How do you deal with corporate gifts to employees?
February 10, 2010
Employees often ask me what they should do if a client or supplier sends them a gift or offers them tickets to an event. Whilst corporate gifts are often a positive way for companies to show their appreciation for each other, it can sometimes cause difficulty for employers when trying to ascertain where to draw the line on allowing employees to accept gifts.
A good way to deal with this is a policy of open communication, and taking each case individually. There should be a section in the employee handbook that explains what employees should do or who they should tell in the event of being sent a gift or offered an event by a client or supplier. This does not mean that they will not be allowed to accept the gift, but management can decide if this is fair under the circumstances, and whether the company is willing to accept the gift. This is particularly important in relation to bribes; as there may be clients that attempt to gain additional favour through an unwitting employee, or an employee may end up feeling indebted to a client following a particularly generous gift. This could expose the organisation to risk.
Another good idea in relation to gifts is to pool them and raffle them off or use them as some sort of reward for high performing employees. In my organisation we have often held a raffle at Christmas with all the bottles of wine, whisky and sherry that have been sent in.
As long as there is a policy of openness and honesty in relation to corporate gifts, then there should be no problem in receiving them and the practice of companies acknowledging each other and the people that work for them can continue to be a positive tool.
Staff retention is not any easier during recession
July 27, 2009
Due to the uncertainty surrounding the economy, and therefore job security and the labour market, it is likely that employees are not as mobile as usual in most organisations. Some employers may be thinking that they don’t have to worry about staff retention at the moment because there aren’t as many opportunities out in the wider world to entice their employees away, and the relative security they can offer their employees versus another job they may move on to will help to keep people at the company whilst the uncertainty over the economic stability of the country continues.
However, whilst the flow of employees into and out of the company may be slower than usual just now, employers need to be warned that if they do not keep their eye on employee retention issues, the outward flow may suddenly turn into a torrent once the economy improves and the labour market frees up again. When this will happen, nobody knows for sure, but what is certain that it will eventually take place and the last thing companies need when they are emerging from economic instability and getting ready to take advantage of improved market conditions, is a mass exodus of their most talented staff. This is certain to happen if employers become too complacent with their approach to staff retention. On top of this, despite the labour market being slow at the moment, there are still jobs available, and if your employees really want to move on now, the really talented ones; the ones you really want to retain; will be able to find a new position even in the recession.
Recent CIPD research, carried out on 3,000 employees found that 34% of respondents would ideally like to change jobs, although most were planning to stay put for the near future due to difficulties in the labour market. Many people involved in the survey, which was carried out by YouGov, were actually planning to change sector or career altogether once the economic crisis ends. An advisor from the CIPD said:
“the poor state of the labour market is acting like a dam holding back the normal flow of talent”
Employers that wish to keep their staff during and after the recession must continue to listen to the needs, ideas and concerns of their workforce through formal and informal consultation methods, and line management has a massive role in maintaining the loyalty, commitment and enthusiasm of their teams through assisting them in working towards career goals and development needs. Loyalty is a two-way street and employees need to know that they have a bright future with the company, otherwise they will pursue other avenues to achieve their aspirations and find job satisfaction.
Employee engagment - crucial for recession survival
July 20, 2009
A government report has highlighted the vital role of employee engagement in helping UK businesses to survive the recession and prosper afterwards. The MacLeod Review, by David MacLeod, states that employee engagement could be more important than ‘almost anything else’ in improving business success through the difficult economic times. The review is based on research carried out with hundreds of employers, and found that whilst some organisations are displaying signs of good engagement activity, a lot of improvements could still be made. The report did not recommend legislative involvement in the action plan, but did recommend a national awareness campaign and a group of industry leaders to increase awareness and understanding of engagement.
Employee engagement will have a direct effect on business success at any time, but at the moment this is more critical than ever because businesses are having to work a lot harder and perform better than ever to maintain their position in the turbulent markets. This is also a time where employees are feeling insecure, less trusting of their company, or may even have ill feeling towards their employer following difficult restructures or redundancy programmes. Employees that are harbouring these feelings are less inclined or in some cases less capable to go the extra mile and perform at a high level for their employer, because their personal motivation and engagement levels have dropped so significantly.
Engagement can simply be described as making sure employees feel involved in and excited by their work. There are many different facets of employment that lead to job satisfaction and engagement, and individual engagement will be brought on by a combination of all of them. Some aspects that will affect this are:
- feeling fairly paid for what you do
- having a benefits package that suits your needs and lifestyle
- having a job that you enjoy and understand exactly where it fits into the organisational objectives
- being treated with respect by your colleagues and managers
- being given clear and constructive feedback
- having a manageable workload
- having a sense of shared values with the organisation
I could go on forever, which shows that one simple action from HR or the management team will not lead to fantastic engagement for the whole workforce. Keeping employees engaged can be hard work and it is often a very individual matter. This is why it is my opinion that line managers have a really big job in maintaining employee engagement within their teams. Staff surveys and consultation exercises can be a good way to measure overall engagement and give the organisation some ideas about projects that can be carried out, but it is on an individual level that engagement will be built successfully. A really good exercise for HR teams at the moment is therefore developing management capability to enable them to manage engagement themselves and see the benefit they can add by getting it right.
Recession dramatically changes employment practices
June 26, 2009
The CBI and recruitment specialists Harvey Nash have carried out research into the current working environment in the UK, and have found there have been quite dramatic changes due to the economic climate. The survey was carried out on 704 companies, covering 3 million employees across the country.
A key move by many businesses is the attempts to work with the workforce to reorganise working patterns and payments in order to save money rather than make more redundancies than are absolutely necessary. Examples of measures used to save money by altering the workplace are cutting overtime or overtime rates, giving extended leave to employees, shorter working weeks or more flexible working patterns.
One company that has worked very closely with employees on this is Axa PPP Healthcare. Recent news reports indicated that the company had written to its employees to give them a choice between cutting pay across the company or cutting up to 300 jobs. The questionnaire also asked which other cost cutting exercises staff would prefer, including things like cutting the Christmas party, taking away car parking allowances or turning air conditioning off.
The CBI research indicated that many companies are freezing pay increases and recruitment drives in order to try to consolidate during the difficult period. In my organisation overtime has been used as a one off low cost way of clearing a backlog of work whilst avoiding increasing headcount.
One area in which companies are not freezing altogether is in training and development, although those holding budgets and planning training are having to be much more careful with the way they carry out plans and implement budgets.
Impact of stress related illness surpasses 70s industrial action
June 25, 2009
According to recent research carried out, the UK economy is suffering heavily at the hands of work related stress, and the cost of this is actually higher than the money lost to strikes that took place in the volatile period of industrial action during the 1970s.
The ever-rising problem of work related stress and mental ill-health is now costing industry around 13.5 million working days each year. In the 1970s the highest number of working days lost was 12.9 million a year – this was during the ‘Winter of Discontent’ in 1978-1979, when so many strikes took place that refuse was not collected in many places and some hospitals had to limit admissions to emergency only patients as workers were picketing entrances to hospitals! So the fact that the current situation is actually worse is very worrying.
Stress is now having a very damaging effect on the economy due to increasing levels of absenteeism, but also increasing ‘presenteeism’: i.e. people turning up for work but being unproductive, a lot of which can be attributed to increasing stress levels. Employees suffering from stress are unable to perform at their optimum level, which in itself can lead to more stress through worrying that they cannot achieve all their work and the fear of consequences from management.
Stress management is now a top priority for HR and health and safety teams, as it can clearly have a devastating effect on the bottom line, which most businesses are highly focussed on at the moment. The Health and Safety Executive has a set of management standards for the management of stress in the workplace, covering areas such as effective job design to ensure workers are capable of carrying out their work, and ensuring people take enough breaks during the day.
HR services procurement – how can you get the best out of suppliers?
May 22, 2009
With the current economic situation there is a need for organisations to save on costs wherever possible. This is extending into most HR departments, with budgets for everything from recruitment to training, employment law advice to salaries being squeezed at every angle. It is more important than ever to choose suppliers that provide the highest possible value for money for the service they are providing, and to reduce wastage or eliminate it altogether.
So how can HR professionals ensure they are choosing the right suppliers for the required services? The amount of business telemarketing lists I have managed to get myself onto doesn’t help my situation – with constant telephone calls from suppliers of HR software, benefits and management training, and an appalling amount of wasted paper arriving each day in leaflets and flyers for various things. Trawling through the possibilities to arrive at the ideal option can be difficult, however the following few tips should help you to navigate the minefield:
- Have a clear idea of your aims and goals in using the supplier. There’s no use expecting the supplier to tell you what you want from them – you will end up confused and no further on. Make a list of the essentials, desirables and elements that are not required.
- Get a clear idea of your budget, with how much room you have for manoeuvre.
- Select suppliers as you would employees – with selection criteria, interview questions and presentation briefs. The use of case studies may also provide an insight into how the supplier would deal with your requirements, and whether this fits with the organisational values.
- Check up on any required qualifications or experience. Does the employment law advice come from qualified lawyers or customer service advisors that have had some training but basically work off a script?
- Be open and honest about your organisation – warts and all. The supplier won’t be able to give you a good enough service unless they understand the constraints they will face.
The most important thing you are looking for in a supplier is value for money, and a return on investment. This doesn’t always mean the cheapest option but if you have no evidence to show your board why you need to spend more on the more expensive option, you’re unlikely to get the backing for it. Measurable selection criteria and facts about success is the way to achieve the buy in you will need.
Adding key responsibilities to contracts
May 20, 2009
Recently I’ve been working on some additions to contracts of employment relating to specific responsibilities that certain members of staff take on as part of their employment with the company. This is important as the additional duties are critical business elements and therefore carry a certain amount of responsibility with them.
For example, a number of people have the responsibility of being a keyholder to the office – this includes looking after keys, having the codes to the intruder alarm systems and being the first or last person to be in the building. Many organisations have these responsibilities, but a lot will simply hand out keys and codes without considering the consequences if they are misused or not looked after properly. Another example relates to IT security. Only a small amount of people should have administrator rights to business systems and servers, and these people have an important duty to look after this properly. I’m sure there are lots of other examples within different businesses of key responsibilities that employees take on that need to be documented and monitored.
When an employee is given responsibility for a critical business duty, he or she should be required to sign to confirm that they understand the importance of this responsibility. The requirements of this role should be set out clearly within the document, and the consequences for non-compliance or deliberate misuse of the duty should also be stated. The importance of the responsibility will determine the relative severity of the consequence – and to make things easier should something happen, it is always prudent to clarify the potential actions that will be taken if something goes wrong.
Does the layout of office furniture affect performance?
May 15, 2009
In my organisation, as with many organisations, there are a lot of changes taking place at the moment, and this has meant some people moving their desk location and even their office. In many organisations the changes have been redundancies, and ‘survivors’ taking on different aspects of the roles of those who have left to cover the workload. It might sound a bit over the top, but in these situations it is important to consider the layout of the office furniture and where people are now sitting to help to embed any changes without too many negative effects on morale and performance.
For example, if someone has left or moved positions who was a pivotal employee in a particular department, or helped to manage projects or workloads, then the people who sat near to that person will probably be feeling a little lost or unsupported. Even if this person wasn’t a manager, it’s important to identify the impact they had on the people around them and try to reorganise so that everyone in the office gains the same impact from other employees that have not left.
Where people actually sit in relation to others is very important in how they feel, behave and perform. The distance to the team manager is important to recognise for newer employees that need more support and confidence building. People that have a responsibility for supervising or helping other employees should sit in a position in which they have a good view of all the other people – i.e. not facing a wall or cut off from everyone else.
Whilst there are probably many other things companies are concerned with at the moment, giving just a little bit of thought to the layout of the office and where people are positioned could have a positive impact on the atmosphere, and subsequently performance, of the office based workforce.
Will swine flu affect businesses?
April 29, 2009
The biggest news story at the moment is the outbreak of swine flu, which has killed almost 160 people in Mexico and has spread to other parts of the world including the USA and Europe. Two people are confirmed to have swine flu in the UK so far – a couple in Scotland who have just returned from their holiday in the popular Mexican resort of Cancun. Whilst the risk is said to be low for the rest of Britain at the moment, there is always the possibility of a spread of the virus to many people – and the last thing I heard on the radio on the way to work this morning was that the Government is going to send a leaflet about swine flu to every house in Britain, and is looking to order in a massive stockpile of protective face masks.
So, if the worst happened, what could this mean for businesses? With a contagious virus the way to avoid spreading it around is to stop people from having close contact with each other, but how do you achieve that in the workplace? Firstly, just getting to work could leave staff open to infection, as small enclosed spaces on public transport are perfect places for viruses to spread. Secondly, infections and viruses spread really easily within workplaces – as my organisation experienced over the winter when nearly everyone had some strain of the same cough/cold/flu illness.
So what can be done to prepare. It’s likely that in the event of a pandemic, the Government would advise employers to take as few risks with their staff as possible; which could include allowing them to stay at home. Here lies a problem for many companies; remember only a couple of months back when the heavy snowfall affected UK businesses because it caused chaos for the country’s travel networks and left many people unable to attend work or school? At the time a lot of organisations found that their business suffered because they did not have contingencies in place for staff not being able to get to work. Swine flu could potentially cause the same problem, and companies need to be mindful of this by having plans, such as home working and home network access, ready for if such an event were to occur.
Importance of culture in organisations highlighted in FSA review
March 30, 2009
How much does the culture of an organisation affect its success or failure? A review of global banking regulation by Lord Turner; the chairman of the Financial Services Authority (FSA) has highlighted that organisational culture and behaviours have a very big impact on the way a company operates.
The report has looked at many different areas of why banks across the world have collapsed or fallen into crisis; and also reviewed whether high salaries and huge bonuses, which have been the subject of high profile controversy in the media, can be to blame for the excessive risk taking that led to the credit crunch and subsequent recession. It was found that the remuneration practices that have been so heavily criticised could only be blamed for a small part of the problems that have occurred due to the way banks and other financial institutions have been run. According to the CIPD (in People Management Magazine):
“Many top executives of the banks that suffered huge losses during the financial crisis … were large shareholders in their firms – voluntarily and through the pay policies”
This shows that trying to stop similar risk taking occurring in future by linking reward to performance more clearly will not work on its own, as it did not stop it this time. The FSA review makes it clear that the culture of risk taking – and the behaviours that arise from this – were a major factor in the demise of the financial sector, and recommends that in the future HR has a big job in moulding the culture of these organisations to avoid a repeat of such failures.
The culture of an organisation is set and determined by the very top level management – and this is where HR should focus when looking to influence and develop organisational culture and behaviours. As the FSA review highlighted – sometimes HR may have to become unpopular by telling management things that are difficult to hear, as well as becoming more intrusive in departmental activities to ensure the appropriate culture is being developed. This is all part of the job, but it isn’t an easy part of working in HR, and is something many professionals struggle with – especially in organisations where HR does not have a formal role or recognition at senior or board level; however this is something HR must overcome, especially when the right culture can be the difference between the success or failure of a business.