Workplace trends in the coming year


The workplace is ever evolving, bringing opportunities and challenges on how best to manage workplace relationships and deliver success.


The employment relations service Acas has produced a special report which examines the key workplace trends in 2016 to help employers plan for the year ahead and look at how the issues of the day might affect them and their employees.


The report, Workplace trends 2016, features commentary from Steve Elliott, chief executive of the Chemical Industries Association, Dr Makani Purva, anti-bullying tsar at Hull NHS Trust, Frances O’Grady, general secretary of the TUC, as well as a range of Acas experts, including its chair, Sir Brendan Barber.


Topics discussed include improving productivity; better ways of working; and encouraging positive behaviours in tackling bullying at work.


The TUC’s Frances O’Grady looks at the giving a voice to a better way of working and details four suggestions:


• employers, politicians and policy makers need to recognise the value of unions and collective bargaining;


• make the Information and Consultation Regulations (ICE) work much more effectively;


• give workers a real say in the strategic decisions that impact on them and the organisations they work for; and


• let’s acknowledge that good communication in the workplace doesn’t happen by accident. 


Good communication requires a genuine commitment to engage. It requires skilled, confident line managers. And from a union perspective it also requires skilled, confident, trained union reps. O'Grady said.


www.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=5584