Asian Leader issue 313 | Page 16

16 Asian LEADER 15 Jan - 28 Jan 2014 BUSINESS & FINANCE Employers plan to take on more new graduates A survey of 100 big employers suggests they are planning to increase the number of new graduates they take on this year. The study, by High Fliers Research, says there will be a 9% rise in this recruitment - about 1,400 extra jobs. Many of the jobs will go to people who have already worked for the organisations, either on work experience or placement, it suggests. Previous forecasts have been less optimistic. According to the study, the increase in what is known as entry-level graduate employment is the biggest in four years among this group of employers. Average starting salaries are £29,000 a year, with higher amounts being paid by investment banks (£45,000) and law firms (£39,000). Among the highest starting salaries for this year are at the European Commission and the supermarket chain Aldi, both offering rates of about £41,000. The study says two-thirds of the employers are offering “paid work-experience programmes” for students and recent graduates, with more than 11,000 paid placements this year for first and second-year undergraduates. In all, 37% of this year’s entry-level positions are set to be taken by people who have already worked with the organisations in some capacity. The largest recruiters of graduates in 2014 will be the charity Teach First, which takes on top graduates to be trained as teachers. It has 1,550 vacancies. It is followed by financial services groups PwC (1,200 vacancies) and Deloitte (1,000 vacancies). Martin Birchall, managing director of High Fliers Research, said: “This very significant increase in graduate vacancies at Britain’s top employers means the job prospects for graduates leaving university this year are the best they’ve been since the start of the recession seven years ago.” A study last year from the Association of Graduate Recruiters was less optimistic, forecasting a 4% fall in graduate vacancies. EU Issues new guidelines for migrant benefits T he European Union has published new guidelines aimed at clarifying the rights of migrant workers to claim social benefits in other EU member states, amid a heated debate in countries such as Britain and Germany over welfare payments to foreigners. The issue of so-called benefit tourism has risen up the political agenda ahead of elections for the European Parliament elections in May, which are expected to see significant gains by right-wing populist parties such as the United Kingdom Independence Party and France’s National Front. These parties have been benefiting from a wave of anti-EU sentiment following years of economic crisis in the region. The lifting of limits on the free movement of Bulgarian and Romanian workers on Jan. 1 has also stoked con- Continued from page 17 This is where a time plan comes in. You need to have a very clear idea of what needs to be done, how long it will take, and when it is going to be done. If it is your first time using a time plan you may want to keep a time log for a week or two first. With a time log you write down in detail how you spend your time. Do this for a few days and you will get a clear idea of how you spend your days and how long various tasks take you. When you know how long each task will take, you can plan your day much more accurately. The 4 Ds of time management Now you can move onto looking more closely at the things you need to do each EU Employment Commissioner Laszlo Andor, cerns over a fresh influx of Eastern European migrants into Britain, similar to the wave that followed the EU accession of Poland and nine other states in 2004. The new guidelines, by the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, clarify which country should be judged to be a worker’s country of “habitual residence” and therefore responsible for paying social benefits. The criteria include family ties, duration of stay and where the person pays taxes, according to the guide. Presenting the guidelines on Monday, EU Employment Commissioner László Andor launched a robust defense of the free movement of workers, which he described as a “cornerstone” of the EU and one of its greatest achievements. “The more workers from other EU countries a country has, the more solvent its welfare system is,” Mr. Andor said. Faced with growing support for the euroskeptic UKIP party, Britain’s Conservative-led coalition government has proposed restricting migrants’ access to benefits. Earlier this month, U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron said he would try to renegotiate Britain’s EU membership to allow it to withhold child benefit payments from U.K. workers whose children live abroad. In Germany, some politicians in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s governing coalition have called for more rights to deport people from other EU countries who have sought welfare payments without previously having worked in Germany. Time management day and deciding how to handle them. For this you will need the four Ds of self-management. These are: . Do it - Get it done, the sooner the better. . Delegate it - This task doesn’t suit you; get someone else to do it. . Dump it - Not important. Forget about it. . Defer it - Something for the ‘to do’ pile. Come back to it later. You should be able to file any task that arises in your average day under one of the four Ds. Time wasters Now let’s look at time wasters. Time wasters can destroy any attempt at effective time management if they are not identified and eliminated. The biggest problem is that they are often very hard to identify because they can be very trivial. These are some time wasters to watch out for: . Lack of or poor planning File things properly, write down appointments, that kind of thing. Basically, you need to be organized to use your time effectively. . Procrastination - Many people keep deferring things when they are best done immediately. Don’t fall into this trap. . Not delegating - You can’t do it all yourself. Do the things that you are good at and enjoy. Someone el