Delegate passes are completely free, and as well as organic hr’s stand where you can come and have a chat about your organisation’s HR needs, there are seminars from Managing Director of Ploughcroft Chris Hopkins and founder of Reactiv Media Tony Abbott (amongst others), and around 40 other stands offering a whole host of different services.

Get in touch with us before the event if you’d like to book a chat with us on the day, or talk about some of our services sooner.

1. Objectivity

In smaller companies or within departments at larger companies, dealing with colleagues HR issues can be both awkward and compromising.  Sometimes, having dealt with an issue at an earlier stage procludes certain staff members intervening later on (for example if an HR officer is involved in an investigation of an incident, they’re automatically excluded from taking part in any later procedures).

This objectivity that external operators offer not only allows organisations to follow the rules effectively, but also gives them a view from outside which can be essential during more complex situations.

2. The Law

Although at smaller companies many HR problems can be dealt with ‘by ear’, there are legal implications and requirements attached to some processes and decisions that if dealt with wrongly could end up costing an organisation a significant amount of money. Outsourcing HR not only means that dedicated professionals are dealing with any issues that could potentially cause problems, but it also ensures that the relevant liability insurance is there should the worst happen.

3. Cost effectiveness

One thing we find with new clients that offer high-value services such as law firms or accountants, is that upper-management or even partners will be fulfilling some if not all of the HR tasks of the firm, particularly if the organisation has grown quickly.

Although it might seem like a good idea to have experienced and knowledgeable employees (i.e. the management or founders of the organisation) taking care of issues that very often have legal implications, it’s simply not cost effective. Consider our outsourced HR pricing structure and then compare how much a partner at a law firm might expect to earn per hour doing his or her ‘day job’ – this difference in cost is the amount the firm in question is effectively losing whilst their top employees are dealing with internal HR.

4. Skills and Experience

At firms where resources are tight, it’s easy to hand the human resources responsibilities over to someone who might not have a great deal of experience in it, and the idea of paying yet more money to an external company might seem to defeat the object, however when you consider both the legal implications of the bigger HR processes, and also the cost effectiveness, then making use of the skills and experience of a HR professional makes a lot more sense.

When introduced, the law was intended to protect employees working for organisations that were being transferred to another business, as an update to legislation that was originally in force from 1981. Although the regulation is intended to help employees and their employers, business leaders have sometimes found the regulation confusing and hard to implement.

The legislation itself has 3 main aims, which are:

These TUPE rule don’t apply when a company’s shares are sold, however they do apply when the physical assets and leases of a company change hands, and sometimes when work is given over to contractors (which falls under the ‘service provision changes’ section of the legislation.

One area in which there is some concern over the implementation of this legislation is when it comes to professional services firms such as solicitors or accountants. According to an expert on the law, Dr John McCullen:

“If you had an organised grouping of solicitors at a law firm devoted to one client, and that client said ‘I do not want this law firm, I will appoint law firm X’, then TUPE 2006 could apply so that—contrary to what the client is expecting or wanting—it may find that the lawyers would have the right to turn up at the newly appointed law firm. The definition of ‘organised group’ can be just one person.”

There is also an issue with employees who might not want to transfer to the new company. Usually they might be able to claim redundancy from their old employer as their post will no longer be in existence, however under TUPE laws they would have no choice but to either accept a post at the new company or resign.

Managing this cycle effectively is rather neatly called ‘talent management’, and is about knowing which people you need to reach your business goals.

Firstly let’s have a look at an overview of the whole talent cycle:

Above are the generally accepted stages in the talent cycle, and each of the steps can be managed by employers again to reach certain business goals. Most people would recognise recruiting and hiring, or perhaps learning and development, but here’s a rundown of each of the factors in the cycle:

Identifying and attracting

As with most of the steps, this one is self-explanatory. When looking at bringing in people from outside of the organisation, you need to be aware of your brand with regards to employment, and wherever possible manage it so that it brings in the sort of demographic you’re after. If your business goal includes rapid expansion, you may want to attract energetic and ambitious staff who will desire certain things from a job role, whereas a position that is more concerned with consolidation might favour experience, and in turn job safety.

Recruiting and Hiring

This part of the cycle might seem like the most straightforward,  but with the average hire costing anything from £500 to £10,000, it isn’t the one you particularly want to get wrong. We’ve got lots more information on recruiting and hiring here, but basically recruitment and hiring often takes an approach from more than one angle to get the right person for the job.

Integrating/Onboarding

Despite the name, all this refers to is getting new talent ‘settled in’; the first few months of a new hire can be very important. Candidates will have to deal with things like gaining local knowledge, fitting in with the company culture, working well with teams that can sometimes have been operating for a while together, and all whilst working out a strategy for the first phase of their tenure. Having a good support system in place will allow employers to spot any problems early and help employees overcome them.

Learning and Development

Good employees, and particularly good leaders and managers, never stop learning. Making sure that there is a framework for constant learning and development is essential to the development and growth of a business as a whole, which applies to new hires too, no matter what their previous experience is. Rather than an indication of something missing, learning, development and management development is a signifier of a desire to always improve.

Engaging and Retaining

This is where all the investment already put into talent management can become unstuck. Holding on to employees is particularly important if a lot of hard work has gone into recruiting and hiring, and if people who by all accounts are perfect for the firm are still leaving, there could be something wrong here. Crafting a supportive work environment, monitoring problems and addressing them and an ability to deliver on the desires of employees all contribute to successful retention.

Managing Performance

Making sure there are good criteria for success, that people know what is expected of them and conversely what they expect in return is the bulk of managing performance. Our performance management and appraisal page here goes into a bit more detail on this, and how performance management goes hand in hand with succession planning (below).

Leadership Pipeline

What happens if you’re faced with the sudden exit of several employees at a management level? Do you start looking outside the organisation to fill the vacant positions, or look internally to move someone up? The leadership pipeline deals with internal leadership planning, and how companies can nurture their own leaders internally, with the added benefit of dealing with a known entity who similarly knows the company.

Succession Planning

This is where planning for the aforementioned exits comes in again. As we’ve said, having multiple departures can be difficult to manage, and succession planning looks at how each role fits in to the organisation, and evaluates the risks of departure. Having suitably evaluated replacements is the next step, particularly if the goals of the business or the role in question is changing, or is likely to in the near future.

Transitioning

Dealing with the exit of employees is never easy, particularly long-serving and/or seemingly indispensable ones. Its key here to stay on good terms with anybody leaving the organisation, as this will reflect on your firm one way or the other. It’s also important to keep in mind any sensitive information or services could be lost to a rival.

One of the partners at organic hr, Spencer Lord, was featured in a CNN article about neuroses in the workplace last week, which looked at two new studies that suggest neurotics perform better than would be expected in a place of work, whereas extroverts can sometimes disappoint.

As well as Corinne Bendersky, a researcher at Neha Shah of Rutgers University, and Adrian Furnham, a psychology professor at the University College London, Spencer contributed his expert opinion with regards to neurotics in the workplace:

“They are more predisposed to worry about the consequences of mistakes and therefore put more effort into avoiding them…due to their natural caution, they can also be very effective in assessing risk.”

Spencer also went on to describe a client he had worked with in the past:

“Her risk aversion, need for precision and near-obsessive attention to detail don’t make her the most popular member of the leadership team at times – she often shoots down ideas from her fellow directors – but she is utterly indispensable,”

To read the full article by Vanessa Ko for CNN, please click here.

1. Enterprise and Regulatory Reform bill implemented

-          Includes various reforms to the employment tribunal system

2. New tribunal award limits

-          The limit on the amount of the compensatory award for unfair dismissal increases from £72,300 to £74,200 from the 1^st of February 2013

3. Employee-shareholder contracts introduced

4. Unpaid parental leave increases to 18 weeks

-          This is an increase from 13 weeks, and applies from the 8^th of March

5. DBS  (Disclosure and Barring Service, formerly Criminal Records Bureau) checks are portable between employers

6. Collective consultation period reduced to 45 days

-          This is reduced from 90 days where 100 or more redundancies are proposed

7. Real-time information must be used for payroll deductions

8. Statutory maternity, paternity and adoption pay increases

-          The standard rate of statutory maternity, paternity and adoption pay increases from £135.45 to £136.78 per week

9. Rate of statutory sick pay increases

-          Standard rate of statutory sick pay increases from £85.85 to £86.70 per week

10. Fee for bringing employment tribunal claim imposed

-          For level 1 claims, the issue fee is £160 and the hearing fee is £230.

-          For level 2 claims, the issue fee is £250 and the hearing fee is £950.

-          The fees come into effect from summer 2013

These changes in legislation apply to businesses of all sizes, and most of them have already come into force, meaning that many firms could be in a breach of the new rules.

Some of these rules will need little consideration from employers – for example tribunal awards limits and employment tribunal claim fees – as they will automatically change where they apply, however it is still important for them to be kept in mind, particularly in the case of tribunals should an employer be unfortunate enough to be involved in one at some point.

Technically, human resources refers to the actual people who make up the workforce of a company, but is often used to describe the department or individuals that deal with managing this resource. Another word that is sometimes used interchangeably with ‘Human Resources’ to refer to the management of people, and one which was more popular in the last century is ‘personnel’, however similarly to the term human resources this technically refers to the individuals involved and not their management, and even in this case there is a slightly different meaning.

‘Human Resource Management’, which is what we are typically talking about when we refer to human resources is in simple terms made up of the attraction, selection, training, assessment, and rewarding of employees, and in many cases looking after a company’s compliance with employment and labour legislation. Employees at larger or complex firms will be most aware of these functions when it comes to things like recruitment, appraisals and assessments, or in more unfortunate circumstances disciplinary meetings.

The practice, or rather the awareness of such a function, developed during the early 20^th century when business leaders, along with professionals like psychologists and sociologists realised that improvements in things like working conditions – as opposed to just pay – yielded increases in productivity in the workplace.

Today much of these working conditions are enshrined in law and seen as rights rather than privileges. Again larger firms will have a department entirely dedicated to human resources management, whilst others will have just one employee or even outsource much of the responsibilities, with the added advantage of objectivity.

HR Intelligence is essentially about informing your decision making. There are many ways business leaders can do this of course, but we concentrate on things like engagement surveys, salary benchmarking and psychometric profiling and ability testing.

Engagement surveys

Surveys offer employers a chance to communicate with their employees on a whole host of different topics, one of which is their happiness or ‘engagement’ with the company. These surveys aren’t about rooting out disenfranchised employees, but rather finding out why contented employees are engaged with the company, and how it might be possible to move more people into this desirable group. Engagement surveys generally group staff into 4 main areas, which are:

1. Unhappy – someone who is dissatisfied and disengaged from their organisation; these people are unproductive, often disaffecting those around them and they take up a great deal of management time; they will stay with the company only until they find something else, which in difficult economic times could take a while.

1. Satisfied – someone who is generally content with pay, benefits, management and working conditions. Generally they are passive, doing nothing over and above the minimum required; they may resign when something better comes along.

1. Committed – someone who does not think about leaving the company but is reactive, usually responding to situations only when told to.

1. Engaged – someone who proactively champions and promotes their organisation at every opportunity, feeling a strong connection with their company and seeking better ways to do things.

The video below from A&DC, a supplier of engagement surveys, highlights some of the business benefits of engagement surveys:

Salary benchmarking

Although saving money is of course an obvious benefit to a company of salary benchmarking (over-paying doesn’t necessarily get results from everybody), it would be a fairly cynical way to look at the process.

Proper benchmarking using specialist tools can help with motivation too, as under-paying employees can lead to a brain drain and ultimately a loss of key skills in the workplace. The key is to figure out how a salary and reward scheme would ideally look for your firm, whilst also accounting for the fact that not everybody is money-motivated – a good working environment, work/life balance and extras like a health plan will be much more important to some individuals.

Psychometric profiling/Ability testing

We touched on some of the actual tests involved in the  ‘team development’ guide, but psychometric profiling and ability testing is also a big part of HR Intelligence and again, informing decision making.

We use psychometrics for things like recruitment and selection, team and individual development, coaching, talent management and succession planning.

How does this affect my company?

All firms have certain decisions they must make, but where’s the sense in making those decisions in the dark? HR Intelligence offers a more scientific and measurable approach to decision making, so when it comes to structuring pay or promoting a team member, it isn’t just guesswork. Ultimately, this means that won’t make that wrong decisions that costs money, time or an employee’s goodwill.

Why organic hr?

organic hr’s partners are qualified in the British Psychological Society Certificate of Occupational Testing to Level B, which means that we are proficient and experienced in applying personality and ability testing in businesses. This along with our background in management consultancy as well as traditional human resources means we’re well placed to translate this ‘HR Intelligence’ into results.

We also use a range of different products and tools, and choose the right ones to use according to the purpose, the individual and the organisation we are working with. Furthermore, we provide a complimentary Level B Conversion Seminar with one of our providers, Talent Q.

We want these guides to be as helpful and informative as possible, so if you’ve got any questions about the post or employee relations, feel free to leave a comment and we’ll do our best to help!

Alternatively, if you’d like to speak to use about our services, give us a call on 01422 399535 or email us at team@organichr.co.uk.

The umbrella of Change and Transition covers a wide-range of issues in the workplace, but will often include things like workforce planning, company restructure, redundancies and TUPE.

Workforce planning

In the broadest sense, workforce planning means making sure that companies have access to an employee talent pool that will ensure business success. There are many ways this can be achieved, including psychometric testing that can find gaps or surplus in certain skillsets – in individual teams as well as the wider company –planning the way a workforce is organised for best results including analysing management structures, providing training and development to nurture skills, and going about recruitment and retention with the same analytical approach.

Company restructure

Companies could be restructuring for a huge variety of reasons, whether that’s an increase in demand for their product or service meaning more employees are taken on, a structure which at present is not fit for purpose or is inefficient, or a drop in demand or absorption with/takeover of another organisation, resulting in redundancies or TUPE considerations (below).

Redundancies

Unfortunately redundancies are a very real possibility for employers and their staff, and there are certain rules set out by the Employment Rights Act of 1996 that must be followed in the event workers have to be made redundant.

The basic rules on pay-outs are that employees are entitled to a week’s wages for every year worked over 2 years if aged between 22 and 40, 1.5 week’s pay of over 40, and 0.5 week’s pay if under 22. There are also procedural things to remember, so for example when only a section of the workforce will be being made redundant, employees aren’t allowed to simply choose who stays through personal preference.

Our blog on the top 10 redundancy handling tips here has more information on redundancy and key points employers should remember.

TUPE

TUPE, which stands for the catchy ‘Transfer of Undertakings {Protection of Employment)’, is a part of UK labour law which protects employees whose business is being transferred to another business. TUPE has three basic aims, which are to ensure:

-          Employees aren’t dismissed from their position as a direct result of the transfer, unless there is a business justification for doing so.

-          Employee’s contract terms and conditions aren’t worsened either before or after the transfer, and as a result of the transfer, again unless there is a business justification for doing so.

-          Employees who will be affected by the transfer are notified and consulted through a representative.

In the following video, solicitor Rachel O’Connell discusses some of the issues surrounding TUPE law:

How does this affect my company?

Aside from the legal requirements surrounding redundancy and TUPE procedures, there is also the positive effect that company restructure and workforce planning can have on things like productivity and employee wellbeing. Making sure that your employees are working well together, as well as using their skills to fullest is not only great for business but good for employees.

Why organic hr?

Bringing in an outside party like organic hr ensures that any legally required facets of change and transition are adhered to, as well as ensuring that they are done objectively and fairly and our commitment to ethical practices means that our outsourced HR pricing structure is both transparent and fair. Something which we know is very important for start-up and small businesses.

We want these guides to be as helpful and informative as possible, so if you’ve got any questions about the post or employee relations, feel free to leave a comment and we’ll do our best to help!

 Alternatively, if you’d like to speak to use about our services, give us a call on 01422 399535 or email us at team@organichr.co.uk.