Sirona Says

The 10 ways to manage your workforce in a recession, courtesy of a CIPD & ACAS JV

Thanks to a CIPD and ACAS joint venture on the subject of helping companies during the recession, they have produced their official guidelines to managing your workforce during a recession. It is an excellent checklist for helping your business through the recession and out the outher side in the best possible way for the stability of your company.

1. Think long term

• Think creatively about how to reduce employment costs, such as new ways of working and work reorganisation.
•  See CIPD Research Insight Smart Working: The impact of work organisation and job design
• Remember that making people redundant and recruiting again later when the market picks up is expensive. 
• Protect and make the most of the training budget – focus resources on key areas such as improving line management capability and customer service. 
• Bear in mind your long-term reputation and responsibility to act as a fair employer.

2.  Maintain employee engagement

• Redouble your efforts to boost or maintain employee engagement.
• See CIPD Research Insight Employee Engagement in Context
• Manage expectations and set a clear sense of direction.
• Keep employees in the picture even when there is little concrete news. 
• See Acas guide Employee Communications and Consultation 
• Use all available media to beat the rumour mill.
• Think about creative, non-financial ways of motivating employees such as recognition schemes, team-building days and employee awards.

3.  Strengthen line management capability

• Support your managers so they are better able to operate in periods of traumatic change.
• Brief line managers in full on developments so they can talk to their teams – face-to-face communications are best.
• Recognise the vital role that line managers play in every aspect of the employment relationship – make sure they are properly trained in day-to-day people management skills.
• See CIPD guide Line Management Behaviour and Stress at Work 
• Line managers also need support and leadership from senior management and from HR to equip them to manage difficult situations and avoid burning out.

4. Support employees’ health and well-being

• Recognise the psychological burden and impact that can arise in a recession – make sure workplace support and occupational health provision are in place to prevent high levels of work-related stress.
• See Acas guide Health, Work and Wellbeing 
• See CIPD Research Insight What’s Happening with Well-being at Work? 
• Where possible provide opportunities for flexible working to help employees balance their work and home lives.
• See Acas guide Flexible Working and Work–life Balance    
• Ensure you have mechanisms in place to deal with workplace stress and potential conflict at an early stage.
•  Acas guide Stress at Work 
•  See CIPD/Acas guide Mediation: An employers’ guide
• Recognise the potential negative impact of ‘survivor syndrome’ if your organisation has made redundancies – employees that remain in organisations where there have been job cuts often suffer from guilt while coping with increased workloads.

Does Your Business need a Recruitment Pinch Hitter now?

I am sure that many of you are not fans of Baseball, so first let me explain what a pinch hitter actually is:

They are simply defined as a substitute for another person, especially in an emergency or a moment of need.  This expression comes from baseball, where it is used for a player substituting for another at bat at a critical point or in a tight situation.

So to put into a business context, it would be someone with specialist skills being called upon to go into a company and solve specific needs of that company, for problems or issues they are experiencing.

Yes it's not brilliant out there, but it's NOT THAT BAD

We all know the state of the economy, it is something that everyday the media seem to taking great pleasure in telling us because they think people want to hear about it!
But what is more significant, is that all this bad news and the continual overkill of doom and gloom  (in my opinion, anyway) that comes out of the British Chamber of Commerce is ever-shrinking the confidence of recruitment and employment in UK businesses.

But let me be clear here, yes there is alot of bad news out there, but it is not effecting every company in the same way, as many are still recruiting staff at all levels. There are still big recruitment problems out there for some companies, as the quality and availability of candidates is becoming very limited.

A large retailer I spoke to last week, told me that their usage of recruitment agencies has actually increased since the credit crunch took hold!! Is that so surprising?
They now receive ten times more CV's, and the quality has dropped dramatically, so for this retailer to get to speak to the skilled individuals they need in their business, they are needing to use agencies to source them.

Talent Management and free beans for a year!!

If someone mentions the product, baked beans, to you, which brand is synonymous with them? Well for me there is only one brand - Heinz. The same goes for soup, Heinz again!
But even with two such powerful brands (and others of course), the company were starting to lose market share, and even confidence in their own products - they didn't even serve them in their own canteen!

So, a new CEO was ordered  - the third in four years! So how did the new one, Dave Woodward, turn around the performance?
He realised that the future of the company lay in the strength of its talented employees. He encouraged employee involvement, engagement and empowerment - after all the employees should know their product and have their own great ideas and opinions, shouldn't they?
He went about the task like a steam train, firstly replacing ten of his twelve senior managers within four months, and put in place new talented managers who believed in his vision that success can be driven by internal talent - but only if they are correctly managed and motivated! Some of the other interesting changes he made were:

• At 8am every Monday morning, his most senior managers would attend a tasting session to tase every single new product.
• Every month, there would be meetings for all the 2300 - by video if needed. He used texting as the medium to collect questions to be asked at these meetings.
• He set up a group of 42 leaders who had to work in the factories, visit the retailers, talk to in store customers and even spend time in consumers homes!! He wanted them to get closer to their product and their customers.
• Introduced a Dragons Den initiative to help staff present their new ideas. Successful new products have been produced because of this. Rewards for this? Well one was a years free supply of beans!!

His belief in his staff and the initiatives he put in place worked because now two years later, Heinz have regained their No 1 position in their respective markets

I believe many companies should show more belief to their existing employees. Given the encouragement and involvement, they may well find that many more of their staff join internal talent management programmes. It will also improve staff retention, help further develop an employment brand and will help improve staff recruitment.
Companies don't always have to go externally to find the talent they need. They may just have to look a little harder - and maybe therein lies the answer. Is talent spotting the real issue?

 

Top 20 Employee Referral Rewards Schemes

I was recently working with a client on their recruitment process, and one of the areas that they were keen to explore was around employee referral rewards / incentives. They knew what they were currently offering was minimal, and wanted to be able to offer a range of incentives to reward their staff for referring new employees to the company.
So using my network on LinkedIn and other contacts, I reached out to all the HR and recruiter contacts (corporate and agency) to see what other companies were doing around employee referrals and what they were giving as incentives. The question that I posed was, "Does anyone know of any employee referral rewards / schemes, that are a little different?" Thanks to the fantastic response I received, I was able to make some excellent suggestions to my client.

Nearly every email I received asked me to inform them of what all the other answers were, so knowing retaining talent is a favourite subject at the moment, I have compiled a list of the Top 20 employee referral rewards offered by companies below (It had to be 20 because there were many good ideas!):

1. Time off. This was the surprising winner, with companies giving time off for successful referrals, ranging from an afternoon, to a day, to a week (very generous!).

2. Cold hard cash! As always money talks, and this ranged from £200 up to £3000 per referral.

3. Travel Allowance. With petrol prices and travel in general getting more expensive, no surprise this came in at no.3. Answers included petrol paid for and train fares covered.

4. Special Event. An example being a fully paid trip to Monaco Grand Prix

5. Holiday. A week away at a choice of destination, fully paid.

6. Restaurant. A long lunch at a good restaurant to include the person referred to the company

10 Reasons why companies fail to retain their top talent

Talent Management and retaining staff is now absolutely key to a company wishing to be successful. I came across this interesting article by Eric Jackson on his blog, Breakout Performance, regarding talent retention. It is a self explanatory title, so here are Eric's ten reasons why companies fail to retain their top talent:

1. Big Company Bureaucracy. This is probably the #1 reason we hear after the fact from disenchanted employees. However, it's usually a reason that masks the real reason. No one likes rules that make no sense. But, when top talent is complaining along these lines, it's usually a sign that they didn't feel as if they had a say in these rules. They were simply told to follow along and get with the program. No voice in the process and really talented people say "check please."

2. Failing to Find a Project for the Talent that Ignites Their Passion. Big companies have many moving parts -- by definition. Therefore, they usually don't have people going around to their best and brightest asking them if they're enjoying their current projects or if they want to work on something new that they're really interested in which would help the company. HR people are usually too busy keeping up with other things to get into this. The bosses are also usually tapped out on time and this becomes a "nice to have" rather than "must have" conversation. However, unless you see it as a "must have," say adios to some of your best people. Top talent isn't driven by money and power, but by the opportunity to be a part of something huge, that will change the world, and for which they are really passionate. Big companies usually never spend the time to figure this out with those people.

3. Poor Annual Performance Reviews. You would be amazed at how many companies do not do a very effective job at annual performance reviews. Or, if they have them, they are rushed through, with a form quickly filled out and sent off to HR, and back to real work. The impression this leaves with the employee is that my boss -- and, therefore, the company -- isn't really interested in my long-term future here. If you're talented enough, why stay? This one leads into #4....

Troublesome Talent - the Mavericks in your business

Every business has them, and you probably won't have to think too hard to write two or three names down from your company. The people I am referring to are Mavericks - also known as Troublesome Talent. They are both good and bad for a business, but do need special management to harness their skills. The lady that defined the phrase Troublesome Talent, Judith Germain of Dynamic Transitions, defines Mavericks as simply," Being Willfully Independent".
The upside of these Mavericks is that they are very talented, creative individuals that are extremely passionate about their work and are very comfortable challenging the established status quo. They have no fear confronting authority - but often do so with constructive ideas and arguments. Although some times they can be too confrontational and aggressive in the style. Larger organisations, with more rigid management structures may find it hard to deal with such Mavericks, because of their inflexible corporate nature. SME's and mid -sized companies, however, seem to be the ideal arena for Mavericks to flourish.

So with Talent Management such a key issue, should the big corporates try and get hold of, and harness these Mavericks? The answer is yes, but only if they are prepared.

Snap, Crackle & Pop off for the afternoon!!

The summer is now well and truly here, and for many companies it is the start of problems. As the temperature starts to crank up, in between the many rain showers, staff start calling in sick and simply skiving off. Their destination - not the doctors or the proverbial sick bed - is the beach, park or back garden to just enjoys the rays of sun.
One large company - who ironically rely on the sun for the products they produce - Kellogg's (UK Office), introduce a Summer Hours Scheme for this time of year. It allows all of its staff to switch off their computers and leave work at Mid-day on Fridays, as long as they have completed their weekly hours quota of 37.5 hours, through making up the hours during the rest of the week.
Last year 90% of the employees took advantage of this scheme - my only question is what happened to the other 10%??

For me this is a great example of the work life balance issue, being used in a fair and appealing way. Jacqueline Grainger, Kellogg's UK HR Director comments, "Flexible working is something we take very seriously, to ensure we provide work life balance opportunities to all employees". I just wonder if the traffic to their career site increases with higher temperatures, as other employers are quite as forward thinking.

Join the Police and become a Bounty Hunter!

Most companies these days have employee referral schemes, but it isn't very often that they become part of a 'recruiting war' between divisions of the same organisation!  The organisation I am referring to the police force in the UK, and particulalry my local division - Sussex Police.
The problem is a simple one - the London Metropolitan Police, in relatively close proximaty to Sussex, has been  'acquiring' experienced individuals from the Sussex force (78 last year), by encouraging internal transfers, primarily down to an increased salary they can offer in the capital. So from the Met's point of view, it is a very good and cheap candidate acquisition strategy.
But from Sussex's point of view, the loss of these experienced officers is huge. Think of the costs of recruitment to replace them, the training and the effects on morale.

So with that in mind, you would think that the Sussex police would be looking at their own retention strategy, to try and stem the tide of transfers. No, instead they focus on a more basic way - bounty hunting! They pay a £500 bounty on colleagues who can 'encourage' London officers to join the Sussex force!! And who pays for this bounty - the taxpayers!!!  Now, it seems that other police forces around the country are going for the same model and are adopting the same approach. So rather than catch thieves, they can catch their colleagues and get a bonus for doing so!!

Is this indicative of the state of our police force, or is it one of the following reasons:

1. Poor recruitment strategies - not recruiting the right officers in the first place
2. Worryingly poor retention strategies - and what about good counter offers?
3. Is there any Talent Management?
4. Complete lack of communication between divisions of the same organisation
5. Bad management
6. Government policies - pay awards and salary levels encouraging discrepancies
7. Lack of government action, when this has been prevalent for over a year
8. Poor divisional moral - encouraging a 'grass is greener' thinking by the officers
9. Abdication of responsibility from the overall head of the police force
10. Divisional HR sticking their fingers in their ears while singing la la la out loud - ie not listening!!

I would be interested to know how the individual divisions are 'promoting' this internal referral system - what do you reckon? Maybe.....'Bounty Hunters wanted' or ""Phone a friend" or "Don't nick a thief, steal a copper'!!!!
I am sure you will also have some ideas!!

Generation Y'ers - not for us, say SME's!

Generation Y staff are surprisingly not in demand for SME companies, says the latest report from the entrepreneur think tank, the Tenon Forum. They claim that these generation Y'ers are often not just up to the job, but also show a lack of work readiness. They also go on to say that over 30% of the SME's surveyed cited poor literacy and numeracy amongst school leavers as a key issue facing their business.

So, while the generation Y'ers are an employers future lifeblood, it does appear that companies that need 'real' skills are shying away from them.....at the moment anyway. So are companies starting to realise that the generation X and the boomer's are actually still worth employing? It appears that they are actively seeking them out!! 

Entrepreneur and Tenon Forum think tank member, Khalid Aziz, Chairman of the Aziz Corporation, says: "We are becoming increasingly frustrated with a lack of work-readiness amongst graduates, many of whom do not possess basic skills, such as mental arithmetic. Those under the age of 40 have never experienced high unemployment and this is contributing to a tendency for younger employees to take work for granted or, worse, treat it as an extension of their social lives. This failure to take work seriously is not an issue amongst more mature employees."

Recruitment and Retention has now just got harder!!

While I appreciate that the whole world is having recruitment challenges, I wanted to highlight two problems that I feel are going to impact massively on recruitment and retention. I have actually already experienced both of them with candidates in the last few weeks, and I am sure it will just get worse.

So what am I talking about? Petrol and Houses. The price of petrol is rising higher and higher every week, so obviously your staff (and you of course) will be paying more for their commute into work. With this price estimated to get to £1.50 per litre by the end of the summer, then their commuting costs (by car) have just risen by 50%. How many will be looking to get a job closer to home to cut down traveling? What are you doing about it? Are you encouraging more home working? Are you being flexible with allowing them to come into the office less? Are you actually sharing your concerns with your staff? If you don't they will look for an employer that is doing something about it.

House prices - more importantly the mortgage rate - are stopping people moving. Higher interest rates mean that mortgages have lept up substantially this year, costing people more money. There are two implications from this, 1) they may now not be earning enough money where they currently work, and may have to look at another job and leaving your company or 2) the option of relocating for a new job has suddenly been diminished for the moment, not because they don't want to move, but because they may not sell their house! So recruiting for specific skills in a market where they are absent now becomes a real problem. Whereas, before you could relocate someone with the right skills, now it will become more of a challenge to convince candidates to move. So if this is going to cause you problems, what are you doing about it? Have you even thought of the long term implications? Should you be reconsidering recruiting lower skilled and training them? Should you look at retraining of existing staff? What about ad hoc pay rises?

The one thing that both petrol prices and house prices will definitely test, and that will be how creative a company can be with their creative retention policies!!!!