Industry News
HR clashes with IT over technology systems-12th August 2010
IT and HR departments increasingly disagree over whether their HR technology needs improving, according to a survey of 300 HR and IT professionals by Taleo, a talent management solutions company.
While a third of businesses are planning to improve their HR technology, perspectives on the performance of their systems vary depending on which department you are in. Almost three-quarters of IT departments are happy with the integration of their HR technology yet 53 per cent of HR professionals believe further work is needed.
Chris Phillips, vice-president, international marketing at Taleo, said: “The fact that the majority of IT teams think that their work is done when it comes to HR technology, while most HR departments think there is still greater integration required, is a clear sign that expectations over the role of HR systems differ significantly between the two departments.”
Emergency Budget: Measures affecting HR- June 22nd
The public sector pay freeze will be extended for an extra year and employers' National Insurance contribution threshold has been raised, the chancellor has revealed.
Unveiling the emergency Budget in the House of Commons earlier today, George Osborne announced the one-year public sector pay freeze, due to start in April 2011, will now be extended to 2012. This freeze will affect all staff earning more than £21,000, but the 1.7 million public servants earning less than this will get an extra £250 a year during the freeze.
From April 2011, the threshold at which employers start to pay National Insurance will also rise by £21 per week above indexation, while companies set up outside the South East will not have to pay National Insurance for the first 10 employees hired for the next three years.
The chancellor pledged this policy would benefit 400,000 businesses.
Osborne also announce the government would launch a new consultation on the phasing out of the Default Retirement Age, and would accelerate the increase in the State Pension Age to 66.
But welfare provisions came under attack, with lone parents faced with returning to work once their youngest child goes to school, or losing their income support benefits. Currently, lone parents do not have to start looking for work until their youngest child reaches 10 years of age. Those on Disability Living Allowances will also have to undergo medical assessments from 2013 to prove they are entitled to the benefit. The government's cuts to the welfare bill will lead to a saving of £11bn by 2014-15, Osborne insisted.
The banks were not exempt, either. The chancellor announced that from January 2011 there will be a bank levy, which will raise £2bn a year. Other taxes to rise include VAT, which will rise from 17.5% to 20% from 4 January, raising £13bn a year.From April 2011, basic state pensions will also be re-linked with earnings.
Meanwhile, Osborne also announced that he expected the UK economy to grow by 1.2% this year and 2.3% next year, and rise further to 2.9% in 2013. But he warned by 2014 and 2015 growth would dip again to 2.7%.
Bad recruitment is damaging employer brands claims survey- June 10th
A survey of more than 500 recruitment managers, by psychometric testing firm SHL, has offered findings suggesting that companies are damaging their employer brand and bottom line by engaging in poor recruitment practices
The survey found that around 25% felt overstretched by the number of applications they are receiving during the economic downturn. This is having a knock-on effect on their recruitment processes, with nearly half of the 1,600 workers surveyed reporting they were left with a bad perception of an organisation following an unsuccessful job application.
A further 18% said their recruitment experience had been so bad it had stopped them doing business with the company in the future . This was as high as 28% for those aged 25 to 34. Recruitment practices most likely to put candidates off a company were not being told they had been unsuccessful (46%) and a lack of feedback (39%).The professional and legal services industry and the public sector were found to be the worst communicators during recruitment processes.
Change in government will bring better job market say business leaders- May 5th
Almost two thirds of business leaders agree a change in government will bring improvements to the job market. With election polls pointing towards a change of government this week, a survey of senior executives by management careers site TheLadders.co.uk found the party that best represented the needs of the jobseeker was the Conservatives (37%), followed by Labour (30%) and the Liberal Democrats (19%).
Although the Liberal Democrats fared less well, their economic spokesperson, Vince Cable, certainly made an impression with business people - he was voted the politician most senior managers would like to hire for their business.
When asked which politicians executives would most like to see working in their business - based on their performance in the job - the current prime minister only came sixth. The top five were Vince Cable (45%), David Cameron (35%), Nick Clegg (32%), William Hague (31%) and Ken Clarke (29%).
The top reasons for choosing those above were because they were 'strategic, a good thinker' (28%), exhibited 'personality, dynamism and motivation' (19.5%), and had demonstrated a 'good performance in their current position' (15.6%) - all attributes that are clearly valued by Britain's leading executives. And while 70% of those polled thought that business people would make good politicians, 76% do not rate politicians as business people, which perhaps explains Cable's popularity: with a solid business background, he was once a senior economist at Shell.
The specific policies related to improving the job market that managers would like to see in the winning party's manifesto are funding to business to recruit jobseekers over the age of 50 (47%), temporary tax relief for employers hiring to fill new roles (41%), action on retraining job hunters in transferable skills (39%), investments in schemes to help businesses employ the long-term unemployed (36%) and focusing on jobs for British nationals (30%).
Derek Pilcher, managing director of TheLadders.co.uk, said: "There's a great deal of expectation riding on the Election and particularly for the job market, which has taken a huge hit during the recession. With unemployment currently standing at 8% and the lowest it's been since 1996, it's really important for our politicians to also demonstrate their business skills in helping provide a more secure job market and - hopefully - a return to prosperity."
Gut instinct leads 7/10 managers into mistakes- February 16th
According to the results of a study by workplace psychologists OPP, 71% of all line managers would change the people decisions they've made if given a second chance. It's an indictment on the "gut instinct" culture that costs UK businesses millions of pounds in performance issues each year. Worryingly, nearly four in ten (39%) line managers said they still rely on gut instinct as one of the most important factors when making any decisions about their people. Twenty-five per-cent even admitted that whether they like someone personally was also a major influence.
A major factor in this is managers' mistaken belief that they truly know their people - a view not shared by employees. Ninety-seven per-cent of managers feel they know their people fairly well or better, as opposed to 74% of workers. Almost half (47%) of managers even say they know a great deal or everything there is to know about their people, while only 23% of employees share this view. Moreover, 45% said that they don't trust their manager's instincts on staff decisions relating to them or to others. The result is a workforce that is becoming increasingly distrustful of management decision-making.
Dr Robert McHenry, CEO of OPP, comments: "The results of this study make chastening reading for any management team. Organisations have to ask themselves why they demand objectivity and transparency in every other decision about resources, particularly in these difficult times when all investment is under scrutiny, but when it comes to people, they allow themselves to 'fly blind'? Managers are making the wrong people decisions more often than not, unable even to stand by their decisions after the fact. Mistakes range from overestimating the potential of a person to discovering information further down the line that would have changed the decision. In any case, these decisions are often made covertly and in the absence of hard facts.
Employers growing confidence- 4th December 2009
The short and medium-term outlook for growth in recruitment is continuing to improve, according to the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC).
The REC reports one in 10 employers anticipate an increase in their permanent staff levels over the next three months, an uplift of 5% on the previous month, while 16% expect their permanent staff numbers to rise in the next 12 months compared with 13% last month. Five per cent of employers expect to increase their temporary workforce in the next three months and 72% expect to maintain the same level of agency staff over the next year.
Although four out of 10 employers said there had been no impact on their workforce as a result of economic changes but 22% of employers are making staff redundant. Slightly more employers (3%) are now reducing hours or cutting pay in response to the continuation of the recession.
While the jobs market remains largely static, employers' hiring intentions and overall optimism grew again, according to the report. Commenting on the figures, REC director of research Roger Tweedy said: "It is encouraging that employer confidence is slowly but surely starting to manifest itself in terms of hiring intentions. However, it is very early days and a number of employers are still making redundancies or cutting working hours. Regular data on how employers are reacting to subtle changes in the jobs market is essential and we will continue to monitor the outlook for both permanent and temporary employment."
Staff cannot maintain the 'Dunkirk spirit' 27th October
UK employees have stretched themselves 'to the limit' to get their organisations through the recession, but this has taken a toll on employee engagement levels, new research reveals.
According to the Hay Group UK, organisations will face a talent exodus of disengaged employees, overstretched and under-rewarded in the recession. The study, The Loyalty Deficit, of 1000 front-line employees also reveals how some employers have broken an unwritten 'contract' with staff, jeopardising loyalty, commitment and ultimately their firm's ability to rebound out of recession.
Two thirds (65%) of staff are working over and above contracted hours and more than a third (36%) have increased the amount of overtime they put in over the past 12 months. The average amount of unpaid overtime workers are currently clocking up is six hours per week.
But this extra time is being put in willingly as workers pull together. The majority (85%) of those working unpaid overtime are committed to helping their organisation survive the recession, while 84% say that people in their team are willing to go beyond their normal responsibilities to help each other out. But half (50%) of these employees warn that this level of work is unsustainable. Seven out of 10 (70%), claim that overwork is having a negative impact on their relationships and family life, while a similar proportion (76%) complain it is affecting their general health and wellbeing.
Russell Hobby, associate director at Hay Group, said: "Walking around the office, leaders may feel the warm glow of a 'Dunkirk spirit' among teams battling through the recession together. However, managers should beware of superficial engagement, where levels of effort and staff retention are artificially inflated by redundancy fears and a soft employment market, rather than genuine loyalty to the firm. Those companies solely focused on the bottom line during the recession could easily fail to notice the debt they have built up with employees for their loyalty during tough times. They risk falling behind those few organisations that have bucked the trend and successfully kept engagement high."
Retirement age not unlawful- September 25th 2009
The default retirement age of 65 is not unlawful but should be scrapped, a judge has ruled in the long-running Heyday legal case.
Mr Justice Blake said the DRA was not unlawful when introduced by the government in 2006, but there was now a "compelling" case given the state of the UK economy for considering whether a retirement age is necessary.
His ruling means the Heyday case brought by charities Age Concern and Help the Aged has been dismissed. It is still legal for UK employers to force workers to retire at the age of 65.
He said his ruling took into account the government's move to bring forward a review of the DRA from 2011 to early next year.
Hundreds of retirement-related employment tribunal cases, which have been on hold awaiting the outcome of this legal challenge, can now move forward. Tribunals will have to take into account the judge's observations on the legality of a DRA of 65 in 2009 when considering these cases.
Over one third of employees plan to change job after the recession- July 29th
While many employees are staying put during the downturn, many are planning to change their job or their whole career when the recession ends. The CIPD's survey of 3,000 employees found that 34% of employees would change job within the next year in an ideal world. Furthermore, 24% of these would consider changing sector, and another quarter (25%) wanted to change their line of work altogether.
Claire McCartney, Talent and Resourcing Adviser at the CIPD, commented on the findings "What is striking is the high proportion of people wanting to change sector or even change their line of work altogether. Concerns over job security and finding new work are prompting people to re-think their career aspirations and ambitions. This will also have a big impact on trends in the labour market", she said"
She also urged employers to take steps now to emprove employee engageent and talent retention: "It's clear from this quarter's findings that the poor state of the labour market is acting like a dam holding back the normal flow of talent. Once job opportunities increase, however, dissatisfied employees will vote with their feet and leave, making it important for employers not to take the loyalty of their people for granted.Employers need to be careful to avoid complacency. The recession may keep your best people with you for now, but you need to take the time to focus on building employee engagement by providing employees with clarity around career paths and setting work that is meaningful to them, if you want them to stay put when better times return."