(PR in) HR Pulse | HR News Round-up: 29th May – 4th June 2023
Photo by Thomas Charters on Unsplash
Line managers are hindering workplace change
New research by United Culture has found that almost a quarter (17%) of employees believe their line managers stop them from addressing workplace issues.
The study looked at c1000 in-office employees in the UK and the US and found that this sentiment is 6% higher in men (20%) than women (14%). Sixteen percent of employees also shared that they didn’t feel recognised by employers. This lack of recognition was felt by twice as many women (22%) as men (11%).
Angela O’Connor, founder of The HR Lounge, explains that management is a learnt skill that can’t be achieved by osmosis, therefore when promoting employees to a management position there needs to be thorough training to ensure they know how to handle concerns, especially when it comes to having difficult conversations.
Ross Seychell, Chief People Officer of Personio suggests that employers should look into taking in anonymous concerns and adopting an open-door policy to make employees feel more comfortable addressing issues. Seychell also highlighted the need for scheduling regular meetings to celebrate employee achievements and encourage employee progression.
A key concern respondents felt unheard about is their working patterns. A quarter of women (25%) and almost a third of men (30%) claimed that their career development is being negatively affected by their current working patterns and almost a quarter (21%) of all respondents feel they haven’t got a good work/life balance.
Alys O’Neill, Director of Consulting at United Culture, explains that the way line managers work with their teams is crucial to how well a business functions, therefore the way they communicate with employees will impact the overall organisation's growth.
Sources: HR Magazine and HR Review.
The “glass cliff”: setting up women in leadership to fail
Elon Musk has recently appointed Linda Yaccarino as Twitter’s new CEO to bring the heavily criticised social media platform out of controversy.
As the first woman CEO of Twitter, this initially seems to be a step towards gender DE&I on the company's part. However, recently there have been speculations that a turnaround for the company is unlikely and Yaccarino may have been placed on a “glass cliff”, according to experts referring to a 2011 Harvard Business Review study by Susanne Bruckmüller and Nyla R. Branscombe.
The study explains how women are often faced with social barriers within the world of work when trying to reach and hold leadership positions aka breaking through the “glass ceiling” often only available to them when an organisation is in crisis.
Bruckmüller and Branscombe found that the success of individuals in leadership positions is heavily thought to be linked to their gender, so women leaders are only brought in after a male leader has damaged the company's reputation in some way.
Regardless of Yaccarino’s upcoming journey within Twitter, the conversations around the “glass cliff” are important to understand in order to improve on DE&I.
Wendy Dean, CEO of Strategi Solutions shares that this is a common practise for the companies she has consulted with. Dean explains that associating the failure of a company with a woman who comes into leadership after the company was already jeopardised by a man is verging on gender discrimination. Dean understands the want for women to take on such roles in order to break the “glass ceiling” but suggests they set realistic objectives and KPIs before taking said roles.
Lupe Colangelo, Interim Head of Talent Placements at General Assembly, explains that the “glass cliff” is a serious issue for women in tech. She adds that taking the right steps isn’t always good enough to meet KPIs due to the biases and structural inequities internalised within the field, therefore reaching goals is considerably harder for women than men.
Colangelo urges employers to increase the funding and time spent on technical and/or managerial training to help women in leadership achieve goals and become successful.
Libby Rodney, Chief Strategy Officer at The Harris Poll, claims the key to understanding whether a woman has been offered a real chance to enter a C-suite or has been put on a “glass cliff” is through transparency. Rodney expands saying workplace transparency shows how a company functions, what its workplace culture is like and how its current employees feel.
Source: WorkLife.
Avery Ingram: Human AI employee
February Labs has developed the UK’s first employable AI software developer, Avery Ingram (AI).
Ingram is a personified, autonomous AI tool created to help real software development teams simplify their tasks and limit repetition. She has a portrait drawn by Dall-E and a CV generated by ChatGPT, along with a LinkedIn account which allows her to be recruited like any other human employee.
February Lab’s CEO, Ash Lewis explains that 2000 software development companies are currently waiting to work with Ingram. She is currently working on 180 cases and delivers a week’s worth of a human employee’s work at 10% of the cost. Ingram’s employment contract is similar to that of a human employee as well, including a notice period and her ‘pay’ is the equivalent of the Living Wage.
Lewis assures audiences that the purpose of Ingram is purely to assist software development teams so that they can focus on the more creative tasks and is by no means a replacement for them.
However, new research from Prospect reveals that more than half (58%) of employees want the UK government to safeguard jobs by setting rules on how generative AI is used in the workplace.
Gosia Adamczyk, director of Verve Group, emphasises the importance of communicating with employees before onboarding AI technology. Adamczyk explains that employees understand the benefits of having AI tech to automate and reduce repetitive tasks, but need to be reassured that their jobs are secure.
Sources: HR Magazine and BusinessLive.