A recent report by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) highlights the sticky situation in which the UK economy and its workforce remain in the thick of, because the bad news is that the report predicts the economy will grow by 1.4% in 2011, down from 1.6% in its previous report, and 2% in 2012, down from 2.1%.
The better news is that it predicts unemployment will peak at 8.7% during 2012, down from 9.5%.
These unemployment figures should undoubtedly be seen as positive however one of the major underlying reasons for this reduced figure is the ongoing pay squeeze.
Pay squeezes helped to mitigate the negative effects of the recession on employment during the recession and companies’ use of them continues to assist the UK economy’s growth (however slow it may be at present). But while the pay squeeze is having a positive effect on the UK economy as a whole, what effect is it having on employees? Is job satisfaction in your company being affected by this prolonged stagnation?
You might say that you’ve tried your hardest to keep people in work and that your employees should be happy to have a job at all, and it’s a fair point, but it’s also the sort of attitude that is stopping them express their views about the work environment in an open way.
In fact there might be a real underlying concern about the ongoing pay squeeze that you haven’t identified yet.
More and more companies are coming around to the fact that they need a full picture of their workforce, and are using tools like the 360 feedback tools, which are uniquely designed to spot areas of concern that many haven’t even realised existed, to put themselves in the picture.
By allowing staff to respond online anonymously, this tool enables their true feelings to become clear without any threat of prejudice. This is simple, identify issues and get them resolved before they fester and manifest themselves as major problems within the organisation.
Elva Ainsworth – Talent Innovations
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