Lincolnshire shared services deal to save £1.3m by axing 20 posts
Plans for North and North East Lincolnshire councils to enter into a shared agreement to jointly provide local taxation and benefits services could save taxpayers £1.3m, mainly by getting rid of 20 full-time equivalent posts. The agreement, which will cover housing and council tax benefits administration, collection of council tax and non-domestic rates and other […]
HMRC staff balloted for action over call centre privatisation plans
A union representing more than 21,000 Revenue and Customs staff is threatening to stage regular walk-outs over the government agency’s plans to use private sector providers in order to answer taxpayers’ phone calls. At the end of last week, the Public and Commercial Services union began a two-week ballot of 12,000 of its members […]
Talent Spot: John Ainley, group HR director at Aviva
“Authenticity is very important. You can be authentically awful, but being comfortable with who you are, is crucial as an HR director,” says John Ainley, group HR director at Aviva. Ainley, who is a member of the insurance group’s executive committee and reports directly to its chief executive, started working there as a divisional HR […]
Blog: Does HR belong in finance?
Recognise This! – HR must provide strategic value to claim a place on the executive team. What’s the reporting structure for HR in your organisation? Do you have a CHRO or similar that reports directly to the CEO? Or does HR report up through operations (the COO) or finance (the CFO)? Workforce Management recently […]
News Analysis: Two thirds of workers suffering high stress levels
Two thirds of all workers are suffering from high levels of stress and are having to take time off work as a result. These are the key findings of a survey among employees at 1,500 companies worldwide undertaken by employee assistance programme provider, ComPsych, to coincide with National Stress Awareness Day today. The poll […]
Book Review: Corporate confidential by Cynthia Shapiro
I found reading this book to be a particularly depressing experience and had to force myself to get anywhere near the end. My advice to other potential readers would be not to bother. Cynthia Shapiro was a senior HR manager in various US organisations and had to get involved in some pretty dirty business to […]
Melody Hossaini’s verdict on the Young Apprentice: Episode two
Melody Hossaini, a candidate in the last series of BBC TV’s The Apprentice, social entrepreneur and founder of InspirEngage International blogs about the second episode in the new season of Young Apprentice: Week two task: Design a product for the parent and baby market and pitch it to leading retailers. This week saw a classic […]
IT recruitment slows drastically after nine quarters of growth
Although overall activity in the IT recruitment sector had been increasing for nine consecutive quarters, growth over the last three months slowed to a grim 1%. Moreover, an increase in outsourcing by both public and private sector organisations as they attempted to cut costs led to both consultancies and software houses being the most active […]
Video Interview: HR, execution and the cloud
Doug Dennerline, president of SuccessFactors, talks about how to bridge the gap between cloud strategy and execution. Watch this video to find out where he thinks cloud computing is headed in 2012.
Blog: Rewards and recognition – tips for motivating staff on a small budget
Money is tight in today’s economy, but you shouldn’t be draining the bank account to get peak performance even when it’s plentiful. As I’ve written recently, pay-for-performance schemes can be demoralizing and demotivating and are likely to have unexpected consequences. Still, employees are not machines. They’re human beings and need to be motivated. However, some […]
Mediation: Part Three – How to prepare participants effectively
The prospect of attending a mediation session in order to try and settle a workplace dispute can be very daunting for everyone concerned. So what can HR professionals do to support people and help prepare them for the big day? 1. Clarify the mediation process Most providers supply all parties with a written document […]
UK lags behind rest of OECD in management skills
An influential HR body has called on the Coalition Government to find ways of encouraging UK employers to fill damaging gaps in current management and leadership skills profiles. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development has published a Work Horizons report entitled ‘Good Management – A New (Old) Driver for Growth’, ahead of next month’s governmental […]
Give employers tax breaks to cut youth unemployment, says CBI
The Confederation of British Industry has called for tax breaks for those businesses hiring jobless young people in an attempt to fight rising youth unemployment figures. The employers lobby group attested that organisations hiring out-of-work 16-24 year olds should benefit from a new ‘Young Britain Credit’, which would cover £1,500-worth of National Insurance contributions during their first […]
New global jobs recession could spark social unrest, warns ILO
Even as the Coalition Government vowed to kick-start UK infrastructure projects in a bid to create employment, a United Nations’ agency warned that the global economy was on the brink of a new jobs recession that could spark off social unrest. The International Labour Organization said in its ‘World of Work Report 2011’ that it […]
Blog: A Beecroft in a bonnet – is the leaked report really such a big deal?
There’s been a lot of hoo-ha this week over the leaked Government report proposing that – shock horror! – people should be fairly sacked for being no good at their job. The main bone of contention though seems to be the ‘compensated no-fault dismissal’ – the suggestion that employers should be able to dismiss incapable […]
How to guard against corporate social media discrimination
Corporate social media discrimination is becoming an increasingly tricky issue to deal with and HR is finding itself at the forefront of the struggle – often without having the necessary defences in place. Corporate social media discrimination refers to situations where employers use social networking sites such as Facebook to undertake research about a candidate’s […]
NHS staff expose confidential patient data 5 times per week
NHS staff are revealing highly sensitive information up to five times a week by posting messages about patients on Facebook, discussing their illnesses in public or losing their medical files. The news was relayed in a shock-horror Daily Mail expose, but was derived from a Freedom of Information request submitted by pressure group, Big Brother […]
Too many firms employing Mr and Ms ‘Unknown’, warns HMRC
The taxman has expressed concern over how much incorrect payroll paperwork he receives, after more than 800 returns in fiscal year 2009/10 claimed to employ Mr or Ms ‘Unknown’. Errors in the details of employees’ tax and national insurance contributions, sent by employers each year to HM Revenue & Customs as part of their PAYE […]
Official apprenticeship figures exaggerated, leaked document reveals
A leaked document from Vince Cable’s department has revealed that official apprenticeship figures have been exaggerated. Data released yesterday by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills appeared to indicate that 442,700 people started apprenticeships in the academic year 2010/11 compared with 279,700 the previous year. But an internal BIS document leaked to The Guardian admitted that […]
Top exec incomes leap 50% while staff struggle with earnings squeeze
Although renumeration for top executives at large public companies jumped 50% in the last year to £2.7 million, pay deals for the rest of the workforce languished at about half current inflation rates of 5.2%. A report by Incomes Data Services indicated that the huge leap in earnings for directors of FTSE 100 companies meant […]