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.
More trouble at Lindsey!
June 19, 2009
After large-scale walkouts at the Lindsey Oil Refinery and other supporting plants earlier in the year, more trouble has now broken out which has led to the dismissal of nine hundred construction contractors for illegal and unofficial industrial action.
Walkouts took place this week at the oil refinery in protest of 51 redundancies which were carried out as a piece of work had been completed on a construction project taking place at the site. Workers argue that this breaks an agreement between the plant owner Total and workers that no redundancies would be made at the site whilst foreign workers still work there. The company denies this agreement was made.
Because the strikes were not supported by the Unions GMB and Unite, this makes them unofficial and the people taking part therefore have no right to protection under Trade Union legislation. They lose the right to protection from dismissal for 12 weeks for participating in industrial action because they did not follow the important rules in relation to strikes – including that it is validated by the union and a proper ballot has been held. Therefore 900 workers taking part in the strike have been sacked, as announced in a Total statement:
“Total can confirm, with regret, that our contractors have now started the process of ending the current employment contracts for their workforce on the HDS-3 construction project,”
Lots of ‘sympathy’ strikes have taken place at sites in Yorkshire, Cheshire, Nottinghamshire and South Wales – which are estimated to involve up to 2000 people. These strikes are not official either but what will happen to those workers, it remains to be seen.
Everyday learning
June 12, 2009
As we all know, budgets for things like benefits, recruitment and training are currently a lot smaller than this time last year in many companies, so HR professionals are having to be more strategic and clever with the cash they have in order to keep their organisations healthy during the recession and prepared for when it ends. Part of this is finding low or no cost alternatives to the things they used to have budget to spend on.
In learning and development, there are so many different ways in which employees can develop their skills and knowledge that don’t necessarily require an external trainer or training session. Work shadowing and buddy systems can prove more successful in many cases, because the learner is involved in a real life situation and can observe the other employee’s skills in action.
I know a newly qualified doctor who took advantage of the opportunity to work in a hospital in a developing African country on a placement scheme. Apart from the obvious benefits to the doctor in developing his newly gained skills in a very different situation to the UK hospitals, he described how the doctors in the African hospital benefitted from his placement, through the opportunity to learn the latest medical developments and techniques from someone who has just finished learning it all. Simply working alongside people from different experiential backgrounds and with different skill sets can be the most effective way to develop a range of abilities within the job role.
This philosophy is used in many large organisations; for example Google, which has a programme called ‘ambassadors’ – in which employees can swap jobs with someone in another area of the world. These kinds of secondments are invaluable for the skill and career development of the individual, but also ensures that good talent and new ideas are moved around the company, promoting more opportunities for innovation and organisational development.
What kind of alternative learning opportunities do your employees have, and how does it benefit them and the company?