http://www.blogigo.co.uk/hrconsultants HR consultancy news, views and opinions. Everything from the world of human resources consulting. Read the latest in the UK HR consultancy industry and comment on things affecting your business. en hrconsultants hrconsultants Wed, 27 Jun 2007 17:30:02 +0200 daily 1 It is so often the case that the 'next big thing' resembles the 'last-but-one-big-thing'. In other words, what goes around, all too often, comes around.  So it is with 'serious gaming'. This is games playing as a business development-learning-coaching tool. Essentially, these are corporate training computer games, but they've got a bright, shiny new title : 'serious gaming' [cue predictable Wikipedia link ]. The tastemakers over at HR Magazine are making quite a fuss about it, claiming it's the saviour of e-learning, will revolutionise training in your organisation, will ensure all your employees are fully involved, trained and on-message.  Oh yes, and they mention classic HR buzzwords such as  'employee engagement'.  All very commendable, I'm sure. The thing is though, reading closely, it appears these games take between 3-6 months to produce and can cost up to £250,000. Now, I'm in favour of any tool... Wed, 27 Jun 2007 17:30:02 +0200 http://www.blogigo.co.uk/hrconsultants/Serious-Gaming-This-Week-s-Next-Big-Thing/12/ http://www.blogigo.co.uk/hrconsultants/Serious-Gaming-This-Week-s-Next-Big-Thing/12/ Today's not very surprising news is that offshore customer support and call centres may be aren't the cost effective HR solution that they were touted as a few years back. PersonnelToday quotes research from Compass Management Consulting that suggests that increasing wages of 15% per year in places like India is making the offshore call centre not so very cost-effective after all. Problems with language and quality of customer service, resulting in longer call times, were also mentioned as a major factor in the research.  My question is: why would this come as a surprise to anyone? It was perfectly obviously that outsourcing customer support functions to countries that don't speak English as a first language is a recipe for disaster.   There are already a growing number of people who just won't engage with companies who outsource their call centres abroad. Companies even mention 'UK Only Call Centres' in their Television advertising. ... Wed, 27 Jun 2007 17:03:59 +0200 http://www.blogigo.co.uk/hrconsultants/Offshore-Call-Centres-Not-So-Cost-Effective/10/ http://www.blogigo.co.uk/hrconsultants/Offshore-Call-Centres-Not-So-Cost-Effective/10/ Most larger companies have employee handbooks and HR policy documents of one kind of another, but when it comes down to it, are these grievance procedures just pie-in-the-sky nonsense? Are they even followed at all in practise?  The problem for employers is, that if your grievance procedures are not being followed, then you are opening yourself up to legal problems, tribunals, compensation - the whole nine yards. Indeed, if you can't show - indeed, prove - that employees are aware of your current grievance procedure and that you have followed the minimum statutory three steps , then any tribunal or legal challenge is inevitably going to go against you. It doesn't matter whether your company has 20,000 employees or just two, the same rules apply. In effect, grievance policies must be as watertight as possible. ACAS has a good self-help guide to creating grievance procedures, but you must ensure your staff are both aware of and have accepted the policies. A good... Thu, 21 Jun 2007 21:21:42 +0200 http://www.blogigo.co.uk/hrconsultants/Do-Your-Grievance-Procedures-Give-You-Grief/8/ http://www.blogigo.co.uk/hrconsultants/Do-Your-Grievance-Procedures-Give-You-Grief/8/ A couple of years back Fast Company published a cover story called 'Why We Hate HR' . Cue lots of fuss, defensiveness from HR professionals and general pointless arguing. Now - two years on - there is a new survey from Deloitte/Economist that indicates "only 23 percent of corporate leaders feel their HR departments play a crucial role in corporate strategy or have a significant impact on operating results." Workforce.com magazine suggests that HR departments are "fixated on administrative and procedural functions and generally ignored larger strategic imperatives." (such as nuturing talent and building value) and that, in fact, the human resources profession at large isn't particularly concerned about such things. Most HR consultants reading this far would surely already be up in arms and would, rightly, point out that a large part of the focus of their work is in putting HR at the centre of people related issues; whether that is... Mon, 18 Jun 2007 21:27:00 +0200 http://www.blogigo.co.uk/hrconsultants/Everyone-Hates-HR-Still/7/ http://www.blogigo.co.uk/hrconsultants/Everyone-Hates-HR-Still/7/ One of the areas in which businesses often require the assistance of HR consultants is employee absense. It is estimated that staff absence costs employers between £10.5 and £13billion per year, so is obviously a serious issue. Often an employer's first thought is to get an absence/attendance policy in place double quick and enforce it vigorously. While, obviously, absence policies are a must have for most companies, the focus really has to be on making the workplace a better place to be in. For example, if you have lots of working mothers in your company, then consider introducing a creche in the workplace, thereby eliminating childcare problems. If your staff aren't motivated or are, frankly, bored then, again, absence is going to increase. No attendance policy is going to be able to prevent it. Vary the work that staff do and encourage their feedback and you will find that your absenteeism problem starts to diminish. Flexibility in dealing with staff is... Sun, 17 Jun 2007 10:59:00 +0200 http://www.blogigo.co.uk/hrconsultants/Absence-Doesn-t-Always-Make-The-Heart-Grow-Fonder/5/ http://www.blogigo.co.uk/hrconsultants/Absence-Doesn-t-Always-Make-The-Heart-Grow-Fonder/5/ The problem with being a self-employed consultant, I'm told, is that you can get too isolated from the very people that you need to engage with : namely potential clients. It's all too easy to end up talking HR consultants jargon and not use the language of your prospects. This was brought home to me recently when I was involved in creating content for the performance management section of the Consultant Matters.co.uk website. We have quickly learnt that the terms performance evaluation, performance management, performance appraisal and, even, performance review are interchangeable in the minds of potential clients. The problem is that, from an HR consultant's perspective, performance management covers a very different set of tasks than performance review. And don't even get me started on things like employee feedback, balanced scorecard, 360 degree feedback and the myriad of other performance evaluation tools available. The point I'm making, I... Fri, 15 Jun 2007 22:27:00 +0200 http://www.blogigo.co.uk/hrconsultants/Simplifying-Performance-Management-For-Real-People/4/ http://www.blogigo.co.uk/hrconsultants/Simplifying-Performance-Management-For-Real-People/4/ From October this year, companies will not be allowed to deduct bank holidays from their employees annnual leave entitlement.  This will bring annual leave entitlements up to 24 days from October 2007 and up to 28 days from April 2009.  The General Secretary of the TUC, Brendan Barber is understandably pleased, claiming it as " another important milestone on the road to giving workers in the UK the same holiday rights as those enjoyed by their colleagues in the rest of Europe " but the effect, of course, remains to be seen. Personally, I'm a big believer in the idea that generous holiday allowances for staff means that they become more, not less, productive. However, there is a real bottom line cost to this move, especially for larger companies, and my feeling is that such companies will attempt to recoup the cost via other methods, possibly creating further dissatistfaction among their workforce. I truly hope this isn't the case, but it does remain... Fri, 15 Jun 2007 21:55:09 +0200 http://www.blogigo.co.uk/hrconsultants/Bank-Holidays-To-Become-A-Real-Holiday/3/ http://www.blogigo.co.uk/hrconsultants/Bank-Holidays-To-Become-A-Real-Holiday/3/ A recent report from the Economist in association with Capgemini Consulting entitled 'Trends In Business Transformation' found 86% of European senior executives believe that business transformation is an integral part of management. So far so good. If executives recognise the need for change and understand the fundamental drivers for organisation change, that can only be a positive thing. However, it appears that many executives feel unqualified to manage change (around 70% felt this way) and almost half felt that the project failed to achieve it's original goals. If executives within the companies themselves are unable to manage organisational change effectively, then it is up to professional human resources consultants to pick up the slack. The reluctanct among certain classes of senior management to engage with outside assistance should be sent this survey as compulsory reading. Organisational restructuring and change can be an immense task and senior... Tue, 12 Jun 2007 20:38:14 +0200 http://www.blogigo.co.uk/hrconsultants/Change-Is-Good-Managing-It-Not-So-Good/2/ http://www.blogigo.co.uk/hrconsultants/Change-Is-Good-Managing-It-Not-So-Good/2/ A recent Personnel Today article suggests that HR professionals "can't be bothered" to calculate the return on investment their company has gained from the use of executive coaching. The author uses this to bash the coaching industry and suggests that "it's highly unlikely that anyone will bother to check or ask you to prove your worth." However, maybe the real issue is that quantifying human resources coaching and executive training isn't the simple task that the author suggests it might be. Properly defined performance management and evaluation schemes can enable HR departments to measure whether an individual's skills are improving and whether there is an increased value to the company. However, putting such things in purely monetary/return on investment terms is not always that easy. To blame, as Karen Dempsey does in this article, the executive coaching industry itself and to suggest that it is nothing more than an "executive... Mon, 11 Jun 2007 22:52:00 +0200 http://www.blogigo.co.uk/hrconsultants/Anyone-Measuring-Return-on-Investment/1/ http://www.blogigo.co.uk/hrconsultants/Anyone-Measuring-Return-on-Investment/1/