm and your staff aren't feeling happy in the workplace, or if they're going through personal health struggles, then the chances are they won't be as productive as usual. As an employer, you're expected to ensure they have time to recover, although this can have a detrimental impact on everyday operations if you don't have backup resources.

But is there anything you can do to ensure that employees are healthier in the first place? Some companies are turning to technology to get answers. From apps to analytics, technology has the ability to make staff members happier and healthier, which can result in a more productive, agile workforce.

The rise of health software

Employees taking a day off from work due to illness can have a disruptive effect on daily business operations. To combat this, some businesses are starting to adopt a more proactive, digital approach to employee wellbeing.

In particular, organisations are turning to software such as that created by digital agency Transform, which has built up a wealth of experience in health tech. The company worked with Public Health England to create an app called One You, which helps people stay on top of their health. It focuses on issues such as smoking, drinking, stress and sleep deprivation.

Ian Pocock, director of health at Transform, has built a well-rounded career in health tech and believes healthcare is on the brink of a new change, with digital as the catalyst. For example, employers can leverage mobile and computer apps to monitor the health of staff, he says, and ensure they get the right treatment.

"The potential for digital apps to support, monitor and drive behaviour change in health is huge. The economic cost of poor physical and mental health in the UK is estimated to be between 70 billion to 100 billion, while sick pay alone costs businesses as much as 9 billion a year," says Pocock.

"The Labour Force Survey tells us that stress accounted for 37% of all work-related ill health cases and 45% of all working days lost in 2015/16. Mobile technology in particular can help us tackle this. It's integral to our lives today, which means we have a greater chance to connect with people about their health.

"A great example is the Lief Therapeutics app. It works by monitoring your heartrate and breathing through a 'smart patch' and uses this information to train your body to fight stress as it's happening," says Pocock, also pointing to meditation app Headspace, which he says has been proven to have a huge impact on stress levels by helping users to sleep better and worry less".

Harnessing smart analytics

Smart analytics may be making waves in areas such as finance and retail, but it also offers a beacon of hope when it comes to health in the workplace. Adam Hale, CEO of human resource software provider Fairsail, explains that health tech has often been limited to companies with substantial financial resources. However, things are beginning to change.

By harnessing the power of big data and smart analytics, employers can identify the health needs of their employees and put the right infrastructure in place so they're always productive. "Smart analytics have transformed business disciplines from marketing to finance. But until recently, the ability to capture and analyse a wide range of people data has been the domain of deep-pocketed technology pioneers like Google," he tells IT Pro.

"Now, with the emergence of people science, these possibilities are finally opening up to the small-to-mid market players too. HR is all about attracting and retaining top calibre people, and then empowering them to be able to do their best work, so they can be highly productive. People science is the new enabler and is incredibly powerful.

"People analytics can be used to predict which of your top performers are most likely to leave, so you can take preventative action. Ultimately, good data and actionable insights gained through the expertise of people scientists can improve our understanding of the workforce and help improve engagement and grow productivity by creating better experiences for them."

Treatment in your pocket

Neurological conditions can often remain below the radar and often they're caused by stressful and demanding experiences in the workplace. Remente, a mental health and wellbeing app, is on a mission to change this. Using it, you can take part on courses and set goals to relieve anxiety, get more sleep and feel more fulfilled.

David Brudo, founder of the company, says more companies are beginning to show an interest in the health of their employees. "Gone are the days when offering free yoga sessions counted as being concerned with employee health. Over the last few years, we have seen that organisations that take a real interest in the health of their workforces and appreciate that digital is the way forward are far more likely to succeed," he tells us.

He explains that his own staff have been using the app to improve their health and remain productive on a daily basis. "It's not all about physical health either. At my own company Remente, we have worked with management teams so that staff can use our app to better understand their own mental wellbeing. This can vary from keeping composed and relaxed in high-stress situations, to being more aware of goal-setting and how to keep organised while at work," he continues.

"Having a tool in your pocket to do this makes it all far more affordable and allows us to understand mental health far better. The companies that use our app have seen an increase in productivity in their workforce, as well as a surge in morale. Staff like to know their employers care, and the incorporation of digital health platforms into day-to-day working life is a strong indicator of a compassionate company," Brudo concludes.

Main image credit: Bigstock

IT contractors earn more despite Brexit vote

Joe Curtis — Mon, 20 Mar 2017 11:37:00 +0000

IT contractors' daily rates are growing even as Britain heads towards a hard Brexit, according to new research.

One in five contractors' rates are increasing, according to accountancy firm Nixon Williams' survey of 600 contractors that compared the first half of 2016 to the second half, after 23 June's vote to leave the EU.

Nixon Williams found that more rates are increasing than decreasing, with 20.5% seeing their rates rise compared to 16.6% whose rates fell post-June.

The 20.5% whose rates increased after the Brexit vote beats the 19.4% whose rates grew before it. The percentage of respondents whose rates fell after Brexit - 16.6% - was lower than before the referendum too, when it stood at 18.6%.

Derek Kelly, CEO of Nixon Williams, said: "The fear was that the EU referendum result would send the jobs market into a tailspin, and that contractors would be first to feel the pain. Even though IT is often regarded as a discretionary spend, technology is key to increasing worker productivity. In that respect, IT contractors are likely to find that demand for their skills holds up well this year."

The survey also found that just 30% of IT contractors were downbeat about the UK's prospects outside of the EU, with the vast majority optimistic or neutral about it.

Contractors seem to be faring better than full-time staff, with the UK's average engineering salary falling from 55,709 to 45,964 last October, according to figures from Balderton Capital.

"Employers are likely to be reticent to commit to permanent hires, and any business transformation projects related to Brexit will be of limited duration and require highly specialised skills, making them ideal for contractors," said Kelly.

The figures also come as public sector bodies prepare to crack down on those who will be affected by the HMRC's IR35 legislation, which seeks to tax contractors as full-time staff.

Public bodies will be responsible for enforcing IR35 among their contractors from next month, and it will target contractors who pay themselves through dividends via their own companies, thereby avoiding National Insurance payments. IR35 will tax them as regular employees, meaning they could lose up to 25% of their earnings.

But those with in-demand skills, like cybersecurity, can charge more to make up for the shortfall in earnings. Kelly added: "Skills shortages in this key area are predicted to worsen this year, which means that cybersecurity professionals are likely to see more frequent multiple contract offers and bidding wars for their skills."

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Northern firms turn to apprentices as Brexit bites

Dale Walker — Wed, 08 Mar 2017 11:50:00 +0000

Digital and technology businesses in the North are taking on a record number of apprentices and graduates in an attempt to plug the growing skills gap, according to a new skills audit.

The audit from trade body Manchester Digital found that over half of surveyed businesses had taken on new apprentices in the past year, 80% of whom met employee expectations.

Local universities supply talent to half of all technology businesses in the north-west, while 25% are actively running their own graduate schemes.

"It is great to see so many businesses in the region investing in their talent pipeline and taking on more apprentices than before," said Katie Gallagher, managing director at Manchester Digital.

"In time for National Apprenticeship Week, our audit has shown apprenticeships provide value for the vast majority of employers and we are seeing more parents and potential candidates viewing tech apprenticeships as a high quality alternative to university."

When asked about the impending introduction of an apprenticeship levy on UK employers, which is designed to help fund new apprenticeship schemes, over 80% of companies believed it would provide a boon to business.

Content production, consultancy, design agencies, cloud and ISP providers, and digital agencies make up the majority of the businesses targeting a new generation of talent, 83% of which have reported growth in the past 12 months.

But it's not all good news, as the number of vacancies still outpaces the availability of new talent. Development and client facing skills have become the most sought-after qualifications for new starters, yet these two areas are proving the most difficult to fill.

This is a particular issue for developer skills, as the work often requires specific knowledge or insight of specialist code or platforms. In terms of languages, over 40% of respondents highlighted Javascript and PHP as the most difficult roles to find developers for, followed by Python at 28% and Magneto at 24%.

Britain leaving the EU also remains a concern, as despite expectations that businesses would increase the amount of talent being sourced from outside Europe following the Brexit vote, the majority have yet to do so. In fact the number of businesses securing international talent outside of the region has dropped to 18% since 2016.

The growing talent deficit has meant 20% of businesses in the region have been forced to turn away work as a result.

"With as many as a fifth of the regions digital businesses turning down work due to a talent shortage, and with no immediate solution in sight, it is imperative that employers look further down the talent supply chain and structure their recruitment strategies to allow for apprenticeships," said Gallagher.

Government reveals more about apprenticeship levy The Dark Web’s battle against a digital skills shortage

Just 3% of women plan to embark on careers in tech

Joe Curtis — Mon, 06 Mar 2017 10:48:00 +0000

Technology's gender gap starts at school and widens as girls grow up, according to new research shining a light on the issues plaguing women in tech, against a backdrop of claims of Silicon Valley sexism.

IT and tech roles appeal to just 27% of female students, while tech careers are the first choice of just 3% of the 1,102 women currently taking A-levels or doing a university degree, according to accountancy firm PwC.

In contrast, 62% of the 1,074 men PwC surveyed said they would consider a career in tech, with 15% making the industry their first job priority, found the report, called Women in tech: Time to close the gender gap.

But nearly two-thirds of the female respondents told PwC they were put off the tech sector because they have received too little information about what it's like, while a quarter said tech is too male-dominated.

While 33% of male respondents said someone has suggested they enter tech, just 16% of women said the same. Only 19% of all students said such a recommendation has happened at school.

Sheridan Ash, women in technology leader at PwC, said: "It's worrying that such a low number of young females aren't considering technology as a career option and this is largely because no one is putting it forward as an option to them.It's hard for girls to aspire to what they can't see - we need to shout louder about the great women already working in technology and work harder to promote more women to senior and visible positions."

PwC's survey found that women cared more about the impact of their work than salaries or work/life balance. Ash said: "Highlighting the role technology plays in solving the world's important problems could be the differentiator that sparks wider female interest in the sector. I have seen first hand the positive real-life impact technology can have on a wide-range of areas."

The accountancy firm said girls need more interaction with technology subjects (under STEM) before they choose their GCSEs.

The report added: "More interaction with technology companies at school level will benefit both females and males and help to grow the pipeline of technology talent that we need in the UK. The key is to ensure that technology is presented to girls as a potential career choice by people in positions of influence: today it's hardly even mentioned to them as a possibility."

Other recommendations included a need to provide "alternative routes", like apprenticeships, into the tech sector for women who haven't necessarily studied STEM subjects, and to highlight more women tech role models, after 83% of women couldn't name anybody who had inspired them to pursue a technology career.

Tech companies in general should provide a better working environment for women too, PwC said, amid accusations that the technology sector is biased against women.

Uber is conducting an investigation into a former employee's claims that systemic sexism exists at the ride-hailing firm - Susan Fowler said, amid other accusations,that during her time as an engineer she was propositioned by a manager,and that HR refused to seriously discipline the man because of his strong performance record.

Meanwhile a former Tesla engineer has filed a lawsuit claiming Elon Musk's car firm is mired in a culture of "pervasive harrassment", allegations Tesla said it has investigated and found to be unsubstantiated.

Uber's ex-CEO appoints two new directors to its board Women in tech earn £5,000 less than men Why are women such a problem?

Implementing flexible working

Rene Millman — Tue, 28 Feb 2017 09:11:00 +0000

Many employees are now working in a more flexible way than ever before, and for good reason; it helps in retaining and motivating staff. It can also help organisations reduce costs and be more effective with the resources they have.

For organisations, this means having a flexible working policy in place so that employees know how to request it and what their options are.

What to include in a policy

All employers should consider creating a policy for managing flexible working requests, as they may be faced with many requests over the course of business. Such a policy will ensure that requests are treated consistently, with the same requirements applying to all staff. The policy should be based on the needs of the organisation, its employees and its customers.

While smaller businesses may not choose to have an official policy, they should still make sure that employees know the process when submitting a request.

Any policy your organisation has must adequately outline statutory flexible working practices to both staff and managers. Employees must be informed about the types of flexible working and who is eligible to make requests (i.e. employees who have completed 26 weeks of continuous employment).

The policy must cover how these requests are considered, as well as possible reasons that a request might be refused. It should also cover informal flexible working requests that fall outside the statutory system.

Employees must also be made aware of the effect of a successful request on the contract of employment.

Practising what you preach

Once a policy has been set up, organisations need to publicise this at any recruitment stage and during induction. It is important in a competitive job market that an organisation flags to a candidate the benefits of flexible working as this will make working there a more attractive prospect.

Employees should be made aware of what has to be included in any flexible working application and who the request should be submitted to.

The flexible working request process can also form part of a wider equality and diversity policy.

Implementing the policy

The main barriers to implementing flexible working in the workplace can be operational ones, such as the need to maintain customer service requirements, ian nability to successfully manage flexible workers, current organisational culture and senior management attitudes.

One way of implementing flexible working is to run a pilot scheme. Having a scheme run in a few discrete areas or teams is a good way of tackling unexpected problems and banishing some of the common concerns around cultural change.

Reviewing the policy

Once the policy is in place, employers should encourage staff to use the policy by communicating any benefits and successes.

The policy should be reviewed to ensure it is achieving its aims. Should employee or organisation circumstances change, the policy may also need to be amended. Feedback from staff on the existing policy can help in evaluating if the policy is working out in practice.

Employers may also want to monitor absence/sickness levels as well as flexible working take-up to give an insight into the impact flexible working is having on an organisation. Employee appraisals can also be used to see if flexible working is functioning properly.

What is flexible working? How to strike a work/life balance