Expecting trouble

Rima Evans | 29 Jul 2008 | 11:13

Editing the latest issue of PM was a bit depressing. Actually, no, most of it was enjoyable – editing one particular story, Flexibility 'puts women’s career on a knife-edge', was the bit that made for hard reading.

As a career woman I was keen to find out what could potentially damage mine and millions of other women’s jobs; oh, how predictable – the issue of children.

The question at large was specifically regarding whether maternity and flexible working rights are so generous these days that employers are being put off hiring women of a childbearing age. According to Nicola Brewer, chief exec of the Equality and Human Rights Commission: yes. Other commentators agreed that organisations are calling into question female employees’ ‘reliability’ because they may fall pregnant.

Our online poll on this topic also came back with a resounding yes.

Am I alone in thinking that this could be described as a somewhat extreme reaction on behalf of employers?

The actual concerns around hiring women of this age haven’t been spelled out. I presume cost is the major one – maternity pay, potentially having to find a replacement for maternity cover and so forth. But flexible working policies don’t have those same expenses attached. So does this hark back to that long-held myth that flexible workers simply work less? I have much sympathy with the cost issue – maternity can be expensive, especially for smaller businesses, and it would be useful to delve deeper into concerns around flexible working so that precise concerns can be aired and explored.

But still I ask again, corporate Britain, is your preferred response in protest at family-friendly laws really to stop hiring women of childbearing age? All women, up and down the land, from the age bracket of 16 to 45ish? You really would be prepared to alienate such an enormous segment of the labour force – from school leavers and graduates to those in the most senior positions – because in a period of about 30 years a woman may decide to have a child or two? Come on.

This is not employers rallying out against legislation. This is employers effectively saying that women contribute so little to the world of work that rather than treat them as individuals with individual needs (some women don’t have children, you know? Some women do but return to work soon after - Karren Brady had her baby on a Friday and was back to work on a Monday!), rather than view women as more than just a collective incapable of making different choices, they would prefer just to denigrate all women of this age bracket and keep them out of the workplace altogether.

The message is that they are not worth the hassle. I’m dumbstruck.

Imagine if just for a week all employment law was suspended and employers actually carried out this threat. Not a single woman of childbearing age would be hired and all the existing ones marched from the premises. What would happen? From a strategic level, lots of talent, experience, skill, creativity, innovative thinking, commitment and engagement would be gone. At a more basic level, workplaces would not be viable – there just wouldn’t be enough people to do the job, especially given the current skills shortages employers keep complaining about. A quick count tells me that on my floor alone the workforce would be slashed from 46 to only 13!

Of course, for employers to stop recruiting women of childbearing age would be an over-simplistic response to a fairly complex issue that links in with our social values and our views on the responsibilities of parenthood, which largely remains centred around the mother.

Those who have called for measures to make family-friendly laws more inclusive of fathers hold the key. Parental rights are currently too focused on women. Although PM’s own Tim Smedley called for increased paternal rights in a recent blog, I would propose going further and suggesting that current maternity entitlements should not automatically be given to mum but that either mother or father should be able to opt for it. But if current benefits for mums were scrapped, to the purported ‘benefit’ of employers, both working mothers and fathers would end up having to make plenty of sacrifices.

A new era for People Management - online and in print

Rima Evans | 11 Apr 2008 | 15:00

Welcome to a new era for People Management. As our teaser ads in the magazine have been mysteriously suggesting "It's time for change" and we can finally reveal our brand-new look for the website as well as the magazine. It is all change intended to ensure we are delivering the information you require in the way you require it.

PM is now committed to providing a daily information service through a combination of online and print, so you will no longer have to wait once a fortnight to get the latest updates on key developments in the fields of HR and business.

Our revamped website boasts lots of new features: a new blogs section, news stories on HR and business issues will be updated daily, regular employment law updates, an online poll, a faster search engine and, of course, an archive of more than 16,000 articles.

This week you should also receive your new-look magazine.

Not only have we altered the physical product - it is slightly smaller to make it more compact and portable, we have made lots of change on the inside too, all in response to feedback from you, the readers.

We know you love our more practical pieces so we have introduced a dedicated new section containing those essential articles for helping you in your day-to-day job. This will include popular favourites such as "law at work" and "how to", and also lots of new pieces which we think will help you to resolve the everyday issues you encounter at work.

We have also introduced a humour page featuring Guardian writer Craig Taylor, recruited new HR columnists and refreshed and updated the look and content of our news section.

There will also be much greater tie-in between website and magazine.

We hope you enjoy the new PM and I welcome any comments or feedback.