Re:locate magazine | Reports & Surveys | Grim findings from CIPD

In its annual end-of-year barometer report on the state of the workplace and the outlook for employment, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development issued its gloomiest forecast for the UK labour market in a decade. The report’s author, John Philpott, Chief Economist at the CIPD said: “We forecast a net rise in total UK employment of 75,000 (0.25%) in the year to December 2008, only a third of the rise recorded in both 2006 and 2007, resulting from a combination of much reduced net hiring in the private sector and net job reductions in the public sector. This would be the worst year for jobs this decade, and easily the worst since the Labour Government came to power in 1997."

Meanwhile, almost half of organisations (46%) no longer award employees an across-the-board annual pay rise or cost of living adjustment, according to this year’s CIPD Annual Reward Management survey from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. Manufacturing, production and private sector service firms are the least likely to provide such a pay rise. The current trend is to allocate pay budgets to departmental heads to distribute among staff based on individual and or collective contribution, and movements in market rates and inflation, rather than as an across the board rise. Under these circumstances there is a greater need to communicate pay messages clearly, says CIPD. However, CIPD research shows only one third of employers are confident in their line manger’s ability to deliver the appropriate pay messages. Another piece of research from CIPD. The Institute’s Future demand for working among older workers may also have interesting implications for those relocating staff. On a survey of 1,000 workers aged between 50 and 64 years, it finds that just under two fifths (38%) of individuals plan to carry on working beyond 65.Currently, only 11% of the workforce work beyond State Pension age. It leads one to wonder what issues will be raised in the future when it comes to relocating older staff.

For further information on any of these surveys, see www.cipd.co.uk.

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