Don can be heard discussing the highlights of the 2008 Salary Survey for Management Consultants here

You can download a free copy from the main BLT website, here

Chartered Secretary recently published a piece about the new Working Time Directive. They tell us that 3.3 million people are now working more than 48 hours a week – and many of those are senior employees, according to a new report.

The Trades Union Congress is warning that the number of people working long hours has increased by 180,000 people over the last year. The union reckons the increase is due to the challenging economic climate, which has made employers more reluctant to recruit new staff and instead work existing employees harder.

The sharpest increase has taken place in the east of England and London, and that 85 per cent of those working long hours are male. It surmises this is because senior roles are increasingly reliant on long hours – and it is concerned that this expectation could exclude women with childcare responsibilities from taking on top jobs.

‘Employees across the UK already work the longest hours in Western Europe,’ TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber adds. ‘The recent increase will mean lower productivity, more stress and less time to have a life outside the office with friends and family.'

The TUC had been hoping that EU employment ministers would side with Britain’s workers to end the excessive working time.

That was not to be and as I’m sure you all know by now, Britain has secured a right to opt out of the EU’s mandatory 48-hour working week. The new rules mean that UK employees will have a legal cap of between 60 and 65 hours a week, averaged over three months.

Our recent CSS Salary Survey found that 74% of company secretaries work longer than their contractual hours. If you’d like to receive a copy of the survey results, please contact css@blt.co.uk

Are you one of them? Does working longer hours decrease your productivity, increase your stress levels and have a detrimental affect on your family life?

As always we’d love to hear your comments…

Industrial Consulting: New Entrants. High-flying Engineers and Scientists needed.

Location: Home based, UK/international work locations
Salary: £32000 + signing-on bonus + Audi A3 + profit share

Are you passionate about profitable production? An evangelist for engineering excellence? Excited about superior systems? The forty consultants who work in this seven year old consultancy are – and they’re looking for another 30 new colleagues this year to join them.

The consultancy delivers manufacturing performance improvement by tackling the shop-floor problems which limit such performance. It works with car plants and curry-makers, defence organisations and dairies across the UK, Europe and North America.

You’ll be trained extensively in consulting techniques and will be exposed to a wide variety of businesses and the people who work for them. You’ll bring a passion for engineering and science, strong communication skills and the ability to develop rapport in the boardroom and the paintroom.

Previous successful hires have come straight from university, or have worked in industry, the armed forces, schools or the research park.

If you can work hard and still find the time to do amazing things; if you want to be with outstanding people in challenging environments; if you deserve to earn a six-figure salary in five years, contact us. But you will need to demonstrate top decile academic success and the personality to match.

CV to Don Leslie at BLT - dfl@blt.co.uk

Look forward to hearing from you

BLT's 2008 Salary Survey is now available for download free here.

Thanks to all of you who took the time to participate in this year's survey - over 700 consultants participated and there are a number of interestings outcomes:

- Salaries: we're finally starting to see some increase after 7-8 years of quite flat growth...

- Work Life balance: improving in terms of the time that consultants have to spend away of home. But 15% still spend more than 4 days per week away from home...

- Hours worked: Median is 51 hours per week. But a significant proportion more than 60 hours per week...

- Impact of credit crunch : Some slow down in the Financial consulting sector, but otherwise a fair degree of optimism in the market..

What are your views? As always a BLT hamper on offer for the best contributors!

Whilst the media are busy berating executives for creaming bonuses at the expense of their employees, it may surprise you to learn that a 2008 Employee Benefits/YouGov study has found that bonuses and benefits packages rank in 16th and 17th place respectively in a list of factors driving employee engagement. The most important were interesting work, work-life balance and the working environment.

Earlier this year we heard that more than a quarter of chief executives at some of the UK’s largest companies receive bonuses even if profits rise by as little as 1% above inflation and that more than half of City of London professionals said they would look for a new job if their year-end bonus failed to meet their expectations.

City workers appear on the surface to have got what they wanted! The Guardian reported at the end of May that “City workers have been awarded £13.2bn in bonuses so far this year, suggesting that the credit crunch has yet to be felt in the pockets of most bankers.”

But have they, when analysts at JPMorgan predicted back in April that total job losses in London’s City financial district are likely to hit 40,000 due to the global credit crunch?

One has to question the sanity of paying out huge bonuses with one hand and handing out redundancy notices with the other.

Maybe in light of this, it’s just as well that ordinary workers feel that interesting work, a balanced work-life and working environment are more important that hefty end of year bonuses.

How important is the annual bonus to you? Would you rather forego the extra money to ensure your job security?

As always we’d love to hear your comments…