Public employees pull fewer 'sickies'

Public sector employees are less likely to take sickness absence than their private sector counterparts, a new study has indicated. Research conducted by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) reveals that while government employees are more likely to take extended periods off work, short-term 'sickies' are far more common within private companies.

The study found that within the last month, more than one in five public sector workers have been to work when they were really too ill to do so. A further 41 per cent have gone into work poorly during the last year, compared to just 36 per cent of private sector employees, according to the research.

TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said people often talk about a 'sicknote culture' in the UK, but workers regularly go into work when they should not. They do this - not because they are afraid of their boss - but because they know they do vital jobs in over-stretched workplaces," he stated. "Of course positive sickness absence policies are important in the public and private sectors. But there is most to gain from tackling the causes of absence, particularly stress, and helping people return to work."

The government is in the process of introducing fit notes to the UK workplace, which detail the tasks an individual is capable of conducting during periods of illness or injury.

Gareth, APA.

Dressing for work is a taxing dilemma

Nothing too racy, dull, scruffy or posh and please don't attract comment or clash with the sofa. Frankly, it is a weekday wardrobe dilemma that nobody would wish for, and certainly not if their working day started at 4am. Breakfast presenter Sian Williams has been refused a tax rebate on her work clothes by HMRC. Judge Christopher Staker saw fit to deny her £1,800 rebate on the £4,500 she spends on her appearance because he thinks it is impossible to divide the business and private benefit of the expenditure.

When Natasha Kaplinksy moved to Channel Five she was said to have received an allowance of thousands of pounds. Rachel Riley of Countdown was reportedly given a £10,000 allowance and a stylist to advise her on what to buy. And Cheryl Cole and Dannii Minogue are reported to have been given ‘substantial’ clothing allowances for ‘X’ Factor. During the US presidential election, Republican Sarah Palin was vilified for her $150,000 (£98,500) allowance for clothes, hair and makeup. While here, Sarah Brown has no allowance; instead she hires clothes from her favourite designers for public functions, which are paid for with her own money.

Even those who are not in the public eye sometimes get an allowance as a perk of the job. Many fashion companies give their staff a clothing allowance, and it is not uncommon for top PAs, especially those who meet clients, to be given an annual amount to spend on business clothes.

APA supports this benefit and believes it should be totally allowable for tax purposes; after all who wants to wear a stuffy work suit after work (unless for the occasional funeral). APA will be following this up with HMRC and looking to make tax free clothing allowances a norm for PA employment contracts.

Shelley, APA

Based on an article in the Guardian today

More Degrees than a thermometer!

In a week when final-year university students turn their attention to jobhunting during the Easter break, a survey by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) finds that nearly six in ten (59%) of employees who graduated in the last two years are not currently working in a field or profession related to the degree they studied.

The survey, Focus on graduate jobs, which is based on responses from more than 700 graduates in employment, comes against the backdrop of Government pledges to significantly increase - to 75% - the proportion of young people they want to secure a degree or equivalent level qualification.
In addition, the survey, conducted for the CIPD by YouGov, finds that among graduates not working in a field related to the degree they studied:

• 58% of those who graduated in the last two years said this was because they were unable to find a suitable job

• 28% said that their degree did not equip them with the skills that they need for the workplace

• 21% of recent graduates chose a new career path after finishing their degree

• 24% had since decided to postpone the start of the careers entirely

The figures raise questions over the Government's continued efforts to expand enrolment on university degrees, and their desire to chase the new 75% target for young people to be educated up to degree level, particularly at a time when the UK labour market has contracted significantly.

APA employment spokesperson Faye Crisp added, “A significant number of business graduates are known to have taken jobs as a PA to enter companies at a level where they will gain a broad level of exposure to business practice and access to senior staff. While this is commendable the Government does need to look again at it targets and make moves to improve its vocational qualifications to ensure they meet the needs of employers.”

APA hopes to launch its first Degree in PA Practice in late 2010.

Gareth, APA (for Faye Crisp FAPA)

Let the plane take the strain!

Private flying has never been a viable alternative to the car for business use; until now that is. Although someway off, it seems that one US Company may be achieving a practical solution and has created a real 'flyng car'.

Every pilot faces uncertain weather, rising costs, and ground transportation hassles on each end of the flight. But the solution is in sight and the long held dream of many; literally to fly-drive, may soon come true if progress continues to be made by US aircraft manufacturer, Terrafugia Inc. of Woburn, MA. It’s state-of-the-art personal aircraft, The Transition® Roadable Aircraft, developed by Terrafugia’s award-winning MIT-trained engineers, combines the unique convenience of being able to fold its wings with the ability to drive on any surface road in a modern personal airplane platform. Stowing the wings for road use and deploying them for flight at the airport is activated from inside the cockpit. This unique functionality addresses head-on the issues faced by today’s Private and Sport Pilots.

Gareth Osborne, APA’s Director General and himself a former professional pilot, is thrilled by news of the company’s achievements and will be watching their progress carefully. “This ranks with the launch of Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic space craft and the first flight by a woman pilot in the RAF’s Red Arrows as a major aeronautical achievement. Long may these advances in aviation continue,” he says.

APA

Non-Budget for SMEs

Just one in five small business owners believe the recent Budget will have a significant impact on their firms, a new study has indicated. Research conducted by the Forum of Private Business (FPB) indicates that just 22 per cent are factoring the Budget into their plans for 2010.

Even fewer firms think the general election will make a major difference to their activities – just 19 per cent. The study found that day-to-day concerns are much more likely to be at the forefront of owners' minds, with sales and turnover an emerging issue for 77 per cent, while 71 per cent and 69 per cent respectively said they were thinking about profitability and cash flow. In addition, staffing was said to be a major concern for 60 per cent of business owners.

FPB research manager Thomas Parry said the study pointed to a certain amount of cynicism about this year's Budget. "A lot of business owners are simply presuming that there's going to be another budget straight after the election so they're not paying it too much attention," he added. "The things they are concerned with at the moment are the more pressing issues associated with running a business in a struggling economy."

APA

A 'Robin Hood' Budget

The Budget at a glance>

Economy
• Predicted growth of 1-1.25% in 2010, in line with forecasts.
• Downgrades growth forecast for 2011 to 3-3.5%.
• Deficit £11bn lower in 2009/10 £14bn lower in 2010/11.

Spending
• Spending to increase by 2.2% above inflation 2010/11.
• 15,000 civil servants to be relocated outside London .

Taxes
• Tax allowances for those earning over £100,000 to be gradually removed.
• Inheritance tax threshold frozen for four years.
• Clampdown on tax avoidance to raise £500m, together with new tax agreements with Belize, Grenada and Dominica.
• No current plans for changes to VAT or income tax.

Borrowing
• Borrowing this year forecast to be £167bn - £11bn lower than expected.
• Borrowing to be cut from £163bn in 2010-11 to £74bn by 2014-15.
• Net debt to reach 56% of GDP this year and peak at 78% by the end of the forecast period in 2014-15.

Jobs
• The guarantee of Six month work or training for under 24s extended to 2012.
• Reduction in the amount of time over-65s have to work to receive work credits.

Education
• Funding for 20,000 new university places in science and maths.
• £35m enterprise fund to help university-launched businesses.

Pensions
• Winter fuel allowance rates extended for further year.

Environment
• £2bn investment bank to back low-carbon industries

Duties
• Duty on cider to rise by 10% above inflation from Sunday.
• Wine, beer and spirit duty up 2% a year until 2013.
• Tobacco duty up 1% this year and 2% a year in future years.
• 3p fuel duty rise to be phased in between April and January 2011.

Small businesses
• £2.5bn support for small business to boost skills and innovation.
• One year business rate cut from October to help 500,000 companies.
• Investment allowance for small firms doubled to £100,000.

The full text of the Chancellor’s speech can be found here:
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/budget2010_speech.htm

APA

BCC challenges the Chancellor

The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) has published its Budget submission to coincide with its annual conference. Key features of the submission – which has been delivered to the chancellor Alistair Darling - include a call for a clear deficit reduction plan that sets out detailed cuts. "This plan must include a freeze in the total public sector wage bill and fundamental reform of public sector pensions," the organisation said.

The BCC has also called on the planned one per cent rise in employer National Insurance Contributions to be scrapped, with an extra penny added to VAT to compensate for the revenue loss.

A three-year moratorium on new employment law is also required, the BCC says, since new legislation will cost a combined £25 billion over this period. Finally, the organisation has called for more support around export trade finance and sustained investment in transport, digital and energy networks.

APA supports BCC in these calls.

APA

Management Rules!

APA passionately believes that PAs are already Managers within their business; after all they manage the working life of the business’s most valuable resource, its Director. However the reality is, and is often missed, that PAs receive little training in management and have to react intuitively to the situations they face on a daily basis.

This one-day programme has been created to balance the scales and add knowledge, best practice and shared experience to the mix and better equip the PA for more managerial tasks.

It is designed to be challenging, thought provoking, insightful and fun. It would help PAs new to management or those who feel endorsement would supplement their exiting knowledge.

Enrol now for a life changing programme – The PA as a Manager.

APA

The PA as a Manager - - - - 27th April 2010 - - - - Portland Place, London, W1

Happy Birthday Dot Com

Twenty-five years ago, Charles Horning was the first man to register a .com domain name for his company, Symbolics. It was over a month before the second was registered and only three more were registered that year. Today, there are almost 90 million .coms, with half a million new ones added every week. VeriSign, the .com registry, handles over 50 billion DNS queries every day. It's difficult to imagine an internet without it.

But there very nearly wasn't a .com at all. Draft specs published in May 1984 called for a “.cor”, for anything corporate-related. The same draft called for a “.pub”. By July, these had morphed into .com and .org, but nobody seems to know why.

Paul Mockapetris, who invented the DNS said. “Back then none of this seemed important,” he said. “We set up .com so we could split off commercial issues and have all that dealt with separately. At the time, everybody thought that that was the tail and the rest was the dog, but it turned out the reverse was true.”

It wasn't until the advent of the web in the early 1990s that domain name registrations, many of them speculative, started to take off in a big way. Early movers such as Gary Kremen, the original registrant of sex.com, went on to make millions from their investments.

Even Symbolics.com was sold off last August for an undisclosed sum to a domain investor.
The engineers who created the system were not so fortunate. “I was smart enough to invent it, but not smart enough to own it,” joked Mockapetris. “If someone had asked me, do you think you'll get 10,000 names registered, I would have said, well I hope so.”

ICANN, the body now responsible for managing new additions to the DNS, is set to soon open the floodgates for potentially hundreds of new top-level domains, many of which will
compete with .com. So is .com's day over?

Gareth, APA

BA Cabin Crew strike - latest information

Unite, the trade union that represents the majority of British Airways (BA) cabin crew, has announced its intention to take strike action on the following dates:

• 20, 21 and 22 March 2010
• 27, 28, 29 and 30 March 2010

If a strike does go ahead, it is intending to operate a range of flights. Not all flights will be cancelled and it is currently finalising flight schedules for the strike period and has temporarily stopped selling seats on all flights operating on those dates.

If you have already booked travel between 19 - 31 March inclusive you will be able to rebook or have a refund on your flight.

For the latest information go to:
http://www.britishairways.com/travel/strike-ballot/public/en_gb?refevent=strikelhn_latest_info

Shelley, APA

Credit where it's due

EU rules that may exempt small firms from filing annual accounts have been condemned as ‘utterly absurd’ by a leading figure in the credit industry.

At a time when the supply of credit is needed more than ever, and yet harder than ever to get, the suggestion that exempting small companies from filing accounts will help businesses grow is perverse, according to Philip King, Chief Executive of the Institute of Credit Management (ICM). “It will have exactly the opposite effect,” says Mr King. “Less information means less credit will be extended, and as a consequence, growth will be impaired rather than encouraged.The accounting exemptions already extended to SMEs do nothing to help facilitate trade, and that these latest plans will make a difficult situation worse: The British Government are not obliged to adopt this proposal, and must not do so.” .

MEPs approved changes to EU rules to waive usual reporting requirements for so-called ‘micro entities’ (firms with less than 500,000 euros on their balance sheet, a net turnover of less than one million euros, and employing an average of 10 people or less). An estimated 75% of companies in the EU are designated as micro entities. They argued, successfully, that this would free up firms from red tape, allowing them to grow more quickly and be more competitive.

“Whereas it is laudable to want to help small businesses, this is not the way to do it,” Mr King insists. “If the last 12 months have taught us anything, it is that businesses must provide more information for credit to be extended, not less.”

Gareth Osborne, APA Director General and a former member of the Small Business Council, the panel of 23 advisors to Government on matters relevant to small business, strongly supports the call for less red tape for smaller firms but recognises that some reporting is necessary for operational purposes, like credit checking. Gareth added, “APA supports ICM’s claim that this is a bad move. Annual accounts are not prepared for Government; they are prepared for business owners to ensure the company is trading legitimately and achieving its ambitions or for proving to others it can support its financial responsibilities. Many businesses would take this change as a signal to avoid the realities of [financially] health checking their enterprise and thereby frustrating their own ability to attract the credit essential to trade.”

APA

A difficult balance

The 2010 Budget will be held on March 24th, the Prime Minister has announced. Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling will deliver his annual financial statement six weeks before the widely-expected date for the general election – May 6th.

He is due to set out plans to cut the UK's deficit in the Commons, which is likely to peak at £178 billion this year.

Gordon Brown claimed that the worst of the recession was over but agreed with the many forecasters who deem the recovery as being "fragile". Mr Brown said the government would use the Budget to set out in more detail how it aims to restore the public finances, while protecting the fundamental public services that we all depend on.

According to the Office for National Statistics, the UK emerged from a six-quarter recession in the final quarter of 2009.

APA will be issuing its Budget Report on March 24th to outline which elements of it most impact on PAs and the businesses they work for.

APA

Additional Tax on Employment

APA, in support of other professional bodies including the CBI, FSB, BCC and the CIPD, is calling on its membership to sign a national petition to protest against the one percent increase in employer National Insurance Contributions (NICs) planned for April 2011.

The petition was launched last week in a letter to the Daily Telegraph calling for the Government to work with business groups to find alternative ways to close the UK's budget deficit.

Gareth Osborne of the APA said, “The planned NICs increase for businesses is another stealth tax and one clearly placed on employment. The labour market position is stabilising and employers are starting to feel more confident about recruiting new staff. Any increase in employment related tax could suppress recovery.”

APA plans to become a signatory to the petition; already signed by a number of major organisations, but is encouraging members to sign up to the petition themselves. It can be found at http://www.no-nics-rise.co.uk/

APA

Economic Update - Q2/2010

Interest rates will remain at a record low for a 12th consecutive month. The Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee has decided to freeze the base rate at 0.5 per cent, while also keeping its quantitative easing programme on hold.

Interest rates have been at 0.5 per cent since last March, as the Bank has attempted to encourage an increase in consumer spending. Last month, it said it was halting its programme of quantitative easing, which has pumped £200 billion into the economy over the last year. However, it revealed that the initiative could be extended in future if such a move is deemed necessary.

According to Gareth Osborne, the Bank's decisions had been widely forecast and were the inevitable outcome given the uncertain position. "We expect the Bank of England to keep interest rates low throughout 2010 given recurring concerns about the strength and sustainability of the recovery," he added. "We still have some way to go before we can be sure the economy isn’t going to regress again. We should be happy for now that there are some signs of improvement and not be too surprised if we see mini highs and lows for some months to come.”

The unemployment rate now stands at 7.8% - unchanged over the quarter but up 1.4% on last year. Nearly 29 million people were in work in the period October to December according to the labour force survey (LFS). The number of people employed was down by 12,000 this quarter and down by 428,000 on the last year. The US unemployment rate is currently 9.7%.

Gareth, APA.

Spelling-bee

Spelling definitely is a problem for many people - who insist on writing it "definately".

A survey revealed definitely is the most common spelling blunder in the English language. Second place went to sacrilegious, third place went to indict, manoeuvre came fourth and bureaucracy, came fifth. Making up the top ten were; broccoli at sixth, phlegm seventh, prejudice at eighth, consensus at ninth and unnecessary at tenth.

A spokesman for researchers OnePoll.com said: "So many of us seem unable to spell, half blame computer spell-checks for their inadequacies, with one in three pointing the finger at text messaging.

The research also found that 57% of people judge other people on their spelling ability, with 42 per cent admitting they believe people who can't spell are "thick"

We all have words that tax us; my personal nemesis is ‘environment’. Gareth admits to establishment and a friend refuses to spell diet - but that's another story.

Shelley, APA