577243-employee-engag.pdf

3% Pay RiseHelp your employees become this much richer. FOR FREE.www.SalaryFinance.com

Flexible thinking iskey to keeping staff

Peacemakingat work is avaluable skill

Special treatsto reward extra effort

Technologyis engagingemployees

03 07 10 15

Successful companies must get the most from a flexiblecompany culture or risk losing out in the war for talent

Staff conflict can fester and affect the bottom line unless it is dealt with properly

Benefits tailored to your team can be the decisive differentiator which attracts staff

Informed use of technology isn’t just a way of monitoring staff morale

Independent publication by 29 / 09 / 2015# 0340raconteur.net

EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT & BENEFITS

Motivating and retaining staff has never been so diffi-cult for companies because we live in a fast-changing

world where jobs are less secure, benefits such as pensions have been cut, and peo-ple are more mobile.

Employees are better informed and able to communicate, thanks to digital media, and they expect more of a dia-logue with their employer, rather than one-way, top-down communication.

For some employers, it means chang-ing radically to adapt to new, tech-savvy ways of working more flexibly. Old, es-tablished practices such as fixed desks and presentee-ism may need to be chal-lenged. New skills and new technology must be learnt.

Despite the UK’s reputation as eth-nically diverse and tech-savvy, it does not have a strong record on employee engagement.

The UK ranked 18th out of 20 leading countries, behind only Japan and Hong Kong, in a survey of 7,000 employees last year, carried out by research firm ORC In-ternational. Only 37 per cent of UK workers surveyed felt they were encouraged to be innovative and fewer than half felt valued at work, according to HR magazine.

Workplace culture matters because, as Paul Frampton, chief executive of Havas Media, an advertising-buying agency, says: “Culture is the one thing that a

competitor cannot steal or replicate.” He quotes Simon Sinek, a business thinker, who argues companies should focus on “why they exist, not what they do”.

Silicon Valley tech companies are seen as pioneers in fostering a modern work-place, from “20 per cent time”, one day a week when an employee can work on any new idea they like, to benefits such as free, organic meals in the canteen. Sal-aries and share awards are generous, plus there is a sense of purpose in working on technology that can shape the future.

Little wonder that Google and Face-book regularly top surveys of employee satisfaction by Glassdoor, the website that lets workers rate their employer.

The rise of social media means employees should be a company’s best advocates. Mr Frampton cites IBM as a company that has encouraged its staff “to share inspiration and views on how they could work smarter”.

Enlightened employers see this as part of a wider trend as staff ben-efit from more flexible working and independence.

Darren Childs, the chief executive of UKTV, the broadcaster behind TV chan-nels such as Dave and Gold, has tried to foster collaboration by mixing up teams, getting a creative to sit next to an accountant, and encouraging people to move desks every three months. He also hosts a weekly “all-hands” ques-tion-and-answer session.

It’s not just about a flexible workspace and a more creative environment. Netf-lix, the online TV streaming site, allows

employees to take as much holiday as they want, so long as they get their work done, as part of a “policy of trust”.

Sir Richard Branson was so impressed he copied Netflix at his Virgin Group. “Flexi-ble working has revolutionised how, where and when we all do our jobs,” he says. “So, if working nine to five no longer applies, then why should strict annual leave pol-icies?” He argues that improved morale, creativity and productivity can all be linked to more flexible treatment of staff.

Few bosses have the Virgin showman’s abilities to communicate, but smart em-ployers know they need to try harder through face-to-face “town hall” meet-ings, online video messages, employee appraisals and social media.

Some experts claim that millennials, those born from the early 1980s onwards who came of age after the millennium, are more likely read social media than e-mail or a company blog.

An interesting question is whether any chief executive can afford not to use social tools, such as Twitter, Instagram or

LinkedIn, to engage employees as well as customers. Fewer than one in ten FTSE 100 chief executives are on Twitter.

Mr Frampton, a keen tweeter, says: “Too many CEOs are resolutely burying their heads in the sand and not shifting from the command-and-control management style they grew up with. Being accessible enough and prepared to enter into conver-sations and learn from others is key.”

James Rossiter, joint managing direc-tor of business communications firm Morgan Rossiter, agrees: “Companies should communicate frequently with staff and keep it short and simple. Sound like a human, don’t use business jargon that would never be understood in a crowded bar.”

Sceptics say that flexible working and a more open approach are a sop to employees who have seen wages lag the cost of living and final-salary pension schemes axed.

In an acknowledgment that pension provision has weakened, the government has demanded that companies auto-en-rol every worker. However, the impact on employee engagement is tempered by the fact that these defined contribu-tion pensions are worth far less than a final-salary scheme.

Havas Media boss Mr Frampton con-cludes with two pieces of advice on em-ployee engagement: “Number one is to be clear on your purpose, and number two is to over-communicate when you are on that journey to your talent and your customers – plus be honest about where there is still work to do.”

OVERVIEW

GIDEON SPANIER

Distributed in JO FARAGHERFreelance business journal-ist, she specialises in em-ployment and recruitment issues, and contributes to Personneltoday.com.

PADRAIG FLOYDFormer editor in chief of the UK pensions and investment group at the Financial Times, and ex-editor of Pensions Management, he is now a freelance business writer.

ALEC MARSHWriter and award-winning editor, he contributes to The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, Daily Mail and The Spectator.

NICK MARTINDALEAward-winning writer and editor, he contributes to national business and trade press on a wide range of issues.

CHARLES ORTON-JONESAward-winning journalist, he was editor-at-large of LondonlovesBusiness.com and editor of EuroBusiness.

BRID-AINE PARNELLScience, technology and business writer, on the staff of The Register, she also con-tributes to Forbes.com.

GIDEON SPANIERJournalist and commentator on business and the media, he is chairman of the Broadcasting Press Guild.

RACONTEUR CONTRIBUTORS

Publishing Manager Richard Sexton

Digital and Social ManagerRebecca McCormick

Head of ProductionNatalia Rosek

DesignVjay LadGrant ChapmanKellie Jerrard

Production EditorBenjamin Chiou

Managing EditorPeter Archer

BUSINESS CULTURE FINANCE HEALTHCARE LIFESTYLE SUSTAINABILITY TECHNOLOGY INFOGRAPHICS

Although this publication is funded through advertising and sponsorship, all editorial is without bias and sponsored features are clearly labelled. For an upcoming schedule, partnership inquiries or feedback, please call +44 (0)20 3428 5230 or e-mail [email protected]

Raconteur is a leading publisher of special-interest content and research. Its publications and articles cover a wide range of topics, including business, finance, sustainability, healthcare, lifestyle and technology. Raconteur special reports are published exclusively in The Times and The Sunday Times as well as online at raconteur.net

The information contained in this publication has been obtained from sources the Proprietors believe to be correct. However, no legal liability can be accepted for any errors. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior consent of the Publisher. © Raconteur Media

raconteur.net/employee-engagement-benefits-sep-2015

Too many CEOs are resolutely burying their heads in the sand and not shifting from the

command-and-control management style they

grew up with


Successful companies must invest in the workplace to engage with employees and get the most from company culture – or risk losing out in the war for talent

Employees using the break-out area at Facebook’s office in Menlo Park, California

EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT & BENEFITS | 03RACONTEUR | 29 / 09 / 2015 raconteur.net

Motivating and retaining staff has never been so diffi-cult for companies because we live in a fast-changing

world where jobs are less secure, benefits such as pensions have been cut, and peo-ple are more mobile.

Employees are better informed and able to communicate, thanks to digital media, and they expect more of a dia-logue with their employer, rather than one-way, top-down communication.

For some employers, it means chang-ing radically to adapt to new, tech-savvy ways of working more flexibly. Old, es-tablished practices such as fixed desks and presentee-ism may need to be chal-lenged. New skills and new technology must be learnt.

Despite the UK’s reputation as eth-nically diverse and tech-savvy, it does not have a strong record on employee engagement.

The UK ranked 18th out of 20 leading countries, behind only Japan and Hong Kong, in a survey of 7,000 employees last year, carried out by research firm ORC In-ternational. Only 37 per cent of UK workers surveyed felt they were encouraged to be innovative and fewer than half felt valued at work, according to HR magazine.

Workplace culture matters because, as Paul Frampton, chief executive of Havas Media, an advertising-buying agency, says: “Culture is the one thing that a

competitor cannot steal or replicate.” He quotes Simon Sinek, a business thinker, who argues companies should focus on “why they exist, not what they do”.

Silicon Valley tech companies are seen as pioneers in fostering a modern work-place, from “20 per cent time”, one day a week when an employee can work on any new idea they like, to benefits such as free, organic meals in the canteen. Sal-aries and share awards are generous, plus there is a sense of purpose in working on technology that can shape the future.

Little wonder that Google and Face-book regularly top surveys of employee satisfaction by Glassdoor, the website that lets workers rate their employer.

The rise of social media means employees should be a company’s best advocates. Mr Frampton cites IBM as a company that has encouraged its staff “to share inspiration and views on how they could work smarter”.

Enlightened employers see this as part of a wider trend as staff ben-efit from more flexible working and independence.

Darren Childs, the chief executive of UKTV, the broadcaster behind TV chan-nels such as Dave and Gold, has tried to foster collaboration by mixing up teams, getting a creative to sit next to an accountant, and encouraging people to move desks every three months. He also hosts a weekly “all-hands” ques-tion-and-answer session.

It’s not just about a flexible workspace and a more creative environment. Netf-lix, the online TV streaming site, allows

employees to take as much holiday as they want, so long as they get their work done, as part of a “policy of trust”.

Sir Richard Branson was so impressed he copied Netflix at his Virgin Group. “Flexi-ble working has revolutionised how, where and when we all do our jobs,” he says. “So, if working nine to five no longer applies, then why should strict annual leave pol-icies?” He argues that improved morale, creativity and productivity can all be linked to more flexible treatment of staff.

Few bosses have the Virgin showman’s abilities to communicate, but smart em-ployers know they need to try harder through face-to-face “town hall” meet-ings, online video messages, employee appraisals and social media.

Some experts claim that millennials, those born from the early 1980s onwards who came of age after the millennium, are more likely read social media than e-mail or a company blog.

An interesting question is whether any chief executive can afford not to use social tools, such as Twitter, Instagram or

LinkedIn, to engage employees as well as customers. Fewer than one in ten FTSE 100 chief executives are on Twitter.

Mr Frampton, a keen tweeter, says: “Too many CEOs are resolutely burying their heads in the sand and not shifting from the command-and-control management style they grew up with. Being accessible enough and prepared to enter into conver-sations and learn from others is key.”

James Rossiter, joint managing direc-tor of business communications firm Morgan Rossiter, agrees: “Companies should communicate frequently with staff and keep it short and simple. Sound like a human, don’t use business jargon that would never be understood in a crowded bar.”

Sceptics say that flexible working and a more open approach are a sop to employees who have seen wages lag the cost of living and final-salary pension schemes axed.

In an acknowledgment that pension provision has weakened, the government has demanded that companies auto-en-rol every worker. However, the impact on employee engagement is tempered by the fact that these defined contribu-tion pensions are worth far less than a final-salary scheme.

Havas Media boss Mr Frampton con-cludes with two pieces of advice on em-ployee engagement: “Number one is to be clear on your purpose, and number two is to over-communicate when you are on that journey to your talent and your customers – plus be honest about where there is still work to do.”

OVERVIEW

GIDEON SPANIER

Distributed in JO FARAGHERFreelance business journal-ist, she specialises in em-ployment and recruitment issues, and contributes to Personneltoday.com.

PADRAIG FLOYDFormer editor in chief of the UK pensions and investment group at the Financial Times, and ex-editor of Pensions Management, he is now a freelance business writer.

ALEC MARSHWriter and award-winning editor, he contributes to The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, Daily Mail and The Spectator.

NICK MARTINDALEAward-winning writer and editor, he contributes to national business and trade press on a wide range of issues.

CHARLES ORTON-JONESAward-winning journalist, he was editor-at-large of LondonlovesBusiness.com and editor of EuroBusiness.

BRID-AINE PARNELLScience, technology and business writer, on the staff of The Register, she also con-tributes to Forbes.com.

GIDEON SPANIERJournalist and commentator on business and the media, he is chairman of the Broadcasting Press Guild.

RACONTEUR CONTRIBUTORS

Publishing Manager Richard Sexton

Digital and Social ManagerRebecca McCormick

Head of ProductionNatalia Rosek

DesignVjay LadGrant ChapmanKellie Jerrard

Production EditorBenjamin Chiou

Managing EditorPeter Archer

BUSINESS CULTURE FINANCE HEALTHCARE LIFESTYLE SUSTAINABILITY TECHNOLOGY INFOGRAPHICS

Although this publication is funded through advertising and sponsorship, all editorial is without bias and sponsored features are clearly labelled. For an upcoming schedule, partnership inquiries or feedback, please call +44 (0)20 3428 5230 or e-mail [email protected]

Raconteur is a leading publisher of special-interest content and research. Its publications and articles cover a wide range of topics, including business, finance, sustainability, healthcare, lifestyle and technology. Raconteur special reports are published exclusively in The Times and The Sunday Times as well as online at raconteur.net

The information contained in this publication has been obtained from sources the Proprietors believe to be correct. However, no legal liability can be accepted for any errors. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior consent of the Publisher. © Raconteur Media

raconteur.net/employee-engagement-benefits-sep-2015

Too many CEOs are resolutely burying their heads in the sand and not shifting from the

command-and-control management style they

grew up with


Successful companies must invest in the workplace to engage with employees and get the most from company culture – or risk losing out in the war for talent

Employees using the break-out area at Facebook’s office in Menlo Park, California

EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT & BENEFITS | 03RACONTEUR | 29 / 09 / 2015 raconteur.net

WORKERS ELIGIBLE FOR ENROLMENT IN A WORKPLACE PENSION SCHEME

PENSIONS

PADRAIG FLOYD

The UK has seen major reforms in pension policy, but it is almost three years since the government launched the

most significant social engineering project for several generations.

Auto-enrolment (AE) is a simple idea, to ensure every UK worker is enrolled in an occupational pension scheme. Employers are required to enrol staff automatically and make contributions to their pension funds. Employees also contribute and there is tax credit top up from the government.

More than 5.2 million UK workers have been auto-enrolled since Octo-ber 2012, an increase in numbers of almost 60 per cent. “Three years in and we can safely say so far, so good,” says Helen Dean, executive director of product and marketing at provider Nest, which itself has enrolled 2.3 mil-lion savers.

Thousands of employers have suc-cessfully staged their businesses in the AE schedule, but there are still more than a million to come. More than 141,000 are expected to stage this year, leaving around half a million mi-cro-employers from 2016.

Getting started is easier than it has ever been as providers have entered the market focusing on the small and mid-sized business market.

Part of AE’s success has been to stim-ulate a huge amount of innovation in terms of investment, but also technolo-gy, says Tim Banks, managing director, sales and client relations, UK and Ire-land, at investment manager AB. This will have a lasting legacy.

“AE has forced innovation, changed business models and driven down charg-es, which means those who succeed in this market will be offering better prod-ucts than ever before,” he says.

That said, not all technology is born equal, says Mr Banks. Even if the kit is up to the job, the vast volume of em-ployers coming through in the next couple of years will present considera-ble data issues.

“Most of our clients are getting people into the system and making sure of data integrity. That can be a costly

business, but it does mean the process can run very smoothly,” he says.

Even businesses that have their data sorted out are still experiencing diffi-culties, says Robert Reid, director of Syndaxi Chartered Financial Planners. Mr Reid says the Pensions Regulator has failed to come to grips with the needs of group companies.

“I had one with five different stag-ing dates [due to the relative size of each operating compa-ny],” he says. “I had to explain to them I was going to stage them all on a single day, meaning some of them would be done early.”

Providers’ desire for fully electronic administration has also caused prob-

the staff”, he says.The AE rules are complex and com-

panies will make mistakes. The main cause of compliance failure has not been implementing a pension or getting payroll lined up, but through omissions in the compliance process, says Chris Daems, director of AE in a Box.

These are often minor tasks such as registering with the regulator or nom-inating a contact, but were omitted because the employer was focused on the big picture and wasn’t aware of the small, but important, details.

“These are jobs that take 15 or 20 minutes for someone familiar with the process to complete,” says Mr Daems, “but they were overlooked or left to an accountant or payroll bureau that are great at payroll, but not due diligence on AE.”

Another simple check employers should make is to ensure their con-tracts no longer specify employees can

join the pension scheme after a period of six months or more, as the maximum postponement is now three months.

The Pensions Regulator has to date been understanding about mistakes made by employers.

Between April and June 2015, it issued 119 compliance notices, 50 unpaid contributions notices, 68 fixed penalty notices, but no escalating pen-alty notices.

But enforcement is increasing– there were twice the number of referrals and cases raised in 2014 against the previ-ous year – and the regulator is likely to be less lenient in the future. This is because employees who do not wish to save with AE must opt-out on a three-year cycle and this starts again in October.

However, this may not be as prob-lematic as once feared, at least for the large firms, says Andrew Cheseldine, a partner at consultants LCP. His clients have an average opt-out of 8 per cent, yet only 3 or 4 per cent of those individ-uals still work for them.

The big problem will be the national living wage from 2016, as it will bring many more into the eligible worker cat-egory. “By 2020, when it hits the £9 an hour rate, it will mean qualifying earn-ings will be about 40 per cent higher than they are now in real terms, making the funding of the pension much more expensive,” says Mr Cheseldine.

AE may cover 20 million workers, but there are more than five million who have fallen through the cracks as they do not qualify for automatic enrolment.

There are nearly as many self-em-ployed who are also bypassed, meaning around ten million economically active individuals are not saving into a pen-sion plan.

While many are not entitled to employer contributions, says Tom McPhail, head of pensions research at Hargreaves Lansdown, that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be saving.

“The worst case scenario is they would only get tax relief, but as they could take their money out at age 55 and shelter in a tax-free fund, I can’t think of anyone who shouldn’t be taking advantage of this,” says Mr McPhail.

Employers must start budgeting for pension saving more systematically. As the living wage swells the ranks of enrolled employees, so contribution levels must also increase. Employers must contribute a minimum 3 per cent by October 2018 to raise total contribu-tions up to 8 per cent (employee 4 per cent, government 1 per cent).

This is only the start, as the long-term aim is to drive that rate higher still, in line with other nations such as Australia’s 9.5 per cent. Even so, it is widely accepted this is not enough to provide a secure income in retire-ment and, as pressure continues for an increase in contribution rates, some of this new burden may fall on employers.

Source: Employee Benefits 2014

Source: Department for Work and Pensions


Auto-enrolment has forced innovation,

changed business models and driven down charges, which means those who succeed in this market will be offering better

products than ever before

We still need to savemore for retirementAutomatic enrolment in a workplace pension scheme has launched successfully but is only the beginning of the government’s drive to get people saving more for later life

EMPLOYER CONTRIBUTION RATE FOR THE MAJORITY OF STAFF

NUMBER OF WORKING-AGE PEOPLE FOR EVERY PENSIONER

Not already in their employer’s pension scheme

Aged 22 or over

Under the state-pension age

Earn more than £10,000 a year

Work, or usually work, in the UK

lems, says Mr Reid. A hotel group client had three enrolled employees with learning difficulties who were unable to do the enrolment online. When Mr Reid spoke to the provider,

they confessed they hadn’t thought there would be any need for a manual pro-cess. “It was a total mess,” he says.

Another example of a lack of foresight presented itself with a client where 70 per cent of the work-force doesn’t speak English as a first lan-guage. After getting nowhere with the

provider, Mr Reid simply had the doc-umentation translated into Polish and Hungarian, which “made a massive dif-ference and was greatly appreciated by

Share this article on social media via raconteur.net

1901

2010

1% of salary

2% of salary

3% of salary

4% of salary

5% of salary

6-10% of salary

More than 10% of salary

In 1901 there were ten people working for every pensioner in the UK.

By 2050 it is expected that this will change to just two workers

2050

12%

7%

11%7%

18%32%

14%

People of working age Pensioner

COMMERCIAL FEATURE

Matthew Starks, director of human re-sources at First Rate Exchange Services, a leading supplier of foreign currency, says: “Our employees were asking for help with their pensions. They wanted something easy and quick to use, and to get quality and professional advice, given the com-plexity of pensions and the difficulty they were having in making decisions on where to invest their money for the future.“First Rate researched the market and chose to work with Wealth Wizards be-cause of the independent, professional advice they offer and shared company values around innovation. We also liked the fact that Wealth Wizards work with our existing employee benefit consult-ants and pension provider to action em-ployees’ wishes once the advice was ac-cepted, ensuring a seamless experience for our people.“We’ve found Wealth Wizards’ services to be a really valuable addition to our em-ployee benefits package.”

HOW IT WORKSPension advice should be

as much a core element of the employee benefits

package as things like health insurance, sick pay and income

protection

fits associated with supporting staff around their retirement finance planning and the quality of life they can expect in later life, can they really afford not to provide their employees with advice on their pension?”

[email protected]

EXPERT INDEPENDENT ONLINE ADVICE TO HELP YOUR EMPLOYEES PLAN FOR THE FUTUREWith auto-enrolment and pension freedoms, it has never been more critical for employees to receive advice

Major changes to the UK pension system are underway. In particular, auto-enrolment and the new pension freedoms mean it’s im-portant employees make decisions about their workplace pensions that are right for them. As online independent financial ad-viser Wealth Wizards points out, now more than ever there is a need for expert advice to make the most of pension savings and get the best retirement outcome.

The last three years have seen significant reforms for the pensions sector, nowhere more so than in the workplace pensions arena, where employers have had to get to grips with auto-enrolment and all the chal-lenges that come with it.

They, and their employees, have had to get their heads around the government’s pen-sion reforms that came into force in April, transforming the very notion of retirement planning by giving those approaching retire-ment far more choice in how to use their pen-sion savings. While that freedom has been welcomed, it has also created dilemmas for those who’ve only ever considered using their pension pot to buy an annuity.

In spite of these changes, many organi-sations report that employees are still not engaging with workplace pensions.

“It’s not really a surprise,” says Ben Web-ster, managing director of employer solu-tions at Wealth Wizards. “Employees are faced with bewildering choice and complex-ity when it comes to pensions, and we don’t expect anyone except a small minority to be in a position to understand their investments or make informed choices without advice.

“For example, many employers select to enrol employees into default funds. While there’s nothing wrong with these, they are

designed for the average employee. But who is really average?”

Clearly there is an urgent need for quality pensions advice, yet few employers are cur-rently providing their staff with access to it. The main barrier, now that commissions have dis-appeared, is the cost and availability of face-to-face advice, which has to be paid for explicitly.

Wealth Wizards has pioneered a com-pletely new approach. Their online services deliver expert advice in the workplace or at home, cost effectively and inclusively for all members of staff, advising on accumulation investment strategies, at retirement advice and encouraging take up of tax efficient op-tions such as salary exchange.

The first true online independent financial adviser or “roboadviser” in the UK, Wealth Wizards’ advice has been developed with input from leading experts and consultan-cies, as well as in-house chartered financial planners and actuaries.

The advice is delivered through simple online apps, using the latest technology. Once registered, employees answer a stand-ard set of questions, which typically takes ten to fifteen minutes. In most cases a full advice report, including a recommendation on how to invest their pension, is instantly available.

While technology is opening up advice at scale, Mr Webster recognises that the over-all complexity of pensions means a degree of handholding is necessary to engage em-ployees fully. That’s why the apps will identify anyone who may need to provide more infor-mation or speak to an adviser directly. A help-line and Skype support is also available, along with employer training and on-the-ground help for employees from the client team.

And once an investment strategy is in place, a regular review should be as routine as get-ting an MOT for your car. However, without a formal checkpoint or legal requirement, Mr Webster believes employees need to be chivvied into looking at their pension annually and accessing professional advice in order to check their investments are still right for them and that their pension pot is on track.

The benefits to the employer of offering such services are clear. By helping employ-ees take control of their pension finances, they are sending a message that they value their staff. This is key to employee engage-ment, motivation and retention, all of which are linked to increased productivity and bot-tom-line benefits.

Another key benefit to employers is a re-duction in the risk from any liability connect-ed with unsuitable pension arrangements as the liability for any advice sits with the adviser. Finally, offering advice can help in-crease take-up of schemes, such as salary exchange, which benefit both employee and employer.

The biggest winners, however, are the many employees who need real help. Providing them with independent advice means they are no longer faced with making difficult choices they feel confused about or simply ill-equipped to make.

“We believe that workplace pension advice should no longer be an aspirational offering,” says Mr Webster. “The pensions landscape has changed dramatically and in doing so has put employees in a position of having to make important decisions about the way they plan for their retirement. We believe that employers, pension consultants, providers and technology companies need to work together to increase engagement in workplace pensions. Pension advice should be as much a core element of the employee benefits package as things like health insur-ance, sick pay and income protection.”

“And from the employer’s point of view, given that a simple and cost-effective online service is available, and the business bene-

The biggest winners, however, are the many employees who need

real help

04 | EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT & BENEFITS 29 / 09 / 2015 | RACONTEURraconteur.net EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT & BENEFITS | 05RACONTEUR | 29 / 09 / 2015 raconteur.net

WORKERS ELIGIBLE FOR ENROLMENT IN A WORKPLACE PENSION SCHEME

PENSIONS

PADRAIG FLOYD

The UK has seen major reforms in pension policy, but it is almost three years since the government launched the

most significant social engineering project for several generations.

Auto-enrolment (AE) is a simple idea, to ensure every UK worker is enrolled in an occupational pension scheme. Employers are required to enrol staff automatically and make contributions to their pension funds. Employees also contribute and there is tax credit top up from the government.

More than 5.2 million UK workers have been auto-enrolled since Octo-ber 2012, an increase in numbers of almost 60 per cent. “Three years in and we can safely say so far, so good,” says Helen Dean, executive director of product and marketing at provider Nest, which itself has enrolled 2.3 mil-lion savers.

Thousands of employers have suc-cessfully staged their businesses in the AE schedule, but there are still more than a million to come. More than 141,000 are expected to stage this year, leaving around half a million mi-cro-employers from 2016.

Getting started is easier than it has ever been as providers have entered the market focusing on the small and mid-sized business market.

Part of AE’s success has been to stim-ulate a huge amount of innovation in terms of investment, but also technolo-gy, says Tim Banks, managing director, sales and client relations, UK and Ire-land, at investment manager AB. This will have a lasting legacy.

“AE has forced innovation, changed business models and driven down charg-es, which means those who succeed in this market will be offering better prod-ucts than ever before,” he says.

That said, not all technology is born equal, says Mr Banks. Even if the kit is up to the job, the vast volume of em-ployers coming through in the next couple of years will present considera-ble data issues.

“Most of our clients are getting people into the system and making sure of data integrity. That can be a costly

business, but it does mean the process can run very smoothly,” he says.

Even businesses that have their data sorted out are still experiencing diffi-culties, says Robert Reid, director of Syndaxi Chartered Financial Planners. Mr Reid says the Pensions Regulator has failed to come to grips with the needs of group companies.

“I had one with five different stag-ing dates [due to the relative size of each operating compa-ny],” he says. “I had to explain to them I was going to stage them all on a single day, meaning some of them would be done early.”

Providers’ desire for fully electronic administration has also caused prob-

the staff”, he says.The AE rules are complex and com-

panies will make mistakes. The main cause of compliance failure has not been implementing a pension or getting payroll lined up, but through omissions in the compliance process, says Chris Daems, director of AE in a Box.

These are often minor tasks such as registering with the regulator or nom-inating a contact, but were omitted because the employer was focused on the big picture and wasn’t aware of the small, but important, details.

“These are jobs that take 15 or 20 minutes for someone familiar with the process to complete,” says Mr Daems, “but they were overlooked or left to an accountant or payroll bureau that are great at payroll, but not due diligence on AE.”

Another simple check employers should make is to ensure their con-tracts no longer specify employees can

join the pension scheme after a period of six months or more, as the maximum postponement is now three months.

The Pensions Regulator has to date been understanding about mistakes made by employers.

Between April and June 2015, it issued 119 compliance notices, 50 unpaid contributions notices, 68 fixed penalty notices, but no escalating pen-alty notices.

But enforcement is increasing– there were twice the number of referrals and cases raised in 2014 against the previ-ous year – and the regulator is likely to be less lenient in the future. This is because employees who do not wish to save with AE must opt-out on a three-year cycle and this starts again in October.

However, this may not be as prob-lematic as once feared, at least for the large firms, says Andrew Cheseldine, a partner at consultants LCP. His clients have an average opt-out of 8 per cent, yet only 3 or 4 per cent of those individ-uals still work for them.

The big problem will be the national living wage from 2016, as it will bring many more into the eligible worker cat-egory. “By 2020, when it hits the £9 an hour rate, it will mean qualifying earn-ings will be about 40 per cent higher than they are now in real terms, making the funding of the pension much more expensive,” says Mr Cheseldine.

AE may cover 20 million workers, but there are more than five million who have fallen through the cracks as they do not qualify for automatic enrolment.

There are nearly as many self-em-ployed who are also bypassed, meaning around ten million economically active individuals are not saving into a pen-sion plan.

While many are not entitled to employer contributions, says Tom McPhail, head of pensions research at Hargreaves Lansdown, that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be saving.

“The worst case scenario is they would only get tax relief, but as they could take their money out at age 55 and shelter in a tax-free fund, I can’t think of anyone who shouldn’t be taking advantage of this,” says Mr McPhail.

Employers must start budgeting for pension saving more systematically. As the living wage swells the ranks of enrolled employees, so contribution levels must also increase. Employers must contribute a minimum 3 per cent by October 2018 to raise total contribu-tions up to 8 per cent (employee 4 per cent, government 1 per cent).

This is only the start, as the long-term aim is to drive that rate higher still, in line with other nations such as Australia’s 9.5 per cent. Even so, it is widely accepted this is not enough to provide a secure income in retire-ment and, as pressure continues for an increase in contribution rates, some of this new burden may fall on employers.




Auto-enrolment has forced innovation,

changed business models and driven down charges, which means those who succeed in this market will be offering better

products than ever before

We still need to savemore for retirementAutomatic enrolment in a workplace pension scheme has launched successfully but is only the beginning of the government’s drive to get people saving more for later life

EMPLOYER CONTRIBUTION RATE FOR THE MAJORITY OF STAFF

NUMBER OF WORKING-AGE PEOPLE FOR EVERY PENSIONER

Not already in their employer’s pension scheme

Aged 22 or over

Under the state-pension age

Earn more than £10,000 a year

Work, or usually work, in the UK

lems, says Mr Reid. A hotel group client had three enrolled employees with learning difficulties who were unable to do the enrolment online. When Mr Reid spoke to the provider,

they confessed they hadn’t thought there would be any need for a manual pro-cess. “It was a total mess,” he says.

Another example of a lack of foresight presented itself with a client where 70 per cent of the work-force doesn’t speak English as a first lan-guage. After getting nowhere with the

provider, Mr Reid simply had the doc-umentation translated into Polish and Hungarian, which “made a massive dif-ference and was greatly appreciated by


1901

2010

1% of salary

2% of salary

3% of salary

4% of salary

5% of salary

6-10% of salary

More than 10% of salary

In 1901 there were ten people working for every pensioner in the UK.

By 2050 it is expected that this will change to just two workers

2050

12%

7%

11%7%

18%32%

14%

People of working age Pensioner

COMMERCIAL FEATURE

Matthew Starks, director of human re-sources at First Rate Exchange Services, a leading supplier of foreign currency, says: “Our employees were asking for help with their pensions. They wanted something easy and quick to use, and to get quality and professional advice, given the com-plexity of pensions and the difficulty they were having in making decisions on where to invest their money for the future.“First Rate researched the market and chose to work with Wealth Wizards be-cause of the independent, professional advice they offer and shared company values around innovation. We also liked the fact that Wealth Wizards work with our existing employee benefit consult-ants and pension provider to action em-ployees’ wishes once the advice was ac-cepted, ensuring a seamless experience for our people.“We’ve found Wealth Wizards’ services to be a really valuable addition to our em-ployee benefits package.”

HOW IT WORKSPension advice should be

as much a core element of the employee benefits

package as things like health insurance, sick pay and income

protection

fits associated with supporting staff around their retirement finance planning and the quality of life they can expect in later life, can they really afford not to provide their employees with advice on their pension?”

[email protected]

EXPERT INDEPENDENT ONLINE ADVICE TO HELP YOUR EMPLOYEES PLAN FOR THE FUTUREWith auto-enrolment and pension freedoms, it has never been more critical for employees to receive advice

Major changes to the UK pension system are underway. In particular, auto-enrolment and the new pension freedoms mean it’s im-portant employees make decisions about their workplace pensions that are right for them. As online independent financial ad-viser Wealth Wizards points out, now more than ever there is a need for expert advice to make the most of pension savings and get the best retirement outcome.

The last three years have seen significant reforms for the pensions sector, nowhere more so than in the workplace pensions arena, where employers have had to get to grips with auto-enrolment and all the chal-lenges that come with it.

They, and their employees, have had to get their heads around the government’s pen-sion reforms that came into force in April, transforming the very notion of retirement planning by giving those approaching retire-ment far more choice in how to use their pen-sion savings. While that freedom has been welcomed, it has also created dilemmas for those who’ve only ever considered using their pension pot to buy an annuity.

In spite of these changes, many organi-sations report that employees are still not engaging with workplace pensions.

“It’s not really a surprise,” says Ben Web-ster, managing director of employer solu-tions at Wealth Wizards. “Employees are faced with bewildering choice and complex-ity when it comes to pensions, and we don’t expect anyone except a small minority to be in a position to understand their investments or make informed choices without advice.

“For example, many employers select to enrol employees into default funds. While there’s nothing wrong with these, they are

designed for the average employee. But who is really average?”

Clearly there is an urgent need for quality pensions advice, yet few employers are cur-rently providing their staff with access to it. The main barrier, now that commissions have dis-appeared, is the cost and availability of face-to-face advice, which has to be paid for explicitly.

Wealth Wizards has pioneered a com-pletely new approach. Their online services deliver expert advice in the workplace or at home, cost effectively and inclusively for all members of staff, advising on accumulation investment strategies, at retirement advice and encouraging take up of tax efficient op-tions such as salary exchange.

The first true online independent financial adviser or “roboadviser” in the UK, Wealth Wizards’ advice has been developed with input from leading experts and consultan-cies, as well as in-house chartered financial planners and actuaries.

The advice is delivered through simple online apps, using the latest technology. Once registered, employees answer a stand-ard set of questions, which typically takes ten to fifteen minutes. In most cases a full advice report, including a recommendation on how to invest their pension, is instantly available.

While technology is opening up advice at scale, Mr Webster recognises that the over-all complexity of pensions means a degree of handholding is necessary to engage em-ployees fully. That’s why the apps will identify anyone who may need to provide more infor-mation or speak to an adviser directly. A help-line and Skype support is also available, along with employer training and on-the-ground help for employees from the client team.

And once an investment strategy is in place, a regular review should be as routine as get-ting an MOT for your car. However, without a formal checkpoint or legal requirement, Mr Webster believes employees need to be chivvied into looking at their pension annually and accessing professional advice in order to check their investments are still right for them and that their pension pot is on track.

The benefits to the employer of offering such services are clear. By helping employ-ees take control of their pension finances, they are sending a message that they value their staff. This is key to employee engage-ment, motivation and retention, all of which are linked to increased productivity and bot-tom-line benefits.

Another key benefit to employers is a re-duction in the risk from any liability connect-ed with unsuitable pension arrangements as the liability for any advice sits with the adviser. Finally, offering advice can help in-crease take-up of schemes, such as salary exchange, which benefit both employee and employer.

The biggest winners, however, are the many employees who need real help. Providing them with independent advice means they are no longer faced with making difficult choices they feel confused about or simply ill-equipped to make.

“We believe that workplace pension advice should no longer be an aspirational offering,” says Mr Webster. “The pensions landscape has changed dramatically and in doing so has put employees in a position of having to make important decisions about the way they plan for their retirement. We believe that employers, pension consultants, providers and technology companies need to work together to increase engagement in workplace pensions. Pension advice should be as much a core element of the employee benefits package as things like health insur-ance, sick pay and income protection.”

“And from the employer’s point of view, given that a simple and cost-effective online service is available, and the business bene-

The biggest winners, however, are the many employees who need

real help


It’s tougher than ever to be a lead-er in today’s business climate. Thanks to a string of commercial scandals at institutions such as

the Co-operative Bank and RBS, there is intense scrutiny of executive de-cisions and trust in senior managers has decreased.

At the same time, the context in which leaders operate has become more complex. Companies are more geographically dispersed, managers have more direct lines of reporting and often a much wider remit than before. A study by best practice insight company CEB found that 85 per cent of leaders felt there was an increase in the number of job responsibilities, while 61 per cent reported they had to consult with more people before making a decision.

“There’s expo-nential technology change, too, which creates more trans-parency around lead-ership,” says Simon Hayward, chief ex-ecutive of Cirrus Group, a leadership consultancy. “If a customer has a bad experience, we find out about it more quickly, and industries are rapidly changing and innovating – take Uber for example.”

With this backdrop, the qualities we expect of a great leader have changed, argues Mr Hayward. The authoritarian, command-and-control leadership style that used to dominate corporate life is no longer relevant. “Under that style of leadership, people follow instruc-tions, but they’re dependent. That’s fine if the leader is always right, but it depends on the wisdom of that leader,” he adds.

CEB’s research has identified three ways great leaders can be effective: how they manage the transactional side of leadership, that is how efficient they are at getting things done; how trans-formational they are in style, how they

motivate, engage and empower em-ployees; and finally, whether they prac-tise networked leadership.

Jean Martin, CEB talent solutions architect, explains: “Networked lead-ers know how to get things from the organization, but also give stuff back; they pull information from employees rather than just pushing directions down.”

Jane Sunley, chief executive of HR consultancy PurpleCubed, believes this more collaborative style is better suited to the leadership challenges of today. “A good leader asks questions, observes, allows people to speak up if there’s a problem,” she says. “In a man-agement culture where all the focus is on metrics and measurement, people will massage the figures because they dread getting it wrong.” It’s also a style

that Generation Y or the millennials – the future generation of managers and lead-ers – prefer, she adds.

When it comes to training and devel-oping leaders, em-bedding this style of leadership requires a more nuanced ap-proach than before.

The one-size-fits-all approach of send-ing groups of managers to a residential course where they learn how things are done may no longer be as effective.

“You have to articulate what lead-ership looks like in your company. It will mean different things to different people,” argues Ms Sunley. She advo-cates appointing internal mentors and facilitators, who can share examples of good leadership, and “tell stories about how they solved problems”.

Hotel group Dorchester Collection aims to train future leaders from an early stage in their involvement with the company. Its Dorchester Acade-my has five different levels, and the focus is on building emotional intelli-gence and learning through experience rather than decreeing how things are done. “Only one of our programmes looks at how we run the service side of the business, the rest focuses on

knowing yourself and knowing the company. If people know who they are, what their strengths are and who they work best with, they can be their most successful,” explains Eugen-io Pirri, the hotel group’s vice pres-ident for people and organisational development.

The idea here is to empower staff to make their own decisions, but within the context of the company’s values, he adds. “It doesn’t work when you tell people what to do or you put them in a box. We spend time looking at how we deliver five-star service, but if some-one wants to serve a coffee in their own way, with their own spark, they can do that.”

This empowerment will become all the more important as employees rely less on leadership from the very top and more on relationships with local managers. “Our research has shown that organisations will become a more loosely connected group of people whose primary experience is not with the ‘logo’, but with the leader they work most closely with,” says Tania Lennon, associate director of leadership and talent at Hay Group.

What could hold them back, however, are systems that don’t fit with a more agile style of working, for example ap-praisal processes that only look at per-formance once a year. “We see many organisations starting to lead in a way that gives employees more freedom, but systems haven’t caught up,” adds Ms Lennon. “It can mean they’re trying to lead with one hand tied behind their back.”

Getting leadership right will pay div-idends in terms of employees’ happi-ness at work and willingness to do well. CEB’s research shows, for example, that employees who operate in a more networked leadership environment tend to show 35 per cent higher em-ployee engagement.

“When employees sense their work is aligned with the company’s goals, that’s a real driver of engagement. Rather than blaming or pointing at problems, good leaders empower em-ployees to fix things along the way,” CEB’s Ms Martin concludes.

Healthy disagreement and challenge at work is not al-ways a bad thing but, past a certain point, conflict can

become damaging. As Bev White, managing director of Penna

Career Services, explains: “It’s important to deal with conflict because trust breaks down and people stop collaborating. Stress builds up and people lose respect for their leaders; they may even leave the business.”

However, with so many policies and procedures in businesses designed to deal with conflict – not to mention com-plex and long drawn-out grievance pro-cedures – it’s not surprising that manag-ers often shy away from dealing with it before it’s too late.

rector of restaurant chain Byron Ham-burgers, has run mediation meetings internally before, asking the individuals involved to write down four things they need from the person they’re in conflict with. Both sides make a commitment to doing something to improve the situa-tion, put the commitment in writing and review it with their manager 12 weeks down the line. “The trick is to get them to hear what the other person is saying and for them to make that commitment to doing something,” he says.

Mr Williams chose to handle mediation internally, but there are advantages to bringing in mediators from outside the organisation, says Ms White. “Someone fresh to the situation can stand back and take the heat out of the problem,” she adds. “Mediators can help people artic-ulate their ideas in a way that’s not ag-gressive and doesn’t prohibit them from listening to others’ ideas.”

External mediators can also be brought in to train staff in mediation skills, so res-olution becomes more ingrained in their workplace culture. The TCM Group did this with Lancaster London hotel, where me-diation is now one of the first steps offered when problems arise. It’s a far cry from the old system, where there were multiple dis-ciplinary procedures, each taking up time and resources, and not always solving the problem.

HR officer Harriette Wolff, who has trained as an in-house mediator, says: “It has given people a platform to speak before something turns into a conflict.” Introduc-ing mediation training has led to a dramat-ic drop in formal grievance procedures and staff are happier, according to Ms Wolff.

And while it can be daunting to deal with issues as they arise, not addressing conflict can be damaging for business. Leave it too long and productivity dips, customer service deteriorates, and others in the team may be drawn in – so better to deal with it up front.

Good leaders empower their employees Business leaders face the difficult balance of letting go to empower managers and boost staff motivation, while staying in firm control of the company’s aims and strategic goals

Peacemakingat work is avaluable skill Staff conflict can fester and affect the bottom line unless it is dealt with in a speedy, sensitive and professional way

LEADERSHIP

JO FARAGHER

CONFLICT MANAGEMENT

JO FARAGHER Getting leadership right will pay dividends in terms of employees’

happiness at work and willingness to do well


DATA

TOP 5 TIPS FOR ENGAGING EMPLOYEES

Source: Dale Carnegie Training

Senior leadership must articulate a clear vision to all employees

Employees should be encouraged to communicate openly and influence the company’s vision through their input

Direct managers should foster healthy relationships with their employees

Senior leadership should continuously demonstrate that employees have an impact on their work environment

Managers should show employees that they are valued as true contributors, giving them a sense of empowerment

01

02

03

04

05

Source: CIPD 2015

of UK employees reported at least one workplace conflict

over the last 12 months

29%

David Liddle, chief executive of the TCM Group, a mediation specialist, says that instead employers ought to see conflict as part of business as usual, and equip managers to “act as diplomats, rather than sticking their head in the sand and hoping that HR will come and sort it out for them”.

“Conflict can be an opportunity and leaders need to create conditions where people can have a dialogue,” he says.

When relationships do break down, companies can either support managers to run a mediation process with those in-volved or call in the services of external mediators who are experienced in dealing with conflict objectively and sensitively.

Mike Williams, human resources di-

Great leaders make great days at work...

...and we help them do it!

Making great days at work

We design, build and manage bespoke employee engagement solutions. Tailor-made solutions that are as unique as your business.

Combining genuine creativity and industry-leading technology, we help some of the world’s most forward-thinking brands emotionally engage their people. So, if you want to make great days at work, we’d love to talk to you.

[email protected] riveragency.com @RiverAgency


It’s tougher than ever to be a lead-er in today’s business climate. Thanks to a string of commercial scandals at institutions such as

the Co-operative Bank and RBS, there is intense scrutiny of executive de-cisions and trust in senior managers has decreased.

At the same time, the context in which leaders operate has become more complex. Companies are more geographically dispersed, managers have more direct lines of reporting and often a much wider remit than before. A study by best practice insight company CEB found that 85 per cent of leaders felt there was an increase in the number of job responsibilities, while 61 per cent reported they had to consult with more people before making a decision.

“There’s expo-nential technology change, too, which creates more trans-parency around lead-ership,” says Simon Hayward, chief ex-ecutive of Cirrus Group, a leadership consultancy. “If a customer has a bad experience, we find out about it more quickly, and industries are rapidly changing and innovating – take Uber for example.”

With this backdrop, the qualities we expect of a great leader have changed, argues Mr Hayward. The authoritarian, command-and-control leadership style that used to dominate corporate life is no longer relevant. “Under that style of leadership, people follow instruc-tions, but they’re dependent. That’s fine if the leader is always right, but it depends on the wisdom of that leader,” he adds.

CEB’s research has identified three ways great leaders can be effective: how they manage the transactional side of leadership, that is how efficient they are at getting things done; how trans-formational they are in style, how they

motivate, engage and empower em-ployees; and finally, whether they prac-tise networked leadership.

Jean Martin, CEB talent solutions architect, explains: “Networked lead-ers know how to get things from the organization, but also give stuff back; they pull information from employees rather than just pushing directions down.”

Jane Sunley, chief executive of HR consultancy PurpleCubed, believes this more collaborative style is better suited to the leadership challenges of today. “A good leader asks questions, observes, allows people to speak up if there’s a problem,” she says. “In a man-agement culture where all the focus is on metrics and measurement, people will massage the figures because they dread getting it wrong.” It’s also a style

that Generation Y or the millennials – the future generation of managers and lead-ers – prefer, she adds.

When it comes to training and devel-oping leaders, em-bedding this style of leadership requires a more nuanced ap-proach than before.

The one-size-fits-all approach of send-ing groups of managers to a residential course where they learn how things are done may no longer be as effective.

“You have to articulate what lead-ership looks like in your company. It will mean different things to different people,” argues Ms Sunley. She advo-cates appointing internal mentors and facilitators, who can share examples of good leadership, and “tell stories about how they solved problems”.

Hotel group Dorchester Collection aims to train future leaders from an early stage in their involvement with the company. Its Dorchester Acade-my has five different levels, and the focus is on building emotional intelli-gence and learning through experience rather than decreeing how things are done. “Only one of our programmes looks at how we run the service side of the business, the rest focuses on

knowing yourself and knowing the company. If people know who they are, what their strengths are and who they work best with, they can be their most successful,” explains Eugen-io Pirri, the hotel group’s vice pres-ident for people and organisational development.

The idea here is to empower staff to make their own decisions, but within the context of the company’s values, he adds. “It doesn’t work when you tell people what to do or you put them in a box. We spend time looking at how we deliver five-star service, but if some-one wants to serve a coffee in their own way, with their own spark, they can do that.”

This empowerment will become all the more important as employees rely less on leadership from the very top and more on relationships with local managers. “Our research has shown that organisations will become a more loosely connected group of people whose primary experience is not with the ‘logo’, but with the leader they work most closely with,” says Tania Lennon, associate director of leadership and talent at Hay Group.

What could hold them back, however, are systems that don’t fit with a more agile style of working, for example ap-praisal processes that only look at per-formance once a year. “We see many organisations starting to lead in a way that gives employees more freedom, but systems haven’t caught up,” adds Ms Lennon. “It can mean they’re trying to lead with one hand tied behind their back.”

Getting leadership right will pay div-idends in terms of employees’ happi-ness at work and willingness to do well. CEB’s research shows, for example, that employees who operate in a more networked leadership environment tend to show 35 per cent higher em-ployee engagement.

“When employees sense their work is aligned with the company’s goals, that’s a real driver of engagement. Rather than blaming or pointing at problems, good leaders empower em-ployees to fix things along the way,” CEB’s Ms Martin concludes.

Healthy disagreement and challenge at work is not al-ways a bad thing but, past a certain point, conflict can

become damaging. As Bev White, managing director of Penna

Career Services, explains: “It’s important to deal with conflict because trust breaks down and people stop collaborating. Stress builds up and people lose respect for their leaders; they may even leave the business.”

However, with so many policies and procedures in businesses designed to deal with conflict – not to mention com-plex and long drawn-out grievance pro-cedures – it’s not surprising that manag-ers often shy away from dealing with it before it’s too late.

rector of restaurant chain Byron Ham-burgers, has run mediation meetings internally before, asking the individuals involved to write down four things they need from the person they’re in conflict with. Both sides make a commitment to doing something to improve the situa-tion, put the commitment in writing and review it with their manager 12 weeks down the line. “The trick is to get them to hear what the other person is saying and for them to make that commitment to doing something,” he says.

Mr Williams chose to handle mediation internally, but there are advantages to bringing in mediators from outside the organisation, says Ms White. “Someone fresh to the situation can stand back and take the heat out of the problem,” she adds. “Mediators can help people artic-ulate their ideas in a way that’s not ag-gressive and doesn’t prohibit them from listening to others’ ideas.”

External mediators can also be brought in to train staff in mediation skills, so res-olution becomes more ingrained in their workplace culture. The TCM Group did this with Lancaster London hotel, where me-diation is now one of the first steps offered when problems arise. It’s a far cry from the old system, where there were multiple dis-ciplinary procedures, each taking up time and resources, and not always solving the problem.

HR officer Harriette Wolff, who has trained as an in-house mediator, says: “It has given people a platform to speak before something turns into a conflict.” Introduc-ing mediation training has led to a dramat-ic drop in formal grievance procedures and staff are happier, according to Ms Wolff.

And while it can be daunting to deal with issues as they arise, not addressing conflict can be damaging for business. Leave it too long and productivity dips, customer service deteriorates, and others in the team may be drawn in – so better to deal with it up front.

Good leaders empower their employees Business leaders face the difficult balance of letting go to empower managers and boost staff motivation, while staying in firm control of the company’s aims and strategic goals

Peacemakingat work is avaluable skill Staff conflict can fester and affect the bottom line unless it is dealt with in a speedy, sensitive and professional way

LEADERSHIP

JO FARAGHER

CONFLICT MANAGEMENT

JO FARAGHER Getting leadership right will pay dividends in terms of employees’

happiness at work and willingness to do well


DATA

TOP 5 TIPS FOR ENGAGING EMPLOYEES

Source: Dale Carnegie Training

Senior leadership must articulate a clear vision to all employees

Employees should be encouraged to communicate openly and influence the company’s vision through their input

Direct managers should foster healthy relationships with their employees

Senior leadership should continuously demonstrate that employees have an impact on their work environment

Managers should show employees that they are valued as true contributors, giving them a sense of empowerment

01

02

03

04

05

Source: CIPD 2015

of UK employees reported at least one workplace conflict

over the last 12 months

29%

David Liddle, chief executive of the TCM Group, a mediation specialist, says that instead employers ought to see conflict as part of business as usual, and equip managers to “act as diplomats, rather than sticking their head in the sand and hoping that HR will come and sort it out for them”.

“Conflict can be an opportunity and leaders need to create conditions where people can have a dialogue,” he says.

When relationships do break down, companies can either support managers to run a mediation process with those in-volved or call in the services of external mediators who are experienced in dealing with conflict objectively and sensitively.

Mike Williams, human resources di-

Great leaders make great days at work...

...and we help them do it!

Making great days at work

We design, build and manage bespoke employee engagement solutions. Tailor-made solutions that are as unique as your business.

Combining genuine creativity and industry-leading technology, we help some of the world’s most forward-thinking brands emotionally engage their people. So, if you want to make great days at work, we’d love to talk to you.

[email protected] riveragency.com @RiverAgency


When my great-grand-father Ernest Drabble, a textile manufacturer in Derbyshire, dropped

dead from a heart attack while walk-ing in the Peak District in 1928, his staff went into mourning. In fact 250 of them went to the funeral. The Derbyshire Times opined: “[Drabble] was an ideal employer, and intro-duced many reforms and amenities which were greatly appreciated by the firm’s employees.”

A staunch Liberal, Drabble was also farsighted – for his day. Staff got break-fast and lunch, and his wife was said to distribute food and coal or even to pay for medical care for workers who were off sick. As a result his people didn’t just shed a tear for him when he died, they also stayed. In 1928, fully a hundred of the firm’s 300 staff had been with the company for more than 20 years.

Times have changed, but business is still seeking to quantify the value of benefits within a broader package of pay and compensation. It also still wants to get the best from its people, just as my great-grandfather did.

Reading-based Jive Software recently occupied one of the top spots – pipped to the post by Facebook – in a list of the top 25 companies to work for in the UK, measured by pay and benefits. The survey, by the jobs and recruiting website Glassdoor, was based on em-ployee insights.

For Jive, a specialist in business social networking platforms, benefits are an essential HR tool. “We use the benefits offering as just one of many levers to attract and retain the best talent,” says Christian Reed, Jive’s senior total rewards manager.

As well as core benefits covering healthcare, income protection, life insurance and pensions, Jive focus-es on wellness, including giving staff a monthly wellness allowance, and offers a plethora of other benefits, including paternity leave, childcare vouchers and even adoption assis-tance. These are attuned locally so that in the UK, for instance, staff can get flu jabs and on-site massages.

“We take a holistic approach,” says Mr Reed. “We want to be competitive from the perspective of compensation, our benefits offering, career develop-ment opportunities and the awesome culture that we offer at Jive. We be-

lieve that those different components add to attracting and retaining the best talent.”

And his UK Jivers, as they’re known, clearly agree. So what’s his advice? “Number one, solicit feedback from your employee base,” he says, “and be specific to the locality where you are looking to augment your benefits, so you can make sure you’re spending your benefits pound where it’s going to have the most employee impact.”

And delivering impact will deliver you loyalty, according to Zoe Spicer, an HR consultant and lecturer at Ashridge Business School. “What we used to call a work-life balance isn’t a work-life balance any more,” she explains. “Most employers expect their employees to be absolutely engaged with their work 24/7 and, if that’s the case, it’s about helping them arrange their busy lives around longer and longer hours.”

This means offering benefits such as emergency child and elderly care or access to 24/7 private doctors – or risk losing out. “There is a lot of evidence that you really do not get the right people through the door if you are not doing this,” she says. “Also, if you are not doing these things for your employees then they’re spending precious min-utes or hours in their working life admin-istering such things themselves. It in-creases their produc-tivity if you can make life as easy for them as you can.”

But it does much more than boost pro-ductivity. “The sup-port generates loyal-ty and retention, and quite frankly makes the employee feel that you really care,” adds Ms Spicer.

At the insurer Zurich, the UK’s head of HR Georgina Farrell puts the case for benefits in even more strident terms. “Money doesn’t buy me loyalty,” she says. “Money is cold. What a bene-fits package does is it buys a conversa-tion that will help me understand my employees even better.”

In her case, that’s a dialogue with 7,200 employees across 16 UK loca-tions, 87 per cent of whom take advan-tage of one or more of the core staff benefits. And clearly Zurich gets it right because employees typically stay for 15 to 18 years.

“Benefits form a huge part of creat-ing the culture of the organisation,” says Ms Farrell. “If you think about where we’re going in the future, and the blend between home and work, they add to more of a lifestyle choice that an individual might make around how they live personally, but also how they bring their whole life to work. It absolutely drives loyalty and morale.”

And accordingly benefits can be good for the bottom line in an even more direct way. Take two issues – the ageing workforce and growing cultural diversity. By offering benefits tailored

to these groups, you can help attract and retain such individuals, so you can better reflect your market. “That helps us look at the UK from a customer-base perspective,” says Ms Farrell. “We can use that insight in an inclusive way to drive intelligence and build different propositions for different customers.” In other words, a more diverse work-force will spot newer, diversity-related business opportunities.

Then there’s the big sell – benefits help capture that ever-harder-to-find talent in the first place. “Ensuring that [the benefits proposition] is focused in the right way allows me to sell a story about what it’s like to work for Zurich. It’s not about coming in to do a job of underwriting; actually it’s about coming in to have an employment ex-perience,” adds Ms Farrell.

Finally, she even regards the build-ings her people work in as part of the benefits. “It’s about ensuring you’re protecting the wellbeing of your em-ployees in order to be productive and for them to be in the right frame of mind to deal with customers,” she says.

Mark Batey, an expert in organisa-tional psychology from Manchester Business School and an adviser to Zurich, admits it’s hard to prove the

efficacy of benefits per se. “There are so many other ingredi-ents that go into the mix that teasing out individual effects of a benefits package is extremely difficult,” he concedes.

Looking at the example of, say, Facebook, Dr Batey points out: “We

can’t infer causation from correlation. The question is: is it a positive work-ing culture that means the company has better benefits? It’s often the case that the underlying factor is whether as an organisation you see yourself as primarily existing with the employees there to do a job for you, versus an or-ganisation that sees itself existing for the benefit of its own employees.”

And that goes to the heart of your business culture and what Dr Batey calls a more collaborative, individu-ated approach to management. “It all needs to be joined up,” he says. “What we’re finding is organisations that get the whole package are much more likely to win the war for talent, to get the best people and to retain them.”

In his essential 1970 business bible, Up the Organisation: How to Stop the Corporation Stifling People and Stran-gling Profits, Robert Townsend had a few choice words on the subject of employee benefits. “True leadership must be for the benefit of the follow-ers, not the enrichment of the leaders,” he wrote. “In combat, officers eat last.”

Do benefits really improve staff loyalty and morale?Rewarding staff isn’t just about money, it’s winning trust and loyalty with a relevant package of benefits to make their lives - and time at work - better

BENEFITS

ALEC MARSH

It’s about ensuring you’re protecting the wellbeing

of your employees for them to be in the right frame of mind to deal

with customers

What a benefits package does is it buys a conversation that will help me understand my employees even better

Share this article and infographic on social media via raconteur.net

Source: PMI Health Group 2015

EMPLOYEES’ MOST DESIRED BENEFITS (%) TOP 10 MOST COMMON BENEFITS EMPLOYERS’ PERCEIVED TOP 10 MORALE RAISERS

REASONS WHY EMPLOYERS PROVIDE BENEFITS

METHODS EMPLOYERS USE TO MEASURE SUCCESS OF THEIR BENEFIT SCHEMES

THE EFFECT OF BENEFITS ON EMPLOYEES (%)

HOW SATISFIED ARE YOU WITH YOUR EMPLOYEE BENEFITS?

DO BENEFITS INFLUENCE DECISIONS TO WORK FOR A COMPANY?

HAS YOUR EMPLOYER EVER CONSULTED YOU ON YOUR BENEFITS/REWARDS PREFERENCES?

WAYS YOUR CURRENT EMPLOYER COULD KEEP YOU WORKING FOR THEIR COMPANY TOP 7 RETENTION DRIVERS – EMPLOYEE VERSUS EMPLOYER VIEWS

Recognition from management01

Better working environment 06

Increased salary 03

Option to work from home 08

Belonging to a successful team 02

Independence 07

Increased rewards/bonuses 04

Greater choice of benefits 09

Source: Kingston Smith W1 2014


Source: Employee Benefits 2014Source: Towers Watson 2014Source: Towers Watson 2014

Source: PMI Health Group 2015 Source: Kingston Smith W1 2014

84%83%72%47%45%40%35%34%32%27%

11%12%

11%

Effective retention tool

Effective recruitment tool

Staff motivation/engagement

Employees’ understanding/appreciation of benefits

Recruitment

Reward or cost containment/reduction

Employees’ understanding of the cash value of their benefits

Helped the organisation remain competitive

Retention

Employee health and wellbeing

Because competitors do

They promote work-life balance

They have to by law

Seen as entitlement by staff

Reduce the national insurance bill

Drive desired employee behaviours

Control sickness absence

They provide a measurable ROI

They feel they have to

To meet TUPE obligations

Training and development 05

Help with childcare10

49%

46%

36%

31%

23%

59%

79%Asked of employees that said they hoped to be working for another employer within a year Views of employers and their staff are not wholly aligned

Base pay/salary

Career advancement opportunities

Relationship with supervisor/manager

Manage/limit work-related stress

Learning and development opportunities

Short-term incentives

Challenging work

Base pay/salary


Trust/confidence in senior leadership

Job security

Length of commute



Contributory pension scheme

0

00

5045

5

40

10

25

30

20

35

15

0

5

20

20

40

40

60

60

80

80

10 15 20 25 30 35

Childcare vouchers

Private medical insurance

Life insurance

Cash plan

Income protection insurance

Counselling service or employee assistance programme

Company car scheme

Health screening

Critical illness cover

YesVery satisfied

Very disatisfied

Fairly satisfied

Fairly disatisfied

Neutral

Yes

No

No

Above-average earners Below-average earners


79%

57%

54%44%42%34%

31%

9%

Increase my salary

Improve my benefits package

Provide me with advancement opportunities

Contribute more to my retirement planOffer flexible work arrangements

Reduce my work stress

Improve my job security

Other

01

03

05

07

02

04

06

EMPLOYEES’ VIEW EMPLOYERS’ VIEW

10

09

01CRECHE/CHILDCARE

VOUCHERS

HEALTHCARE PLAN

PERFORMANCE- RELATED BONUSES

0225+ DAYS’ HOLIDAY


06CYCLE-TO-

WORK SCHEME

07SEASON

TICKET LOANS

08FLEXIBLE

WORKING HOURS

03MOBILE PHONES

04LIFE COVER (DEATH IN SERVICE)


When my great-grand-father Ernest Drabble, a textile manufacturer in Derbyshire, dropped

dead from a heart attack while walk-ing in the Peak District in 1928, his staff went into mourning. In fact 250 of them went to the funeral. The Derbyshire Times opined: “[Drabble] was an ideal employer, and intro-duced many reforms and amenities which were greatly appreciated by the firm’s employees.”

A staunch Liberal, Drabble was also farsighted – for his day. Staff got break-fast and lunch, and his wife was said to distribute food and coal or even to pay for medical care for workers who were off sick. As a result his people didn’t just shed a tear for him when he died, they also stayed. In 1928, fully a hundred of the firm’s 300 staff had been with the company for more than 20 years.

Times have changed, but business is still seeking to quantify the value of benefits within a broader package of pay and compensation. It also still wants to get the best from its people, just as my great-grandfather did.

Reading-based Jive Software recently occupied one of the top spots – pipped to the post by Facebook – in a list of the top 25 companies to work for in the UK, measured by pay and benefits. The survey, by the jobs and recruiting website Glassdoor, was based on em-ployee insights.

For Jive, a specialist in business social networking platforms, benefits are an essential HR tool. “We use the benefits offering as just one of many levers to attract and retain the best talent,” says Christian Reed, Jive’s senior total rewards manager.

As well as core benefits covering healthcare, income protection, life insurance and pensions, Jive focus-es on wellness, including giving staff a monthly wellness allowance, and offers a plethora of other benefits, including paternity leave, childcare vouchers and even adoption assis-tance. These are attuned locally so that in the UK, for instance, staff can get flu jabs and on-site massages.

“We take a holistic approach,” says Mr Reed. “We want to be competitive from the perspective of compensation, our benefits offering, career develop-ment opportunities and the awesome culture that we offer at Jive. We be-

lieve that those different components add to attracting and retaining the best talent.”

And his UK Jivers, as they’re known, clearly agree. So what’s his advice? “Number one, solicit feedback from your employee base,” he says, “and be specific to the locality where you are looking to augment your benefits, so you can make sure you’re spending your benefits pound where it’s going to have the most employee impact.”

And delivering impact will deliver you loyalty, according to Zoe Spicer, an HR consultant and lecturer at Ashridge Business School. “What we used to call a work-life balance isn’t a work-life balance any more,” she explains. “Most employers expect their employees to be absolutely engaged with their work 24/7 and, if that’s the case, it’s about helping them arrange their busy lives around longer and longer hours.”

This means offering benefits such as emergency child and elderly care or access to 24/7 private doctors – or risk losing out. “There is a lot of evidence that you really do not get the right people through the door if you are not doing this,” she says. “Also, if you are not doing these things for your employees then they’re spending precious min-utes or hours in their working life admin-istering such things themselves. It in-creases their produc-tivity if you can make life as easy for them as you can.”

But it does much more than boost pro-ductivity. “The sup-port generates loyal-ty and retention, and quite frankly makes the employee feel that you really care,” adds Ms Spicer.

At the insurer Zurich, the UK’s head of HR Georgina Farrell puts the case for benefits in even more strident terms. “Money doesn’t buy me loyalty,” she says. “Money is cold. What a bene-fits package does is it buys a conversa-tion that will help me understand my employees even better.”

In her case, that’s a dialogue with 7,200 employees across 16 UK loca-tions, 87 per cent of whom take advan-tage of one or more of the core staff benefits. And clearly Zurich gets it right because employees typically stay for 15 to 18 years.

“Benefits form a huge part of creat-ing the culture of the organisation,” says Ms Farrell. “If you think about where we’re going in the future, and the blend between home and work, they add to more of a lifestyle choice that an individual might make around how they live personally, but also how they bring their whole life to work. It absolutely drives loyalty and morale.”

And accordingly benefits can be good for the bottom line in an even more direct way. Take two issues – the ageing workforce and growing cultural diversity. By offering benefits tailored

to these groups, you can help attract and retain such individuals, so you can better reflect your market. “That helps us look at the UK from a customer-base perspective,” says Ms Farrell. “We can use that insight in an inclusive way to drive intelligence and build different propositions for different customers.” In other words, a more diverse work-force will spot newer, diversity-related business opportunities.

Then there’s the big sell – benefits help capture that ever-harder-to-find talent in the first place. “Ensuring that [the benefits proposition] is focused in the right way allows me to sell a story about what it’s like to work for Zurich. It’s not about coming in to do a job of underwriting; actually it’s about coming in to have an employment ex-perience,” adds Ms Farrell.

Finally, she even regards the build-ings her people work in as part of the benefits. “It’s about ensuring you’re protecting the wellbeing of your em-ployees in order to be productive and for them to be in the right frame of mind to deal with customers,” she says.

Mark Batey, an expert in organisa-tional psychology from Manchester Business School and an adviser to Zurich, admits it’s hard to prove the

efficacy of benefits per se. “There are so many other ingredi-ents that go into the mix that teasing out individual effects of a benefits package is extremely difficult,” he concedes.

Looking at the example of, say, Facebook, Dr Batey points out: “We

can’t infer causation from correlation. The question is: is it a positive work-ing culture that means the company has better benefits? It’s often the case that the underlying factor is whether as an organisation you see yourself as primarily existing with the employees there to do a job for you, versus an or-ganisation that sees itself existing for the benefit of its own employees.”

And that goes to the heart of your business culture and what Dr Batey calls a more collaborative, individu-ated approach to management. “It all needs to be joined up,” he says. “What we’re finding is organisations that get the whole package are much more likely to win the war for talent, to get the best people and to retain them.”

In his essential 1970 business bible, Up the Organisation: How to Stop the Corporation Stifling People and Stran-gling Profits, Robert Townsend had a few choice words on the subject of employee benefits. “True leadership must be for the benefit of the follow-ers, not the enrichment of the leaders,” he wrote. “In combat, officers eat last.”

Do benefits really improve staff loyalty and morale?Rewarding staff isn’t just about money, it’s winning trust and loyalty with a relevant package of benefits to make their lives - and time at work - better

BENEFITS

ALEC MARSH

It’s about ensuring you’re protecting the wellbeing

of your employees for them to be in the right frame of mind to deal

with customers

What a benefits package does is it buys a conversation that will help me understand my employees even better

Share this article and infographic on social media via raconteur.net

Source: PMI Health Group 2015

EMPLOYEES’ MOST DESIRED BENEFITS (%) TOP 10 MOST COMMON BENEFITS EMPLOYERS’ PERCEIVED TOP 10 MORALE RAISERS

REASONS WHY EMPLOYERS PROVIDE BENEFITS

METHODS EMPLOYERS USE TO MEASURE SUCCESS OF THEIR BENEFIT SCHEMES

THE EFFECT OF BENEFITS ON EMPLOYEES (%)

HOW SATISFIED ARE YOU WITH YOUR EMPLOYEE BENEFITS?

DO BENEFITS INFLUENCE DECISIONS TO WORK FOR A COMPANY?

HAS YOUR EMPLOYER EVER CONSULTED YOU ON YOUR BENEFITS/REWARDS PREFERENCES?

WAYS YOUR CURRENT EMPLOYER COULD KEEP YOU WORKING FOR THEIR COMPANY TOP 7 RETENTION DRIVERS – EMPLOYEE VERSUS EMPLOYER VIEWS

Recognition from management01

Better working environment 06

Increased salary 03

Option to work from home 08

Belonging to a successful team 02

Independence 07

Increased rewards/bonuses 04

Greater choice of benefits 09

Source: Kingston Smith W1 2014


Source: Employee Benefits 2014Source: Towers Watson 2014Source: Towers Watson 2014

Source: PMI Health Group 2015 Source: Kingston Smith W1 2014

84%83%72%47%45%40%35%34%32%27%

11%12%

11%

Effective retention tool

Effective recruitment tool

Staff motivation/engagement

Employees’ understanding/appreciation of benefits

Recruitment

Reward or cost containment/reduction

Employees’ understanding of the cash value of their benefits

Helped the organisation remain competitive

Retention

Employee health and wellbeing

Because competitors do

They promote work-life balance

They have to by law

Seen as entitlement by staff

Reduce the national insurance bill

Drive desired employee behaviours

Control sickness absence

They provide a measurable ROI

They feel they have to

To meet TUPE obligations

Training and development 05

Help with childcare10

49%

46%

36%

31%

23%

59%

79%Asked of employees that said they hoped to be working for another employer within a year Views of employers and their staff are not wholly aligned

Base pay/salary




Learning and development opportunities

Short-term incentives

Challenging work

Base pay/salary


Trust/confidence in senior leadership

Job security

Length of commute



Contributory pension scheme

0

00

5045

5

40

10

25

30

20

35

15

0

5

20

20

40

40

60

60

80

80

10 15 20 25 30 35

Childcare vouchers

Private medical insurance

Life insurance

Cash plan

Income protection insurance

Counselling service or employee assistance programme

Company car scheme

Health screening

Critical illness cover

YesVery satisfied

Very disatisfied

Fairly satisfied

Fairly disatisfied

Neutral

Yes

No

No



79%

57%

54%44%42%34%

31%

9%

Increase my salary

Improve my benefits package

Provide me with advancement opportunities

Contribute more to my retirement planOffer flexible work arrangements

Reduce my work stress

Improve my job security

Other

01

03

05

07

02

04

06

EMPLOYEES’ VIEW EMPLOYERS’ VIEW

10

09

01CRECHE/CHILDCARE

VOUCHERS

HEALTHCARE PLAN

PERFORMANCE- RELATED BONUSES



06CYCLE-TO-

WORK SCHEME

07SEASON

TICKET LOANS

08FLEXIBLE

WORKING HOURS

03MOBILE PHONES

04LIFE COVER (DEATH IN SERVICE)


Differentiation by business unit

More organisations are wak-ing up to the need to engage employees and offer at least some form of benefit pack-

ages. But with pensions becoming less of a differentiator in the wake of auto-enrol-ment, it is perhaps no surprise businesses are seeking more creative ways to stand out from the crowd – to attract and retain staff.

As a provider of rewards itself, Reward Gateway knows it has to put into practice what it preaches to others. As well as ben-efits including an employee share plan, staff lottery and the ability for staff to pur-chase iPads through interest-free loans, it

For Black Pepper Software, the em-phasis is on building up a strong social scene, with regular team away-days and an annual trip to a major European city. This year, employees and their partners will head to Dusseldorf, while previous trips have seen them travel to Florence, Copenhagen and Amsterdam. “The team is encouraged to split off into groups, enjoy themselves and self-organise group activities, although we do have one meal together as a business during this time,” says company director Mark Stevenson.

The company offers more regular in-formal away-days, where the emphasis is also on socialising and team-bonding. “These are a great way to build rapport and increase morale throughout the business, as well as rewarding staff for the incredibly hard work they put in throughout the year,” he adds.

Communications agency Atomic has taken the experience concept a stage further, allowing staff to create their own “bucket list” and contributing money to help make this a reality. “We wanted to

offer a benefit that challenges the norm and inspires our people to think big

and stretch their comfort zones,” says director Julie Wilks. “So far, people have chosen everything from skydiving and swimming with dolphins to cake decorating and piano lessons.” One employee used her allowance to trek to Ev-erest base camp, Ms Wilks adds, while her own ambitions are more

modest – she’s planning an “owl encoun-ter” later this year.

The business also whisks its staff away just before Christmas each year to a secret location. “People get told to turn up at, for example, Gatwick Airport at 7am with their passports,” says Ms Wilks. “Last year we all went to Munich. People get really excited about it, to the extent of googling any details sent out beforehand to try to figure out where we’re going.”

Not all initiatives have to cost money, however. Talent management business Rethink Group has helped to motivate and reward staff by offering them the ability to take a sabbatical. “The best example of

also offers wedding and baby bonuses, of £1,000 and £500 respectively, designed to help employees meet the costs associated with getting married and starting a family.

“When we were founded back in 2007, the majority of employees were in their early-20s,” recalls Tracy Mellor, group people director. “As we developed, so did our staff’s priorities and we realised that what had been important to staff previously – team lunches and drinks on a Friday night – weren’t quite as high on their to-do list any more. So we asked em-ployees directly to find out what would really make a difference to them, and the answer was financial help to ease them through the beginnings of married life and parenthood.”

this is one of our employees who recently undertook the Hajj-to-Mecca pilgrimage,” says Michael Bennett, managing director and co-founder. “While the pilgrimage itself lasts a week, the visits to various religious sites and everything that comes with it can take up to a month, which is obviously very difficult to plan around.

“When our employee came to us with this request, we realised it was of signifi-cant importance to her and looked to find a solution. We were able to grant her an extended period of leave; after all, the al-ternative was potentially losing or demo-tivating a valuable member of our team.” The employee returned more focused and committed, prompting the business to make such trips available to all staff, regardless of the length of service.

For Crunch Accounting, the focus is on creating a more vibrant and healthy office environment. “We realised that lots of our team were eating their lunches at their desks while they worked and spending the entire day in front of their screens,” says Helena Mann, operations manager. “We recognised this wasn’t a good situa-tion so we did a few things to address it.”

The business set about creating a number of breakout areas where people could go to have time away from their desk and eat their lunch, and also introduced free breakfasts. “Going straight from a stressful commute into work isn’t good for anyone’s wellbeing, so we encourage people to grab a bowl of cereal or some fruit and chat with colleagues before they start the day,” says Ms Mann. “It’s a much more relaxed way to start the day.”

Digital marketing agency Ph.Creative, meanwhile, has developed a system de-signed to enable staff to reward colleagues for their efforts and encourage them to demonstrate the kind of behaviour it ex-pects. Employees are given five poker chips at the start of each month, which they can then give to others in recognition of their hard work or help on a particular issue. At the end of the month those with the most chips are rewarded, both through a treat and the recognition that comes with it.

“There’s anything from a crate of Peroni to a dinner date for two, a family day out or a weekend away, through to cold, hard cash,” says Bryan Adams, chief executive and founder. “We find more than anything, though, that having your name called out and celebrated with the wider team is as much a reward as the physical ones. Rec-ognition is very important – it’s as revered as the ‘players’ player of the year’ award at the end of a football season.”

Peer recognition is important at cater-ing firm Lexington, which runs an annual chef of the year and barista competition. “These help galvanise and engage our team, as well as encourage innovation and creativity,” says chief executive Mike Sunley. “They are a fantastic way to show-case the fabulous work our team is doing and it gives us another opportunity to rec-ognise those who stand out.”

CREATIVE BENEFITS

NICK MARTINDALE

Source: Deloitte 2014

Recognition is very important – it’s as

revered as the ‘players’ player of the year’

award at the end of a football seasonSpecial treats

to reward extra effortBenefits tailored to your team can be the decisive differentiator which attracts the best recruits and retains star staff members

REDESIGNING REWARDS STRATEGYACTIONS TAKEN OR PLANNING TO TAKE


1. Atomic employee Katie Hudson paragliding in Turkey as part of a rewards programme

2. Black Pepper Software staff on a bike tour of Amsterdam

3. Crunch Accounting created breakout areas for their staff to create a healthier office environment

1 2

3

GLOBAL EMPLOYERS’ TOP 5 PRIORITIES FOR REWARDS PROGRAMMES

01 Aligning rewards with business strategy by attracting, motivating, and retaining employees

02 Costs of providing healthcare and other non-cash benefits to employees

03 Motivating staff when pay increases are flat/non-existent

04 Demonstrating appropriate return on investment for reward expenditures

05 Creating a rewards programme that reflects the culture and goals of the organisation


Definition, mix of components, and/or

total redesign

Differentiation by employee group (workforce segmentation)

Significantly reducing rewards investment

We have not redesigned our rewards strategy

Alignment with organisation

strategy and brand

Increasing health and wellbeing initiatives

43%

40%

34%23%

14%

8%

18%

COMMERCIAL FEATURE

91% of employers agree that workplace financial solutions lead to more satisfied employees

Source: Bank of America Merrill Lynch

1 in 3 employees report money worries impact their work productivity

Source: Sodexo

HERE’S A SIMPLE WAY TO IMPROVE YOUR EMPLOYEES’ FINANCIAL HEALTHMoney worries can hamper staff performance so it’s in everyone’s interest to find a better way to pay down personal debt

Yoga is a popular staff benefit. After work, employees unwind with a spot of group ashtanga. It’s great for building team morale, and even better for keeping em-ployees limber in body and mind.

Bee keeping is booming too. You’ll find hives on the roofs of many City firms.

Both are great. But are they addressing what staff really want? The answer is: it’s unlikely. For a growing number of workers their chief concern is something far more practical: their personal finances.

We all know consumer lending is a se-rious problem in the UK. So serious that many workers can think about little else.

A PwC report called Precious Plastic: How Britons Fell Back in Love with Bor-rowing reveals consumer lending has hit an all-time high. Credit card debt, bank loans, peer-to-peer borrowing and pay-day loans rose 9 per cent to £239 billion last year. One in five Brits say they are worried about how they will make future payments.

Naturally, most borrowers hide their money worries. But it nags away. The con-nection between financial problems and low performance at work is well chronicled. Insomnia can hammer productivity.

So what can you do as an employer?SalaryFinance is a new platform to help employees reduce the cost of their lend-ing, with no risk or contribution from their company. Repayments are made direct from the payroll. By creating an automatic monthly repayment, paid like clockwork, the interest rate can be dramatically low-ered. It’s an effective way for employees to get out of debt quicker.

The Bank of England has offered its staff salary deductible loans for years, as have credit unions. Now a fintech startup, SalaryFinance, co-founded by Google UK former head Dan Cobley, banking consult-ant Asesh Sarkar, and entrepreneur and social finance expert Daniel Shakhani, is taking the concept to other interested em-ployers, with grand plans.

Here’s how it works. Staff are offered loans up to 20 per cent of salary, subject to affordability. The rate is typically one third of the market average and the aim is to reduce the cost of existing staff lending, rather than introduce new lending.

Everyone gets the same interest rate, ir-respective of income and status. There are no fees. The current rate is 7.9 per cent APR, far lower than the average 22 per cent rate offered by the big four high street banks in the UK, for loans less than £5,000, or the outrageous demands of pay-day lenders.

Participants therefore slash their debt burden from day one. Each month a pay-ment is taken from the pay check to repay the debt until it is gone.

It must be stressed that there is no li-ability for the company. The sole role for employers is to enable the payroll deduc-tions, as they do for pensions, health insur-ance and other benefits. The SalaryFinance platform integrates smoothly with all major payroll packages.

SalaryFinance is able to offer a low rate because of the cost-savings associ-ated with deducting repayments directly from payroll. Administration costs are cut. Missed payments and timing irregulari-

ties are eliminated. In essence, the model lowers risk, rather than prices it in. The bor-rower reaps the benefit.

Now you may ask, if it’s so great why aren’t more firms offering it? “The Bank of England has been offering it for years,” says SalaryFinance co-founder Mr Sarkar. “And credit unions too. In countries such as Brazil, the majority of consumer loans are done through the payroll system, and it is widespread in Italy and the United States. It’s the UK which is behind. We want to change that.”

The way to do that is to show compa-nies how they will benefit by taking part. “Since there are no fees, no liability, and no new admin processes over and above other deductions like pensions, there is no downside for companies,” says Mr Sarkar. “Signing up should be a no-brainer.

“The reason companies ought to offer this benefit to their employees is that it can help to reduce employee stress and increase productivity, benefiting everyone. By making repayments directly through their payroll, workers can dramatically cut the interest they owe and start winning back their hard-earned money. Employers will find the scheme quick and easy to imple-ment thanks to our innovative technology. We urge companies to take a close look.”

The SalaryFinance model is the exact in-verse of pay-day lenders. Everything is de-voted to offering the lowest possible APR. “Our model, which has been developed by Britain’s leading financial and technology innovators, means we can under-cut other lenders,” says Mr Sarkar.

“Our mission is to be a progressive force for good, offering British workers a fairer, more transparent and more affordable way to borrow. We are dedicated to helping people to lower their repayments and get their debt under control. It’s in our DNA – for every £1 we make, our customers save £25.”

The platform ensures employers don’t know how much each person owes. Partici-pants will demand that level of privacy. “The model is also great for automated savings and it’s an area we are considering,” says Mr

Sarkar. “Staff could allocate a fixed amount of their salary to be paid into a savings ac-count each month.”

SalaryFinance is pitching at a big market. More than £15 billion is paid in interest on loans annually. For an average employer with 4,000 staff, and salaries between £25,000 and £50,000, the model can save employees over £500,000 a year or the equivalent of a 3 per cent pay rise. If interest rates rise, em-ployers may feel duty bound to help workers struggling to keep their cash flowing.

For a new company, SalaryFinance has an impressive array of companies already signed up, including FTSE-listed Saga, public sector services company Agilisys and internet retailer AO.

The feedback is also encouraging. Karen Caddick, Saga’s group HR director, com-ments: “At Saga, we are committed to pro-viding our employees with benefits that will help to make their money go further. We want to provide a positive work environment where our people feel valued and rewarded.

“SalaryFinance is an excellent way to do just that. It will help our staff to make the most of their salaries, to live well and to save for the longer term as well.”

To find out more visit www.SalaryFinance.com

By making repayments directly through their payroll, workers can dramatically cut the

interest they owe and start winning back their

hard-earned money


Differentiation by business unit

More organisations are wak-ing up to the need to engage employees and offer at least some form of benefit pack-

ages. But with pensions becoming less of a differentiator in the wake of auto-enrol-ment, it is perhaps no surprise businesses are seeking more creative ways to stand out from the crowd – to attract and retain staff.

As a provider of rewards itself, Reward Gateway knows it has to put into practice what it preaches to others. As well as ben-efits including an employee share plan, staff lottery and the ability for staff to pur-chase iPads through interest-free loans, it

For Black Pepper Software, the em-phasis is on building up a strong social scene, with regular team away-days and an annual trip to a major European city. This year, employees and their partners will head to Dusseldorf, while previous trips have seen them travel to Florence, Copenhagen and Amsterdam. “The team is encouraged to split off into groups, enjoy themselves and self-organise group activities, although we do have one meal together as a business during this time,” says company director Mark Stevenson.

The company offers more regular in-formal away-days, where the emphasis is also on socialising and team-bonding. “These are a great way to build rapport and increase morale throughout the business, as well as rewarding staff for the incredibly hard work they put in throughout the year,” he adds.

Communications agency Atomic has taken the experience concept a stage further, allowing staff to create their own “bucket list” and contributing money to help make this a reality. “We wanted to

offer a benefit that challenges the norm and inspires our people to think big

and stretch their comfort zones,” says director Julie Wilks. “So far, people have chosen everything from skydiving and swimming with dolphins to cake decorating and piano lessons.” One employee used her allowance to trek to Ev-erest base camp, Ms Wilks adds, while her own ambitions are more

modest – she’s planning an “owl encoun-ter” later this year.

The business also whisks its staff away just before Christmas each year to a secret location. “People get told to turn up at, for example, Gatwick Airport at 7am with their passports,” says Ms Wilks. “Last year we all went to Munich. People get really excited about it, to the extent of googling any details sent out beforehand to try to figure out where we’re going.”

Not all initiatives have to cost money, however. Talent management business Rethink Group has helped to motivate and reward staff by offering them the ability to take a sabbatical. “The best example of

also offers wedding and baby bonuses, of £1,000 and £500 respectively, designed to help employees meet the costs associated with getting married and starting a family.

“When we were founded back in 2007, the majority of employees were in their early-20s,” recalls Tracy Mellor, group people director. “As we developed, so did our staff’s priorities and we realised that what had been important to staff previously – team lunches and drinks on a Friday night – weren’t quite as high on their to-do list any more. So we asked em-ployees directly to find out what would really make a difference to them, and the answer was financial help to ease them through the beginnings of married life and parenthood.”

this is one of our employees who recently undertook the Hajj-to-Mecca pilgrimage,” says Michael Bennett, managing director and co-founder. “While the pilgrimage itself lasts a week, the visits to various religious sites and everything that comes with it can take up to a month, which is obviously very difficult to plan around.

“When our employee came to us with this request, we realised it was of signifi-cant importance to her and looked to find a solution. We were able to grant her an extended period of leave; after all, the al-ternative was potentially losing or demo-tivating a valuable member of our team.” The employee returned more focused and committed, prompting the business to make such trips available to all staff, regardless of the length of service.

For Crunch Accounting, the focus is on creating a more vibrant and healthy office environment. “We realised that lots of our team were eating their lunches at their desks while they worked and spending the entire day in front of their screens,” says Helena Mann, operations manager. “We recognised this wasn’t a good situa-tion so we did a few things to address it.”

The business set about creating a number of breakout areas where people could go to have time away from their desk and eat their lunch, and also introduced free breakfasts. “Going straight from a stressful commute into work isn’t good for anyone’s wellbeing, so we encourage people to grab a bowl of cereal or some fruit and chat with colleagues before they start the day,” says Ms Mann. “It’s a much more relaxed way to start the day.”

Digital marketing agency Ph.Creative, meanwhile, has developed a system de-signed to enable staff to reward colleagues for their efforts and encourage them to demonstrate the kind of behaviour it ex-pects. Employees are given five poker chips at the start of each month, which they can then give to others in recognition of their hard work or help on a particular issue. At the end of the month those with the most chips are rewarded, both through a treat and the recognition that comes with it.

“There’s anything from a crate of Peroni to a dinner date for two, a family day out or a weekend away, through to cold, hard cash,” says Bryan Adams, chief executive and founder. “We find more than anything, though, that having your name called out and celebrated with the wider team is as much a reward as the physical ones. Rec-ognition is very important – it’s as revered as the ‘players’ player of the year’ award at the end of a football season.”

Peer recognition is important at cater-ing firm Lexington, which runs an annual chef of the year and barista competition. “These help galvanise and engage our team, as well as encourage innovation and creativity,” says chief executive Mike Sunley. “They are a fantastic way to show-case the fabulous work our team is doing and it gives us another opportunity to rec-ognise those who stand out.”

CREATIVE BENEFITS

NICK MARTINDALE


Recognition is very important – it’s as

revered as the ‘players’ player of the year’

award at the end of a football seasonSpecial treats

to reward extra effortBenefits tailored to your team can be the decisive differentiator which attracts the best recruits and retains star staff members

REDESIGNING REWARDS STRATEGYACTIONS TAKEN OR PLANNING TO TAKE


1. Atomic employee Katie Hudson paragliding in Turkey as part of a rewards programme

2. Black Pepper Software staff on a bike tour of Amsterdam

3. Crunch Accounting created breakout areas for their staff to create a healthier office environment

1 2

3

GLOBAL EMPLOYERS’ TOP 5 PRIORITIES FOR REWARDS PROGRAMMES

01 Aligning rewards with business strategy by attracting, motivating, and retaining employees

02 Costs of providing healthcare and other non-cash benefits to employees

03 Motivating staff when pay increases are flat/non-existent

04 Demonstrating appropriate return on investment for reward expenditures

05 Creating a rewards programme that reflects the culture and goals of the organisation


Definition, mix of components, and/or

total redesign

Differentiation by employee group (workforce segmentation)

Significantly reducing rewards investment

We have not redesigned our rewards strategy

Alignment with organisation

strategy and brand

Increasing health and wellbeing initiatives

43%

40%

34%23%

14%

8%

18%

COMMERCIAL FEATURE

91% of employers agree that workplace financial solutions lead to more satisfied employees

Source: Bank of America Merrill Lynch

1 in 3 employees report money worries impact their work productivity

Source: Sodexo

HERE’S A SIMPLE WAY TO IMPROVE YOUR EMPLOYEES’ FINANCIAL HEALTHMoney worries can hamper staff performance so it’s in everyone’s interest to find a better way to pay down personal debt

Yoga is a popular staff benefit. After work, employees unwind with a spot of group ashtanga. It’s great for building team morale, and even better for keeping em-ployees limber in body and mind.

Bee keeping is booming too. You’ll find hives on the roofs of many City firms.

Both are great. But are they addressing what staff really want? The answer is: it’s unlikely. For a growing number of workers their chief concern is something far more practical: their personal finances.

We all know consumer lending is a se-rious problem in the UK. So serious that many workers can think about little else.

A PwC report called Precious Plastic: How Britons Fell Back in Love with Bor-rowing reveals consumer lending has hit an all-time high. Credit card debt, bank loans, peer-to-peer borrowing and pay-day loans rose 9 per cent to £239 billion last year. One in five Brits say they are worried about how they will make future payments.

Naturally, most borrowers hide their money worries. But it nags away. The con-nection between financial problems and low performance at work is well chronicled. Insomnia can hammer productivity.

So what can you do as an employer?SalaryFinance is a new platform to help employees reduce the cost of their lend-ing, with no risk or contribution from their company. Repayments are made direct from the payroll. By creating an automatic monthly repayment, paid like clockwork, the interest rate can be dramatically low-ered. It’s an effective way for employees to get out of debt quicker.

The Bank of England has offered its staff salary deductible loans for years, as have credit unions. Now a fintech startup, SalaryFinance, co-founded by Google UK former head Dan Cobley, banking consult-ant Asesh Sarkar, and entrepreneur and social finance expert Daniel Shakhani, is taking the concept to other interested em-ployers, with grand plans.

Here’s how it works. Staff are offered loans up to 20 per cent of salary, subject to affordability. The rate is typically one third of the market average and the aim is to reduce the cost of existing staff lending, rather than introduce new lending.

Everyone gets the same interest rate, ir-respective of income and status. There are no fees. The current rate is 7.9 per cent APR, far lower than the average 22 per cent rate offered by the big four high street banks in the UK, for loans less than £5,000, or the outrageous demands of pay-day lenders.

Participants therefore slash their debt burden from day one. Each month a pay-ment is taken from the pay check to repay the debt until it is gone.

It must be stressed that there is no li-ability for the company. The sole role for employers is to enable the payroll deduc-tions, as they do for pensions, health insur-ance and other benefits. The SalaryFinance platform integrates smoothly with all major payroll packages.

SalaryFinance is able to offer a low rate because of the cost-savings associ-ated with deducting repayments directly from payroll. Administration costs are cut. Missed payments and timing irregulari-

ties are eliminated. In essence, the model lowers risk, rather than prices it in. The bor-rower reaps the benefit.

Now you may ask, if it’s so great why aren’t more firms offering it? “The Bank of England has been offering it for years,” says SalaryFinance co-founder Mr Sarkar. “And credit unions too. In countries such as Brazil, the majority of consumer loans are done through the payroll system, and it is widespread in Italy and the United States. It’s the UK which is behind. We want to change that.”

The way to do that is to show compa-nies how they will benefit by taking part. “Since there are no fees, no liability, and no new admin processes over and above other deductions like pensions, there is no downside for companies,” says Mr Sarkar. “Signing up should be a no-brainer.

“The reason companies ought to offer this benefit to their employees is that it can help to reduce employee stress and increase productivity, benefiting everyone. By making repayments directly through their payroll, workers can dramatically cut the interest they owe and start winning back their hard-earned money. Employers will find the scheme quick and easy to imple-ment thanks to our innovative technology. We urge companies to take a close look.”

The SalaryFinance model is the exact in-verse of pay-day lenders. Everything is de-voted to offering the lowest possible APR. “Our model, which has been developed by Britain’s leading financial and technology innovators, means we can under-cut other lenders,” says Mr Sarkar.

“Our mission is to be a progressive force for good, offering British workers a fairer, more transparent and more affordable way to borrow. We are dedicated to helping people to lower their repayments and get their debt under control. It’s in our DNA – for every £1 we make, our customers save £25.”

The platform ensures employers don’t know how much each person owes. Partici-pants will demand that level of privacy. “The model is also great for automated savings and it’s an area we are considering,” says Mr

Sarkar. “Staff could allocate a fixed amount of their salary to be paid into a savings ac-count each month.”

SalaryFinance is pitching at a big market. More than £15 billion is paid in interest on loans annually. For an average employer with 4,000 staff, and salaries between £25,000 and £50,000, the model can save employees over £500,000 a year or the equivalent of a 3 per cent pay rise. If interest rates rise, em-ployers may feel duty bound to help workers struggling to keep their cash flowing.

For a new company, SalaryFinance has an impressive array of companies already signed up, including FTSE-listed Saga, public sector services company Agilisys and internet retailer AO.

The feedback is also encouraging. Karen Caddick, Saga’s group HR director, com-ments: “At Saga, we are committed to pro-viding our employees with benefits that will help to make their money go further. We want to provide a positive work environment where our people feel valued and rewarded.

“SalaryFinance is an excellent way to do just that. It will help our staff to make the most of their salaries, to live well and to save for the longer term as well.”

To find out more visit www.SalaryFinance.com

By making repayments directly through their payroll, workers can dramatically cut the

interest they owe and start winning back their

hard-earned money


Only a third of UK employees are highly engaged at work

Want to know more? Download the full report for free at redletterdaysforbusiness.co.uk

Research confi rms engagement can be improved by:Letting your staff get on with their jobGiving your staff opportunities to growPraising your staff and recognising good performanceGiving your staff regular trainingMaking sure your staff know what is expected of them each day

Engage your team with our brand new, ready-to-go elearning

Enjoyable, bitesize training for multi-device use“This new style of elearning is some of the very best we have evaluated. It is an exemplary example of learning materials... making mobile learning a reality!”LEARNING LIGHT, ELEARNING CONSULTANCY

Access your free trial: http://bit.ly/essentialsplus

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

CHARLES ORTON-JONES

Enrolling in the u niversity of work Companies are employing intranet learning to educate, train and develop employees, thereby raising standards as well as morale

Universities are in turmoil. The internet has undermined the old ways of educating students. Professors used to

stand in an auditorium and deliver a lecture. But what is the point when stu-dents can download the entire series to peruse at their leisure?

So what should universities do? A simple way to discover how learning can be reinvented for the 21st century is to take a look at what’s happening in the business sector.

Commvault, a data management com-pany, created Com-mvault University to train employees. It embraces teach-ing methods mil-lennials – 20 and 30-somethings – will enjoy most. In es-sence Commvault University is an in-tranet-based portal that allows all em-ployees to browse a library of resources.

“There is a lot of evidence that shows that millennials, having grown up with Google and YouTube, are far more used to resourcing their own personal devel-opment and doing so through multiple channels,” says Commvault HR director Susie Andrew.

“What we’re doing at Commvault is we’re replicating that. The Commvault University allows students to work at their own pace, in a way that is in-teresting to them and not just limited to their specific role. Every learning module they complete is logged on their profile, so at the same time as learning, they are creating an internal CV which shows their commitment and achievements.”

It’s not all static; there are interactive we-binars and guest speakers, such as man-agement gurus Clayton Christensen and Marcus Buckingham, hold workshops.

Pets Corner runs a tuition programme to put Russell Group universities to shame. Ten training staff run courses for employees located in 100 pet stores around the UK. Head of training Lucy Ross says: “Staff are taught in small

groups of eight to thirteen people to ensure we provide an intimate setting whereby we can cater for all abilities and experiences within the pet indus-try. Currently we have 378 different manuals for staff, 25 of which are nu-trition-specific for learning on the shop floor. The manuals are continuously updated so that our staff can keep their knowledge current and relevant.

“Our current sessions cover 12 differ-ent topics. These are mammal husband-ry, reptile husbandry, aquatics care and maintenance, aquatic product knowledge,

wild bird and home farming, treatments and grooming, pets and parasites, dog training and prod-ucts, cat behaviour and care, the pets corner difference and customer service, systems and policies, and management training – so it’s a very intensive and

broad schedule. “On completion of each session staff

are required to pass a test to ensure they

understand the subject and possess the core knowledge necessary for delivering the Pets Corner standard. To keep up to date with changes, each member of staff will then need to repeat these sessions within 18 months.”

There’s no tolerance for a failure to learn. All staff must pass a written exam before they are allowed to sell to the public. Ms Ross tried the softly-soft-ly approach. It didn’t work. “We have made our in-house curriculum manda-tory. Before this we have tried setting certain sessions within the working

rotas and allowing staff to volunteer themselves to expand their knowledge. This, as you can imagine, was a disas-ter. We would have some staff members putting themselves forward with a real drive and thirst for learning and knowl-edge, which was fantastic. But those who were less confident in their knowledge felt over-whelmed or even perhaps lazy and would not volun-teer themselves,” she says.

A persistent criticism of university teaching is that it is too desk-bound. Business-es can’t afford to have staff competent only in the theory. Stone Junction, a techni-cal PR agency, is typical of the way the best companies approach training. Richard Stone, managing director, says: “We apply the 70/20/10 model in our training: 70 per cent consists of getting em-ployees to actually practise what they learnt, 20 per cent consists of being told how to do new things and 10 per cent is desk research.”

Mr Stone makes sure his protégés get out of the office. “Our training programme is also complemented with external training days, webi-nars and tech talks, industry events and trade shows, as well as trade body member-ship and continuing profes-sional development,” he says.

Staff get a lot of autonomy through an annual grant to spend on non-vocation-al training. They also train each other. “We encourage everyone to share any skills or knowledge they have with the rest of the team. This way the trainee becomes the trainer,” says Mr Stone.

The net result is a workforce constant-ly engaged and learning. Mr Stone adds: “Since implementing our new train-ing programme and incentive scheme, we’ve seen employee satisfaction go through the roof. It’s also helped our staff retention, which is crucial for any small company.

“Believe it or not, we’ve already dis-covered hidden talents within the team. One of our graduates turned out to be a video and audio-editing expert – an extremely handy set of skills for any company, but especially relevant when you’re working in the media sector.”

A key question is how much training to give. Too little, and the impact is di-minished. Too much, and staff are distracted from their job. McDonald’s is known for its exemplary record on training. It always ranks as one of the best places to work in the UK and is overall rated “good” by Ofsted, and “outstanding” for apprenticeships. The ap-prenticeships are scheduled to take five years. The pro-gramme includes qualifica-tions in maths and English, and foundation degrees. Half of current managers started as apprentices. The full training and develop-ment budget runs to £40 million a year, an average of 75 hours per employee.

At law firm Osborne Clarke, the average training time is similar at 70 hours a year. That might seem a lot, but it amounts to an hour and half a week. At HCSS Education, an education finance special-ist, employees fit in tuition at “lunch and learns”. The slot can cover a variety of skills from time management to lessons learnt from a compa-ny project. It proves that lack of time need be no excuse.

Companies innovate in education because their fu-tures depend on it. Univer-sities, operating in an envi-

ronment where students queue to sign up and then almost never transfer to an-other provider, have mostly been slower to adapt. They and their students would do well to observe – and learn.

Staff are taught in small groups of eight to

thirteen people to ensure we provide an intimate setting whereby we can

cater for all abilities

Since implementing our new training programme

and incentive scheme, we’ve seen employee

satisfaction go through the roof

CASE STUDY: WOLFF OLINS

Wolff Olins is the leg-endary branding agency behind famous logos such as Orange mobile and the London 2012 Olympic Games. It runs a phenom-enally broad and deep education programme.

Ellen O’Connor, head of learning and development, explains her approach: “We have a peer-to-peer learning programme – a

curriculum of training courses across our four offices in London, New York, Dubai and San Fran-cisco, designed and led by experts internally. At the moment 3D Printing 101 is really capturing people’s imaginations and our Pre-senting course is always a favourite.

“We call this selection of on and offline courses

Curve. The key to its popularity and impact is keeping it refreshed with new content which is aligned to our business needs. Our people love learning from each other, and our faculty love developing their skills in presenting, facilitat-ing and sharing their knowledge. It’s a double learning loop.

“We’re currently launching our own Leadership Devel-opment Programme too, an evolution of everything we’re already doing.

“We also have more social learning groups such as our Cook-ery Club, run by our head chef Sam, which cements a positive

attitude to learning, creativity and team-work. Externally, we invite people to attend Omnicom University, which is run by the parent company of our group, offer courses at places such as Gen-eral Assembly, a great school for new skills in programming, design and marketing, as well

as interesting schools such as the Institute of Interaction and Design in Copenhagen.

“Everyone at Wolff Olins can apply for a personal learning grant as part of their development plan; individuals make a case for the training they want to do, and how it will support their

plan and contribute to their current and future work. The amount we contribute is flexible de-pendent on the course and our perceived value of those skills within the business. We have an agreement with those attending longer courses that they will share their learnings afterwards, so we all get

the benefit.“We find that the

variety of learning options helps to create high engagement, and by empowering our people to teach, we’ve established a shared sense of responsibility for learning and teach-ing, and beyond that helping others and the business grow.”


Source: UK Commission for Employment and

Skills 2014

of employers in England reported

a skills gap in their workforce

15%

reported a skills under-use

47%

said they had trained their staff over the previous

12 months

66%

Source: KnowledgePool 2014

COMPONENTS OF SUCCESSFUL LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMMES

Highly customised 45%

Learner-driven 44%

Good value for money 43%Popular and enjoyable among attendees 42%

Uses new technologies 38%Always on/accessible whenever needed by employees 36%

Well-organised/reliable process 33%Balance what the employee and the business wants 32%

Short/sharp training (concise and timely) 30%

Directly impacts the bottom line 28%

Choice in how it is delivered 27%

Measured in terms of their ROI 27%

None of these 2%


Only a third of UK employees are highly engaged at work

Want to know more? Download the full report for free at redletterdaysforbusiness.co.uk

Research confi rms engagement can be improved by:Letting your staff get on with their jobGiving your staff opportunities to growPraising your staff and recognising good performanceGiving your staff regular trainingMaking sure your staff know what is expected of them each day

Engage your team with our brand new, ready-to-go elearning

Enjoyable, bitesize training for multi-device use“This new style of elearning is some of the very best we have evaluated. It is an exemplary example of learning materials... making mobile learning a reality!”LEARNING LIGHT, ELEARNING CONSULTANCY

Access your free trial: http://bit.ly/essentialsplus

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

CHARLES ORTON-JONES

Enrolling in the u niversity of work Companies are employing intranet learning to educate, train and develop employees, thereby raising standards as well as morale

Universities are in turmoil. The internet has undermined the old ways of educating students. Professors used to

stand in an auditorium and deliver a lecture. But what is the point when stu-dents can download the entire series to peruse at their leisure?

So what should universities do? A simple way to discover how learning can be reinvented for the 21st century is to take a look at what’s happening in the business sector.

Commvault, a data management com-pany, created Com-mvault University to train employees. It embraces teach-ing methods mil-lennials – 20 and 30-somethings – will enjoy most. In es-sence Commvault University is an in-tranet-based portal that allows all em-ployees to browse a library of resources.

“There is a lot of evidence that shows that millennials, having grown up with Google and YouTube, are far more used to resourcing their own personal devel-opment and doing so through multiple channels,” says Commvault HR director Susie Andrew.

“What we’re doing at Commvault is we’re replicating that. The Commvault University allows students to work at their own pace, in a way that is in-teresting to them and not just limited to their specific role. Every learning module they complete is logged on their profile, so at the same time as learning, they are creating an internal CV which shows their commitment and achievements.”

It’s not all static; there are interactive we-binars and guest speakers, such as man-agement gurus Clayton Christensen and Marcus Buckingham, hold workshops.

Pets Corner runs a tuition programme to put Russell Group universities to shame. Ten training staff run courses for employees located in 100 pet stores around the UK. Head of training Lucy Ross says: “Staff are taught in small

groups of eight to thirteen people to ensure we provide an intimate setting whereby we can cater for all abilities and experiences within the pet indus-try. Currently we have 378 different manuals for staff, 25 of which are nu-trition-specific for learning on the shop floor. The manuals are continuously updated so that our staff can keep their knowledge current and relevant.

“Our current sessions cover 12 differ-ent topics. These are mammal husband-ry, reptile husbandry, aquatics care and maintenance, aquatic product knowledge,

wild bird and home farming, treatments and grooming, pets and parasites, dog training and prod-ucts, cat behaviour and care, the pets corner difference and customer service, systems and policies, and management training – so it’s a very intensive and

broad schedule. “On completion of each session staff

are required to pass a test to ensure they

understand the subject and possess the core knowledge necessary for delivering the Pets Corner standard. To keep up to date with changes, each member of staff will then need to repeat these sessions within 18 months.”

There’s no tolerance for a failure to learn. All staff must pass a written exam before they are allowed to sell to the public. Ms Ross tried the softly-soft-ly approach. It didn’t work. “We have made our in-house curriculum manda-tory. Before this we have tried setting certain sessions within the working

rotas and allowing staff to volunteer themselves to expand their knowledge. This, as you can imagine, was a disas-ter. We would have some staff members putting themselves forward with a real drive and thirst for learning and knowl-edge, which was fantastic. But those who were less confident in their knowledge felt over-whelmed or even perhaps lazy and would not volun-teer themselves,” she says.

A persistent criticism of university teaching is that it is too desk-bound. Business-es can’t afford to have staff competent only in the theory. Stone Junction, a techni-cal PR agency, is typical of the way the best companies approach training. Richard Stone, managing director, says: “We apply the 70/20/10 model in our training: 70 per cent consists of getting em-ployees to actually practise what they learnt, 20 per cent consists of being told how to do new things and 10 per cent is desk research.”

Mr Stone makes sure his protégés get out of the office. “Our training programme is also complemented with external training days, webi-nars and tech talks, industry events and trade shows, as well as trade body member-ship and continuing profes-sional development,” he says.

Staff get a lot of autonomy through an annual grant to spend on non-vocation-al training. They also train each other. “We encourage everyone to share any skills or knowledge they have with the rest of the team. This way the trainee becomes the trainer,” says Mr Stone.

The net result is a workforce constant-ly engaged and learning. Mr Stone adds: “Since implementing our new train-ing programme and incentive scheme, we’ve seen employee satisfaction go through the roof. It’s also helped our staff retention, which is crucial for any small company.

“Believe it or not, we’ve already dis-covered hidden talents within the team. One of our graduates turned out to be a video and audio-editing expert – an extremely handy set of skills for any company, but especially relevant when you’re working in the media sector.”

A key question is how much training to give. Too little, and the impact is di-minished. Too much, and staff are distracted from their job. McDonald’s is known for its exemplary record on training. It always ranks as one of the best places to work in the UK and is overall rated “good” by Ofsted, and “outstanding” for apprenticeships. The ap-prenticeships are scheduled to take five years. The pro-gramme includes qualifica-tions in maths and English, and foundation degrees. Half of current managers started as apprentices. The full training and develop-ment budget runs to £40 million a year, an average of 75 hours per employee.

At law firm Osborne Clarke, the average training time is similar at 70 hours a year. That might seem a lot, but it amounts to an hour and half a week. At HCSS Education, an education finance special-ist, employees fit in tuition at “lunch and learns”. The slot can cover a variety of skills from time management to lessons learnt from a compa-ny project. It proves that lack of time need be no excuse.

Companies innovate in education because their fu-tures depend on it. Univer-sities, operating in an envi-

ronment where students queue to sign up and then almost never transfer to an-other provider, have mostly been slower to adapt. They and their students would do well to observe – and learn.

Staff are taught in small groups of eight to

thirteen people to ensure we provide an intimate setting whereby we can

cater for all abilities

Since implementing our new training programme

and incentive scheme, we’ve seen employee

satisfaction go through the roof

CASE STUDY: WOLFF OLINS

Wolff Olins is the leg-endary branding agency behind famous logos such as Orange mobile and the London 2012 Olympic Games. It runs a phenom-enally broad and deep education programme.

Ellen O’Connor, head of learning and development, explains her approach: “We have a peer-to-peer learning programme – a

curriculum of training courses across our four offices in London, New York, Dubai and San Fran-cisco, designed and led by experts internally. At the moment 3D Printing 101 is really capturing people’s imaginations and our Pre-senting course is always a favourite.

“We call this selection of on and offline courses

Curve. The key to its popularity and impact is keeping it refreshed with new content which is aligned to our business needs. Our people love learning from each other, and our faculty love developing their skills in presenting, facilitat-ing and sharing their knowledge. It’s a double learning loop.

“We’re currently launching our own Leadership Devel-opment Programme too, an evolution of everything we’re already doing.

“We also have more social learning groups such as our Cook-ery Club, run by our head chef Sam, which cements a positive

attitude to learning, creativity and team-work. Externally, we invite people to attend Omnicom University, which is run by the parent company of our group, offer courses at places such as Gen-eral Assembly, a great school for new skills in programming, design and marketing, as well

as interesting schools such as the Institute of Interaction and Design in Copenhagen.

“Everyone at Wolff Olins can apply for a personal learning grant as part of their development plan; individuals make a case for the training they want to do, and how it will support their

plan and contribute to their current and future work. The amount we contribute is flexible de-pendent on the course and our perceived value of those skills within the business. We have an agreement with those attending longer courses that they will share their learnings afterwards, so we all get

the benefit.“We find that the

variety of learning options helps to create high engagement, and by empowering our people to teach, we’ve established a shared sense of responsibility for learning and teach-ing, and beyond that helping others and the business grow.”


Source: UK Commission for Employment and

Skills 2014

of employers in England reported

a skills gap in their workforce

15%

reported a skills under-use

47%

said they had trained their staff over the previous

12 months

66%

Source: KnowledgePool 2014

COMPONENTS OF SUCCESSFUL LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMMES

Highly customised 45%

Learner-driven 44%

Good value for money 43%Popular and enjoyable among attendees 42%

Uses new technologies 38%Always on/accessible whenever needed by employees 36%

Well-organised/reliable process 33%Balance what the employee and the business wants 32%

Short/sharp training (concise and timely) 30%

Directly impacts the bottom line 28%

Choice in how it is delivered 27%

Measured in terms of their ROI 27%

None of these 2%


TECHNOLOGY

BRID-AINE PARNELL

The explosion in the use of data analytics to monitor every aspect of business from logistics to customer

satisfaction has also seen compa-nies turn their attention internally to monitoring staff and their en-gagement with the firm. But tech-nology isn’t just a way of keeping

tabs on how motivated and engaged your workers are – it can also help to encourage and support that engage-ment. From the ubiquitous, but now updated, employee survey to social media platforms and collaboration tools, technology offers businesses a way to get staff working together, discussing the firm’s mission and bonding socially, all in ways that are quantifiable and observable by management.


Informed use of technology isn’t just a way of monitoring staff morale, it can also help to

encourage and support employee engagement

SOCIALLY SPEAKINGThe days of gathering around the water cooler for the latest gossip or talking business over a cigarette break are long gone. Now staff are more likely to chat online or by e-mail, but this causes the same problems as the coffee breaks used to – news may travel faster, but not everyone is involved. Companies can solve this with an internal social network that allows employees to chat, share personal infor-mation, organise social events and discuss business ideas at the same time. The network can be available both in and outside the office and facilitate everything from quiz night at the local to mentoring from colleagues to incorporating tweets or other traditional social media. These interactions help workers to bond more easily, share information quickly and feel work is more a part of their life as a whole, rather than something that’s encased inside the four walls of their workplace.

PEER REVIEWMarrying social media and gamification techniques are social communication and recognition platforms such as Jostle and Globoforce. The basic idea behind these intranets is to allow workers to share their achievements with each other and not just with management. Staff can nominate each other to be recognised or see what others are doing that’s gaining recognition. Whether there’s some kind of reward system attached or not, staff generally enjoy having their work appreciated by their peers, and bosses get the added benefits of workers hearing first-hand about best practices and spotting influencers who may have leadership potential in their employee pool. It also helps employers to acknowledge the small ways that people do their jobs well. Happy customers, for example, may not be immediately recognisable in sales or deserving of staff promotion, but they are of huge value to the company’s brand and the workers, who send people away with a smile on their face, deserve to be commended.

WORK TOGETHERGetting staff to collaborate is a pillar of good employee engagement. When employees can easily work together and see what their hard work is achieving, it’s good for social bonding, good for their motivation and good for the business. From the simple solutions such as Google Drive and Dropbox, which allow workers to share and work on the same documents, to more complex collaboration platforms, such as Incentive, having easy access to what the team is working on and how a project is progressing removes a lot of the frustrations of daily interactions. Being able to pin a question to the exact place in the document you’re confused about can often be a lot easier than a string of e-mails or even trying to explain in person. On top of that, most of these tools can be accessed remotely or on mobile devices, allowing collaboration across geographical regions and even while key workers are out of the office.

JUST ASKFor years, the easiest way for companies to figure out how motivated their workers were was to just ask them, usually in infrequent employee surveys or once-a-year reviews. The logic behind this is still sound, but technology now allows firms to do it continuously and less obtrusively with online platforms. Instead of a long survey at the end of the year or a one-off opportunity at the yearly appraisal, staff can give feedback daily or weekly with mini-questionnaires on platforms such as TINYPulse or even just emotional respons-es – a simple click on a smiley, angry or sad emoticon with software such as Morale.me or emooter. Real-time feedback like this can help companies to pinpoint any problems before they get serious, something that’s particularly useful when the issue is a minor one. If dirty coffee cups in the kitchen are enraging your staff to the point where it’s a distraction, that’s valuable information with an easy fix.

PLAY A GAMEEmployers have long realised that cash benefits are not all that motivate their staff; workers want recognition, progression and status as well, and gamification can help to provide all that. The oft-cited example is US store Target, which introduced a game for cashiers to help improve their performance and make their rather isolated job a bit more interactive. A simple game shows the cashier in red or green depending on whether they’ve scanned an item in the optimum time. The game also keeps track of their score so they get immediate feedback. Employees are more engaged and they’re motivated by the very thing that their boss wants them to do – checking people out faster. Gamification ideas like this make workers’ jobs more fun while at the same time incentivising them to do well at their work, and recognising and rewarding good work in real time.

MAKE A GOOD STARTSmart firms are looking at employee engagement right from the beginning with the hiring process. Basic recruitment tech-nology has evolved a lot in the last few years and the new crop of intelligent hiring tools, such as Connectifier and Firefish, pull in huge amounts of data on candidates from social media presence to interviews, background and experience. This kind of analysis tells prospective employers not just how suitable they are for the job, but how the candidate’s ethos matches up with that of the company. Firms can see what they’re passionate about, what they’re interested in and how well they will fit into the company culture. It’s a lot simpler to integrate new workers when they share the same values as existing staff and the firm, instead of trying to change the candidate to fit their new environment.

COMMERCIAL FEATURE

National insurance broker Bluefin em-ploys 1,400 people, split across 49 offic-es. Bluefin operates in a heavily regulat-ed, process-driven industry with multiple systems and portals for staff to access. They are actively making acquisitions, bringing on board teams and businesses across the UK. They need to induct new employees efficiently, share best prac-tice, store information and drive staff to their intranet, known as BITE.

Using the Hub, Bluefin were able to rapidly reshape BITE into a social intranet with no interruption to business. They created bespoke home pages and con-tent for newly acquired companies, en-hancing the on-boarding process. Video streaming and blogging gave senior management the ability to supplement their traditional communications chan-nels and give messaging a more personal feel, which is especially important due to the geographical spread of offices. Their Hub provides a central log-in for vari-ous systems, streamlining process and avoiding confusion over systems access.

“One of the things that works best for us is that staff feel like it’s ‘their’ intranet. It’s constantly evolving; a lot of the content is generated by the individual departments. We have a small internal communications team so the ability to provide various levels of editorial control is key,” says Amy Smith, Bluefin’s head of marketing and public relations.

CASE STUDYEMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT AND THE RISE OF THE SOCIAL INTRANETCould this blend of modern and traditional communication finally solve the employee engagement problem?

Are you the type of boss who inspires your employees? If so, you are a rarity. The Har-vard Business Review recently published research on employees’ top complaints about their leaders. A thumping 91 per cent of employees said communication can drag executives down. The employees in the survey listed the following failings of bosses: not giving clear directions (57 per cent), not knowing employees’ names (36 per cent) and not recognising employee achievements (63 per cent).

The magazine noted: “The data shows that the vast majority of leaders are not engaging in crucial moments that could help employees see them as trustworthy.” It added: “This is startling, considering how much money organisations spend conducting employee surveys and reor-ganisations, engaging consultants and implementing change initiatives.” That last sentence is worth reading twice, as none of the solutions listed is likely to work. Imple-menting change initiatives? When did that help connect staff?

The traditional way of connecting staff is through the company intranet. This should be the hub of communication and a foun-tain of knowledge for staff. It should be. The reality is that many intranets are stale, underused and not valued by employees. “Traditional intranets tend to be dull and limiting,” says Pancentric’s product direc-tor Martin Boswell. “People are told to log on and find stuff. Employees barely use them.” So if it doesn’t engage staff and it’s wasting valuable resource time, why bother at all?

Research by the McKinsey Global Insti-tute found that using social tools to boost communications can raise productivity by 20 to 25 per cent. In today’s digital workplace, companies such as Bluefin are replacing the traditional intranet with the social intranet and it’s easy to see why. The social intranet takes the core functionality of the traditional intranet – new starter in-formation, contact directory, team charts and so on – and incorporates the engage-ment features of social networking tools.

This enables staff to form groups for particular projects, communicate online, share resourc-es, “like” and comment on articles, and crucial-ly, contribute content themselves.

Providing employees with this kind of access automatically builds a community and, like Slack, Twitter or LinkedIn, boosts engagement because they become part of the conversation. For chief executives and senior management, a social intranet with clever reporting and metrics provides instant information on employee engagement, with-out the need to wait for annual survey results. You can see which projects and documents are generating buzz, who is contributing, and vitally, which teams are really engaged and which areas of the business have gone quiet.

Senior management can communicate via video messaging and blogs – much more en-gaging than traditional methods of e-mail or newsletters that take weeks to compile and endless resources to produce.

So who’s using social intranets and what are the results? Pancentric Digital recognised the need for a new type of intranet, and spent the past six years building and developing the Hub, a social intranet and flexible portal system used by FTSE 100 member RSA, as well as Ralph Lauren, Bluefin and Direct Line Group.

Mr Boswell believes the Hub can change the way companies perform. “The Hub is a powerful way to boost engagement in a short space of time,” he says.

Bluefin’s head of marketing and public rela-tions Amy Smith says the main thing she notic-es is that employees really feel like it’s “their” intranet, not just a marketing or HR tool. Em-powering staff to contribute ensures content is constantly changing, retaining interest and sparking further engagement. Showcasing results and highlighting employee events, such as charity fundraisers, gives teams a boost and reinforces the community feel.

Mr Boswell maintains that a social intranet must be easily accessible and intuitive enough for all employees to use without the involve-ment of the IT department. It should be agile enough to allow rapid evolution. “That’s essential for the way modern workplaces function,” he says. “Employees can access secure resources and collaborate no matter where they’re located. Gone are the days when teams of key stakeholders needed to attend endless planning sessions about the intranet. In today’s low-code world, compa-nies equipped with agile intranets empower employees to participate, enabling two-way communication that can offer real insight and build employee engagement fast.”

To find out more about the Hub, e-mail [email protected] or call 020 7099 6370 www.hub.pancentric.com @thehubportal

Using social tools to boost communications

can raise productivity by 20 to 25 per cent


TECHNOLOGY

BRID-AINE PARNELL

The explosion in the use of data analytics to monitor every aspect of business from logistics to customer

satisfaction has also seen compa-nies turn their attention internally to monitoring staff and their en-gagement with the firm. But tech-nology isn’t just a way of keeping

tabs on how motivated and engaged your workers are – it can also help to encourage and support that engage-ment. From the ubiquitous, but now updated, employee survey to social media platforms and collaboration tools, technology offers businesses a way to get staff working together, discussing the firm’s mission and bonding socially, all in ways that are quantifiable and observable by management.


Informed use of technology isn’t just a way of monitoring staff morale, it can also help to

encourage and support employee engagement

SOCIALLY SPEAKINGThe days of gathering around the water cooler for the latest gossip or talking business over a cigarette break are long gone. Now staff are more likely to chat online or by e-mail, but this causes the same problems as the coffee breaks used to – news may travel faster, but not everyone is involved. Companies can solve this with an internal social network that allows employees to chat, share personal infor-mation, organise social events and discuss business ideas at the same time. The network can be available both in and outside the office and facilitate everything from quiz night at the local to mentoring from colleagues to incorporating tweets or other traditional social media. These interactions help workers to bond more easily, share information quickly and feel work is more a part of their life as a whole, rather than something that’s encased inside the four walls of their workplace.

PEER REVIEWMarrying social media and gamification techniques are social communication and recognition platforms such as Jostle and Globoforce. The basic idea behind these intranets is to allow workers to share their achievements with each other and not just with management. Staff can nominate each other to be recognised or see what others are doing that’s gaining recognition. Whether there’s some kind of reward system attached or not, staff generally enjoy having their work appreciated by their peers, and bosses get the added benefits of workers hearing first-hand about best practices and spotting influencers who may have leadership potential in their employee pool. It also helps employers to acknowledge the small ways that people do their jobs well. Happy customers, for example, may not be immediately recognisable in sales or deserving of staff promotion, but they are of huge value to the company’s brand and the workers, who send people away with a smile on their face, deserve to be commended.

WORK TOGETHERGetting staff to collaborate is a pillar of good employee engagement. When employees can easily work together and see what their hard work is achieving, it’s good for social bonding, good for their motivation and good for the business. From the simple solutions such as Google Drive and Dropbox, which allow workers to share and work on the same documents, to more complex collaboration platforms, such as Incentive, having easy access to what the team is working on and how a project is progressing removes a lot of the frustrations of daily interactions. Being able to pin a question to the exact place in the document you’re confused about can often be a lot easier than a string of e-mails or even trying to explain in person. On top of that, most of these tools can be accessed remotely or on mobile devices, allowing collaboration across geographical regions and even while key workers are out of the office.

JUST ASKFor years, the easiest way for companies to figure out how motivated their workers were was to just ask them, usually in infrequent employee surveys or once-a-year reviews. The logic behind this is still sound, but technology now allows firms to do it continuously and less obtrusively with online platforms. Instead of a long survey at the end of the year or a one-off opportunity at the yearly appraisal, staff can give feedback daily or weekly with mini-questionnaires on platforms such as TINYPulse or even just emotional respons-es – a simple click on a smiley, angry or sad emoticon with software such as Morale.me or emooter. Real-time feedback like this can help companies to pinpoint any problems before they get serious, something that’s particularly useful when the issue is a minor one. If dirty coffee cups in the kitchen are enraging your staff to the point where it’s a distraction, that’s valuable information with an easy fix.

PLAY A GAMEEmployers have long realised that cash benefits are not all that motivate their staff; workers want recognition, progression and status as well, and gamification can help to provide all that. The oft-cited example is US store Target, which introduced a game for cashiers to help improve their performance and make their rather isolated job a bit more interactive. A simple game shows the cashier in red or green depending on whether they’ve scanned an item in the optimum time. The game also keeps track of their score so they get immediate feedback. Employees are more engaged and they’re motivated by the very thing that their boss wants them to do – checking people out faster. Gamification ideas like this make workers’ jobs more fun while at the same time incentivising them to do well at their work, and recognising and rewarding good work in real time.

MAKE A GOOD STARTSmart firms are looking at employee engagement right from the beginning with the hiring process. Basic recruitment tech-nology has evolved a lot in the last few years and the new crop of intelligent hiring tools, such as Connectifier and Firefish, pull in huge amounts of data on candidates from social media presence to interviews, background and experience. This kind of analysis tells prospective employers not just how suitable they are for the job, but how the candidate’s ethos matches up with that of the company. Firms can see what they’re passionate about, what they’re interested in and how well they will fit into the company culture. It’s a lot simpler to integrate new workers when they share the same values as existing staff and the firm, instead of trying to change the candidate to fit their new environment.

COMMERCIAL FEATURE

National insurance broker Bluefin em-ploys 1,400 people, split across 49 offic-es. Bluefin operates in a heavily regulat-ed, process-driven industry with multiple systems and portals for staff to access. They are actively making acquisitions, bringing on board teams and businesses across the UK. They need to induct new employees efficiently, share best prac-tice, store information and drive staff to their intranet, known as BITE.

Using the Hub, Bluefin were able to rapidly reshape BITE into a social intranet with no interruption to business. They created bespoke home pages and con-tent for newly acquired companies, en-hancing the on-boarding process. Video streaming and blogging gave senior management the ability to supplement their traditional communications chan-nels and give messaging a more personal feel, which is especially important due to the geographical spread of offices. Their Hub provides a central log-in for vari-ous systems, streamlining process and avoiding confusion over systems access.

“One of the things that works best for us is that staff feel like it’s ‘their’ intranet. It’s constantly evolving; a lot of the content is generated by the individual departments. We have a small internal communications team so the ability to provide various levels of editorial control is key,” says Amy Smith, Bluefin’s head of marketing and public relations.

CASE STUDYEMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT AND THE RISE OF THE SOCIAL INTRANETCould this blend of modern and traditional communication finally solve the employee engagement problem?

Are you the type of boss who inspires your employees? If so, you are a rarity. The Har-vard Business Review recently published research on employees’ top complaints about their leaders. A thumping 91 per cent of employees said communication can drag executives down. The employees in the survey listed the following failings of bosses: not giving clear directions (57 per cent), not knowing employees’ names (36 per cent) and not recognising employee achievements (63 per cent).

The magazine noted: “The data shows that the vast majority of leaders are not engaging in crucial moments that could help employees see them as trustworthy.” It added: “This is startling, considering how much money organisations spend conducting employee surveys and reor-ganisations, engaging consultants and implementing change initiatives.” That last sentence is worth reading twice, as none of the solutions listed is likely to work. Imple-menting change initiatives? When did that help connect staff?

The traditional way of connecting staff is through the company intranet. This should be the hub of communication and a foun-tain of knowledge for staff. It should be. The reality is that many intranets are stale, underused and not valued by employees. “Traditional intranets tend to be dull and limiting,” says Pancentric’s product direc-tor Martin Boswell. “People are told to log on and find stuff. Employees barely use them.” So if it doesn’t engage staff and it’s wasting valuable resource time, why bother at all?

Research by the McKinsey Global Insti-tute found that using social tools to boost communications can raise productivity by 20 to 25 per cent. In today’s digital workplace, companies such as Bluefin are replacing the traditional intranet with the social intranet and it’s easy to see why. The social intranet takes the core functionality of the traditional intranet – new starter in-formation, contact directory, team charts and so on – and incorporates the engage-ment features of social networking tools.

This enables staff to form groups for particular projects, communicate online, share resourc-es, “like” and comment on articles, and crucial-ly, contribute content themselves.

Providing employees with this kind of access automatically builds a community and, like Slack, Twitter or LinkedIn, boosts engagement because they become part of the conversation. For chief executives and senior management, a social intranet with clever reporting and metrics provides instant information on employee engagement, with-out the need to wait for annual survey results. You can see which projects and documents are generating buzz, who is contributing, and vitally, which teams are really engaged and which areas of the business have gone quiet.

Senior management can communicate via video messaging and blogs – much more en-gaging than traditional methods of e-mail or newsletters that take weeks to compile and endless resources to produce.

So who’s using social intranets and what are the results? Pancentric Digital recognised the need for a new type of intranet, and spent the past six years building and developing the Hub, a social intranet and flexible portal system used by FTSE 100 member RSA, as well as Ralph Lauren, Bluefin and Direct Line Group.

Mr Boswell believes the Hub can change the way companies perform. “The Hub is a powerful way to boost engagement in a short space of time,” he says.

Bluefin’s head of marketing and public rela-tions Amy Smith says the main thing she notic-es is that employees really feel like it’s “their” intranet, not just a marketing or HR tool. Em-powering staff to contribute ensures content is constantly changing, retaining interest and sparking further engagement. Showcasing results and highlighting employee events, such as charity fundraisers, gives teams a boost and reinforces the community feel.

Mr Boswell maintains that a social intranet must be easily accessible and intuitive enough for all employees to use without the involve-ment of the IT department. It should be agile enough to allow rapid evolution. “That’s essential for the way modern workplaces function,” he says. “Employees can access secure resources and collaborate no matter where they’re located. Gone are the days when teams of key stakeholders needed to attend endless planning sessions about the intranet. In today’s low-code world, compa-nies equipped with agile intranets empower employees to participate, enabling two-way communication that can offer real insight and build employee engagement fast.”

To find out more about the Hub, e-mail [email protected] or call 020 7099 6370 www.hub.pancentric.com @thehubportal

Using social tools to boost communications

can raise productivity by 20 to 25 per cent


We offer a simple solution:

Everyone wins

Employers join our platform for freeStaff benefi t from loans with an interest rate of around one third the market average2

Repayments collected from salary deduction for effi ciencyNo cost, no liability and minimal admin for employers

www.SalaryFinance.com

Financial health matters1 in 3 employees report money worries impact their productivity at work1

1 Statistic sourced from Sodexo research2 Market average based on the big four bank advertised rates for loans less than £5,000, as at September 2015

Documents

577243-employee-engag.pdf