The canine contribution to the workplace!
September 15, 2008
This Wednesday (17th September 08) is ‘take your dog to work day’, an annual event organised by the Blue Cross to promote ‘responsible pet ownership’ by encouraging dog owners to spend more time with their beloved pooches, and also to raise money for the animal welfare charity.
This is something that seems to have become quite popular, and allowing employees to bring pets to work is apparently quite a big thing in the States, which I’m quite surprised about with the prominent litigation/claim culture that has developed there.
Many people promote the wellbeing benefits of having pets at work, for example a survey carried out by the Blue Cross a while back found that 90% of respondents that allowed pets in the workplace reported a positive impact on staff morale. I however remain sceptical about the benefits of this type of scheme versus the obvious risks, but to be fair I’m not a pet owner so having a dog sniffing around my desk all day isn’t my idea of fun, and imagine it would only provide another distraction in a day that’s got enough of them already (i.e. employees!)
Another big issue that I can’t quite see past is the possible health and safety risks of such a scheme, for example how do you protect employees who have animal allergies? Also, any less than perfectly behaved pets would surely give cause for concern in this regard? And what would happen if one of the dogs fancied himself as a bit of a stud dog?
This poses the question of how you would ensure only well behaved pets were allowed to work – the Blue Cross gives guidelines on ‘pettiquete’, but the difficulties of ensuring good behaviour, to me is just another obstacle for such a scheme. One quite famous example of a ‘pet in the workplace’ scheme going a bit wrong was in April last year at Google - which is famed for it’s pet-friendly offices - where an employee’s python escaped from its cage at the New York offices. Fortunately the snake was found later on by a reptile expert, asleep behind a filing cabinet, but it must have caused chaos in the office at the time. I can’t stand snakes so this story chilled me to the bone, and is just another reason I’m not taking to the pets at work idea.
I’m fairly open minded and I’m all for making the working environment as enjoyable as possible, but as you can probably tell, bringing your dog to work doesn’t really appeal to me. What do you think? Am I being totally unreasonable or do you agree that allowing pets in work is just asking for trouble on a big scale?
… and another thing!
September 14, 2008
After my rant yesterday about dodgy recruitment agencies, I was thinking about the differences in experience I’ve had with recruiters working for my organisation and thought I would share a couple more anecdotes about things to look out for when using agencies.
Recently I’ve had cause to terminate quite a long established agreement with our main recruiter, after I had heard a stream of complaints about his poor practice in the last year and after losing a few employees because they hadn’t been managed properly in the process of finding a job. The problem is that many recruitment consultants are heavily targeted (and commissioned) on everything from new business generated to number of conversions (i.e. how many job offers were received against the number of candidates put forward), and this means that some of the more pressured ones end up giving a less than satisfactory service to both the candidate and employing company in order to force through recruits and hit their targets. The complaints I received recently were that the recruitment consultant had mis-sold the company and the job to the candidate and on another occasion had promised a salary review at a much earlier time than our organisation would ever offer. In both these occasions, the agency cannot be held completely responsible for both misunderstandings, as it is down to the company and employee to establish expectations and make the job role and company very clear. However one candidate, who ended up leaving quite soon after starting, said that he had not asked as many questions as he could have done in the interview because he felt the recruitment consultant had given a really clear picture of the role, and as this was his first role out of education he had not thought to check this out himself. He then found that the description had been completely wrong just to suit what he was looking for in a role. With the employee who was given an incorrect salary review date, his initial paperwork from the company made the correct date clear from the outset, but the fact that he had effectively been ‘convinced’ into the role with incorrect information reflected badly on my organisation and made for a poor start to the employment relationship.
I also have examples of the opposite to this scenario. Having worked for a while with a small locally based agency, I have found the service much more reliable and honest. Whilst the size of the company may mean that sometimes they struggle to cope with the large volume of recruitment we throw at them, I think the main consultant we work with has really taken the time to understand the organisation and what is needed. Sometimes we discuss a candidate before they are put forward and during the conversation, the consultant will say ‘I’m not putting them forward because after what you’re just said, they’re not right for the job’, which is a refreshing change from the CV farming we see from some others – where they have simply looked on a jobsite and found CVs for people with the relevant skills, had a quick chat to them over the phone and sent them through for us to discover whether they’re right or not. I think that for the not insubstantial amounts companies pay for recruitment services, a more in depth pre-screening should be standard practice.
One thing we will now be doing is asking specific questions to candidates and newly recruited employees regarding their experience of the recruitment agency, including how they found the company (e.g. advertising, word of mouth or were contacted directly from the agency), how the role was explained, the pre-screening process and how they found the consultant (e.g. were they pushy, did they listen etc). This is something I am hoping will help us to keep finding quality candidates without the worry of how the company is being represented to them.
Watch out for those recruitment cowboys!
September 13, 2008
Moaning about dodgy recruitment consultants seems quite a regular feature on this site, but as this is a major part of my role in HR it’s something that I’m plagued with on a daily basis. Finding the recruiters that work well for me and then continue to do so in the face of difficult assignments or a little bit of pressure is not an easy task.
One thing that has really irritated me lately is the lengths to which recruitment agencies will go to find candidates, and I’ve experienced many trying to directly poach staff from my organisation recently. Now, I’m not naive, I know that there’s a lot of headhunting happening in the world of employment, and I know that employees everywhere are being approached by recruiters looking to fill lots of roles. This doesn’t bother me. What does bother me is when recruitment agents call the actual company to speak to employees that they have identified as potential candidates from company websites or the ever helpful networking sites such as linked in (whoever invented that, cheers very much, you’ve made my job just that little bit harder). To get through to these people the recruiter will pose as a potential client or customer, sneak past the receptionist with a well placed fib and a bit of schmoozing (our receptionist is very good but sometimes the caller is more canny) and once they’ve reached the target candidate, start to pitch various jobs offering the world and more. This, in my opinion, is underhand and very unprofessional, but I have experienced even worse than this:
I am quite fortunate in that many of my employees will inform me if they are being chased by a recruiter and what has been said, so you can imagine my delight when I was contacted by a consultant who ‘really wanted to work with me’, when I had only the day before been told that he was contacting my employees to offer them new opportunities. I have to say I really enjoyed cutting the cheeky blighter down over the phone, and he was most embarrassed. As you can imagine I haven’t received a further call.
Another quite amusing situation happened recently, although for those involved it wasn’t actually that funny. A colleague of mine sent me an email conversation that had taken place between him and a number of other people in similar positions in the region. This had occurred because a slow witted recruitment consultant had sent a group email offering retail vouchers for applications or candidate referrals out to all the potential candidates she could gain details for – many of which were their work email addresses – and she had failed to hide the addresses from all the other recipients. This led to many outraged responses from the people on the list, expressing their disgust at having their email addresses revealed to so many other people, and the fact that they had been portrayed to the industry as a job seeker when they were not looking for a new role. Some of my favourite comments were:
- ‘Pretty shocking behaviour, and doesn’t do the recruitment industry stigma any favours…’
- ‘what makes you think any potential job applicant wants to have their email address made public in this manner? Surely there is more tact in your industry. Please remove me from your books immediately’
- ‘I’d suggest removing everyone’s data from your mailing list as you’ll find nobody inclined to do business with you from now on.’
This example just goes to show how careful you need to be when dealing with the recruitment industry. However there are many really professional recruiters out there and it’s important to see each provider on their individual merits, but you need to continually review the service you’re getting and also encourage your employees to highlight recruitment sharks to you if at all possible.
More bad news for the travel industry
September 12, 2008
Today brings bad news for thousands of holidaymakers in the UK and abroad as the tour operator XL has gone into administration, leaving people stranded in foreign countries without a flight back to the UK, or waiting in the UK for a much needed break that they’ll now not be able to go on.
The company, which flies to 50 destinations across the world, has gone into administration due to rising fuel prices and the economic downturn. This has left £1,700 staff across the company shocked and dismayed at waking up to find they no longer have a job. Many of these people found out the devastating news from news reports or when colleagues or friends called them. Staff have already set up a facebook page called ‘RIP XL’.
This follows the collapse last month of another airline, Zoom. Holidaymakers were similarly left stranded in Canada and America, and today’s events are bad news for the struggling travel and airline industry. It seems that these industries are being hit twice by the UK’s economic conditions; not only are they suffering from the impact of the financial ‘squeeze’ being imposed on millions of Britons, but the industry is so reliant on fuel that, like all businesses in this situation, the continuously rising costs have hit hard.
So what does this mean for the millions of people employed in the travel industry? I imagine that a lot of people are attempting to move into more secure areas, using the transferrable skills they have gained in their roles, for example the extensive customer service skills that airport workers will gain. Employers need to recognise these skills as well, as there will be thousands of people previously employed by large corporate employers in the travel industry that could have a lot to offer to a business. I have recently worked alongside someone who was formerly cabin crew for some of the big airlines, and is now excelling as an account manager for a small company, building up a client base using the years of corporate client facing skills gained in her previous role.
It’s the little things that keep people engaged
September 10, 2008
A while back I wrote about staff engagement, what it is and how HR Professionals can manage it within their organisations. Ways in which to measure engagement include consultation methods such as focus groups, committees, surveys and performance management systems, but I think people often forget what is actually important in keeping staff engaged in their jobs and the company, and focus on the large scale interventions whilst neglecting the day to day needs of employees.
Employees are people, and have basic needs and feelings in work just the same as they do at home. We spend a huge part of our lives at work, so it has more of an emotional impact on our lives than some of our out of work relationships. The small things at work can become very important in employees’ happiness and wellbeing. Some advice for managers on dealing with day to day engagement is:
- Try to see the impact of your decisions from a variety of perspectives. What might seem like a small decision to you, for example how the office is going to be set out, might have an impact on one of your staff members that you did not anticipate.
- TALK TO YOUR STAFF. In my experience, too many managers make the mistake, over and over again of assuming the desires of their staff, for example their career aspirations, then feel bewildered when their newly promoted employee takes a job elsewhere that better meets their expectations. So really, what I’m saying isn’t talk to your staff, but LISTEN TO THEM.
- Learn to read the signs. Employees can behave strangely sometimes, but it is rarely for no reason that they do so. HR professionals need to be experts in reading between the lines when speaking to staff, or watching them work, and managers need these skills even more because they are with the employees day in, day out. Some people are unable to be really open about how they’re feeling, especially to a superior, and so being able to read situations and tease the true picture out of an employee is crucial.
- If your staff can’t tell you when there’s something wrong they’re hardly going to be engaged with the organisation and their job, so be approachable. And I mean this in every sense: even someone who is a really nice manager and engages staff well will still manage to alienate people if they shut themselves in their office and look really busy all the time. So put yourself in an approachable position as well as working on your people skills.
- Reflect on the past lessons of engagement. If you lost staff or had a performance problem with someone and it turned out that they were not engaged, analyse why and then analyse if these issues could be repeating themselves with other employees. Self reflection, in my opinion, is the best skill a manager can have because it means you are constantly striving to improve yourself.
I’d be really interested to hear of other people who have experienced these day to day small engagement issues, let me know your thoughts on what is important in engaging employees. Or if you are an employee that feels engaged with your company, or doesn’t, let me know what aspects of your employee experience have the biggest effect on this.
Expanding technology and employee feedback
September 8, 2008
The other day I was in my local shop purchasing a bottle of wine, and I paid by card using the chip and pin machine. Just before I went to key my pin into the machine, it asked me if the service I had received had been polite and efficient.
This is an example of the extent to which technology is now being used to gain useful feedback from a variety of different people. The information gained from the chip and pin machine is probably used by the head office of the grocery chain to benchmark local stores and feed back on whether improvements need to be implemented, but it could be used to feed into the performance management process for staff within the store.
Using technology in performance management processes can help to gain more data than the traditional manager-employee methods such as performance appraisal. It makes sense that the more data gathered and the more people involved in the process, the more objective and accurate the assessment of personal performance is likely to be. Many companies now use online 360 degree feedback systems which allow participants to answer a series of specific performance related questions about the individual quickly and easily, and also confidentially if required.
Technology is developing constantly, and the chip and pin example shows how new systems used in retail can be adapted to help organisations assess and review the performance of their staff. However, even as technology advances, there is no substitute for effective people management as the impact of the performance of employees, good or bad, is still crucial even if new technology emerges that improves some of the processes within the organisation.
Ethical outsourcing and purchasing
September 5, 2008
The other day I was discussing the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) (‘Business meets the community’ 3rd September), and highlighted a scheme in Birmingham where companies are encouraged to contribute to the ongoing issue of gang culture by employing young gang members on apprenticeships. Another area to look at when considering CSR is the outsourcing and purchasing carried out by the organisation, and the wider effects of the choices made by organisations on the local community or wider world, when purchasing services or goods.
For example, most companies employ cleaners or contract out cleaning services whether you operate in an office, school, factory or other place of work. Cleaning products contain all sorts of nasty polluting ingredients or are harmful to the environment in the way they are sourced. Re-assessing the cleaning products used is one way that organisations can reduce their negative effects on the world.
The way companies actually use cleaning services can also be incorporated into the CSR strategy. Outsourcing has become the main way of employing cleaning services, and it is now quite rare for cleaners to be employed directly by companies, as this is more costly and difficult to manage than an outsourced contract. However this means that organisations have less control over the working conditions of the cleaners, and therefore may end up indirectly employing people on unethical or less than satisfactory terms and conditions. However, reviewing external outsourced contracts against basic socially responsible requirements such as decent wages and annual leave entitlements means that the CSR within the main organisation can be passed on to the wider stakeholders of the business.
An example of this was at Barclays Bank, which became part of a community based scheme a few years ago to promote socially responsible contracts for cleaning staff. The bank outsourced its office cleaning in London at Canary Wharf to a company that guaranteed that cleaners received a ‘living wage’, a pension with 4.5% employer contribution, 20 days annual leave plus bank holidays, 15 days paid sick leave and the opportunity to join a trade union.
There are so many facets to consider in corporate social responsibility, many of which can be achieved quite easily but make a big difference to the communities that organisations form part of.
Maternity and Paternity benefits delayed
September 4, 2008
If your thinking about having a baby and the thought of having 52 weeks off paid sounds fantastic then read on.
Unfortunately, the plan of maternity and adoption pay going up from 39 weeks to 52 weeks has been put on hold until April 2010. The change was meant to be happening in April 2009, but HM Revenue & Customs have issued that this is no longer the case and it will now prepare for babies born after April 2010.
It’s good to hear that there is going to be a change in maternity and adoption pay and even better to hear that paternity leave and pay will be introduced. This is so that fathers would get the right to take up to 26 weeks’ paid time off to care for the baby if the mother returns to work without using her full entitlement to paid maternity leave.
Mike Emmott who is an Employee Relations Advisor at the CIPD has said the following:
“The timing may be to do with the threat of recession and the government is probably getting the sense that any shift in legislation is going to be seen as an unnecessary threat to hard-pressed employers. It will happen, probably sometime in 2010.”
Some people have seen this as unfair and a change in policy and others think that the change wont happen at all, what is your opinion on this subject?
Business meets the community
September 3, 2008
Organisations have an important impact on the communities they operate in, with the provision of employment opportunities, activities for residents or the provision of supplies. Many companies go beyond these basic links to the local community by organising or participating in specific schemes as part of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy. CSR has become a more prevalent aspect of corporate management in recent years, and is now seen to be an important part of organisational strategy. The CIPD says that CSR:
“can be seen as a form of strategic management, encouraging the organisation to scan the horizon and think laterally about how its relationships will contribute long-term to its bottom line in a constantly changing world”
CSR also has an effect on company reputation and employee engagement, with many employees now actively seeking organisations which they feel conducts their business ethically and responsibly. Examples of CSR include local community projects, environmental policies, schemes involving charitable donations or fair trade or ethical purchasing.
One current example of a very topical CSR related scheme is in Birmingham, where companies are being encouraged to employ young people who are involved in local gangs, through apprenticeships. It is hoped that this scheme will contribute towards tackling the much publicised problem with gun and knife crime relating to gang culture in the city, by offering an ‘exit route’ to the young people who have been sucked into a life of crime. The scheme will initially be piloted with six young people between the ages of 16 and 25, with plans to extend this if it proves successful.
The scheme is aimed not at the ‘hardened criminals’ at the centre of gangs in the city, but to those on the edges, in the hope that this will reduce the chances of those individuals being drawn into a life of crime. Councillor Alan Rudge from Birmingham city council said:
“Every business in the city and every person in the city will benefit from it. Community cohesion is about all people living in harmony together.”
This sounds like a promising scheme, and one which looks to tackle the gun and knife crime issue from a different angle than that of the police force. However I can imagine lots of businesses being very reluctant to take part in this scheme and it will need to be well supported by the local authority for it to be a success. The individuals involved will need a lot of support and encouragement to complete the apprenticeships and move away from their former lives.
What do you think of this scheme? Is CSR an important part of your organisational strategy and what do you do if it is?
Can employers see the bigger picture?
September 2, 2008
Yesterday I was talking about the legal and practical issues surrounding employee eye tests, which are all quite straightforward to manage. However new developments in vision correction surgery have created another issue for HR – should employees be signed off sick for this procedure and subsequent recovery or should the time be taken from the employee’s personal annual leave allowance?
This is a topic that has caused a lot of debate within organisations in recent years. Laser eye surgery is a personal choice of the employee rather than a medical requirement, and therefore could be seen to fall outside of unavoidable absence through sickness. This issue could also be debated in relation to cosmetic surgery, another area that has grown in relevance in the last few years as nose jobs and liposuction have become more accessible to everyday people and not just the rich and famous. Another issue is that if there were complications with the surgery and the employee subsequently became ill – would this period of absence be considered as sickness or would the employee have to continue to take the days from their holiday allowance? Although this illness would be ‘self inflicted’, so is a lot of illness (e.g. if an employee broke their leg skiing!)
The problem is that some surgeries that appear at face value to be cosmetic could in fact be medically required, for example some women who have breast reduction surgery do so because they have severe back problems (which probably keep them off work). Another example is an employee who suffers psychological or social problems due to a body issue, or heart problems due to being excessively overweight. Employers are not medically qualified to determine what is cosmetic and what is medical, and to try to use discretion for different cases could be asking for trouble. In terms of laser eye surgery, it is unlikely that an employee will be having this procedure done because of an associated psychological or medical condition, but another consideration for employers is the cost of future eye care that may be required if the employee doesn’t have surgery (i.e. more eye tests, and perhaps a contribution towards the cost of glasses). In relation to the cost of paying SSP or company sick pay for a couple of days for the employee to have the surgery, this could actually balance out in the long term, so is it worth rejecting a request for sick pay in these circumstances?
Another thing to consider is the fact that it’s not actually very often that an employee needs time off for cosmetic or laser eye surgery, so refusing a request for sick pay for time off to have this kind of procedure could actually be more damaging to the employer/employee relationship than the short term financial outlay of paying for a few days sickness’ absence. As we all know, the way employees feel when they’re at work makes a huge difference to the ultimate performance of the company, and having a supportive employer behind you when contemplating a potentially life changing procedure will undoubtedly have a knock on effect to the ongoing sense of mutual trust and respect. I’m sure there are exceptions, but overall I think that this is the bigger picture that employers need to see when dealing with these kinds of situations.