Unite is calling on employers in the IT and communications sector to improve their training and appraisal practices after research revealed widespread dissatisfaction among staff.

 
A survey of just under 400 personnel working for firms ranging from Accenture and Apple to Capita and Hewlett-Packard undertaken by the union revealed that 62% were not receiving the necessary training to keep their skills up-to-date, while a huge 85% were dissatisfied with what development they did get.
 
A further 52% believed that the assessment of their performance over the last three years had been neither fair nor accurate, while only just under a quarter were happy with the situation. A massive 92% also felt that they had not been fairly rewarded for their efforts over the same time period, with 78% indicating that they were either ‘dissatisfied’ or ‘very dissatisfied’.
 
Peter Skyte, Unite’s national officer, said: “In such a fast-moving sector, the fact that almost two thirds of people felt they did not receive the necessary training to keep up their skills is deeply worrying. UK workers will lose out unless they can compete in the global IT market. Employers must do more to keep their employees skills up-to-date.”
 
It was also concerning that so many staff were dissatisfied with how their performance was managed and assessed by employers, he added.
 
A third of respondents believed that their employer failed to take the appraisal process seriously compared with 38% who were happy with the situation, while one fifth said that performance appraisals did not happen regularly enough.
 
Some 28% also indicated that the results of such assessments were not agreed with them, 22% had no right of appeal against their assessment and 21% had no right of appeal against resultant pay awards.
 
Of those that were subject to ‘forced rankings’ or a system of pre-determined performance rankings, 94% felt the system to be unfair and 91% felt it had a ‘negative’ or ‘very negative’ effect on team working.