The Department for Work and Pensions carried out research by sending 3,000 fake job applications to employers, with three different names: Nazia Mahmood, Mariam Namagembe and Alison Taylor. All the false applicants had similar backgrounds and qualifications, and were all educated in the UK. The Asian and African named applicants had to apply for 16 jobs on average before getting an interview, but Alison Taylor was given an interview after nine applications.

The worrying results indicate that racial discrimination in employment is still common in UK organisations, more than thirty years after the Race Relations Act was created to try to stop it. It begs the question is the Equality Bill, that the Government is promoting as the magical answer to all of our equality problems, actually going to do more to solve these issues? Jim Knight, minister for employment and welfare reform thinks so:

“We are determined to stop this scourge on society - the equality bill will strengthen our hand and we are already preparing to publish specific plans for dealing with discrimination in the workplace later this year.”

The results suggested that using standard application forms rather than other forms of application, may be more likely to avoid discrimination, as applicants for public sector vacancies were not subject to the same ‘foreign name’ discrimination. Most public sector application forms actually detach the personal details and equality monitoring pages before the application is sent for short listing. However this process is not always possible in the private sector – public sector vacancies are renowned for taking many weeks and even months to be processed, but in my organisation the effect of this kind of time period would be disastrous. In fast paced commercial environments, candidates for roles need to be found efficiently, and in many industries, the need to fill out complicated forms would put a lot of applicants off. In these organisations it is interventions such as equality and diversity training for those involved in selection processes that will have a better impact on reducing discrimination whilst maintaining high volume, high pace recruitment practices.

This is a post from HRGirl.com.

ShareThis

“the intelligence with which we address and solve problems of meaning and value and through which we assess whether one course of action or one life-path is more meaningful that another”

The author talked about young graduates who had told him that they wanted some experience in the private sector before taking their commercial experience to work for a charity, which would provide them with the opportunity to fulfil their spiritual intelligence as well as their IQ and EQ. This is quite an overt example, but I think a lot of people do not need to take such direct paths to social contribution to achieve some kind of SQ.

SQ can be fulfilled within most organisations for a lot of employees, as it could come down to how the employee feels about what their company does and its impact upon its customers as well as the wider society. It is about helping employees to define their personal values and working out where they align to the aims and values of the organisation. For example, does the organisation produce products or deliver services that are a genuine benefit to the customer? This may sound like a strange thing to say, but I recently interviewed someone for a sales role whose present company was selling debt solutions to unwitting customers that did not really need them – the candidate’s SQ was virtually non-existent. I think that the employee’s impact on society can be at a very basic level such as ‘are we an ethical provider?’ regardless of what the service is, and still have an effect on their spiritual intelligence.

An important factor in this is the communication mechanisms within organisations. Does the company shout about its positive impact on customers (successes, case studies) or society (environmental policies, corporate social responsibility practices)? Or is it the case, as in many organisations, that the positives are there but employees are left to wallow in the negative issues without being given a balanced viewpoint of how the company is doing ‘socially’? A difficult question could be ‘how do you address the SQ of your employees that work in the customer complaints department?’ These are the considerations within organisations in relation to SQ that I think come way before considerations of a direct link between employees and their contribution to society.

This is a post from HRGirl.com.

ShareThis

Gordon Brown said that the reforms are being used to generate money that will be used to provide free childcare for lower earning parents. However as would be expected, many of the leading voucher providers have criticised the plans, as this will make family life and balancing the struggles of work and childcare more difficult for many. With the possibility of savings of up to £1,000 for parents that are involved in a scheme, this is quite a big dent on family income, and could have an effect on the number of parents that are able to work when they have children.

This is a post from HRGirl.com.

ShareThis

This decision followed the highly publicised Stringer case earlier this year, which ruled that employees will continue to accrue their holidays when they are on long term sick leave, and that this could be carried forward if they are unable to take the leave in the current year.

This latest ruling covers situations when an employee is on holiday, and becomes sick. The ECJ has said that it is no longer allowed for an employer to say ‘tough luck, you lose those days’ if the employee is genuinely sick. And there lies the potential problem for a small number of employers; that this system is open to abuse from a handful of employees that may try to increase their holiday entitlement by claiming sickness during a period of annual leave. However it is recommended that the employee should provide clear medical evidence of the illness – i.e. a doctor’s note – to show that they would have been off work if they weren’t on holiday. In theory this could prove to be overruled as well in cases where the illness lasted less than 7 days, because employees can self-certify for this amount of time in normal sickness absences, however for now it is generally accepted that this is required to be able to reallocate holidays.

This is a post from HRGirl.com.

ShareThis

One effective way of tackling this dual problem is with a Local Employment Partnership (LEP). This is a scheme where the Job Centre helps to source candidates through the pool that is classed as long term unemployed, and if required may carry out pre-interview training or assessments to ensure that candidates with the right capability and skills are being put before employers. One employer that has recently found success with this scheme is John Lewis, where recent recruitment drives for new store openings have involved many LEP candidates, and the success rate for these applicants has been high. In addition to this, it has been found that those employees that were sourced through the LEP have been retained at 90%, which shows the benefits in terms of loyalty and commitment that can be found through this route. As Suzy Welby, manager of government initiatives at John Lewis highlights, the labour pool of long term unemployed people is growing and could be a great source of untapped talent:

“There might soon be three million unemployed, many of whom will have the skills we want, and that is not a group you can ignore.”

For more information on this subject visit the jobcentreplus website

This is a post from HRGirl.com.

ShareThis

The chair of the EHRC, Trevor Phillips, has commented on the findings by demanding that the sector addresses this issue. Phillips was formerly the head of the Commission for Racial Equality and has come under attack from a number of commissioners for his leadership skills and style since taking the helm of the newly formed EHRC, which requires him to lead on equality in age, gender, religion and belief, sexual orientation, disability and human rights as well as race.

A key reason for the pay gap in the financial sector could be the age profile of its workers – with most employees in the City at an age where women are most likely to have childcare needs. Campaigners for gender equality have highlighted the need to support parents with childcare initiatives and other measures that will encourage women to continue to work and support their progression in their careers. The Government has highlighted that the Equality Bill will continue to highlight these issues with the introduction of compulsory gender pay gap reporting, which will be introduced within large (bigger than 250 employees) organisations initially.

This is a post from HRGirl.com.

ShareThis

However, whilst the flow of employees into and out of the company may be slower than usual just now, employers need to be warned that if they do not keep their eye on employee retention issues, the outward flow may suddenly turn into a torrent once the economy improves and the labour market frees up again. When this will happen, nobody knows for sure, but what is certain that it will eventually take place and the last thing companies need when they are emerging from economic instability and getting ready to take advantage of improved market conditions, is a mass exodus of their most talented staff. This is certain to happen if employers become too complacent with their approach to staff retention. On top of this, despite the labour market being slow at the moment, there are still jobs available, and if your employees really want to move on now, the really talented ones; the ones you really want to retain; will be able to find a new position even in the recession.

Recent CIPD research, carried out on 3,000 employees found that 34% of respondents would ideally like to change jobs, although most were planning to stay put for the near future due to difficulties in the labour market. Many people involved in the survey, which was carried out by YouGov, were actually planning to change sector or career altogether once the economic crisis ends. An advisor from the CIPD said:

“the poor state of the labour market is acting like a dam holding back the normal flow of talent”

Employers that wish to keep their staff during and after the recession must continue to listen to the needs, ideas and concerns of their workforce through formal and informal consultation methods, and line management has a massive role in maintaining the loyalty, commitment and enthusiasm of their teams through assisting them in working towards career goals and development needs. Loyalty is a two-way street and employees need to know that they have a bright future with the company, otherwise they will pursue other avenues to achieve their aspirations and find job satisfaction.

This is a post from HRGirl.com.

ShareThis

Employee engagement will have a direct effect on business success at any time, but at the moment this is more critical than ever because businesses are having to work a lot harder and perform better than ever to maintain their position in the turbulent markets. This is also a time where employees are feeling insecure, less trusting of their company, or may even have ill feeling towards their employer following difficult restructures or redundancy programmes. Employees that are harbouring these feelings are less inclined or in some cases less capable to go the extra mile and perform at a high level for their employer, because their personal motivation and engagement levels have dropped so significantly.

Engagement can simply be described as making sure employees feel involved in and excited by their work. There are many different facets of employment that lead to job satisfaction and engagement, and individual engagement will be brought on by a combination of all of them. Some aspects that will affect this are:

• feeling fairly paid for what you do
• having a benefits package that suits your needs and lifestyle
• having a job that you enjoy and understand exactly where it fits into the organisational objectives
• being treated with respect by your colleagues and managers
• being given clear and constructive feedback
• having a manageable workload
• having a sense of shared values with the organisation

I could go on forever, which shows that one simple action from HR or the management team will not lead to fantastic engagement for the whole workforce. Keeping employees engaged can be hard work and it is often a very individual matter. This is why it is my opinion that line managers have a really big job in maintaining employee engagement within their teams. Staff surveys and consultation exercises can be a good way to measure overall engagement and give the organisation some ideas about projects that can be carried out, but it is on an individual level that engagement will be built successfully. A really good exercise for HR teams at the moment is therefore developing management capability to enable them to manage engagement themselves and see the benefit they can add by getting it right.

This is a post from HRGirl.com.

ShareThis

So how would you go about this, considering the fact that you are unlikely to wield as much influence over the specific individuals who will be carrying out the work? All you can do is ensure that you make use of a professional and reliable cleaning company and from that point you’ll have to leave it in their hands.

It may be tempting to employ someone directly or give the work to a friend of a friend, but the advantage of using a cleaning company is that you won’t need to recruit again if a cleaner leaves. The agency should have a roster of cleaners on their books, all of whom should meet qualification criteria. Pick the right cleaning agency and you won’t have to worry about a thing.

A good cleaning company will ensure that their employees have the expertise to do their job. For example, professionals will have received carpet cleaning training, as different carpets require different cleaning approaches and the wrong one could lead to damage.

This is a post from HRGirl.com.

ShareThis

The concept is based around a short, sharp presentation of ideas on a specific topic within a limited time frame. There are a number of different names for the method, the original being ‘Pecha Kucha’ (pronounced ‘pe-chak’cha) which was created for young designers in the world of architecture to have the opportunity to meet and present their work in an informal setting. The short time limit on each session allowed for a lot of designers to present in one night. The name Pecha Kucha is a Japanese term for the sound of chit-chat, and in this particular form of speed-presentation, each presenter gets to present 20 slides, with 20 seconds for each slide, amounting to 6 minutes and 40 seconds in total.

Pecha Kucha is mainly for creative subjects such as architecture, design or photography, but other versions of the speed technique exist for a range of subjects. Ignite is another method that has 20 slides but only 15 seconds per slide, giving a five minute maximum length. One of the advantages of this method is that because of the length of the presentation, it is not possible to go into too much technical detail, and so it is good for simple but important messages or small sections of one subject that has been broken down.

Another benefit of this method is clearly that it can be used as a way of getting across a point with minimum time and maximum impact. My colleague was keen on this aspect as there are fundamental training needs within the team which need to be addressed but it can be difficult to arrange and deliver long training sessions due to organisational pressures such as the need to maintain service delivery throughout the day, whereas with this method those training needs can be broken down to small chunks and delivered over a period of a few weeks, in a logical order so that development takes a progression, and can be slotted easily into the working day. We are running the short presentation at the beginning of the week, with a small piece of ‘homework’ for participants to complete by the end of the week, which will reinforce and test the learning they have had, then another short session at the end of the week in which one of the participants (chosen at random so that everyone completes their homework!) gives feedback and presents the results of their homework. I’ll report back on how it goes!

This is a post from HRGirl.com.

ShareThis