According to research top talent in many UK companies are not happy and voting with their feet. This is despite the fact that many of them are highly paid on average £325,000 per annum and receiving a bonus of £100,000 on average. This just goes to show that money does not always motivate.
So what are the reasons why top talent are creating high turnover costs to organisations. According to research, top performers are unhappy with company pay structures, lack job satisfaction and training and development opportunities, They are also fed up with constant relocations which create job insecurity.
So as companies fail to meet the expectations of these top performers, often they fail to make the grade. Many companies feel that paying high salaries ensures high productivity and profits for them, but that is not always the case. Companies end up paying out huge salaries yet strategic business objectives and performance targets are not met, therefore, misaligning reward strategy to business strategy.
As an example, the financial benefits package of an executive is usually made up of salary, benefits, performance bonus, share options and car/car allowance as well as the standard pension, private health insurance and healthcare.
However, companies need to consult with the individuals concerned to ensure that the package is tailored appropriately meeting the needs of both the individual and the organisation. Job satisfaction and development needs need to also be incorporated so that the total reward package is strategically effective.
As with all reward solutions the total reward package for top talent needs to be fair, equitable, transparent and competitive. To get ahead of the game, companies need to be highly creative to determine reward solutions that will recruit and retain in the face of stiff competition.
Using the benefit package to incorporate different benefit solutions can make the world of difference such as paid sabbaticals with holiday vouchers or the opportunity to drive a high performance car on the open road for meeting company targets can be a huge motivator for certain individuals fostering high performance.
Other options could include flexible hours, extra days off, better parking and workspaces, publicly recognising top talent in announcements and share options.
The company’s talent gains the recognition and respect for a job well done and for the huge responsibility they carry to ensure the company performs well.
The company benefits by fostering high performance, gaining competitive advantage and addresses the huge skills shortage that exists in the UK.
Offering stretching training and development opportunities can enhance job satisfaction. These usually highly educated top performers want to continue growing their skills through a range of options such as further academic qualifications, secondments and action learning opportunities. Likewise the company benefits from having top employees who are in the know with new ideas which help to stay ahead of competitors and avoid products and services becoming stale. Succession planning is ideal to pick out the talent pool for development.
When looking at relocating, companies should consult with their top talent to see if this is really necessary to move their top performers or could their roles be carried out in a different way eg incorporating flexible working opportunities including home-based working. This can benefit the company as well by not paying out huge relocation or redundancy costs to all concerned.
A recent announcement by London Midland trains related to a substantial cancellation of train services on the Northampton to Birmingham line. This is due to a lack of qualified drivers caused by several factors. It takes on average twelve months to train a driver but driver retention is poor due to crippling shifts. Despite the attractive salary, high train driver attrition demonstrates that money is not always a motivator.
The planned need to look at staff rotas may help the problem in the short term, however, a longer term solution needs to be found in order to ensure the problem does not occur in the future.
The strategic initiative of workforce planning would allow the train company to plan well into the future, five years ahead at least. Future demand and supply of staff is key. Planning will help to identify any shortfalls so that staffing gaps can be plugged, therefore, workforce planning provides the right people at the right time with the right skills. Workforce planning can include the implementation of succession planning, flexible working, skills audits, talent management, multi-skilling and role design to name a few processes. Ideally it should run alongside development of the long term business plan, which most forward-thinking companies undertake.
Within the plan, data needs to be organised for recruitment (numbers and levels), training, learning and development, organisation structure and deployment.
Organisational strategy can be an internal driver. However external drivers can be customer and stakeholder expectations and changes in market forces to name but two. In the long term the government has plans to develop the rail service to meet increasing customer demands, so train companies need to rise to the challenge with their workforce planning.
The implementation of workforce planning need consensus from all key stakeholders with key responsibilities outlined.Managers need to be actively supported as they contribute to the process.Regular reviews and amendments are required.The process should be a continuous cycle to ensure future people needs are met.
I have worked in HR since the mid 1990s and over the years have watched whilst the HR environment has become engulfed with jargon. Developments began in the 1990s where the term HR overtook the term personnel and came from the States.From the mid 1990s it seems the flood gates for HR jargon were opened.
The pure and simple role of HR Manager that used to mean approaching one individual for support with people management has, in general, become, in many large organisations, HR Business Partner, a role that sits within a framework alongside various generalists and specialists who are approached for support where the need lies. If you have a problem with a disciplinary situation you talk to the Employee Relations Manager, if you want to discuss pay and benefits you need to discuss this with the Employee Reward Manager rather than your HR advisor. Where has the simplicity gone?
Diversity has become the term for what once was equal opportunities. Equal opportunities looked at various pigeon-holed individuals eg disabled or coloured to ensure they had equality in all areas of employment. Diversity, however, is about valuing differences and uniqueness and being tolerant. It does not focus on individuals but values everyone for who they are. Nevertheless discrimination in all its now extended forms is still rife in the UK demonstrated by employment tribunal statistics so what does that say about this development?
Employee engagement has become a hot topic. This is all about catching the imagination of employees so they love working for a company, work harder and ultimately increase profits. This tends to be linked with employee recognition which is deemed to be a communication tool that reinforces and rewards the most important outcomes people create for your business.Employees, therefore, rather than just receiving informal praise for a job well done are now encouraged to perform for formal customised employee reward perks. The aim is that these processes make people feel valued, reduce turnover, increase employee empowerment and improve company culture. Surely an employee is paid to do a good job so surely that is just reward anyway?
Knowledge management is a range of strategies and practices used in a company to identify, create, represent, distribute and enable adoption of ideas and experiences. Informal teaching/sharing processes that have always gone. They have now been replaced by a formalised process where knowledge is captured via the management of competencies, best practice transfers and cross project learning, all of which are formally spread throughout an organisation to the benefit of all. Simple eh?
Talent management refers to the skills of attracting highly skilled workers, of integrating new workers, and developing and retaining current workers to meet current and future business objectives. What happened to good old fashioned recruitment and employee retention?
Even the term recruitment has become resourcing.
Just lately I have seen the terms onboarding and orienteering being banded around, terms from the States. Orienteering in the UK used to just mean “anoutdoor adventure sport which involves walking or running whilst navigating around a course using a detailed map and sometimes a compass”. Onboarding to me has nautical connotations and has nothing to do with employment. Why have these somewhat ridiculous terms started to replace the good old fashioned term of induction which is the process of formally guiding and introducing a new employee to people and processes in an organisation?
Instead of redundancy the terms downsizing or rightsizing are increasingly used.
Mergers and acquistions are known as TUPE transfers relating to the law The Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006 (a legal mouthful in itself), which governs the transfer of employees from one company to another.
The list could go on.
HR has a hard enough job being understood anyway in the business world so why make things even more difficult? Instead of making HR seem to be “with it” in business aiming to exert an influence on proceedings, HR seems ever more out of touch. How can HR be taken seriously if they cannot communicate in every day language?
I am a fan of good old fashioned plain English. When I provide advice on HR and employment matters I use clear practical language so my clients understand what they need to do. No-one has ever said to me “can you explain that more clearly or “I don’t know what you are talking about”.
So, in conclusion, although I am sure the jargon attached to HR processes will continue to develop, I personally do not believe it does anything to add to HR’s professional credibility and if you want clear, practical jargon-free HR advice just give me a call.
