News round-up

Citation

(2015), "News round-up", Human Resource Management International Digest, Vol. 23 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/HRMID-06-2015-0102

News round-up

Article Type: News round-up From: Human Resource Management International Digest, Volume 23, Issue 6

Ing computerizes aspects of HR

A Dutch multinational bank and financial-services organization is using a cloud-based software to transform human resources (HR) service delivery to more than 25,000 Netherlands-based employees.

Ing Group previously relied on call centers and face-to-face interactions for most HR inquiries. It now has a fully branded HR portal for employee self-service, an automated case-management system and a single system for recording and streamlining HR requests and services.

The self-service portal enables employees across The Netherlands to gain access to a knowledge base of more than 1,200 articles in Dutch and English on topics such as health, compensation and learning. This allows employees to get answers they need on the most frequently asked topics whenever they want.

The bank has converted its manual case-management HR processes into automated process workflows. This means that, when an employee has an enquiry on benefits and vacation or a more complex request such as sabbaticals and leave of absence, he or she can log into an HR portal that routes the request to the right HR expert. This enables Ing’s HR team to measure and report back on HR performance and its impact on the business.

Ing integrated the new software into the company’s existing HR system, helping it to consolidate its tools for HR services on to a single system of record. This gives the organization a bird’s-eye view of its processes and one repository of HR data, for greater consistency and efficiency.

“Employees increasingly expect consumerized self-service for HR”, said Marc van den Berg, manager, HR Click Netherlands. “The automation opportunities have meant that employees have much of the information they need at their fingertips, significantly increasing employee satisfaction and dramatically reducing the number of steps taken for information to be accessed”.

From start to finish, the project took only three months to go live.

Ing’s project partner was an enterprise IT cloud company ServiceNow.

Metlife launches a wellness program for UK staff

MetLife UK has launched a wellness program for all staff across its wealth-management, employee-benefits and individual-protection businesses.

Employees are offered individual health consultations on key issues, including body-mass index and cholesterol, as well as advice on areas to improve, as part of the program, which is being run with AXA PPP Healthcare.

The program was launched with a wellness week open to all 400 MetLife staff in its Canary Wharf and Brighton offices. They were offered a range of seminars and advice on health and stress issues, plus massages and free gym passes.

The program was developed following feedback from staff and builds on services MetLife offers to corporate clients as part of its pro-active protection group income-protection policy.

Pro-active protection provides a range of health and wellbeing information and other support services via MetLife’s wellbeing hub, which includes an employee health gateway to help employees to calculate their own “health age” and receive personalized health and wellness information.

MetLife research shows that improving health and wellness at work is the No. 1 objective when designing employee-benefits programs – 82 per cent of employers chose it as their primary objective, slightly ahead of retaining staff.

Tom Gaynor, employee-benefits director of MetLife UK, said: “Wellness cannot be truly at the heart of our proposition if we do not embrace it as a company. In order to achieve our aim of being a market-leading insurer we need to also be a market-leading employer”.

“That is why we have launched the wellness week and wider program as we strongly believe that healthy employees are happy employees and that everyone should have access to wellness at work.”

“Practical programs to help to improve employees’ mental and physical health create foundations for companies to grow strongly, which is where employee-benefits programs can play a major role”.

Construction employees would welcome on-site drug testing

Three-quarters of construction workers agree with random drug testing while on site and most would feel safer if employees could be tested and dismissed at any point if they were proved to be under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

All participants in a survey were initially asked whether they had ever worked on a construction site that carried out random drug testing. Less than one-tenth (9 per cent) of workers stated that they had done so. All stated that they had passed their tests without any suspicious results.

When then asked whether they believe that random drug testing should be made a mandatory procedure carried out across all construction sites in the UK, over three quarter of the workers (76 per cent) and almost half of the employers (49 per cent) agreed that it should be.

Construction workers and employers who believed that drug testing should be made mandatory on all sites were then asked to state the reasons. The most common answers were:

• I would feel a lot safer and more secure in my workplace with drug testing in place (68 per cent);

• I do not want to work with people who are putting me in danger (54 per cent);

• I do not want poor work carried out if colleagues are under the influence of drugs (43 per cent);

• I do not want to work or associate with drug users (22 per cent); and

• drug testing may help those who use habitually to quit their habit and put their career first (15 per cent).

When the respondents who stated that they did not agree with making the drug testing compulsory across construction sites were asked to reveal why not, the top five reasons emerged as:

1. random drug testing would take up too much time in organization and implementation (77 per cent);

2. the costs involved in carrying out the drug tests would be too expensive for construction companies (61 per cent);

3. there are no guarantees the drug testing would be 100 per cent effective (40 per cent);

4. I believe workers should be allowed to spend free time however they wish (16 per cent); and

5. I take drugs occasionally and would be concerned about losing my job (5 per cent).

Lyndon Wood, Chief Executive of business-insurance Web site http://constructaquote.com, which carried out the research, said: “Taking into account how important safety and accuracy are regarding so much of the work carried out on construction sites, it seems as though implementing drug tests would work out as a perfectly logical step to ensure the safety of workers and the peace of mind of employers and construction clients.”

“Having said that, many think that the science and technology behind the tests do not yet give totally accurate results. Lives and careers could be irreversibly damaged through a faulty drug test. While I do think that drug tests should be implemented across all sites eventually, perhaps now it is too soon to risk the potential problems associated with someone being falsely accused”.

Skill gap affects learning and development specialists

A significant gap exists between the skills that learning and development specialists know they need and what they actually have in-house.

Research by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), the professional body for HR and people development, and Towards Maturity, provider of research on effective practices for modern learning approaches, reveals that although learning and development specialists are more ambitious than ever, many do not have the capabilities in-house to drive the organizational change they would like to.

For example, 87 per cent think that business planning is a priority for learning and development specialists, but only 47 per cent think they currently have the skills in-house. Similarly, 96 per cent see supporting learners online as important, but just 36 per cent have the capabilities to offer these services.

A high proportion of firms are not investing in building their learning and development capability. Over 50 per cent of organizations surveyed said they are not planning on changing role focus toward instructional design, content development, technology, performance consulting and data analytics.

This also filters down to the learning and development function itself. Despite nine out of ten learning and development specialists looking to improve performance, productivity and sharing of good practice, only 53 per cent agree that there are more options than just “the course” for building skills and performance.

Ruth Stuart, research advisor at the CIPD, commented: “It is very interesting how, as learning and development specialists, we constantly champion the importance of staying ahead of the game in terms of skills and capabilities but do not take our own advice. In this volatile work environment we need to be agile, adaptive and ambidextrous to drive performance and stay relevant, aligning our work to the wider business”.

“In order to do this, we need to ensure that the correct learning and development resources, roles and capabilities are in place. Evaluating your team’s current skill base, starting to build on capability gaps and then making continuous professional development (CPD) an everyday reality are the first steps.”

“We have seen that although practitioners seem to understand the importance of alignment between learning and development activity and organizational performance, many are struggling to achieve this in practice. A clear line of sight is therefore key, as is being clear on vision and purpose and ensuring all resources are deployed innovatively and effectively”.

The research also highlights a noticeable shift in the learning and development role from pure training delivery to a performance-consulting model. This means learning and development specialists must both diagnose and solve problems, partnering the business to identify opportunities to enhance performance. The shift also moves learning and development provision significantly beyond “the course”, and means that learning and development specialists will increasingly need to be versatile experts.

McDonald’s has already put measures in place to accommodate these broader roles, with the introduction of a new development program designed to build performance-consulting skills across the business.

Laura Overton, managing director of Towards Maturity, said: “It is clear that learning and development specialists have higher expectations than ever, aligning themselves with wider business needs and accumulating more responsibility. However, this makes it imperative that we stop and reflect on our own learning and development first if we are to adapt to the changing contexts of work and the way we support individual and organizational performance”.

“The challenge is how to focus our roles and shape our own professional development to make sure we are future-ready. We need to first identify all internal and external factors influencing learning and development roles and consider what is driving change. We then need to assess whether there is a healthy mixture of roles in the learning and development function, before deciding which changes we need to make to drive performance in our individual organizations”.

The CIPD’s research found that the following organizations have been successfully implementing new initiatives and processes to enhance the impact of learning and development:

• Barnardo’s: The IT learning and development team at the UK’s largest children’s charity has developed an adaptable way of working which means it can respond quickly to business needs while continually keeping its own skills up to date.

• Mattel: The American toy manufacturer has shifted learning evaluation from inputs to outputs, to focus on business impact.

• McDonald’s: The food-service retailer has encouraged a shift from training delivery to performance consultancy with the introduction of a new development program designed to build performance-consulting skills across the business.

• Ministry of Defense: The college of communications and information systems at the Ministry of Defense has focused on achieving business and customer alignment with a full appreciation of the purpose of learning and development through an innovation cell.

• PriceWaterhouseCoopers: The professional-services firm is encouraging evidence-based decisions using data and has established a digital-learning academy, focusing on building confidence in learning technologies and having great conversations with business leaders.

• University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust: The trust has established a learning and development structure that clearly connects to organizational needs, so investment can be directed where it is most needed.

Want to be happy at work? pick your colleagues wisely

More than a quarter of people think that the thing most likely to make people happy in their job is getting on well with colleagues. This is closely followed by having a good work-life balance, at 24 per cent.

Research by Barclays also showed that after the atmosphere of a workplace, it is how valuable or important the work we do that matters. One in five people felt that doing something they believe in makes them happy, while the same amount felt they were happy because what they did was useful.

The top 10 factors that make people happy at work are:

1. I get on well with my colleagues (26 per cent).

2. I have a good work-life balance (24 per cent).

3. It is something, I believe in (21 per cent).

4. I think what I do is useful (20 per cent) and I get to use my brain (20 per cent).

5. There is a good atmosphere in the office (17 per cent).

6. I am financially well rewarded (15.95 per cent).

7. I have flexible working conditions (15.80 per cent).

8. I feel recognized and appreciated (15 per cent).

9. I am doing something challenging (14 per cent).

10. I have a lot of responsibility (13 per cent).

The founder of Lady Geek and a Barclays panelist for the research, Belinda Parmar, commented: “When I first started my degree in languages, I had a romantic and unrealistic vision of what career I would have after– the reality was very different where I struggled to get a job. Had I thought earlier about the job options open to me, I would not have studied languages. I wanted to take part in the Barclays debate to encourage more young people to think not only about doing what they love but what will be in demand and a route to a fulfilling successful career”.

Kirstie Mackey, the Head of LifeSkills Created with Barclays, said: “It is interesting to see that such a broad range of factors makes people happy at work. It is also telling that environmental factors are so important. This suggests that although the industry will always be an important consideration for young people in choosing a career, they need to be thinking in broader terms about the work environment that they think will suit them. It is also vital that businesses recognize what employees are looking for, so that they can create a happy, engaged workforce”.

LifeSkills Created with Barclays is a free education and work-experience program. More than 1.1 million young people have participated in LifeSkills since it was launched in March 2013. The bank has also recently announced 800 new apprenticeship placements throughout the business, to join 2,000 apprentices already hired, and the first pilot of the Trailblazer higher apprenticeship. The latter allows young people to achieve a Level 6 apprenticeship, equivalent to a university degree. Five young people from within Barclays and five from outside the business started on the scheme in February following an initial training program.

Workers declare job location to be more important than wage

Job location is on average the most important factor for why UK workers stay in their current job role (57 per cent), ahead of both wage (52 per cent) and job security (33 per cent).

These are the findings from an online survey conducted by OnePoll on behalf of ClickSoftware, as part of a global competition to find the world’s most extreme work locations.

The UK survey, which looks at factors affecting job performance, found that one in five people believe their productivity at work has been harmed by the location of their job. This increases further in the capital with over a quarter of Londoners (26 per cent) feeling that their productivity would suffer by working in a horrible location. Within the UK, employees in the southeast value the location of their job more than anyone else in the country.

Young professionals are by far the most affected by the location of their work, with a quarter (24 per cent) of 25 to 34-year-olds admitting that their productivity is likely to be affected by a “horrible location”. More notably, over two-thirds of people (67 per cent) revealed they have either considered or actually left a job, at least in part, for a change in scenery.

Regardless of the job involved, the most popular place to work is at home, with 60 per cent of people identifying this location to be very comfortable. Over half of people (51 per cent) admit they would not feel comfortable working in a job that involves heights. Working underground, such as in a mine, was the least popular option, with nearly three quarters (72 per cent) of people saying that they would not feel comfortable doing so.

Those looking for an interesting view as they toil away should look for a job on the road, with 46 per cent of people voting this the location that would provide the most interesting views each day, just ahead of working up high in the open (45 per cent) or out at sea (44 per cent). However, the majority of Londoners are happy with the view from the office as they identified this to be the most inspirational place for them, and instead focus on achieving promotion, which is nearly five times more important to the capital’s workers (23 per cent) than people in East Anglia (5 per cent).

Unproductive working days cost UK businesses £250 million a year

UK businesses are losing £250 million a year, as employees are distracted by heavy e-mail traffic, loud talkers and office gossips.

Research commissioned by Samsung and carried out in partnership with the University of Leeds found that workers are unproductive for 70 days of the year, with respondents admitting they only feel like they have actually achieved something on an average of 3.6 days a week. Almost a quarter (22 per cent) claim they interrupt their workflow every 22 minutes to check their e-mails and over a third of workers (38 per cent) admit they check e-mails at least every 15 minutes.

According to the research, the top seven office distractions are:

1. loud talkers – 57 per cent;

2. the telephone ringing – 39 per cent;

3. unnecessary meetings – 26 per cent;

4. constant stream of e-mails – 22 per cent;

5. making tea rounds – 18 per cent;

6. office gossips – 16 per cent; and

7. people typing loudly – 12 per cent.

The report also uncovers the extent to which technology is transforming the workplace and working habits. The average worker now uses two or three different devices at work, with 10 per cent of respondents admitting they use as many as five or six. Likewise, over a quarter (28 per cent) of workers now have two screens attached to their desktop, and 38 per cent have more than two screens attached to their PC. Over half (54 per cent) of respondents say good-looking technology is important, yet 38 per cent are dissatisfied with the technology they have in the office.

When it comes to working from home, 22 per cent of people who spend some of their time working in a company office find working from the comfort of their home makes them more productive. Nearly a third of people who regularly or always work from home (32 per cent) have a dedicated workspace. Despite this, 86 per cent still confess they get side-tracked when working at home, with the main distractions noted as people they live with (36 per cent), housework (36 per cent), the TV (27 per cent) and pets (15 per cent).

Employers discriminate against Muslim women

Discrimination by employers means that Muslim women are much more likely to be unemployed than white Christian women even when they have the same qualifications and language abilities.

Dr Nabil Khattab told, in the British Sociological Association’s annual conference in Glasgow, that Muslim women in the UK were around 70 per cent more likely to be looking for work unsuccessfully.

Dr Khattab, of the University of Bristol, said that they “have experienced greater unemployment, which can be attributed to discrimination in recruiting and hiring practices”.

Survey data showed that the unemployment rate among Muslim women was 18 per cent, compared with 9 per cent for Hindu women and 4 per cent for white Christian women.

Previous research had attributed this to Muslim women being less well educated and less fluent in English: on average 21 per cent of Muslim women aged 19-59 had degrees, compared with 44 per cent of Hindu women and 30 per cent of white Christian women. Only 29 per cent of Muslim women had English as their first language.

However, Dr Khattab took a sample of 2,643 replies to surveys to compare the rates of people looking for work without success, and carried out a statistical analysis to compare women with similar educational level and language abilities.

He found that Muslim women were 71 per cent more likely than white Christian women to be unemployed, even when they had the same educational level and language skills. Hindu women were 57 per cent more likely to be unemployed than white Christian women.

The figures were also adjusted to remove any effects of marital status, whether the women had children and the strength of their religious belief.

“This study uses data to explain the employment patterns among Muslim women in the UK”, Dr Khattab told the conference. “It provides a thorough analysis of a wide range of factors that have not been analyzed in previous studies such as the impact of language skills and the importance of religion”.

“Economic activity among Muslim women in the UK remains considerably lower and their unemployment rate remains significantly higher than the majority group even after controlling for qualifications and other individual characteristics”.

He said that Muslim women’s high visibility was likely to be a key factor in explaining their exclusion. “They wear the hijab or other religious symbols which makes them more visible and as such exposed to greater discrimination”.

He said that by controlling for the religious intensity of Muslim women in the analysis, it was likely that cultural factors such as the reluctance by some of them to work in certain jobs had been ruled out as a reason for their higher unemployment rate.