Multi-national employers are increasingly synchronising their international HR policies to create a single company look-and-feel, according to the organisation behind the annual ‘Britain’s Top Employers’ study.
A report in the Daily Telegraph cited the CRF Institute’s chief operating officer, Steven Veenendaal, as saying that, the reason behind the move was that “harmonisation is seen as being a key driver for growth as well as providing impetus for a united employee culture”.
The problem is, however, that harmonisation at a global levels was “probably at odds” with a growing trends towards staff wanting to work from home.
“Companies will need to have a debate about how they are going to accommodate these different forces,” Veenendaal said.
Nonetheless, it will be the European economic climate that forces employers to look at their HR practices most closely, argued the company’s founder, Sierk Baalbergen.
“Companies like never before need to be able to say what they are, where they are going, and what they need from their people to be able to do this. The future of HR actually looks very promising because economic shocks are a driver for change and re-evaluation and innovation in HR,” he said.
Another key HR trend will see organisations increasingly trying to work out how to separate their operational from their strategic functions. “No one has got all the answers just yet, so there will be many big discussions still to come about how to achieve this,” Veenendaal pointed out.
The discussion took place to coincide with the publication of the Institute’s 12th annual ‘Top Employers’ listing and an awards dinner, which was held last night in London.
The top three winners in the large organisation category, based on both their HR practices and employee offerings such as benefits, were fast-food chain, KFC; soft drinks company, PepsiCo, and hospitality group, Whitbread.
The leading mid-sized firms with up to 499 staff were professional property consultancy, Rider Levett Bucknall; marketing and communications agency, McCann Manchester, and pensions law firm, Sacker and Partners.
