I just got out of the habit of saying DTI (department of trade and Industry) and now BERR (Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform) is becoming BIS (Business, Innovation and Skills). BERR joins with DIUS (Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills) which in the press release should “create a single department committed to building Britain’s future economic strengths”. The last re-brand cost the Government a total of £218,063, I imagine the cost this time is likely to be inflated over the cost two years ago.

Will there be cost savings in removing any duplication or possible redundancies?

I like the fact that the higher education sector will be brought closer to the world of commerce and industry, as a recruiter I see many graduates poorly prepared for the actual work they are supposed to be trained to carry out.

Interestingly the first item mentioned on the Government’s press release is “Advocate the needs of business across government, especially of UK small businesses” which is a nod towards the huge SME sector of the UK economy.

We shall see what occurs in practice…

When working for a large design and construction company, I went on a site visit to South Wales. A grievance from the guys was a lack of good quality, high factor sun screen. They requested that the Company provide the sunscreen as it was costing them a “fortune” to stay safe in the sunshine whilst working.

Request accepted, Factor 30 bought at local Boots.

A quick win for the Company and definately supporting their health and safety at work.

Cash might not be the most effective way of motivating your employees, cash bonuses often get eaten up by regular bills and expenses where a gift or prize may be more memorable and exciting.

What types of incentives are there?
Merchandise - an iPod or a mobile phone,
Events/activities - meals out, hotel accommodation or special trips - Ballooning, Day at the Races or theatre/show trips.
Travel - all expenses paid to tropical destinations
Retail vouchers or gift cards - often available at less than the retail value
Points based awards - to be converted to a range of awards

Advantages

Providing incentives can be more affordable for employers, if budgeted correctly and at the right level to still motivate employees, sometimes the return on the investment can be disproportionate, employees put a greater value on relatively low cost rewards.

It can be customised to the wants and needs of your employees.

The reward scheme can be very simple to implement and understand for employees - sell this much product and you will get a flat screen TV.

There is a subtle psychological effect of rewarding employees with gifts and prizes, it is difficult to talk about a cash bonus you receive from your employer (and it is generally the practice to not allow the employee to discuss cash bonuses with colleagues), however winning a prize - it is far more acceptable to be public about winning and even publicly recognising an employee in front of their colleagues for doing so.

It is also far easier to recognise a team or group of people and make the reward a team event increasing sense of belonging and team working.

Drawbacks

Be careful to align the rewards to the expectations of your employees, too low and the prizes aren’t worth winning and actually will de-motivate employees, too high and the risk is the scheme is unaffordable.

Sometimes, hard cash bonuses has become almost part of the wage packet, in terms of recruitment and retaining good employees, it is important to communicate the value of the programme. If you are swopping from a cash scheme think very carefully about the impact on employees and whether your bonus scheme could be considered as part of the employment contract.

Be wary of the tax implications of the incentives, both cash and non-cash, click here HM Revenue & Customs: Incentive awards and PAYE to understand more or speak to your accountant.

The UK Government suggest in its contingency plan that large organisations should plan for absence up to 15% and for small businesses up to 30%. Also bad luck for smaller organisations as it is said that it is likely to spread quicker in smaller workforces.

Also you need to think about emergency time off for dependents – those caring for a sick dependent, also those advised to stay at home or are even too worried to attend work.

All this means contingency plans for coping in a crisis, this should include:

enhanced protection for sites and vulnerable employees
raising employees’ awareness and testing readiness
maintaining health surveillance and hygiene measures
producing action plans that are specific to locations

Here is a link to the Cabinet Office checklist for Business and a pdf from the NHS on HR issues

I suppose I am like the rest of the country, hoping that it will phizzle out but as the Scouting Movement’s motto goes “Be Prepared”.

In a recession, it might be the case that employees may be experiencing financial difficulties, they may not arise from employment but other factors outside the employer’s control (e.g. the employee’s partner has lost their job). Although there is no legal obligation to help employees in financial difficulties, it may be in the company’s interest to do so. Here are some ideas for ways in which employers can assist.

Counselling

Some employers have Employee Assistance Programmes (EAP) which provide counselling to employees on a confidential basis, these can be suggested to employees when the situation arises. They aren’t specialists in Debt counselling but would have access to specialists in the field. Be careful however, it is not enough just to offer a stressed out employee the number to a helpline - there are cases where this has been found to be a breach of the duty of care. Investigate further and see if there are more ways in which they can be supported from work.

Debt counselling

More specific than just counselling and more available to employers without EAP schemes - the Citizen’s Advice Bureau give debt advice to individuals and also the Charity CCCS. Make it clear that it is a third party and the employer is not responsible for the advice provided.

Loans and salary advances

Typically, this is what employees first come and ask for and in a recession there would be an increased demand. If the company doesn’t have a loan scheme, one can be put into place temporarily. It is important to set out the rules, and document the loans or advances clearly with written agreements on repayment via deductions from future salary. Also make it clear that outstanding amounts will be deducted form final salaries.

Time off work

This is a gesture of goodwill, in some cases, employees will want time off to visit bank managers, search for alternative accommodation if their home is at risk of repossession. These requests are granted at discretion and on an informal basis. However, if there is an increase in requests, it may be the case that the company needs to make a formal decision on how such requests are dealt with

Flexible working

There might be an increase in requests for Flexible working (employees with children up to the age of 16 or responsibilities for caring for adults, who have at least 26 weeks service). These have to be considered carefully and fairly - it would be best to seek further advice if you don’t have a policy relating to Flexible working that you can follow.

Overtime Requests

Although Overtime is probably reduced, there will be increased requests, it could be tempting to give some people priority over others but care must be taken not to discriminate. Always consider ways of ensuring that the opportunity to work is fairly allocated, even those with financial difficulties will have to compete on an equal footing with other employees.

The Work Foundation has announced that it will be examining the future of HR, looking at:

- Who and what HR can uniquely champion.
- The role HR plays in levels of risk aversion, professional judgement and accountability in the organisation.
- Employee engagement where alignment of objectives and motivation cannot be taken for granted so that this tension drives innovation, diversity and positive energy.
- Future trends in the economy, the workforce and the workplace within which HR operate.

Thank you The Work Foundation! I will be watching the progression and final outcome with great interest. What does HR produce? Has it been the case that HR has hidden behind the intangibility of people management? I have always though this to be an excuse, although direct impact is sometimes difficult to measure we can measure preceived indirect benefits and absolutes like reductions in employee turnover, absence, recruitment costs etc.

Is there also a propensity hide behind the need for process and procedures, generally driven by legislation, but occasionally over-engineered for political correctness and to feel that HR controls the process rather than management?

In regard to engagement, I seem to get a different and vague response about what “engagement” actually is from almost every HR practioner I meet, I will be interested in their results in that respect.

Personnel Today are looking for your views on this…

Richard Beatty, Rutger HR Professor (USA) has certainly sparked some online “debate” from his recent presentation to 300-odd Financial Executives in Orlando USA. As I read the information, Beatty says that HR are spending too much time on trying to engage employees who are “unengageable” or just couldn’t care less about working in the organisation. He bases his information on the Gallup survey of customer services employees in a Financial firm and the negative impact of the bottom quartile on customer reaction. He also states that HR isn’t very good at data analytics and we don’t think like business people. “Many of them entered human resources because they wanted to help people.”

I think on the analytics side he is probably right, I have worked in large Blue Chips and the data gathering and analysis in HR is woefully bad, HR Professionals end up running around fire-fighting or introducing the lastest HR “must-have” Strategy (soon to dropped as implementation didn’t stick as the organisation was too busy getting business done). Basic numbers and measures are forgottten in the dash towards “employer of choice”.

Beatty’s arguments and solutions remind me very much of Jack Welch’s (General Electric), 20, 70, 10 principle for performance management. Reward the top 20% performers, satisfy the middle 70% and get rid of the bottom 10%. Translated recently to “performance manage” the bottom 10%. Problem is that the bottom 10% soon are of a high standard and you start alienating good people and get a reputation.

I have to agree that some HR Professionals aren’t business-minded, but in the majority we are pretty savvy when it comes to seeing the bottom line - if you had to deliver on some of the budgets given by Boards, you would have to be. I think good HR professionals would agree with Beatty that finding out what makes top performers tick and training and selecting those attributes makes sense - but isn’t that part of engagement? Getting employees the skills and the knowledge to be able to contribute to the goals of the business. Engagement isn’t just making people feel warm and fuzzy about the organsiation they work for.

Other interesting comments come from Denise Cooper of Profitablity through Human Captial, who relates Beatty’s comments back to 2005 article “why we hate HR” and Jim Holincheck who breaks down the article into sections and comments well on each - particularly on the analytics side (I am presuming that is his consultancy area). Also Gautam Ghosh who points out that Beatty could be playing to the audience and enforcing some age-old stereotypes (I am with him on that point)

We love our jargon, I have seen many definitions of engagement but still the myth perpetuates that it is about “employer of choice” and “feeling warm and fuzzy about the organisation”. Really - there is nothing very cuddly about a Corporation to feel fuzzy about!

Mercer has produced a report on Absence and Healthcare benefits for 2008. I am a bit cheap and haven’t purchased the 2008 survey but looking at the 2007. One of the most interesting facts for me is that 80% of business managers surveyed know the rate of absence (eg the percentage) but only half of that number know the reasons and even less know the cost of the absence.

No surprises, but how can you tackle absence if you don’t know the reasons (you could have an institutional problem you don’t even know about) and why would a business manager but motivated to do anything if they dont know the cost effect?

Quite horrified by the lack of compassion shown by Guru, but hey I suppose the blog is funny and supposed to be controversial…

Guru’s blog here: http://www.personneltoday.com/blogs/human-resources-guru/2009/03/jade-goody—the-unemployed-mo.html

This was my comment:

Well, I think it is a sign of the times - more redundancies, particularly effecting retail etc, indirectly effecting the female population more.

The female population being more likely to have a sympathetic bone in their body (please note that remark is vaguely directed at “disciple Rob” and you, Guru) and able to give time to delivering floral tributes. Also more likely to be part time employed and full time “home-makers”.

Probably already been to the job centre, seen the queues and decided to be pragmatic and do the job search online later.

I wasn’t a Jade fan either, but in view that a majority of a workforce might be - in interests of motivation and employee care - having a heart might be politic.

Yesterday, I spent some time with Phil Pluck, Northern Director of ACAS. Really informative and enlightening meeting. I have always been an advocate of ACAS as a useful source of advice for employees and on occasion for myself! I have also used them for training Employee Representatives in a TUPE situation - very good training, good price and additional benefit of employees having a trusted, independent source for answers.

Some of the interesting points discussed with Phil:

The Recession - % increase in cases for ACAS is 40% (not dissimilar to the last recessions figures), they were hoping that this would start to decrease somewhat but has remained steady due to different sectors being effected at difference times. Interestingly the corelation between the onset of redundancy processes and the increase in mental health issues - Phil had had some interesting conversations with the GMC

The Grimsby TOTAL “strike” non-union politically-motivated pickets posing as union members, the fact that TOTAL’s orignal contractor prior to the Italians was British but failed to fulfill the terms of the contract (interesting that wasn’t widely reported!). Also the diffculties faced when ACAS were brought in by the Government.

I didn’t realise that ACAS were called on for international work, we chatted around work completed in China for the Government, in understanding what employee relations actually is and how it contributes to organisational development.

Phil was a feast of information on the changes in mediation requirements, the types of training that ACAS conduct for employees and employers. Phil was great to chat to, clearly knowledgable and able. Although his first Public Sector appointment, Phil is dedicated to improving ACAS, its commerciality and its services, expanding more into serving the private sector. ACAS mainly work with the public sector but in my experience can add incredible value to SME’s and Corporations as a trusted name for employees in negotiations/mediations, expertise (in my experience - I admit that not everyone’s experiences will be the same) and value for money.