Get staff blogging to improve internal communications
March 17, 2008
I’ve just read an article about a new scheme that McDonalds are doing in the USA and Canada. ‘Station M’, a new internal blog was launched to help internal communications between workers at nearly 15,000 restaurants. The blog allows employees to post their thoughts and questions on work and non-work related areas, and to interact with each other, which the company is hoping will lead to improved knowledge and service levels across the company.
I think this is a great idea and something loads of companies could copy. As well as sharing valuable knowledge within the company without having to spend a lot, it’s a good way for managers and HR professionals to do some investigating into the current satisfaction levels of staff, what their development needs might be and also what new ideas might be out there. Also – if so many hours are being wasted by workers on sites like Facebook, then this might provide an alternative that also benefits the company!
BA Pilots May Strike
March 14, 2008
Oh dear, looks like we may have travel chaos over the Easter holiday period!
Talks with British Airways 3,200 pilots have broken down, meaning we could be about to see the BA pilots first strike in over 30 years. Today, their union, Balpa, will hold an emergency meeting which will result in a decision on whether or not they will issue dates for industrial action.
Conciliation talks with the intermediary Acas broke down last week and BA has threated a High Court injunction to stop any strike action.
These talks have come about because of British Airway’s plans to open a new subsidiary airline called Openskies, which would recruit pilots externally. This would mean the two pilot workforces would have different employment contracts with separate pay and working conditions. The union wants a single pilot community, so both airlines would operate using the same working conditions.
A strike would cost BA a small fortune with their entire groundforce worldwide unable to operate.
Longer Working Hours For GP’s
March 13, 2008
Longer working hours has always been a bone of contention in many companies, involving job shares, shifts and potentially recruitment issues.
Being a family doctor is a demanding role at the best of times and there has been increasing pressure upon them to work evenings and weekends to fit in with demand. Companies lose many hours through doctor appointments during the working week but now family doctors have finally agreed to extend their hours following increased government pressure.
The average GP will now need to work an additional three hours each work on either a Saturday morning or one weekday evening. It appears that these extra hours may even be split into two sets of ninety minutes, allowing two evening surgeries. This extra time cannot be taken from their normal working hours to make it up either.
The British Medical Association (BMA) balloted its members after effectively being forced by the government after the threat to switch some funds from the surgeries to PCTs (Primary Care Trusts). If this had taken place, each three-GP surgery would have lost on average around £36,000 per year of funding.
Am amazing 98% of doctors were not happy with the way the government handled the issue, according to a BMA poll.
Laurence Buckman, cairman of the BMA’s GP committee said:
“This poll shows the government has a long way to go if it wants to repair the damage its past behaviour has caused. A majority of GPs were and remain willing to provide extended hours surgeries. However, GPs believe they are being railroaded into an unrealistic vision of extended hours.”
However, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the agreement was justified by the demand from patients and as such, he was pleased with the agreement.
Effective interviewing 2: questioning
March 10, 2008
Following on from last week’s post about effective interview structures, developing good questioning skills will also help to improve the accuracy of the assessment of the candidate’s ability to do the job. A good technique to use is the funnelling technique, which allows the interviewer to drill or ‘funnel’ down into a subject with the candidate:
- Start with an open question – one that invites an open response e.g. starting with what, where, how, why, when: “What experience have you had in Sales?” These open questions may be developed from the person spec prior to the interview so that all areas are covered.
- Drill down further into the subject by asking further probing questions. “what was the product you were selling?”, “how many calls did you make per day?” etc
- Use closed questions to confirm understanding or clarify a point. “So you made around 20 calls in one day is that correct?”
The funnelling technique helps to improve the accuracy and effectiveness of the interview in the following ways:
Relevance: a skilled interviewer can probe candidate’s experience to link it to the needs of the job
Validity: The more information you gain about a candidate, the more valid your prediction of how successful they would be in the job will be.
Truth: It will be harder for the candidate to tell untruths if the interviewer skillfully probes further. It is quite easy to state that you can do something in response to an open question, but when you start to drill down further only the genuine experience and skills of the candidate will show.
Subjectivity: the more depth of detail and information that is gained, the more justification an interview panel has to make an objective decision based on a range of factors.
These are questioning techniques that shouldn’t be used:
- Don’t ask leading questions – this is where you basically put the answer you are looking for into the candidate’s mouth. “so you would say you are confident on the phone?” – nobody in their right mind would say “no actually I’m not” would they!
- Closed questions should only be used in the context of the funnelling technique as above – try not to use them as the opening questions as they will only attract yes or no answers. “have you worked in sales before?”
- Multiple questions should be avoided as they are confusing and you will just end up repeating the different elements of the question for the candidate. Ask each section as a separate question.
Using a combination of behavioural and hypothetical questions will allow candidates to draw on their experience and their own approach to the job in question:
- Behavioural questions focus on past events in a candidate’s life. The interviewer is hoping to hear of occasions when the candidate has demonstrated the abilities or behaviours most relevant to the job for which they are applying. For example, ‘Tell me about a time when you used your negotiating skills’.
- Hypothetical questions involve asking candidates how they would react or behave in specific situations, i.e. the types of situations they will encounter in the job if they are successful. For example, ‘How would you deal with several knock backs in a row?’ However, don’t rely on this type of question for all of the interview – you want to know what they have done in the past that will prepare them for this job, not just how they think they would behave in a certain situation.
Using a combination of structuring the interview around the person specification and effectively questioning the candidate as above will give you a good chance of choosing a candidate that has the necessary background, skills and personal attributes to fulfil the needs of the job.
Effective interviewing 1: structure
March 7, 2008
I’ve been doing lots of interviewing recently and this has led me to focus on how an interview should be structured and carried out to ensure the best outcome. Interviewing can be quite a subjective activity, and decisions can often be made on a number of aspects that aren’t related to the actual skills and abilities of the candidate. For example, when an interviewer gets a first impression of a candidate they will often ask questions that are designed to confirm this impression: the self fulfilling prophecy effect. Or interviewers will give preference to candidates they perceive as being similar to themselves, in background, career history or even just in personality. This can lead to a team of workers who are too similar – they have similar skills on offer, similar skill shortages and decision making within that team may be poor due to the fact that everybody is coming from the same point of view and therefore may lose sight of the alternatives. Interviewers need to base decisions on the needs of the job and not on the perceived or stereotyped type of person that is required.
A way of reducing the possibility of poor decision making is to carry out a structured interview process. Structuring the interview around a person specification by coming up with set questions derived from the job needs has a number of positive outcomes:
- The interview is relevant to the job, not the person. Asking questions only based on the CV or application form could mean that important aspects of the job role are overlooked due to the focus on what the candidate has done before.
- Giving each candidate the same set of questions means that you are measuring them against the same criteria and therefore increases the reliability of any comparisons.
- Basing the questions on the needs of the job increases the accuracy of the prediction of how well the candidate could do the job.
- This method lets the candidate link their answers to the most relevant parts of their experience, rather than interviewers asking about their previous experience and then assuming the links to the role on offer.
I think the best way to prepare for the interview is to discuss the needs of the job with the manager of the team, as they will know best what is required; then this can be put into a person specification. Normally a person specs lists the job needs under different headings such as experience, education, skills, knowledge and personal attributes and then each set of criteria is assigned as essential or desirable. Once the final version of the person spec is ready, it’s quite straightforward to develop questions based around the criteria so that all aspects of the job are covered in the interview. I’ll look at questioning techniques in the next post.
Reality TV contestants ruled “employees” in France
March 6, 2008
This week it was reported that a ruling over the status of contestants on a show in France could “cripple” the country’s reality TV industry. Contestants on L’Ille de la Tentation (Temptation Island) are couples who spend 12 days on a gorgeous Mexican Island being tested for their commitment in a range of activities designed to make them cheat on each other (sounds great - not!) Three contestants were successful in their claims for overtime payments, as France applies a strict 35 hour working week and the contestants were “employed” 24 hours a day for the duration of the show. The TV channel that makes the show tried to argue that the contestants were involved in entertainment and were not “employed” to work, but this argument was dismissed. Apparently since the ruling, many other French reality TV contestants have been consulting lawyers to see whether they also have a claim.
This case could have huge consequences for reality TV in France, but I wonder whether something like this would happen in the UK? Many contestants who were “ordinary” members of the public found that the fame of reality TV brought them a large fortune just on the back of their appearance on the show – Jade Goody being the best example, then there’s that horrible woman from Wife Swap who proceeded to appear on every other show she could attach herself to (I can’t even remember her name). So whether any claims relating to employment rights would ever happen is probably doubtful, given the negligible amount that could be won at a Tribunal. Although with the likes of Big Brother et al having seriously overstayed their welcome on British TV, it wouldn’t be a bad thing if the power of reality TV was challenged…
Flexible working for senior managers
March 5, 2008
Last night I was chatting to my friend on the phone and she was having a moan about her manager not being available enough in work time. My friend is a ‘trainee’ sales consultant, although she hasn’t had any formal training as such, it’s been more a process of shadowing other consultants and mentoring sessions with the manager. The point is she’s still at the stage where she needs to be able to constantly ask questions and bounce ideas off her manager, but the manager only works three days a week due to family commitments. There have been a number of issues with slow decision making and conflicts within the workplace due to the fact that the manager has not kept up with developments when she wasn’t in work.
This illustrates the point that flexible working arrangements cannot simply be put in place without due consideration to the processes and people the change will affect, and throws up the question of whether part time work or other flexible working practices are even appropriate for people in a senior position. I’ve just read a bit of research that was done on work/life balance in a major Irish organisation which found that Senior Managers were restricted from finding work/life balance due to the long hours culture which is associated with senior posts. Both men and women in senior management recognised that their own careers would be seriously jeopardised by taking up work/life balance arrangements.
This issue probably contributes to the gender pay gap which still remains today: if it is not possible for workers to stay in senior positions and manage family life then one parent will have to take a lower position. If the father earns more (which may be the case), the mother will probably be the parent that sacrifices the senior role: and so the vicious cycle continues.
I think that it is possible for senior managers to take up flexible working options in order to achieve a better work/life balance or to manage family commitments. However it is not simply a matter of offering the opportunity of flexible working. Planning needs to take place to ensure workplace processes can run smoothly when the manager is not in, and consideration needs to be taken in respect of any staff who report to the manager. Finally, the manager needs to understand that actions still need to take place when they are not in work, and should not expect decisions to be delayed until they are in if this will affect the efficiency of the work.
More postal strikes possible
March 4, 2008
Yesterday the BBC reported that we could be facing yet more postal strikes in the coming months as Unions advise their members not to accept the latest pensions proposals. A consultative ballot is being held by Unions, which could lead to a strike ballot, and more disruptions to the service if the majority vote to strike. (read more information on the rules relating to industrial action here).
This issue has been going on for ages now – since last summer a number of postal strikes have been organised over pay, pensions and the modernisation agenda which will mean the losses of thousands of jobs.
Royal Mail is proposing changing the pension scheme to a career-average scheme rather than the current expensive final salary scheme, a change that has already been made by other firms seeking to reduce the huge gaps in funds in pension schemes, but one which will reduce the amount most workers are entitled to on retirement. The company has been consulting with employees on this and the modernisation changes, but according to Unite, the postal managers’ union, the consultation has been “a complete sham” as there have not been many changes to the earlier proposals as a result of the consultation.
Royal Mail is having to modernise due to the increasing competition from other postal companies since the liberalisation of the postal service in 2005. Royal Mail has lost a great deal of business to other companies, and due to these pressures is looking to introduce new working methods and technology to improve productivity and reduce the number of workers needed.
Restrictive covenants - not worth the paper they’re written on?
March 3, 2008
I’ve recently been reading about some developments in the courts relating to the enforceability of restrictive covenants in contracts of employment. A restrictive covenant is a section in the contract which aims to restrict the actions of an employee who is leaving the company, normally relating to their work with a competitor and normally within a specified period of time. A recent case; Crowson Fabrics Ltd v Rider, indicated how useful restrictive covenants can be in employment contracts. In this case ex-employees had copied and retained customer and supplier information in order to start a rival business, but the High Court found that they had not acted in breach of their implied duties of confidentiality. They were not subject to any restrictive covenants, which the employer should have used to specify the information that was restricted and confidential.
When an ex-employee breaks a restrictive covenant the employer may seek an injunction through the courts; if this is not complied with then the employee could be in contempt of court and prosecuted. However, many employees take no notice of restrictive covenants when leaving a company, probably due to the fact that the courts have found many restrictive covenants unenforceable due to the unreasonable scope of them. Restrictive covenants are only enforceable if they are no wider than is necessary to protect the ex-employer’s legitimate business interests. Enforceable covenants will therefore clearly identify the restrictions, and must indicate a limited scope which relates directly to the business aspects the employer is trying to protect. This would include:
- The specific information that is to be protected from use. This could include customer details, strategic plans, ‘trade secrets’ and product knowledge.
- The action that the ex-employee is not allowed to take. This could include not working for a competitor, non-solicitation of business (i.e. not trying to steal clients from the business), or non-poaching of other staff working for the business. Think about what is most important to protect your business – will it actually put your business at risk if that employee works for a competitor, or is it more important that they do not take clients from you?
- The period of the restriction. This is often around six months, but will depend on the nature of the business and the type of activity that is restricted.
- The area of restriction. This may be a geographical area, or could list specific competitors that you do not want the employee to work for.
- You need to ensure the restriction is only applied to relevant employees. For example, it would be unreasonable to apply the restriction to employees who have little contact with customers.
Recent case law indicates that the courts are now supporting more employers in cases involving restrictive covenants. This could be due to the fact that employers are now applying more reasonable restrictions in the light of previous case law. As always, I would recommend seeking legal advice when dealing with this issue – as the experts will be able to ascertain from you the purpose of the protective clause, and will help you to write a relevant restrictive covenant which has more chance of being enforceable in the event of an employee’s breach.