employment

#TheReset – It’s an Employers Market… Is it not?

Ellie Francis on September 15, 2020, 12:15 pm | Readers 921

In the wake of Coronavirus, business owners are looking for silver linings in the rubble around them. A key shift would seem to be in the employment market where, for some time now, employees have ruled the roost. At the beginning of the year, companies scrambled to impress current and prospective talent, trying to convince them of the ‘why us’ component of their employment offer. They invested in Employer Branding and Employee Experience as a priority for their budget and …

#TheReset – Belfast City Centre’s loss is the rest of Northern Ireland’s gain…

Brian O'Neill on September 4, 2020, 8:02 am | Readers 8790

I have not been in the City Centre since February and to be honest, I have no desire to rush back anytime soon. Even before the pandemic, it was not a great experience – noisy, dirty, lots of traffic, a harsh natureless environment, a notable increase in beggars and addicts. It is a pity because having a wander around the city centre was an activity that many of us grew up on. But lately, it has lost its attraction. Of …

#TheReset: Slashing The Presenteeism Umbilical Cord…

Ellie Francis on August 28, 2020, 8:20 am | Readers 578

Recent months have seen a significant change in the way we work. On Friday 13th March 2020, Northern Ireland’s workforce made their usual commute home from the office, and the majority of them haven’t returned since. While a number of our local employers embraced working from home as an option for their team prior to lockdown, few of them had engaged in a remote-working-only strategy rendering their office lease and funky fit-out somewhat redundant. While the early days of moving …

#InConversation Podcast with Dr John Moriarty from Queen’s about changes to work patterns during Covid-19…

Brian O'Neill on July 17, 2020, 1:33 pm | Readers 305

John is a fellow in the Centre for evidence and social innovation and a sociology lecturer School of Social Sciences, Education and Social Work at Queens University Belfast In this podcast we chat about the changes to the workplace from Covid 19. As well as the obvious downsides, there have also been some positive to the lockdown. People are commuting less, meetings now take place on video saving time and money etc We also talk about the challenges of working …

#InConversation Podcast – I talk with Ellie Francis about the skills shortage in Northern Ireland and the latest employment trends…

Brian O'Neill on June 19, 2020, 3:36 pm | Readers 387

Before Covid-19 many sectors in Northern Ireland were facing a skills shortage. In this podcast, I chat with Ellie Francis about how this will affect the economy. Ellie started a company called Nepturnal, where she advises clients on how to attract and retain staff. Ellie has also started writing for Slugger and you can read her first post here. The skills shortage is an interesting phenomenon for those of us who grew up in the bad old days of 20% …

Northern Ireland and The Skills Gap Carousel…

Ellie Francis on June 18, 2020, 10:22 am | Readers 819

As we begin to emerge from the clutches of the Covid 19 Pandemic, the business community in Northern Ireland face a plethora of challenges if they want to remain above water, let alone experience growth. Not least of which is the imminent recession predicted to be the sharpest economic downturn on record. However the talent shortage faced by many of our most prominent industries, such as ICT, agri-food and digital media, continues to glare at employers as it did before …

Why do we need foreign labour when we have so many unemployed?

Brian O'Neill on February 19, 2020, 7:43 pm | Readers 2882

A texter to Good Morning Ulster today asked the question: ‘Why do we need cheap foreign labour when we have 100,000 unemployed?’ I voted against Brexit and I also believe it is good to have free movement of labour, but I must admit the texter had a point. It is a strange state of affairs that we import labour from all over the world when we have so many local people economically inactive. From the NISRA Report on Economic Inactivity: …

1994 assessment of Peace Dividend – likely to boost jobs in inward investment, export/cross-border trade and tourism, but losses expected in security sector [DED/22/234] #20yearrule

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on August 24, 2019, 10:30 am | Readers 1002

Government papers released under the 30/20 year rule (DED/22/234) document a flurry of activity around 1994 as departments tried to calculate the possible ‘peace dividend’ in terms of new employment from inward investment, exports/cross-border trade and tourism, though officials cautioned that there would be heavy job losses in the security sector if there was a “sudden cessation of violence” in Northern Ireland.

Have we really reached full employment in Northern Ireland?

Brian O'Neill on May 10, 2018, 10:45 am | Readers 2451

Ulster Bank economist Richard Ramsey has suggested that Northern Ireland is now “effectively at full employment” as the latest official figures showed the unemployment rate was 3.5% in the three months between December and February 2018. This is quite a drop from the over 20% we had in the 1980s. Northern Ireland has traditionally been associated with high unemployment so this is quite a turnaround. Now as always there are some caveats, the BBC reports: The inactivity rate in Northern Ireland stands …

Brexit: So what will happen to the economy when the foreign workers go home?

Brian O'Neill on November 23, 2017, 8:42 am | Readers 1843

Over on Channel 4 there is a new darkly funny fly on the wall documentary series “British Workers Wanted“. It shows a recruitment company in England coping with life during Brexit. 98% of the company’s recruitment staff are foreign, but what do you do when after Brexit the foreign workers start to leave? The show follows the company’s efforts to recruit British workers to do the jobs that the foreign workers used to do, but with predictably dire results. This 1-minute …

“They’d have known from then that I couldn’t be counted on to fall into line.”

Eamonn McCann on May 31, 2017, 7:10 pm | Readers 6026

An organisation which plays a key role in distributing public money to community organisations in Derry has been found guilty of discriminating against a local man because of his opposition to what he characterised as a “Sinn Fein/DUP carve-up” of community organisation in the city. The Waterside Neighbourhood Partnership (WNP) has been ordered by a Fair Employment Tribunal to pay Gary McClean £10,000 compensation for denying him a job as a Community Development Officer (CDO) in the Curryneirin area despite …

Brexit bites as EU workers start to say screw you UK we are outa here…

Brian O'Neill on April 11, 2017, 1:05 pm | Readers 5542

If there is one advantage to having kids it is that it does increase your circle of friends. Humans need social contact, especially when going through the misery joy of having your first child. We compare notes with other parents, we sympathise when they tell you their baby is not sleeping even though inside we are delighted that at least our kid is not as bad as there’s. We force a smile when another parent tells us how their little …

British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly: Recommendations on GFA…

Mick Fealty on March 31, 2014, 11:27 am | Readers 16

This session is in Dublin at the Royal Hospital. Panel Discussion currently underway is on the theme ‘Future of Work’… Senior Vice President of Londonderry Chamber of Commerce – Gerry Kindlon Science Foundation of Ireland – Ann Riordan, Chairperson IDA – Frank Ryan, Chair Of particular interest to Slugger readers is the Assembly’s recommendations on the Belfast Agreement: a formal public reporting mechanism on the implementation of the Agreements be put in place every effort be made to bring the …

Surviving the job hunt part 2

David McCann on January 27, 2014, 10:34 pm | Readers 49

A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece about how to survive the job hunt. Luckily for me things in that area have turned around and I am now faced with an exciting new challenge that I cannot wait to get stuck into. I am writing this piece as I think it’s always good to illustrate when looking for jobs that in the employment market a month is literally an eternity. I was thinking today about a friend of mine …

Emphasis on youth skills rather than qualifications the way out of recession?

Mick Fealty on March 15, 2011, 7:41 pm | Readers 4

In the Republic the live register of unemployed hit the highest levels since the late 1990s. One aspect of it is the limited capacity for retraining, or training on the job. Eamon McDwyer, a local Cavan businessman told Slugger on the #RTERoadtrip that rigid enforcement of limits on jobseekers allowance an opportunity was being missed. Listen! In England, Professor Alison Wolf has been warning for some years of “a complete disintegration of the youth labour market”, as “successive governments obsessed …

In terms of post-recession employment, the young and the vulnerable are suffering the most – but what will we do about it?

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on September 28, 2010, 6:30 am | Readers 62

In many ways the Equality Commission’s 115 report confirmed my shallow understanding of the recession. People who’ve never worked – eg, the young – are struggling to get jobs. People who have lost jobs are struggling to regain employment. Vulnerable groups are finding it tough. And blue collar has so far been worse than white collar.