Probation officers’ excessive workloads are putting the public ‘at direct risk’, according to Napo, the trade union that represents probation and family court staff.
According to union officials, members say they are unable to cope with the growing number of ex-offenders they are being asked to supervise, and could be set to launch strike action.
Last year, an investigation by the National Audit Office found that the Probation Service was “under significant strain” since it returned to full public ownership in 2021.
Staff shortages and skills gaps were major factors in poor performance, the NAO found, with probationers adequately assessing risk of harm in just 28% of cases.
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From September, the government is planning to expand its use of tagging for ex-offenders so that up to 40,000 individuals will be monitored by tags and overseen by probation officers. This means a 40% increase in monitoring cases for staff.
Tania Bassett, Napo national official, said: “Excessive workloads and staff burnout poses a direct risk to the public, with staff being unable to effectively manage the risk of their clients in the community.
“Added to this is the shortage of accommodation, which will result in more people being homeless and therefore more likely to reoffend.”
She added that managers were discussing removing a workload measurement tool that would show the level of tasks officers were dealing with, putting them at further risk.
The Ministry of Justice announced plans in March to recruit 1,300 extra probation officers as part of a £700 million investment up to 2029.
The Guardian reports that the union’s executive has voted for a motion that “the current position is untenable and cannot continue”.
The executive claims that HM Prison and Probation Service leadership has “demonstrably failed in its duty of care to the workforce of the Probation Service, and this represents a reckless disregard for our welfare and professional integrity as well as the safety of our communities”.
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson told the newspaper: “We remain committed to working closely with trade unions to ensure our staff continue to get the support they need to cut crime and protect the public.
“We have full confidence in Probation Service leadership to deliver the necessary changes and improvements.”
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Royal Mail has 6,500 postal workers off sick every day, out of a total of about 130,000 employees, its chief executive has warned.
Martin Seidenberg, the chief executive of International Distribution Services (IDS), the Royal Mail owner, told The Times CEO Summit that the business wanted to be at the “vanguard” of efforts to tackle the nation’s economic inactivity problems. The absences at the Royal Mail cost the organisation £200 million a year, he said.
“It has a cost to us, and of course an impact to you, to society, because of the quality that we can deliver or not deliver,” Seidenberg said, adding that was “super important for us to fix”.
In response to its issues with sickness absence, IDS has given all of its 130,000 staff 24-hour access to an online GP.
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“We’ve been very surprised how heavily this is being used,” Seidenberg said. “We like it, because quite frankly, we believe that the sooner we can take care of our people and they have access to medical support, the sooner they’re likely to return to the job.”
Seidenberg also warned that the UK’s education system was failing to equip children with the technology skills needed when they move into work.
He spoke alongside Sir Charlie Mayfield, the former chairman of John Lewis who led the government’s Keep Britain Working review. Mayfield said it was no surprise that school leavers were generally unprepared for employment because “we’ve created a system where education and employment have never been more separate”.
In addition to what is being taught in the classroom, Mayfield pointed to work experience as an example of how the UK was failing to ready young people for their careers. “People basically don’t do work experience anymore [because] we’ve made it so difficult for people to do it,” he said. He gave an example of a plumber who might be open to having a young person still at school shadow him for a few hours, but cannot because he does not have employers’ liability insurance. “It’s madness and yet it is also fixable. We need to sort out the whole pathways into work.”
One of the traditional ways from school to work is apprenticeships – paid jobs that allow young people to work and gain hands-on experience, while also studying for a formal qualification.
“The easiest and most valuable person to recruit is the one you’ve already got in the business,” Mayfield said. “There are very few opportunities to drive growth that actually benefit employers, benefit individuals, save on welfare, don’t cost a tonne of money and don’t have to take a long time, and these are all right in front of us.”
Also speaking at the summit was Jennie Daly, the chief executive of housebuilder Taylor Wimpey. She told delegates that many employers in the construction industry had scaled back their apprenticeship programmes in response to higher employment costs.
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Reports about high youth unemployment sit alongside surveys showing persistent skills shortages. Robin Adda looks at how we can solve the conundrum where young people can’t find work and employers can’t find talent.
The latest report from Skills England paints a worrying picture of the UK labour market. Employers continue to report persistent skills shortages across key sectors, with demand for priority roles expected to grow significantly over the next decade.
This comes at a time when a new major report shows how youth unemployment has risen to its highest level in a decade, with more than one million young people now not in education, employment or training (Neet).
On the surface, these may appear to be two separate issues. In reality, they are intrinsically connected. The solution to both lies in how we identify, develop and invest in skills.
AI will continue to dominate headlines as a key driver behind this and so it should. It is reshaping the workplace at an unprecedented pace. But it is not the whole story.
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The bigger issue is that many organisations have become focused on immediate productivity rather than laying the foundations. With rising costs and economic uncertainty, it’s easy to go down this route – consequently, businesses are investing less in the pipeline, while many traditional entry-level opportunities continue to disappear.
Government initiatives such as those outlined in the Skills England report (the Growth and Skills Levy and Youth Guarantee) are positive steps, but they cannot solve this challenge alone.
Employers are still the biggest influence on how talent enters and progresses through the workforce, meaning businesses must play their part.
Here are some areas where businesses can make a tangible difference to their own skills gaps, and the unemployment issue – youth and beyond.
Hire for potential, not just experienceOne of the biggest barriers facing young people today is the expectation that they arrive already equipped – the never-ending cycle of needing experience to get a job and needing a job to get experience.
Employers should place greater emphasis on transferable skills such as curiosity and the ability to learn. Technical skills can often be taught, and many will carve out specialisms in time, but qualities such as resilience, communication, problem-solving and adaptability are increasingly valuable in a workplace shaped by constant change.
So with this, companies should think outside the box when building their hiring process – a CV should not be the sole measure of potential, especially for entry-level roles.
Think of incorporating more unique interview processes, such as live tasks that test problem-solving and attitude – allowing you to uncover the qualities that can’t just be AI’d onto a CV.
Rethink pathways into workMany traditional routes into employment were designed for a very different labour market.
Apprenticeships, internships, graduate schemes and work experience programmes remain important, but they need to evolve alongside employer needs and candidate expectations.
Encouragingly, some organisations are already recognising this. Marks & Spencer recently announced plans to create 1,000 paid traineeships for 16- to 24-year-olds across the UK and Ireland, offering structured training, paid experience and clear progression opportunities without requiring a degree.
Of course, not all have the resources of M&S, but this type of programme is scalable and mouldable. This means any business can create visible pathways into work, help young people gain confidence and experience, while developing talent aligned to their future needs.
Help candidates make skills visibleOne of the most overlooked challenges in recruitment is that valuable skills often go unrecognised.
Young people develop desirable capabilities in countless ways, yet often struggle to articulate them in a way that employers can easily identify.
Skills England’s Youth Employability Summit found that employers consistently value skills such as communication, resilience, teamwork and problem-solving, but that these frequently go unrecognised.
The result is that potential is overlooked, opportunities are missed, and the gap gets wider.
Businesses need to move beyond relying solely on qualifications, job titles and years of experience as indicators of capability. Instead, they should help candidates identify and communicate these transferable skills.
Creating a common language around this enables companies to make better hiring decisions. One way to achieve this is by embedding key skills-based questions into the initial application process, so businesses can uncover valuable potential that may otherwise be hidden behind a CV.
Young people develop desirable capabilities in countless ways, yet often struggle to articulate them in a way that employers can easily identify.
When organisations become more effective at recognising skills during the screening stage, everyone benefits – and businesses reduce the risk of overlooking high-potential candidates simply because they lack traditional work experience on paper.
The days of learning a role once and relying on those skills for an entire career are over, and AI alone is changing job requirements faster than many organisations can keep pace with.
Forward-thinking employers are moving away from one-size-fits-all training models and towards continuous, personalised learning cultures.
Skills mapping, personalised development plans and targeted training programmes can help individuals adapt while ensuring organisations remain resilient in the face of change.
Most importantly, organisations need to stop viewing skills development as a cost and start viewing it as an investment, as it could be cheaper in the long run versus outsourcing work to expensive specialists.
Invest in talent nowSkills shortages and youth unemployment are often discussed as separate challenges. They are not.
Closing that gap will of course require government support, education reform and economic growth. But it will also need employers to recognise the role they have to play – and to be bold in their commitment to entry-level talent.
The M&S programme demonstrates that there are organisations already willing to invest in young people and more businesses need to follow suit.
Investing in AI is important – but there needs to be balance. In this climate, it will take bravery, innovation and long-term thinking from business leaders to take a step back from AI and rebuild the pathways that connect young people to opportunity.
The organisations that succeed over the next decade will not be those that simply adopt the latest technology. They will be the ones that continue to invest in people from the ground up and, at the moment, that’s what’s missing.
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The UK jobs market showed signs of resilience in May despite continuing economic and political uncertainty, with the number of active job vacancies rising modestly.
According to the latest Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) Labour Market Tracker, there were 1.62 million active job postings across the UK in May, up 0.8% from April and 8% higher than a year earlier. The figures suggest that demand for workers remains relatively stable despite concerns over global tensions, rising employment costs and changes to labour market regulation.
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However, the number of newly advertised roles fell during the month. New job postings totalled 683,121 in May, down 4% compared with April and 9.2% lower than the same month last year, indicating that employers remain cautious about expanding their workforce.
The REC said the overall level of active vacancies had returned to a similar position to that seen in March, suggesting the labour market may be stabilising after recent fluctuations.
While most parts of the UK recorded growth in active job postings, particularly Northern Ireland, London was the only region to see a decline. Some of the sharpest falls were recorded in central London boroughs, including Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea, Hammersmith and Fulham, and Lambeth. The REC said the two bank holidays in May may have disrupted normal hiring patterns and contributed to the declines.
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Demand increased in some sectors, particularly hospitality, agriculture and retail, but the organisation cautioned that it was too early to draw firm conclusions about summer recruitment trends. It said next month’s figures would provide a clearer indication of whether seasonal hiring is gathering pace.
The REC said the labour market had remained resilient despite ongoing political uncertainty, legislative changes and tensions in the Middle East. Any increase in recruitment activity stemming from a decline in hostilities between the US and Iran was likely to be gradual, it said.
Maxine Bligh, the REC’s chief membership and innovation officer, said: “An Iran-US agreement will ease one of the global pressures holding back hiring and investment. But domestic political uncertainty and looming employment law changes still leave many firms without the confidence they need to accelerate recruitment.
“We are likely to see some growth in the job market, but not at full speed, with many businesses continuing to rely on temporary staff until the outlook becomes clearer.
“The government must calm the cost pressures that are shaping every recruitment decision if it wants firms to invest in hiring.”
Yesterday, Thursday 18 June, figures from the Office for National Statistics found that early job vacancy estimates for March to May suggest a decrease of 19,000 (2.6%) vacancies to 707,000, compared with December to February. This was the lowest level since February to April 2021.
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With the World Cup finals in the USA now well under way, HR experts are continuing to warn organisations over the potential for workplace disruption because of absences and ‘banter’.
Lisa Patmore, employment partner at Dorsey & Whitney, warned that many employees were now shaping their schedules according to the football schedule rather than by their normal working hours. She said that although England’s match with Croatia started at a “relatively civilised” 9pm, the celebrations after the match including the liberal consumption of alcohol will have caused problems the following morning.
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She referred to the matches being a “difficult mix for employers – particularly where absence or lateness affects productivity, service delivery or colleagues who are left to pick up the slack” and added that employers also needed to factor in recent changes to statutory sick pay, which mean workers are entitled to SSP from day one of absence, “which may have previously been a deterrent to missing work”.
Patmore advised employers to communicate expectations clearly and avoid knee-jerk reactions if someone calls in sick after a match, even where their social media showed they’d been posting all night.
“Employers must treat any reported sickness as genuine unless there is evidence to suggest otherwise. Failing to do so may risk claims for unfair dismissal or discrimination,” she said.
“What’s more, in the age of social media, lines are increasingly blurred. Sickness after a busy night of posting may look suspicious and could give an employer grounds to ask questions, but it’s not a free pass to take disciplinary action. Posts need to be considered in context: timestamps aren’t always watertight and snooping on private accounts can raise its own privacy issues – potentially backfiring on the employer.”
The difficulty with workplace banter today is that we can have five generations working together, all with different views on what is and isn’t acceptable humour” – Stephanie Davies, Laughology
For Stephanie Davies, CEO of L&D company Laughology, football banter was a source of some workplace issues. She referred to research commissioned by her firm that found over half of UK workers say workplace banter feels riskier now than it used to and more than four in 10 employees feel football banter at work is riskier. Davies, a behaviour psychologist, said that rather than letting disappointment or dodgy jokes cause tension, employers should embrace how football gives workplaces a “brilliant opportunity to create laughter, connection and perspective”.
She said: “The difficulty with workplace banter today is that we can have five generations working together, all with different views on what is and isn’t acceptable humour. That doesn’t mean we should immediately call people out and berate them when something goes wrong. Instead, we should ‘call people in’ by helping them understand why something might now be considered offensive. It’s also important to remember that workplace rules have changed. Even if two people are comfortable with a particular joke, someone who overhears it may be offended and can raise a complaint, making it the organisation’s responsibility to address.”
She referred to a firm that had received a complaint from an employee who overheard a colleague referring to supporters of the team he supported as “manky-mob and knuckledraggers”. Another had “manky-mob” shouted at him when he walked in to a room. Both terms are used by Celtic and Rangers fans and were seen as highly offensive, she said, because of the intense political and religious tensions between the clubs. Davies said she had also worked with a client where an employee took offence when colleagues supporting a rival team sent them jokey football memes.
Davies added: “I’m a huge advocate of humour because it is the social glue that brings people together. However, there are some clear rules. If someone asks you to stop, you need to stop immediately and understand why it caused offence. If you carry on, it’s no longer banter, it’s bullying. The same applies if the humour involves punching down, exploiting a power imbalance, targeting a protected characteristic or focusing on an individual’s personal traits.”
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Major changes in how C-suite roles are structured are needed in response to the rise of AI, the chief executive of Accenture UK and Ireland has said, with HR directors taking the lead.
Matt Prebble said HR directors will have to take responsibility for managing AI agents alongside human staff in future. He told the Financial Times: “When you consider running the organisation of the future, you’re going to think about how do I set up the organisation so that I’m managing people, but also agents and AI and technology?”
Integrating AI agents required careful management, he added.
“For the small number of clients that have managed to get an authentic agentic AI working in their organisation … you have to onboard agents, you have to train the agents … that could be the HR director’s job.”
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Prebble said AI was prompting boards to reconsider how to reshape their workforces. “We’re on the early part of that journey to understand how does the organisation structure of leadership really change,” he said.
He added: “As AI takes on more execution, the COO role is evolving, for example”, he said, with “operational leaders increasingly accountable for AI-driven outcomes”.
To mirror the way its clients operate and buy services, Accenture itself has shifted away from its traditional division between consulting, technology and other business lines towards broader “reinvention” projects.
Accenture has seen its market value and share price fall sharply, partly because of uncertainty over whether AI would replace many of the tasks carried out by its 786,000-person workforce and force it to slash prices.
Prebble rejected suggestions that Accenture was particularly exposed to the problem because of its large number of junior staff or that it had not done enough to address the threat. He emphasised that Accenture planned to increase UK graduate recruitment by 40% next year.
There is lots of shadow AI use where people are using AI to improve their individual effectiveness” – Ben White, On Track International
“This perception that you don’t need the bottom of the pyramid, you don’t need the next generation coming through, is misplaced. That’s based on a narrow view of productivity,” he said.
Ben White, executive consultant at learning and development firm OnTrack International, in response to Prebble’s comments, said most organisations were still struggling at basic AI adoption. “There is lots of shadow AI use where people are using AI to improve their individual effectiveness,” he said.
“But building and working alongside AI as a company, function or team is some way off. This comes down to people’s work identity being challenged. What value do I or will I add? Using AI may give people back more time to connect but what if people’s work identity is not about connecting but doing a task and going home?”
He added: “One of the reasons that AI adoption and integration has failed to date is that it is seen an ‘IT thing’ or it’s to do with skills and knowledge, so it must be HR or L&D. AI is different. I like the idea of the augmented worker where their abilities are enhanced by AI within the controlled environment of the workplace and we are all on similar journeys.”
White said the EU’s AI Act would push firms to show that employees had AI literacy. “This will not be solved by the usual e-learning package that people just click through and take a test at the end as a tick box,” he said. “This also has to be role specific. Different roles will have different learner journeys and different use cases.”
Meanwhile, research from recruiter Robert Walters and payments platform Native Teams has suggested demand for AI professionals in the UK could reach almost 300,000 by 2028, against an estimated domestic supply of just 137,000.
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Businesses continue to be more cautious in recruiting new staff as official labour market figures continue to show a falling number of vacancies.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) found that early job vacancy estimates for March to May suggest a decrease of 19,000 (2.6%) vacancies to 707,000, compared with December to February. This is the lowest level since February to April 2021.
While the unemployment rate fell from 5.2% to 4.9% over the latest three months, the employment rate also decreased slightly from 75.1% to 75%.
Ben Harrison, director of the Work Foundation at Lancaster University, said today’s statistics show the labour market remains in a precarious position.
“While unemployment may have fallen slightly from last month to 4.9%, 124,000 more people are out of work relative to last year. More than two-thirds of this increase has been driven by young people aged 18 to 24, while youth unemployment remains well above the level seen for much of this century.
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“At the same time, opportunities to gain a foothold in the labour market have declined. Recent Work Foundation analysis of Adzuna data found that the number of ‘starter’ jobs available to first-time entrants has fallen by 49% over the last decade.”
“And while overall vacancies have declined to their lowest level since 2021 at 707,000. This is particularly bad news for young jobseekers who are facing an increasingly sparse and challenging jobs market. While total vacancies have fallen in recent years, the decline in starter jobs has been 1.6 times faster than for other jobs in the last 12 months.”
Average annual growth in regular earnings (excluding bonuses) was 3.4% and 4.4% for total earnings (including bonuses).
Annual average regular earnings growth was 5.1% for the public sector and 2.9% for the private sector. Public sector pay growth is affected by the timing of pay awards varying this year.
Liz McKeown, ONS director of economic statistics, said regular wage growth in the private sector was rising at its lowest rate in five and a half years.
The figures come after yesterday’s inflation figures showed that the consumer prices index (CPI) in May stood at 2.8%, while CPI including owner-occupier housing costs (CPIH) was 3.0% – both unchanged on the previous month.
The retail prices index (RPI), the inflation measure cited by trade unions, ticked up slightly to 3.1%, up from 3.0% in April.
Andrew Crawford, senior vice-president at LHH UK and Ireland, said: “Today’s labour market figures show the reality of rising employment costs and the national insurance contributions hike. Despite growth at the beginning of the year, the current economic climate is forcing many employers to freeze hiring, negatively impacting the UK’s job market.
“The impact is being felt as more workers are staying in roles, with 51% are worried about being made redundant by their current employer. This uncertainty is likely set to continue for a time as nine in 10 UK businesses have made or are planning to make redundancies this year, with AI and automation being the top driver of layoffs for the first time.”
The Recruitment and Employment Confederation’s director of campaigns Shazia Ejaz said: “Much of the job market is on standby mode as employers wait for clearer signals while geopolitical tensions unfold. Global pressures and domestic political uncertainty are making employers hesitant to commit to hiring although latest REC data shows temp hiring is faring better than permanent.
“While employment and unemployment levels remain broadly steady in today’s data, this is a difficult labour market for jobseekers. Vacancies are falling across most sectors and workforce jobs are declining across many regions, showing demand for staff is easing.”
TUC general secretary Paul Nowak said: “While Donald Trump has declared an end to his illegal war in Iran, the economic shockwaves he unleashed are only beginning to ripple through to the labour market – and young people are among the most at risk.
“Improvements in the jobs market from the start of the year have offered workers and businesses some protection, but today’s figures suggest challenging months are ahead. Falling vacancies and stagnant real wages mean jobs and living standards are at further risk.
“We must do more to address youth unemployment. The government’s jobs guarantee is an important start, but far more places are needed, and young people shouldn’t have to be stuck out of work for a year and a half before they can benefit.
”The sheer number of young people not in employment, education, or training should be front of mind when the Bank of England meets today. It’s time to cut interest rates to boost investment and strengthen the economy.“
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Online electrical retailer AO World is offshoring up to 200 UK call centre roles to South Africa despite an increase in profits.
The retailer said the move was “in response to ongoing inflationary cost pressures, and particularly rising employment costs”. It said it expected to save about £4m a year as a result of the shift.
About 150 roles in phone sales and enquiries have already been switched from AO’s call centre in Bolton to South Africa over the past year or so. A further 50 are expected to go. About 100 further roles, handling more complex customer queries, are expected to remain in the UK.
AO said its employee numbers fell by 340 to 2,800 in the year as it made efficiencies across the business.
AO said on Wednesday that pre-tax profits had risen by 145% to £50.5 million in the year to 31 March, enabling it to pass £20m in special payments to shareholders.
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John Roberts, the founder and chief executive of AO, said: “What government is doing is accelerating the cost equation at the same time as technology is accelerating its capability and cost [reduction].”
He added that the fall in youth employment experienced by the UK lately was “nothing to do with AI and robotics” but “about terrible government decisions”, which had made it more expensive and risky to hire inexperienced workers with new measures such as more rights from the first day of employment.
Roberts warned that new rules on zero hours would make it difficult to take on temporary staff during busy periods such as Black Friday and Christmas, as employers could have to offer those workers similar hours in the slow January period.
Roberts said the group now had the strongest balance sheet in its history, “delivered against a backdrop of rising costs”.
AO said sales rose 11.4% to nearly £1.3 billion in the year and had continued well with a 17% surge in TV sales in May as households prepared to watch the men’s football World Cup.
It also said it had carried out “a small-scale, exploratory trial during the year to test the use of robotics within our warehousing operations”. AO said early results “are encouraging” and it was now beginning to do further tests in its live operations.
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UK chief executives still tend to be over-50 and male, research has suggested, with British boardrooms continuing to fall short when it comes to promoting youth and diversity compared with their European counterparts.
The Route to the Top Europe 2026 report, by executive search company Heidrick & Struggles, concluded just 8% of UK chief executive officers in 2025 were appointed before the age of 45, the second lowest in Europe. The average age for stepping up was 51.7 years.
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The only consolation is that, while the UK is at the bottom of the curve, the trend across Europe is also moving towards later appointment. The percentage of under-45s appointed had fallen from 25% in 2021 to 17% this year, it found.
Equally damning, just 8% of UK CEOs are women, and barely half (54%) hold a postgraduate degree – the lowest proportion in Europe.
Before the European C-suite gets too smug, however, the study concluded this 8% figure is broadly in line with the European average, suggesting boardrooms across the continent still have a job to do.
Across Europe, the number of women CEOs had only improved marginally in the past five years, from 6% in 2021 to 8% in 2026, it argued.
The Heidrick & Struggles report tracks the backgrounds and career paths of 522 CEOs at the largest companies across Europe. It also surveys 299 European CEOs and board members on succession planning and leadership alignment.
Among other findings, when it came to academic qualifications, as well as the 54% of UK CEOs who had a postgraduate degree, 39% only had a bachelor’s degree as their highest qualification. This compared with a European average of 69% for postgraduate qualifications, rising to 85% in the Nordics and Benelux.
One positive, however, is the internationalism of UK chief executives. Nearly half (46%) had cross-border experience and 39% had worked across sectors in their previous two roles – both above the European average.
Furthermore, 47% of CEOs at the UK’s largest companies were not British nationals – the highest proportion of any major European economy. France, by comparison, had just 18% non-national CEOs, with Italy and Spain lower still.
A total of 32% of UK CEOs had previously held a chief financial officer role – the highest proportion in Europe, against a European average of 22%.
Once in post, UK CEOs tended to stay for an average of 6.2 years, close to the European average of 6.6 years.
UK and Irish organisations were the most likely in Europe, too, to say CEO succession planning was not a high priority, with 43% saying this, against a European average of 33%.
While the UK’s openness to international leadership talent did set it apart from much of Europe – and was a sign UK plc is still a draw for top global talent – it also raised questions about the depth of the domestic talent pipeline, Heidrick & Struggles argued.
Jenni Hibbert, regional leader, Europe and Africa and global managing partner, leadership insights, at Heidrick & Struggles, said: “The data paints a detailed picture of who is running UK PLC in 2026. The path to the top has narrowed over time and the profile it rewards is increasingly specific. What should concern boards is not just who is getting through, but who isn’t.
“When nearly half your CEOs come from overseas, one in three came through finance, and fewer than one in 10 were appointed before 45, you have to ask whether the pipeline is genuinely open or whether it just looks that way,” she added.
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