Financial wellbeing webinar 7 June 2017
Listen to a recorded webinar which discusses the impact of financial stress on health and ask what employers should be doing to support employee financial wellbeing.
Workplace Savings & Benefits hosted a debate on the impact of financial stress on health and can now be listened to on demand.
WSB talk about how this issue is increasingly being recognised by employers, who are concerned about the number of individuals experiencing debt and money problems – issues that often make their way back into the workplace in the form of lower productivity, stress and sickness absence.
The difficulties of balancing the often competing demands of the workplace and our personal lives can, inevitably, leave even the most organised and competent people feeling unable to cope.
In addition, this financial stress can compound other issues – with many employees facing financial difficulty as a result of ill-health, because they do not have sufficient savings to cover time off work due to ill-health, and have no protection in place in the form of sick pay insurance or income protection.
A WSB held in May 2017 looked at the impact of financial stress on health and ask what employers should be doing to support employee financial wellbeing.
Listen to the debate here
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Protecting vulnerable workers from exploitation 8 June 2017
The Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority (GLAA) is the agency charged with protecting vulnerable workers from labour exploitation across the entire UK labour market.
The GLAA have written an article called Protecting vulnerable workers from exploitation for Unpaid Britain (a project set up to examine the non-payment of wages in Britain).
The article starts off with a rather harsh but real question, “… what does someone who has been illegally trafficked into the UK, is then forced to live in squalor and is paid a pittance for working several hours every day, have in common with a worker who is not receiving holiday pay?”
The answer provided is that they are both being exploited for their labour.
The article goes on to talk about how the two scenarios are of course completely different; that the first is clearly a victim of modern slavery, a repugnant practice which is sadly increasing not just here in the UK but across the world, as criminals trade people as a commodity. And the second scenario is where a worker may believe he or she is being treated fairly, they may enjoy their job and it could come with all the rights and benefits you are entitled to working in the UK, however if they are not being paid what is rightfully theirs, whether that is holiday money or for services rendered, then they are a victim of labour exploitation. The tragic deaths of 23 cockle pickers in Morecambe Bay in 2004 focused the nation fully on the extreme costs of severe worker exploitation and as a result brought about new legislation that resulted in the creation of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority. For more than decade the Gangmasters Licensing Authority (GLA) has sought to prevent the exploitation of vulnerable workers but their powers were limited and remit restricted to the fresh produce sector – agriculture, horticulture, shellfish gathering and all associated processing and packaging. Now, in direct response to the challenges and threat posed by modern slavery, they have been given sweeping new powers and a broadened remit to investigate all forms of labour exploitation - The Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority (GLAA).
The Chartered Institute of Payroll Professionals
Policy News Journal
cipp.org.uk
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