National Association of Link Workers’ Post

Latest from FE News: UK continues to fall behind rest of world as zero-hour contracts reach record numbers – and it’s young people bearing the brunt: New analysis reveals UK continues to fall behind rest of world as zero-hour contracts reach record numbers – and it’s young people bearing the brunt The… UK continues to fall behind rest of world as zero-hour contracts reach record numbers – and it’s young people bearing the brunt was published on FE News by Work Foundation #EmployabilityNewsCareerGuidanceAdvice #Socialimpact Read more here:

It's extremely encouraging to see the House of Lords picking up the baton when it comes to ensuring essential skills getting the energy and focus they need. My favourite line: 🎤 Lord Aberdare: "When Napoleon supposedly described us as a nation of shopkeepers, I believe it was meant more as a recognition of our commercial talents than as an insult. Now is the time to apply our talents to a new challenge—to show ourselves to the world as a nation of skills builders." Great to see Skills Builder Partnership's Universal Framework featuring predominantly as well as lots of our Essential Skills Tracker research getting a good airing too. Two of my other favourite bits: 🎤 Baroness Sater: "The Essential Skills Tracker 23, from the Skills Builder Partnership—together with the CIPD, the Edge Foundation and KPMG—which reveals that the cost to the UK economy of low essential skills in 2022 alone was £22 billion. Again, good education alone will not cut it. The same tracker found that 18% of workers with above-average literacy and numeracy levels have a very low essential skills score, meaning that they cannot properly implement and take advantage of that education. The 13% of the population who experience real social mobility—enjoying a strong income, job satisfaction and life satisfaction—combine their education with these all-important skills and confidence." 🎤 Lord Holmes: "can we put an end to calling so much of this “soft skills”? These are not soft skills but essential skills, and without them the world is incredibly hard." After 15 years of working with many brilliant people in a growing movement to equip everyone with the essential skills to succeed, it's exciting to see further signs of the growing momentum behind our collective mission. https://lnkd.in/edyUCu2R

https://lnkd.in/ewQHZzMr Interesting #onjobtraining #traininganddevelopment The amount of money spent on training in England has #flatlined as UK-wide spending sinks to its lowest ever recorded level, according to the government’s latest employer skills survey. Are we losing skills? How are we expected to #adaptandgrow #newskills #motivation What are your thoughts? Are we just expected to #selftrain? If you’re prepping a new way forward are we too #shortsighted to see the long term benefits of #realhandsontraining

Key workers make up around a third of the UK workforce, but they are finding it increasingly difficult to find a home that they can afford. This is a real problem for recruitment and retention of key workers in health, education, and so many of the sectors on which we all rely on for our wellbeing and our capacity to contribute to a growing UK economy. Not just a UK challenge, I can see how this is also a German challenge in urban areas. Learn more, may be we can broaden our view in Germany for this important problem:

Labour has pledged to “double the size of the UK’s co-operative and mutual financial services sector”. But what might that mean for building societies? The manifesto is light on detail on this point. It also doesn’t explain what “doubling” refers to or where the baseline is, which is especially important given the high-profile mergers and consolidation in progress - Coventry Building Society and The Co-operative Bank plc as a key example. There are a few things that a Labour government could be focussing on to achieve this: 🗞 Marketing and awareness - Much of the public is unaware of how mutual organisations are structured and the benefits that come with this. A nationwide (small ‘n’ ..) marketing campaign could improve public understanding and drive customer volumes. 💲 Funding - The Building Societies Act requires societies to get at least half of their funding from customer savings, limiting external funding sources to 50% and reducing the capital they can deploy for growth. Recent changes to this bill exclude certain funding types from counting towards this limit, but a Labour government could look to change the 50% figure to further unlock growth plans, or implement a new capital instrument altogether. However, expansion of this limit too far could erode mutuality. 🎓 People and skills - It can be challenging finding the right skills in the mutual sector. There is currently a single masters course focussed on leadership and management specifically for the mutual sector run by Loughborough University, as most other degrees focus on operating PLC/shareholder owned businesses. A labour government could look to boost these sort of courses from a publicity and grant perspective to increase mutual specific skills. 🤖 Technology - Much of the building society sector is held back by legacy technology, a theme we see first hand at Woodhurst. Labour could promote or facilitate digital transformation in the sector to further drive modernisation. This could take the form of grants or incentives for upgrades. 🏦 Regulatory and policy support - The manifesto talks to requiring policymakers to report annually on how they are considering the specific needs of mutuals, aiming to level the playing field with the wider FS sector. 📖 Support for sector specific initiatives - This could include things like support for passbook stocks (e.g. paper and printers), or developing and implementing a sector-wide passbookreplacement. I’m keen to hear any other thoughts on how Labour could achieve this ambitious aim. #BuildingSocieties #Government

If you were to receive $1K a month in #GuaranteedIncome, what would you spend it on? Food? Transportation? Rent?.....How about Helping other People? Starting a Business? Cutting back on Drinking? A new study out this week gives us the most in-depth view so far of how GI programs are impacting communities across the country. The study followed more than 3K participants -- including a control group to compare how spending habits change over 3 years. https://lnkd.in/g9u2N5iq

Mandatory Reading. The fundamental thesis of this essay is that Britain can have rapid economic growth in the near future, swiftly catching up with the world’s most prosperous countries. It can do this because the sources of its current sclerosis are easy to identify and straightforward, in principle, to fix. The problem is not too little investment by the state. It is that the state has prohibited most of the investments we need to make. The solution is to remove these obstacles to investment, mobility and trade, in a politically viable and durable way.

Here's what it means to have dignity in labour... Missed my post from yesterday? Catch up here - https://lnkd.in/ddxmRa7R My friends and I were not allocated other faculties. Guess where we were posted to clean? You got it right! Our faculty! Education and Humanities. If it were to be some other faculty, I wouldn't be so bothered because I wasn't familiar with most of the faces, but having to sweep and mop my faculty? Was it the fact that I knew a lot of students there? Or the fact that I was familiar with the lecturers? Or the fact that according to my class advisor, I was the only probable first class student in my set. My pride and ego kicked in! I couldn't imagine doing that kind of odd job in an environment where many people already knew me. What if I had someone crushing on me?🙈 However, I thought again, - "is my pride more important than the money I'll make?" - "do I still want to be a bother to my parents knowing the situation at home?" - "wouldn't I be the owner of the money eventually?" My friends and I weighed our options and decided to work regardless, but we came up with a plan. This is where it gets interesting😂. Since we were to sweep and mop 4 times a week, we devised a plan to wake up earlier than usual at 4:30am, have our bath, dress in gym clothes and act like we were going to jog round school, but we put our lecture clothes in our bags for times when we had 7am lectures. And then on Sunday (which is everyone else's Saturday), we went there at the normal time to clean too because that's the day we had inspectors over, but since people scarcely went to the faculty on weekends, our secret wasn't really in the open. Plus, at this point, we had become shameless and you couldn't shame the shameless😂. I did this for two years and had a much better office job in my final year. And now, the story is entirely different! I said this story to say; THERE IS DIGNITY IN LABOUR. If you're doing odd jobs now, know that it's for a season and as long as you put in the work, the grass is definitely greener on the other side. PS: What jobs did you do in the past that you look back on and truly thank God for growth? _____________________ By the way, if you're coming across my profile for the first time, I'm Omotayo and I create content for individuals and brands to build authority, conversion and growth. Would you like to work with me? Shoot me a DM Want to catch up with my posts? Check them out here - #thelinkedinmaverick. If you haven't followed me yet, you totally should. Remain Remarkable 💜

What makes government policies about work actually work? The new Labour government has made working life and work a central plank of their policy agenda - an Employment bill etc - so I wanted to think more on this. As part of broadening my writing and broadcasting about the future of work I was delighted to write this opinion piece for Financial Times and specifically: - Why Department for Business and Trade should be renamed Department for Business, Trade - and Work - Why The Disney song "Heigh Ho" (which incidentally was also sung by Donald Duck in a little remembered information film called The Volunteer Worker, a factoid which did not name it into the piece for space reasons but which I find fascinating) could be the mantra of the UK Labour Government - channelling as it does the spirit of FDR's New Deal when that song was written - 8 key governments in particular have such interface with work related issues including Education, Equalities, Health, Science and Transport so that silo-busting is imperative. - rules of course the corporate world could apply to and often does better than government (but by no means always). - I call this the Grandiose to Granual Axis of some might say: the devil is in the details. I hope you enjoy it #work #futureofwork #government #silos

Ulster University Economic Policy Centre Economists report there are currently 47k workers that would like to work more hours, translating to 5.6% of the employed population. These findings come as part of the second paper in a series of three, measuring levels of spare capacity in Northern Ireland labour market, using alternative indicators. The paper highlights that, although the employment rate may be high, beneath the surface there are workers reporting they would like to work more hours than are currently available to them (i.e. those who are ‘underemployed’), representing underutilised labour. See the full report on our website: https://lnkd.in/eR6CsdnV Mark Magill | Marguerite Shannon | Sarah Perry | Ulster University