Article was first published in HRZone.

As uncertainty over the Eurozone crisis continues to dampen confidence and fears of a double-dip recession continue to loom, it appears that UK organisations will need to keep on tightening their belts for some time to come.

And as downsizing strategies go, few measures ever seem to receive the same amount of airtime and column inches as job cuts, which have become the very public face of the economic downturn.

The rationale for redundancies is easy to understand when the workforce can account for anything up to 90% of a business’ total fixed costs. But are employers simply taking the easy way out?

There is mounting evidence to suggest that significant efficiencies – amounting to millions of pounds in cost savings – can be achieved just by managing the workforce more effectively. Cutting headcount is not a cheap proposition and it is an agonizing process in any organisation. Worse still, losing important knowledge and skills can come back to haunt you in the longer term.

While remaining staff may pick up the slack initially, growing the workforce quickly enough as demand rebounds can likewise prove to be a challenge.

In fact, recent statistics from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development` showed that employers are already struggling to recruit the skills they require due to increased competition for talent. But this situation can hamper a business’s recovery and may even call its future into question.

Clearly then, it makes sense to retain good people rather than lose them for short-term financial gain. Organisations can do this by addressing three core issues in order to optimise how they manage their workforce: monitoring staff activity and time spent; managing absence and deploying employees more effectively.

Spreadsheets

Although such a proposition may sound straightforward in theory, a lot of companies simply do not have the tools to go down this route in practice. Managing absenteeism, for instance, is something of a holy grail for HR professionals. Even though absence levels have fallen in recent years, the associated costs remain high.

For example, SK Chilled Foods established a few years ago that it was losing 700 hours per week due to unauthorised absences. As it had 700 staff, it was on average losing about an hour per week per employee.

At Doncaster Council, staff reportedly took an average of nearly 13 sick days per employee during 2009/10, which cost the authority more than £10 million.

Adding to the cost of absenteeism are activities such as wasting time and fraud, which includes rounding up timesheets. Nonetheless, many HR directors are not keen on the idea of introducing absence monitoring systems and such initiatives often stall because of internal political and cultural considerations.

As a result, spreadsheets continue to be the most common tool for reporting time spent and absenteeism, which makes it difficult to analyse the data at any level of detail. The danger is that this situation can give rise to a culture of ‘getting away with it’, which organisations can do little about as they have little hard evidence.

A Wall’s ice cream factory in Gloucester found, on the other hand, that automating its workforce processes saved it time on manual data entry and analysis activities. Before its owner Unilever overhauled how things were done, four full-time clerks and an HR administrator were tasked with allocating staff costs against specific products lines.

But implementing a workforce management system also meant that the factory could deploy its 500 workers more cost-effectively as they were automatically allocated to undertake pre-scheduled tasks.

Managers were able to evaluate labour costs at the activity, production line or factory level and last-minute changes could be made easily in order to cope with absences or to meet production demands. There was also no need for dedicated administrators any more.

Automating manual processes

SK Chilled Foods, meanwhile, saved more than £600,000 and cut absence levels by 40%, which reduced other administrative costs, by introducing a comprehensive, automated workforce management strategy.

A lot of the savings came from simply automating manual procedures such as entering attendance data and connecting together previously siloed HR processes and systems so that things operated more effectively.

Its workforce management systems also enabled detailed information to be recorded about each employees’ attendance levels and activities, which could then be data-mined in order to uncover trends as well as the behaviour of individuals if required.

Such information can help users to understand the reasons for any widespread absenteeism or excessive overtime levels, which may be down to an organisational misalignment that can easily be fixed rather than individuals’ poor behaviour.

The same data can also be used to help optimise scheduling and rostering by providing a more accurate picture of the time and resources required to perform a given task. Moreover, as predictive workforce analytics software becomes more prevalent, it will be possible to base strategic decisions of this type on real-time rather than historical information.

But these systems can also bring benefits for the workforce. A medical devices company, for instance, found that introducing a flexible working model based on annualised hours – monitored by a workforce management system – not only reduced its cost base, but also helped to address growing staff discontent due to erratic overtime schedules.

After having said all of this, it is important to stress that deploying any kind of automated system is likely to expose some ‘dead wood’. Nonetheless, dealing with surplus capacity is a long way from making the mass redundancies suggested by our current apparent ‘sack to save’ culture.

Neville Henderson is a principal consultant at Pasfield Curran, the flexible working, productivity and working time consultancy business of workforce management software supplier, Crown Computing.

Read more: http://www.hrzone.co.uk/topic/managing-people/could-more-effective-workforce-management-replace-redundancy/117938#ixzz1n0yqsVPx

If you had to compare generations and look at the strengths of each, how would you objectively evaluate each cohort? If you belong to one generation, what would you say are your unique strengths, unmatched by other generations? Or would you think that all generations are in fact the same and there are no real differences?  Let’s find out in this week’s poll.

• Six out of ten people believe that employees work more if given flex time and the opportunity to work from home
• Over a quarter believe that there is no difference and that employees work the same amount
• A little over one-tenth (13%) feel like employees in fact work less, than if they were obliged to go to the office and fulfil their regular working hours.

One could guess that if employees worked less, Microsoft wouldn’t have created the “Work from Home Day”. As Kate Kalmstrom mentions, there are many benefits, namely:

• Avoid wasting time commuting to and from work
• Better focus on tasks at hand, as an open office can be distracting
• Perhaps an even more cosy and comfortable setting to work in,  again allowing the person to produce more

Surely on the employer side, there is a lot of trust involved, i.e. that your employees will be working. One could assume  that certain employees would abuse the benefits. But in general, so long as employees deliver on projects and meet deadlines, why should it matter when and how they work, right?

Click on infograph below to see results

• Worthless
• Uninteresting
• Boring
• Nonsense
• Gibberish.

To avoid blah blah, Dan Roam recommends that the words should be 1) clear, 2) the idea should be simple and 3) the intent should be to clarify.

For employer branding professionals, this should remind us of what we need to communicate to top talent:

• What they’ll be doing on the job if they get hired
• What benefits they’ll get by working for you instead of someone else
• What type of employer you are

Do you agree? Comments are always welcome.

Don’t be greedy either because too much talk about money is a put off, says nearly every other second person. Why though? Should a candidate be primarily motivated about the job and not the reward, or? If money isn’t a motivator, why should employees, particularly salespeople, strive to make their employer richer? You tell me.

To top that off, signs of fatigue aren’t appreciated either for every third or so person. Yip, for all job candidates, drink plenty of coffee and make sure you have the fight in you. You don’t want to come across as being bored or tired before you’ve even started the job – seems like another no brainer.

Interestingly, candidates don’t have to worry about being overexcited – due to a caffeine overdose – because gesticulating frantically, being overconfident and speaking excessively, doesn’t seem to bother the most of us.

To sum-up the top three abominable mistakes for job-seekers: 1) know zippo about the job or company; 2) obsessive about getting cash, and 3) look like you’re going to fall asleep in your chair by yawning too much!

To see infograph of this week’s poll, click on the image below.

Click on infograph to see mistakes by job-seekers

In the workplace, and from a business perspective, having a diverse workforce is no longer a question. The world is interconnected and due to the huge advances in international travel and communication, people easily move and work across borders. This article serves to remind people of the pros and cons to having a diverse workforce and provides five recommendations for recruiters and managers on how to manage one. Yes, having a diverse workforce may sound obvious, but it’s not so straightforward to manage as some might think.

Struggling with Human Nature

Diversity means difference in all manner and form. The antonym to diversity would be uniformity. In the workplace, diversity refers to the composition of your workforce – people of dissimilar background, culture, experience, psychical and mental characteristics, etc. Whereas uniformity would involve cloning Mr. One & Only – we all think the same; we all do the same; we all look the same…how boring! Why is having a diverse workforce so important? And what can backfire if people are too different? Let’s explore.

In an article about the challenges of having a diverse board, WSJ sums-up brilliantly the benefit and obstacles: diversity leads to more out-of-the box thinking; yet, it also creates contention and disunity. Although this is an article about how diversity can backfire on company boards, the same obviously applies to employees and large to small project teams. WSJ reports that if a company has a board of like-minded individuals, the following arises:
“They look at problems—and solutions—the same way. There’s no one to challenge prevailing ideas, or to speak out on issues important to certain groups of customers and employees.”

Clearly, the above scenario is something that all organizations should avoid. Why? Because the world is already complex and problems, as well as solutions, need to be looked at from every possible angle. Moreover, The thinking goes that a diverse workforce would create the opposite and more desirable environment of “more innovation, more outside-the-box thinking and better governance”. Yet although it sounds simple in theory, it’s hard to practice and even harder to achieve for one main reason: human nature!

When employees have conflicting viewpoints and find it hard to compromise, personal battles and power struggles are likely to occur, especially in a competitive environment where everyone is fighting to be noticed, to get promoted and climb up the chain-of-command. In the boardroom, WSJ describes such a scenario:
“People often feel baffled, threatened or even annoyed by persons with views and backgrounds very different from their own. The result is that when directors are appointed because their views or backgrounds are different, they often are isolated and ignored. Constructive disagreements spill over into personal battles”.
Obviously, the above situation would apply to employees working in project teams too: certain individuals may be picked-on, or marginalised, because they question the group’s intentions and purposes. In such circumstances, the difficulty for the project manager and HR department is to get people to work together, despite their personal differences; and to create an environment where people agree to disagree, but are nevertheless able to move projects forward – easily said, than done!

The colorful world we live in

Diversity today is a given and leaders can no longer ignore it. On the contrary, managers need to embrace diversity despite the difficulties of managing people with dissimilar needs and backgrounds. In “Understand the importance of diversity”, BusinessWeek explains just why: due to “speedy air travel and now even speedier internet service” the world has become interconnected. In addition, trade agreements and the free flow of labor between countries have further facilitated the process. Although that sounds rather obvious, the implications or affects of globalization on businesses are still being dealt with and experienced. Here is a perfect illustration of just how colorful and complex today’s world is:
“In the U.S. alone, the wide range of people involved in both the making and the consuming of products could include the Indian automotive engineer who is helping to take Ford to the next level; the African American statistician at a Silicon Valley startup; the 65-year-old disabled man who, instead of retiring, has just been promoted; the Gen Y child of immigrants from Central America who excels in Web marketing at Procter & Gamble; the gay woman who is the mother of two; and so on”.
Although fictitious, the above example couldn’t be truer to reality. More importantly, as the journalist later reports, “As consumers, they are all buying what your business sells—or ignoring it—depending on whether your company is as diverse as they are”. Is this true?

Taking into account only the gender composition of a workforce, recent findings in the special report from The Economist, confirms the argument that a company’s employee makeup should in fact represent their consumer audience:
“A number of studies have shown that the presence of a critical mass of women in senior jobs is positively correlated with a company’s performance and possibly with higher profits. None of them has demonstrated a causal link, but it is not implausible that companies will benefit from a more diverse workforce with a broader set of ideas. Many of their customers are probably female. In Europe and America women decide on 70-80% of all household purchases and strongly influence buying decisions even for items such as cars and computers that are generally seen as male preserves.”

Businesses today have to embrace diversity to be successful. Companies can no longer group consumers into broad categories – on the contrary, markets are now highly segmented, into various groups and sub-groups, and it’s a trend that will continue as marketers learn to practice precision targeting. To reemphasize the point, if companies wish to be profitable, they first need to understand the needs of such a disparate consumer population and second they need to cater to each and every distinct group by tailoring their products and services accordingly. How they do that? It’s by hiring, basically, their consumers!

From an employer branding perspective, businesses will thus need to attract a diverse range of employees and similarly address a disparate range of employee needs, i.e. if they wish to serve today’s consumer population. The only way to do that is by first understanding what those differences are and become sensitized to the needs, wishes and views of others. Yet as mentioned before, managing dissimilar people is complex and as the WSJ pointed out: conflicts, prejudices and battles between groups occur. Internal conflicts and power struggles – the “us versus them” scenario – will certainly hinder business progress and a company’s diversity initiative could certainly backfire. What’s the solution? First, one needs to fully understand the implications of diversity, before one learns to master it. Second, the challenge for management is to lead by example, by being open-minded, tolerant and understanding to all. Third, the test for HR is to create an atmosphere that encourages cultural diversity and simultaneously forges a common company culture or team spirit attitude, one that is essential for achieving the company’s business plan.

Below is a summary of the pros & cons to having a diverse workforce and a list of recommendations for HR to facilitate the process of building one.

Pros to diversifying

1. Innovation: people from various backgrounds and cultures don’t think or work alike, thus it encourages more outside-the-box thinking that leads to new inventions and discoveries.

2. Profitability: a diverse workforce knows how to market and sell products & services to a diverse consumer population; marketing is all about understanding the end-consumer and there is no better way of doing it than by recruiting the people you’re trying to sell to.

3. Talent pools: a wider selection of people is made available, i.e. the entire world should be your recruitment shopping basket. Why limit yourself by recruiting only those from a particular university, educational background, or career path? Be daring and venture out into the unknown – you will be surprised to find many talented and gifted people that will over-deliver and surprise you if given the right opportunity.

4. Multiformity: a variety of people with different skills and experiences are able to specialize and address various service/product areas in your business; the all-round overachiever or corporate superhero is hard to come by and it’s probably best to recruit people who have different skills and strengths instead.

Cons to diversifying

1. Conflicts: people often feel confused, threatened or even annoyed by individuals with views and backgrounds very different from their own; constructive disagreements can become power struggles and  create a bad political atmosphere that hinders project advancements.

2. Bureaucracy: decision-making can be delayed due to diverging views and opinions, thus corporate decisions and actions take time.

3. Unproductivity: dissimilar cultural identities and values, or simply said when people lack things in common, could negatively affect the overall team spirit that is essential for reaching high-levels of productivity.

4. Disunity: everyone in the company might have a different opinion on the way business should be run and managed; thus, the company might have people doing their own thing, especially if there is no protocol and authority to ensure common practices.

So taking into consideration the pros and cons of diversity, what can be done?

5 recommendations* for employers to manage a diverse workforce

1. Recognize & welcome cultural differences

That’s one step in the right direction to creating an environment of tolerance and understanding. Being a manager, encourage your employees to adopt this mindset, to challenge their belief system and to be open-minded enough to hear alternative views. It will open up horizons and make people realise that there isn’t one road to Rome, or an ultimate truth or way of doing things.

2. Adapt to new hires instead of enforcing the traditional corporate culture on them

Just as a person is expected to be flexible and be able to adapt to new circumstances, the same should apply to a company. As the world constantly changes, a company culture needs to adapt to current times. For example, a lot has been written about the Gen Y mentality and how employers should understand and adapt to this new generation in order to harness their full potential and at the same time make them work alongside Gen Xers and the soon retiring Baby Boomers.

3. Communicate and understand differences

As a leader, you should encourage people to voice their opinions and, more importantly be themselves. If employees feel like they can open-up and be their true selves, they’ll be more engaged in their job and will feel happier in the long-run, as nobody likes pretending to be something they’re not. Managers need to accept that they can’t make everyone think and act like they do.

4. Be attentive to verbal and nonverbal cues that might indicate or create tension

There are countless examples of how cultures differ in their interpretation or perception of both verbal and non-verbal communications. Managers today are expected to be culturally dexterous and be sensitive to such differences in order to not offend somebody. Here are some examples:

• “Pointing with one finger is considered to be rude in some cultures and Asians typically use their entire hand to point to something.”
• In Western culture, eye contact means you’re attentive and honest; yet for a Hispanic, Asian, Middle Eastern, or Native American, eye contact is thought to be disrespectful or rude.
• “In Canada and Japan, people generally do not raise their voices in normal conversation. However, in Latin America, people talk loudly and it is not because they are angry.”*

5. Evaluate how diversifying affected the company’s performance in sales, efficiencies, and customers gained or lost.

This is the most telling of all recommendations. We should always question and test the purpose of things and see if indeed our diversity policy or programme is creating the results we wish for. Perhaps your diversity initiative is compromising your business performance. That doesn’t mean you should scrap diversity altogether but it might mean that you need to go back to the drawing board and re-think your approach.

*These suggestions have been inspired from the Business Week article “Understand the importance of Diversity”.
*Examples where taken from the Vermont Department of Health

Here are the top 10 stories of last month.

1. 6 competencies for a successful HR professional

According to “the largest global study ever on human resource professionals” there are 6 competencies you must have to become a successful HR professional. Read more to find out how to become one, and how to build an effective HR department. Read more

2. 13 ways Millennials view work differently

Young people who are entering the workforce have an entirely different view than their parents. According to a recent study by a Yale professor, starting to work in a recession creates attitudes that could last up to 20 years. Read more

3. What is your Employee Value Proposition?

Why would top talent in your industry want to work for you? The answer shouldn´t only be written in words, it should be a part of your company’s culture. New studies show that in the tough job market it’s the culture, and not a high salary, that is important for employees. Read more

4. IKEA got thousands of applicants without spending money on media

In Australia, IKEA has been running a recruitment campaign, from which they got over 4000 quality applicants, without spending a dollar on media. By using their own specific channels and tone of voice, they successfully hired almost 300 staff to a new department store. Read more

5. 5 habits of a great recruiter

Here is a list of 5 things most successful recruiters do. How to measure being successful can of course always be discussed, but if you have a proactive approach and are open to new influences you are already ahead of many others. Read more

6. How to recruit passive candidates

The best candidates are often the passive ones, and the process of recruiting them is completely different from how to recruit active job seekers. Does your company have a strategy for how to attract and hire the passive candidates? Read more

7. Recruitment in 2012

Over the past years, the way we think about work and recruitment has changed. Gone are the days when everyone was a regular employee, working all hours from the office and wanted the job that paid the most. Two of the reasons are of course the turbulent economy and new technical tools. Read more

8. Have your employees spread your employer brand

Getting your employees involved in your recruitment marketing, should be a part of your employer branding strategy. Reason being, you can get referrals and help candidates to better understand your organization. Read more

9. HR 2012 forecasts

What are your predictions for 2012? “More Social, More Data, More Job Boards, More Acquisitions…” says John Sumser in HR Examiner. He presents 13 hot topics and explains how they will affect you this year. Read more

10. 10 tips when using social media for recruiting

The awareness of the commitment it takes to use social media for recruitment is increasing; nevertheless, there are still a lot of misconceptions and mistakes made. Do you know where to find your audience online? Moreover, do you have interesting and engaging content on your profiles? Read more

Yet although the principal of the net and social media to expand networks, connections and reach-out to huge audiences is a communication revolution, do we all know what we’re doing? Are we really capitalizing on the potential? Is it all just a fad of various people wanting to be there, because they must, but in the end have no idea if it’s beneficial? In other words, is social media helping you become more successful in attracting, recruiting and retaining staff? Perhaps we should ask that as our next question.

However, from our poll of the week, and as we could predict, the majority of employers are using social medial but still have no idea of what they want, or maybe even of what they’re getting out of it – only time will tell if all of this is just a craze or if Facebook is indeed worth $80bn or more. As the BBC rightly mentioned, it depends on how much we’re all worth, as in the end user, and whether or not we’re all willing to be targeted by more and more advertising – for it to be seen.

Here is a sum-up of this week’s poll. Thanks for your participation!
• Interestingly, the majority of employers are using the channel but still have no idea what they want (65%).
• It’s only a small fraction of companies, over one in ten employers that surprisingly do have a clear strategy and defined goals – perhaps they can be kind enough to advise the other 65%.
• Almost one out of five isn’t present in social media but is planning to be there. Only a small minority of employers (5 %) doesn’t want to and doesn’t see the purpose.

To see the results, click on the infograph below: Is your company actively present in social media for talent attraction purposes?