Have I Got (HR) News For You! Test your knowledge of recent HR news

The following 10 questions all relate to items of HR news that have been in the public eye over the last couple of weeks. The Answer link will take you either to an earlier item on HR Case Studies, or to a separate page on the internet. Use the Back button on your browser to return to this page. Good luck!

Which newspaper was fined £792,736 for bullying one of its former sports reporters?
Answer

How many temporary staff were to be recruited by Royal Mail to minimize the disruption caused by striking postal workers?
Answer

In which company have 25 staff committed suicide over the last 18 months in protest against an insensitively managed restructuring programme?
Answer

Which professional group has recently run a competition to identify its sexiest worker?
Answer

The average employee at 85 Broad Street earns $700,000 per annum. Which company do they work for?
Answer

The UK came 8th, France came bottom in a recently published league of managerial effectiveness. Who came top?
Answer

Which football manager was recently awarded £2 million in compensation for constructive dismissal by his former club?
Answer

When Alison Cooper was recently appointed as CEO of a FTSE 100 company, she became only the 5th woman in charge of one of the UK's top businesses. Who does she work for?
Answer

Two of Moira Cameron’s colleagues were recently suspended for bullying her. What is unique about the job she does?
Answer

In the annual survey of hours and earnings, which occupational group were ranked lowest in terms of annual pay with a pro-rata salary of £3143?
Answer

Half a million fewer workers earning overtime pay

According to a TUC analysis of official figures released yesterday, the number of people working paid overtime in the UK has fallen by nearly half a million in the last year to just under four million.

Here’s an overview of the TUC analysis:

In Summer 2009, 15.8 per cent of employees in the UK earned paid overtime, a fall of 1.5 percentage points since Summer 2008
Employees were working an average of six and a half hours paid overtime per week this year, a fall of 12 minutes on 2008
The average amount of weekly overtime works out at £2,888 a year per employee
The major reason that overtime has declined is simply because many jobs with overtime have disappeared due to redundancy during the recession
55 per cent of the decline in paid overtime is due to job losses, with the other 45 per cent due to employees having fewer opportunities for overtime
Those most affected are workers aged 20-24
15.9 per cent of young people earned overtime pay in 2009, compared to 20.1 per cent in 2008 - a fall of 474,000
The sectors most affected by the drop in overtime are manufacturing, transport and communication (broadcasting, TV and radio production, postal workers)

Paid overtime has actually fallen steadily since records began in 1998, when nearly one in four (24.8 per cent) workers earned paid overtime.

TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said:

These workers are the hidden victims of the recession. Job security remains the number one concern for workers across the country but the sharp drop in paid overtime shows that many people in work are also suffering financially. Even those that are still earning overtime are often no longer able to claim double pay.

Lots of people rely on overtime pay to earn a decent living. As Christmas approaches, a lack of extra income will put family budgets under even greater strain.

While many in the City look to their stocks and bonuses as a barometer of the health of the economy, having enough hours of work and overtime pay matter far more to millions of workers and their families

Half a million fewer workers earning overtime pay

• Is overtime the most effective way of dealing with sudden and temporary surges in workload?

Chicken Madras, Special Rice and a good manager please.

It’s Friday; it’s been a long week; it’s an “according to a survey” item, so … all together now, after three 1,2,3… GROAN

Right. Down to business

According to a survey of 22,000 staff in 18 countries only 50% of UK employees rate their managers as effective

The results of the survey conducted by the Kenexa Research Institute (KRI) reveal something that simply no-one could possibly have expected. Ever. Apparently (so don’t faint when you read this) being a "good manager" has a significant impact on the engagement levels of staff and their overall perception of the company. Earth shattering.

It seems that employees in the UK define a good manager as someone who keeps his or her commitments, evaluates employees' performance fairly, makes use of employees ideas, quickly solves problems and practices open, two-way communication. We wouldn’t have expected any of that would we?

Based on the results of the survey, KRI said: "Effective managers are respectful, considerate and fair, as well as good organisers who can clearly communicate work expectations and provide feedback.” Astonished? Me too.

So, the only decision to me made is where to go for the best managers.

The scores on the doors reveal that employees in India (68%) reported the highest ratings of managerial effectiveness, followed by Brazil (61%), the United States (60%), Russia and the Gulf countries (57%), Canada (56%), China (53%), Germany (51%), the UK coming eighth with (50%).

Countries to avoid are France (41%) whose workers reported the lowest ratings, with Japan (43%), Italy (44%) and Spain (46%) only slightly ahead.

Chicken Madras anyone?

• Any suggestions why India scores so well, and France so poorly?

It's not been a particularly good week for the bullies!

Sadly the following anecdote is totally true, and I feel obliged to apologize in advance if it causes any offence.

In the early 1990's while working for a major UK company, I was telephoned by a regional sales manager, who asked me without any apparent embarrassment, "Are we allowed to recruit black people?" After picking myself up from the office floor, I asked him why we might not do so, and he in turn responded that as the national sales force was 100% white, he wondered if the company had an unofficial "whites only" policy. The issue being clarified, the discussion continued to that of him wanting to recruit a West Indian sales representative, which in time he duly did.

In 2009 it seems (I hope) unimagineable that our companies might be populated with managers who consider that any such discrimination is acceptable, doesn't it?

But change the scenario from discrimination to that of bullying behaviour, and it quickly becomes evident that we haven't evolved or developed as much as we might like to believe.

Take this week for example:

Headteacher Catherine Maltbaek seems likely to be struck off the GTC teaching register as a result of her bullying behaviour towards members of staff. An employment tribunal described the case as "the worst case of bullying ever seen in the workplace”

The News of the World was yesterday fined a jaw-dropping £792,736 for the excessive bullying and harrassment of one of the tabloid newspaper's former sports reporters.

Also yesterday, two of the Tower of London Beefeaters found themselves out of work when they were sacked for bullying Moira Cameron, the first female Beefeater. The 44-year-old became the first female yeoman warder in the institution's history after completing the required 22 years of service in the Army.

Comments that have been left on this blog clearly reveal that bullying (in a variety of disguises) is more prevalent than we care to admit, but at least it seems that there is a surge in public sentiment that such behaviour should no longer be tolerated.

HR Managers have a crucial role to play in the eradication of inappropriate workplace behaviour, and strong words may well have to be exchanged with established and otherwise successful managers. But unless HR is prepared to put itself in the firing line, it will be delinquent in discharging its duties.

By the way, Crabbe and Goyle: Dumbledore has passed his CIPD exams, and he wants to see you in his office after break!

• Open question: are we doing enough to make workplace bullying unacceptable?

News of the World fined £792,736 for bullying. Where was HR?

It seems that the world is waking up to the problem of workplace bullying!

And this case will inevitably receive a good deal of media attention especially as the perpetrator of the bullying (in his former role as an editor with the News of the World) is now David Cameron's head of communications.

Matt Driscoll, a sports reporter sacked in April 2007 while on long-term sick leave for stress-related depression, was awarded £792,736 by the east London employment tribunal. It is believed to be the highest payout of its kind in the media, and legal costs could take News International's total bill well over the £1m mark.

Driscoll commented:

Andy Coulson was at the heart of all of this. He should look at himself and decide if his actions in the course of the way I was treated were correct. If I were him, I would find it very hard to look in the mirror. I was subjected to unprecedented bullying and he did nothing to stop it, if anything he accelerated it. I didn't do anything wrong. I was in the top 30 sports writers in the country. I then came up against the venom of Andy Coulson.

The tribunal found in December 2008 that Driscoll had fallen victim to "a consistent pattern of bullying behaviour". "The original source of the hostility towards Driscoll was Mr Coulson, the editor; although other senior managers either took their lead from Mr Coulson and continued with his motivation after Mr Coulson's departure; or shared his views themselves. Mr Coulson did not attend the tribunal to explain why he wanted the claimant dismissed.

The News of the World defended the case by claiming that the main reason for Driscoll's dismissal was his capability or qualifications for performing his work.

Driscoll, who joined the paper in 1997 and was promoted twice, was initially highly regarded, according to the tribunal ruling. That changed in August 2005 when Coulson turned against him for failing to follow up a rumour that Arsenal were planning to play in purple shirts, a story that later appeared in sister paper, the Sun.

According to the tribunal, the bullying continued after Driscoll went on sick leave. Senior management at the paper sent Driscoll a barrage of emails, phone calls and visited his home to demand that he see a company doctor, despite Driscoll's GP advising him to "distance" himself from the source of his stress.

Guardian: News of the World faces £800,000 payout in bullying case

• Provocative question for HR Professionals: shouldn’t a half-decent HR Director have prevented this from happening?

Sadly another case of bullying hits the press

Perhaps it’s something to do with last week being anti-bullying week, but the number of cases in the media concerning inappropriate behaviour on the part of senior managers seems to have suddenly increased.

Indeed the Daily Mail is currently reporting how a headteacher at a Catholic school now faces sanction from the General Teaching Council for unacceptable professional conduct and could be struck from the teaching register.

It’s claimed that the headteacher berated staff in front of pupils, causing several to quit the school in fear of suffering mental breakdowns.

An earlier employment tribunal heard how the female head enacted a campaign of harassment described as "the worst case of bullying ever seen in the workplace”

She was found to have regularly humiliated teachers for eating at the desks and using the toilet too often, and repeatedly rang a bell in her deputy head's ear "like a town crier". The deputy head has already been awarded £56,000 for constructive dismissal after she was forced to quit her post at the Plymouth school in October 2005, stating that the headteacher had made her life "a total misery".

The head’s tirades were not confined to teaching staff either: the school’s administrator quit in 2004, claiming the headteacher would often "bellow at her with a red face and blistering eyes”

The report in the Daily Mail has attracted a significant number of readers’ comments which are well worth viewing.

Daily Mail: 'Bullying' headmistress 'reprimanded teachers for using the toilet too often'

• One of the responses to the Daily Mail article states simply: "Bullies are only bullies because they can get away with it." Do you agree?

Have you calculated your TCA (Total Cost of Assholes)?

Harvard Business Publications may be more well-known for academic and theoretical tomes, but the issue of workplace bullying has made its way to the inner sanctum of management strategy – clearly a sign that such a subject will be receiving increasing attention in coming months.

And, far from moderating its language on the issue, the article linked below correctly states that bullies, especially bullying bosses, are unaffordable. In an unforgettable phrase, the article quotes from Robert Sutton’s delicately titled book “The No Asshole Rule” :

The TCA (total cost of assholes), while difficult to calculate, is very expensive — in time, money, and workplace wellness

How about these eminently sensible tips on how to deal with a bullying boss:

Document and define the bullying. Is it actually bullying? Women who exert 'male' leadership styles are in danger of being perceived as bossy. Men who do the same thing are often praised as decisive. Look for patterns over time vs. isolated incidents, privately document the facts and specific actions. Finally, look at your company's culture. Is bullying or aggressive behaviour rewarded?

Consider your options and make a choice. If the culture supports or rewards bullying, seriously consider if this environment is for you.

Nip bullying in the bud — carefully. Privately derailing someone who is yelling at you by calmly repeating their name can be highly effective. Not so when your boss belittles you in a meeting. (Never out a bully in public; it will surely escalate things.)

Grow a support system. It's as important to get honest feedback about your experiences, perceptions, reactions, as it is to know that you are not alone

Is Your Boss a Bully? Stop Being the Target.

• Is the fact that this difficult subject has been addressed by a normally academic publishing house a sign that the issue is not only a growing concern, but also one that is starting to be taken seriously?

Rogue agencies: the ticket touts of the recruitment world

We all know the scenario.

It's rock festival time, and the tickets are certain to sell like hot cakes. You want to make sure of getting your tickets for the must-see show of the year, so you find the glossy site on the internet, provide your credit card details, click submit and wait.

And wait.

And eventually it dawns on you that you've been had. You've fallen victim to a dodgy outfit who have sold you non-existent tickets that they were never authorised to sell.

Nothing like that would ever happen in HR would it?

Sadly, it's becoming common practice.

During the last week I have seen at least two online job adverts (by agencies of varying size and reputation) where they are advertising vacancies for hiring organisations, perhaps not without the permission of the organisation, but where it has been made perfectly clear to the agency that any CVs that are submitted will only be reviewed once the in-house campaign has run its course. If the in-house campaign is successful, no CVs will be requested from the agency.

So, any application submitted to the agency rather than the hiring organisation is likely to be merely seed cast onto stony ground.

In a job market where it's challenging enough already, to confuse, mislead (and possibly deceive) applicants in this way is far from helpful if not downright mischievous.

It wouldn't be difficult to stop either, would it!

• Any suggestions?

What's in a name?

Smile nicely at the screen and click the picture to enlarge

They started as Welfare Officers.

Then they were Personnel Officers.

Soon they became HR Managers (not Officers any longer, as they had generally been promoted)

At the moment most of them are HR Business Partners.

• Where next?

The future of HR in just three words

OK, HR Professionals: (especially those of you powered up on your return from the CIPD Conference!) Here's your opportunity to address the youth of the nation!

Many of the readers of HR Case Studies are teachers of Advanced Level Business Studies who need a helping hand with that tricky little subject of Human Resources Management.

So, one simple task for you:

What three words would you use to describe the HR Manager of the future?

The 7 habits of highly effective recruitment consultants

Personal involvement on both sides of the recruitment fence, combined with observation of an apparently increasing discontent with the level of service of many recruitment consultants, has provoked me to offer the following suggestions for improvement in this critical area. Your views are more than  welcome.

Once a candidate has applied for a position, ensure that you provide regular feedback on progress.

If you are not the only agency that is representing a client, this should be explained to the candidate.

Ensure that you provide the candidate with a written commitment of what can be expected from you in terms of service and support – and keep your word.

If you have invited a candidate to apply for a position that you are managing, do not subsequently mail them to advise them that they do not have the skills or experience that you were looking for: you should know this already.

If you have not been formally engaged by the client to fill a role (i.e. the client is independently seeking to fill the role, but has invited you to submit CVs which will be assessed only if the initial phase is unsuccessful), explain this to the candidate.

Use technology to draw you closer to the candidate: if the contact between you and the candidate is worse than it would have been in a paper-based world, you’ve lost the plot.

The words “If you have not been contacted within 28 days of the closing date, you should assume your application has not been successful” will never, ever be included in any correspondence that you issue.

Sorry seems to be the hardest word. Especially when it costs $500 million

Readers of HR Case Studies will be familiar with the strength of emotion that the mention of Goldman Sachs seems to evoke in the public on both sides of the Atlantic.

Comments about “doing God’s work” and hectoring the masses to "tolerate the inequality (of bankers’ bonuses) as a way to achieve greater prosperity for all” were inevitably destined to raise the temperature of the debate over salary and bonus levels in the investment bank.

However, displaying a surprising change of heart, the bank issued a long-overdue apology yesterday for its role in the global financial crisis and announced a $500 million (£299 million) pledge to small businesses.

Lloyd Blankfein, the chief executive of the bank, (and the guy who appears to have a divine mandate) said:

“We participated in things that were clearly wrong and have reason to regret ... We apologise.”

 He added that the bank was “very concerned” about the criticism it received for accepting a $10 billion bailout, only to return quickly to paying multimillion-dollar bonuses.

On Monday, members of US Trade Unions protested outside the bank’s Washington office, calling for the bank to donate its (wait for it . . . $23 billion!!) bonus pool to homeowners facing eviction.

The bank said yesterday that it would put aside $500 million for donations, loans and grants to community development organisations.

Times Online: Goldman boss says sorry and pledges cash

• “Our reputation is very important to us,” said Lloyd Blankfein yesterday. In the light of his comment, do you see the apology as a praiseworthy altruistic gesture, or just good image management?

HR once more questions its future

The CIPD conference which starts today in Manchester is giving the HR profession yet another opportunity to question if not its existence, then at least its purpose.

Under the heading of Next Generation HR, the CIPD is publishing the findings of an extensive research project with the aim of prompting the profession to “start thinking about what it needs to look like in future”

The project focuses on testing three hypotheses. 

• HR’s purpose needs to shift to being about sustainable organisational performance
• It needs to focus on building a culture of authenticity, demonstrating a balanced approach to risk management and developing organisational agility.
• It needs to define the type of HR leadership it will need in future 

Comments from senior HR professionals who have been involved in the research indicate that not all organisations have successfully managed the transition from seeing HR Managers as enforcers of policy to that of commercially-minded business partners.

CIPD unveils its Next Generation HR study 

• Do other professions spend as much time as HR in a search for meaning?
• Is such self-examination a feature of a mature and confident profession, or one that is in danger of losing its way?
• Is the need to evolve something that is peculiar to UK HR, or is it a worldwide phenomenon?

Transparency or Voyeurism? How much do I need to know?

It probably started with the Daily Telegraph’s exposure of the abuse of the UK parliamentary expense system, but we do seem to be in danger of indulging in an orgy of public striptease, slowly revealing the most intimate details of our wages and salaries.

Let’s look at a few examples:

MPs expenses

The Daily Telegraph's investigation into Cabinet Ministers' expenses led to the creation of an expenses dossier which contains electronic scans of every expense claim made by MPs since 2005.

The information is so detailed that it is public knowledge that, for example, Jacqui Smith bought a number of items from B&Q at 3.29 pm on 7 April 2008, including six bags of sand at £1.39 per bag.

Similarly, Gordon Brown paid (and claimed) for having his grass cut on 15th May 2008, costing him £35.

Office of National Statistics Salary Survey

Last week saw the publication of the Office of National Statistics annual survey of salaries.

This informs us that the highest-paid category of employee in the UK is Directors and CEOs of major organisations who earn on average £172716 per annum; the most poorly paid employees are in the category of school mid-day assistants who earn on average £3143 per annum.

Trade Union Pay

In August of this year, under the headline of “Trade union leaders receive huge pay rises despite redundancies and salary cuts among members” the Daily Telegraph (yes, it’s them again) published the salaries of many of the UK’s TU leaders, revealing that, for example, Tony Woodley, the joint general secretary of Unite, which with two million members is Britain's biggest trade union was said to have seen an increase in his pay and benefits package last year of 20 per cent, from £88,359 to £105,761.

Chief Executive Pay

Not to be outdone by the Daily Telegraph, in September the Guardian published its list of the salaries of the top FTSE 100 Chief Executives, revealing in the process that the most highly paid chief executive was Bart Becht of Reckitt Benckiser who received £36.8m in pay, bonuses, perks and share incentive schemes.

BBC Salaries

This week the BBC has published information on its senior management structure for those divisions of the BBC which report directly to the Director-General. The information also contains details of senior staff salaries and expenses. All that is required is a couple of clicks and it is there for anyone to see that, to choose a name at random, Tim Davie (Director of BBC Audio & Music and a member of the BBC's Executive Board) last year earned a salary of £325,000, with a total remuneration of £403,000. Oh, and by the way, he ran a team Away Day on 24th February which cost £750.

CIPD

Not wanting to be left out of the game of “I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours”, even the CIPD felt obliged to hang its washing out to dry in September, and thereby caused quite a stir in the HR community when it announced that CIPD Chief Executive Jackie Orme received a bonus to top up her £300,000 per year salary at a time when other CIPD staff had had a pay freeze imposed on them.

• There's clearly too much information to digest above, so you're all let off with one simple question today: Is it healthy for so much information to be in the public domain?

Well, how much do you think you are worth, boy?

The latest annual survey of hours and earnings is out today and it provides an amazing insight into wages across the UK.

From the over 400 jobs surveyed by the Office of National Statistics, below are summarised the annual salaries of just the top and bottom ten.

Directors and CEOs of major organisations £172716
Brokers £133845
Corporate Managers And Senior Officials £122280
Financial managers and chartered secretaries £78926
Medical practitioners £73598
Aircraft pilots and flight engineers £70595
Senior officials in national government £67403
Managers in mining and energy £67153
Air traffic controllers £64045
Health Professionals £60814


Elementary Personal Services Occupations £8184
Retail cashiers and check-out operators £8167
Cleaners, domestics £8069
Waiters, waitresses £7639
Bar staff £7372
Travel and tour guides £7098
Playgroup leaders/assistants £6812
Leisure and theme park attendants £6062
School crossing patrol attendants £4354
School mid-day assistants £3143

Guardian: What do people get paid? The latest salary survey results

Well, how much do you think you are worth, boy?
Will anyone stand up and say?
Would you say that a man is worth nothing
Until someone is willing to pay?
Graham Kendrick
Copyright © 1974 Make Way Music

Bonus row hits Ministry of Defence

Today has seen mounting criticism of the £47m in bonuses that has been paid out to Ministry of Defence civil servants.

Although the payment of such bonuses had been agreed in earlier pay deals, and average out at less than £1,000 for each of the MoD’s 50,000 staff, families of serving soldiers have criticised the payment of such performance-related bonuses as "obscene” and “insensitive”.

An army private on the lowest salary earns £16,681 a year, with a six-month tax-free operational allowance of £2,380 if posted to Afghanistan.

The MoD employs 85,000 civil servants - one for every two active armed forces personnel.

£287,809,049 has been paid out in bonuses since 2003

Although the MoD has stated that such pay awards are met from within salary budget and have no impact on the operational or equipment budget, the UK Conservative opposition has claimed that, "Many in the armed forces will be aghast that bonuses are being paid on the basis of 'outstanding performance'"

BBC News: MoD bonuses attacked by families

• Are there some organisations within which the payment of performance-related bonuses is inappropriate?

Fag-Ash Lil appointed as FTSE 100 Chief Executive

A woman (not the new Chief Executive of a FTSE Company) smoking

Alison Cooper’s appointment as chief executive of Imperial Tobacco means that the number of women in charge of FTSE 100 companies leapt by 25% yesterday. She joins Dame Marjorie Scardino (Pearson Publishing), Angela Ahrendts (Burberry Fashion), Cynthia Carroll (Anglo American Mining) and Katherine Garrett-Cox (Alliance Trust Finance) in the select group of women at the helm of UK companies.

She is now likely to become one of Britain's best-paid women. Last year she earned £1.3m, but she will clearly be expecting to pick up more in pay, perks and other incentives if her objective of increasing worldwide sales of the Company’s brands is successful.

Her predecessor (40 cigarettes per day) has (bewilderingly!) consistently refused to accept the direct link between smoking and lung cancer.

Ms Cooper (Occasional smoker) has yet to make public her opinion on the subject.

Guardian: Imperial Tobacco appoints FTSE 100's fifth female chief

• Does Alison Cooper’s appointment to this role further the cause of women in senior business positions?

Would you take a pay cut for a better boss?

The Chartered Management Institute (CMI) has just published the results of a survey (all together now…..groan) of 3,000 UK adults which reveals that one in every two workers would be prepared to take a pay cut if that meant they could work with a better manager.

The report also claims that UK firms invest less in their managers than their competitors, and that this needs to be addressed by both the Government and employers if the skills gap is to be reduced.

Worryingly, a large proportion of UK bosses describe themselves as "accidental managers", with no training and no ambition to manage people at all.

The CMI is launching its Manifesto for a Better Managed Britain and demanding that urgent action is taken to transform management and leadership performance. The report poses the following challenge:

"In what other profession would it be acceptable for only a quarter of practitioners to hold a professional qualification? The sad truth is that UK managers are no longer regarded as professional, competent or accountable."

Daily Telegraph: Half of workers have resigned because of bad management

CMI: Better Managed Britain campaign launched to bring about skills transformation

• Would you be prepared to work for less for a better boss?
• If you're from outside the UK, what's your experience of leadership development in your country?
• Is management something that can be taught?
• Does it matter if managers don't actually hold a professional qualification?

"Doing God's work" at 85 Broad Street, New York

WARNING! If it’s been a difficult (or an expensive) weekend, you might need to sit down with a strong coffee before reading this.

An article in yesterday’s Times Online outlined the fortunes of the men and women who turn up for work each day at the relatively anonymous offices at Number 85 Broad Street, New York.

The select few who work here make more money than many small countries.

These are the Masters of the Universe of Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of The Vanities.

These are the financial megastars who, once they have become filthy rich by 40, frequently parachute into some of the most senior political posts in the US, understandably prompting accusations that they "rule the world."

Even in this time of global recession, Lady Fortune has smiled with favour on those who work behind the brass-trim glass doors of this prestigious establishment. Average pay this recessionary year for the 30,000 staff is expected to be a record $700,000. Top earners will get tens of millions, several hundred thousand times more than a cleaner at the firm.

Welcome, dear readers, to 85 Broad Street, the home of Goldman Sachs.

Times Online: I'm doing 'God's work'. Meet Mr Goldman Sachs

New Statesman: Goldmans boss says he does "God's work". Who does he think he's kidding?

• Is this morally acceptable?

Has your software got the Sunday e-mail bug?

Click picture to enlarge, or put on powerful spectacles

Now, remind me what Maslow and Herzberg said about money as a motivator….

Personnel Today magazine (who deserve an easier day from you after Wednesday’s “Sexy HR Manager” debate) have reported that there’s a marked decline in blue-chip companies seeing cash as the only reward mechanism for executive staff.

Using the results of a survey (mini-groan!) from Mercer Executive Reward, it’s reported that although most UK blue-chip Companies will offer pay rises in 2010, there would be "less emphasis on the cash element when rewarding staff and more on career development and elements of work/life balance".

According to Mercer, “cash, tarnished by the role of bonuses in the economic slump, is no longer king in the eyes of employers. It is being usurped by an emphasis on employee engagement and a focus on motivating specific, high-value employees.

Personnel Today: Blue-chip companies seek non-cash rewards

• Where does the phrase “Blue-Chip” originate?
• Where does money fit into Maslow and Herzberg’s theories of motivation?
• Do you think that the trend reported above is likely to continue as the recession (hopefully) ends?
• Do you believe that career development and an improved work/life balance appeal equally to high and low paid staff?
• Loaded question: Is offering career development instead of cash as a reward a sign of an enlightened organisation or a con-trick to keep wage costs down?

Stop! Thief! Someone’s stolen my ideas!

The UK National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence(NIHCE) has today published a set of guidelines for employers on promoting mental wellbeing through productive and healthy working conditions.

Although the guidance and supporting documentation is extremely comprehensive and robust, it does have to be said that most of the guidance is identical to the recommendations that HR professionals have been making for many years!

The guidance focuses on interventions to promote mental wellbeing through productive and healthy working conditions, and describes mental wellbeing at work as being determined by the interaction between the working environment, the nature of the work and the individual.

The five recommendations of NIHCE are:

Adopt an organisation-wide approach to promoting the mental wellbeing of all employees, working in partnership with them.

Adopt a structured approach to assessing opportunities for promoting employees’ mental wellbeing and managing risks.

Provide employees with opportunities for flexible working according to their needs and aspirations in both their personal and working lives.

Strengthen the role of line managers in promoting the mental wellbeing of employees through supportive leadership style and management practices.

Collaborate with micro, small and medium-sized businesses and offer advice and a range of support and services.

Promoting mental wellbeing at work
 

• What might "an organisation-wide approach to promoting the mental wellbeing of all employees" look like?
• Which opportunities for flexible working might organisations wish to make available for their employees?
• The guidance speaks of "strengthening the role of line managers in promoting the mental wellbeing of employees." What might this involve in practice?
• Will smaller organisations experience greater difficulties than larger ones in implementing such guidance?

Phwoarr! Nice legs; shame about the policies

(Editor's Note: Picture removed in the interest of public decency)

Partly in response to the launch of the Farmers Weekly Britain’s Sexiest Farmer Competition, Personnel Today has invited members of the HR profession to unfasten a few buttons, slip into something seductive and nominate colleagues for the Sexiest HR Professional Award.

Do you work with someone in your HR team that is drop dead gorgeous? Is there a real fit lad or lass in your department that you think could be the best HR has to offer?

If so, then enter them into the nationwide search to find the best looking HR men and women. Email us with a pic attached and a panel of judges will vote on the sexiest male and female. The winners will be featured in a future issue of Personnel Today magazine.

Update!! Although the entries for HR Hunks and Top Totty were initially rather thin on the ground, there's been a sudden pre-Christmas rush and the 14 finalists are now up on the Personnel Today website for us all to drool over. So, dim the lights, load the Barry White album into the player and cast your eyes over this foxy bunch. And then, having cooled off, you can add to the comments below!

• Further research activity. Visit the Farmers Weekly Site; do you agree that in Entry No. 38, Bertha is better looking than Nuffy? (Hint: Bertha is the tractor)
• Serious (and loaded) question: Is the Personnel Today competition all harmless fun or does it risk portraying HR in an unprofessional light?

Hard times for the UK's Graduates

It’s clearly tough being a graduate these days.

A study by the Higher Education Careers Services Unit has found that Graduate unemployment has grown by 44 per cent in the past 12 months and is likely to be even higher next year.

Of those students who graduated in 2008, 7.9 per cent were not in employment in January 2009. Not since 1995 (when it stood at 8.1 per cent) has graduate unemployment been so high.

The report paints a bleak picture for the immediate future too: “It’s likely that unemployment for 2009 graduates may be even higher than that reported here,” says the study.

The situation varies from sector to sector:

Graduates in the construction industry have been particularly hard hit, as unemployment more than doubled from 2.9 per cent in 2007 to 8.5 per cent for 2008 leavers.

Graduate hiring in the finance sector fell to 7.5 per cent in 2008, from 8.7 per cent in 2007.

IT roles also saw a year-on-year decrease as consultants, software professionals and computer programmers fell by 18 per cent.

But it’s not all bad news (phew!): Public sector graduate recruitment remained buoyant despite the recession, with a year-on-year increase in healthcare, teaching and social work roles, the largest increase being in social work roles, where graduate numbers had surprisingly risen by 55 per cent since 2007.

For a graduate who’s fortunate to be in a job, the average salary is reported to be £19,677, an increase of two per cent from 2007.

People Management: Graduate unemployment jumps by 44 per cent in a year

• How, if at all, are these figures likely to affect the intentions of school leavers to go to University?
• What might be the negative impact on businesses that choose to neglect recruiting graduates?
• Further research: read the HR Case Studies article entitled BT hangs up on graduate recruitment. What might have been the factors that persuaded BT to do a U-turn on its decision to pull out of graduate recruitment?

The result of job-sharing: two miserable people

There’s an interesting opinion piece in the current edition of Management Today on whether or not Job-Sharing actually works.

On the upside, the writer somewhat hesitantly states that flexible working has helped a number of firms through the recession without the need for redundancies.

But on the down-side, the author is highly suspicious about whether such flexible working practices actually work:

The big fallacy of job-shares is that if two people do half a week each, you end up with a full-time equivalent. But you don’t really. Inevitably, things end up falling through the cracks between the two, or deadlines get pushed back, or service levels suffer. As a business, you only have half the amount of knowledge of the role present at any one time. So when random questions come up, as they invariably do, you’ve only got a 50-50 shot of being able to answer them.

Other potential pitfalls of job-sharing are stated as:

It gets even more complicated if the two people concerned don’t actually like each other.

Generally both people are miserable, because as far as their manager is concerned the best they can do is half a job.

It's bad for the business, because in this case a half plus a half doesn’t necessarily equal one.

Management Today: Does job-sharing ever work?

• This all seems somewhat negative to me, so I’d be interested to hear your views, particularly from those who have had experience of job-sharing, or any other form of flexible working.

A bumpy ride ahead for HR recruiters (and candidates!)

Opinion about what the future of the job market might hold for HR professionals seems to be up and down like the proverbial roller-coaster.

Apparently HR recruiters feel worse about job prospects now than they did only a month ago, according to (get ready for another groan) a new poll from the independent campaign Keep Britain Working.

The HR Recruitment Job Prospect Index (which requires either a PhD in statistics or a familiarity with witchcraft to understand it) currently stands at minus 35. This is a 5 point drop against September, when the index figure was minus 30. This is the worst score since last May, when the Job Prospect Index began, where it stood at minus 29.

Basically, this seems to indicate that those involved in the recruitment of HR professionals don’t see a very positive future for either themselves or those they are hoping to place into new roles.

Despite the bleak future, nearly one in four people (24%) still feel positive about their employer in spite of worsening job prospects, demonstrating how successful many employers have been at working flexibly, in partnership with their staff, to respond to the recession.

So, the message is clear: hold on to your job if you’ve got one. Or to your seat on the roller-coaster!

Pessimism deepens over job prospects