In the introduction to his new book on learning technologies, renowned author Donald H Taylor describes an encounter that is all too typical from the world of eLearning. A woman is overheard complaining that the course she is studying on her computer is repetitive: it includes a few small updates but is largely the same as the course she took last year. It’s difficult to access, because she needs a different login from the company’s system. And all it really requires her to do is to keep hitting the ‘next’ button. She sums the experie... Continue reading

The importance of giving accurate and fair information when being approached for a reference for an ex-employee has been highlighted by a recent case in which a man claimed a reference given by his ex-employer lost him a job offer. The Tribunal found in favour of Mr P Mefful, who argued he had been discriminated against after his ex-employer, Citizens Advice Merton & Lambeth, made comments related to his sickness absence in a reference. During the course of his eight-year employment with the firm, Mefful had two lengthy periods of absence –... Continue reading

Health and safety protections are at risk from the Government’s Brexit plans, according to a new briefing published by the TUC, Protecting Health and Safety after Brexit. The report claims that, although the Government has set out its intention in a white paper to transfer all existing health and safety protections from EU law to UK law, there are no guarantees for what happens afterwards. The TUC says that the next Government must make sure that a commitment is written into the Brexit deal to, as a minimum, match present and future EU stan... Continue reading

BIFM has become a Disability Confident Committed Employer to demonstrate its support of developing good practice around the employment, retention, training and career development of disabled employees. The scheme, which promotes a positive approach to enabling disabled people and those with other health conditions within the workplace, focuses on both attracting the right people to the organisation and keeping and developing them. In addition to helping customers and other businesses identify those employers who are committed to equality in t... Continue reading

Employees at Google have ditched human resources as a route to airing and solving their grievances and are instead utilising an employee-run message board, which is then created into a weekly email sent to subscribing employees, in order to get their grievances heard. Named ‘Yes, at Google’, the list offers employees the opportunity to submit their allegations of unwelcome behaviour anonymously and for those allegations to be tracked and communicated across the company, in what employees are calling “an attempt to make the company more i... Continue reading