NEWS

CPAmerica, Inc. announced the rollout of their new learning management system (LMS) through a partnership with Prolaera. This new partnership will expand and enrich CPAmerica’s current CPE offerings and online learning experience for members starting in early June.

The CPAmerica team underwent a rigorous process to select the LMS provider offering the best platform for their members. The last several months were spent reviewing requests for proposal (RFPs), attending product demonstrations and conducting interviews with members.

“We are excited to support members’ needs for training and CPE with our new LMS,” said CPAmerica president, Grace Horvath. “The post-pandemic workplace has made staff training and development even more challenging, and our partnership with Prolaera will further enhance the essential resources and benefits of membership.”

CPAmerica’s LMS will provide members with access to a robust CPE compliance tracking tool, comprehensive reporting and an extensive catalog of top-rated CPE, all in one centralized location.

“Prolaera’s vision perfectly aligns with CPAmerica’s goals to empower members with a modern learning and development platform that simplifies CPE management at its core,” added Prolaera founder, Evan Hiner. “We see numerous opportunities in our partnership with CPAmerica and their members to enhance their human capital at this time of rapid change in the industry.”

Eventbrite has introduced BriteBreak Fridays, which gives employees – in the UK and around the world – the first Friday of each month off work to promote mental well-being.

On the first Friday of every month, the entire Eventbrite workforce stops and no emails are sent or meetings scheduled, providing employees with a real chance to disconnect from routine, recharge their batteries and have the time to do what makes them most relaxed and happy.

The ticketing and event platform tested BriteBreak Fridays during lockdown when mental health needs required more attention than ever before. Recording significantly increased employee engagement and no noticeable loss in efficiency and efficacy, Eventbrite made BriteBreaks a permanent part of its company culture.

Since the inception of BriteBreak Fridays, Eventbrite has found that employees are performing better and productivity has increased. In the last year – with BriteBreak underway – the company has developed more platform features than in recent years, improved its systems to handle twice the load, and improved the strength of the platform.

The new BriteBreak initiative is just one of the benefits that Eventbrite offers its workers to improve their quality of life, support their work and enhance their family commitments.

The ONS has released insights into hybrid and homeworking in the latest survey

Susannah Streeter, senior investment and markets analyst, Hargreaves Lansdown commented: ‘’This latest data from the ONS indicates that plenty of employees still believe working 9-5 in the office is no way to make a living. Only half of businesses have said their workforce had returned to their normal place of work and although that is up from a third in early September and a fifth in April, there is still so much uncertainty about our future working patterns. With more than one in six businesses already intending to use increased homeworking as a permanent business model, and another one in eight unsure what they will do, the fight for talent is likely to determine company policy going forward. Many recruiters are already reporting that many of the best candidates are demanding flexibility over their working lives and companies do appear to be listening. In the words of Dolly Parton, they are keen to ensure its not all taking and no giving with 65% of companies saying they are using homeworking because of improved staff well-being. More than half of companies (53%) say it’s because of increased productivity and 43% of companies said one of the reasons was that it led to reduced carbon emissions, compared to 34% of companies giving that reason at the last reading, indicating that the urgency for a change of behaviour to limit global warming is being felt by business leaders.

More than half of companies (51%) do expect more than three quarters of the workforce to come back to their normal place of work, one in eleven companies don’t expect staff to return. It seems clear that for droves of staff semi, or permanent homeworking will become the new 9-5. This big shift will have ripples right across many industries as new patterns of consumer behaviour which emerged during the pandemic settle in for the long haul.’’

Business insights and impact on the UK economy – Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk).

Jobs that require abstract thinking, people engagement and soft skills are less likely to be automated, according to new research by the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). In comparison, occupations that involve physicality and muscle, or those that can be codified or delivered online, are more likely to be replaced by machines.

Researchers of a report published by PLOS ONE journal titled, Automation and the changing nature of work, say low-skilled manual jobs are going to continue to be hollowed out over the next decade with machine operators, construction labours and loaders being replaced by machines. These are the jobs that are high in ‘muscle’ requirements.

White-collar jobs, like accountants and training specialists, which have large volumes of tasks that can be codified or be delivered online will also diminish. However, within this category, those that provide bespoke or executive services will remain. In essence, if there is value to engaging with humans or a tricky problem to address, these jobs will survive.

Researchers say that managers of all types, such as CEOs and health and education executives, have nothing to worry about. Nor do carpenters or electricians - the trade jobs that marry creativity with physical labour.

Cecily Josten and Dr Grace Lordan, of The Inclusion Initiative at LSE’s Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science, mapped an indicator of how automatable any occupation is to data from the European Labour Force Survey (EU LFS) which contains labour market data from across European Union member states and the UK.

Cecily Josten said: “Identifying which skills, abilities and activities will be demanded is key not only for us as individuals but also for policymakers and companies interested to hire and train the workforce of the future. As the returns to education in, for example, social or digital skills, are increasing, it will become relevant to know what type of training and education is needed.”

The authors’ analysis reveals that jobs that are high on ‘brains,’ implying they involve abstract thinking, are far less likely to be automated. The authors also find that combining ‘heart’ with ‘brains’ will future proof your job further. ‘Heart’ relates to jobs that involve soft skills and are high on people engagement.

The authors also found that automatability not only varies within occupations but also across countries. This is because, regardless of whether innovation is feasible, it does not automatically equate with whether it is implemented in a country for practical or ethical reasons. In other words, some governments seem to be doing more to protect jobs from automation compared to others.

Dr Grace Lordan said: “The future of work will have winners and losers. I would avoid accounting, unless you plan advanced studies, and choose STEM or economics. I would avoid becoming a brick layer and choose a specialist trade. We also need the government to do more to allow people engage in these advanced qualifications who cannot afford them, so they are not left behind. The money must come from somewhere, so we need to look at better capturing the rents from the technologies that are causing jobs to disappear.”