PEOPLE FOCUS - CIPD

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PEOPLE FOCUS LIFESTYLE Work Life Balance is Beneficial in a Recession! Some managers are surprised when I start to talk about Work Life Balance: ’Are you serious? There is a full scale recession out there and the thing you now want to talk about is work life balance!’ My simple and honest answer is: ‘Yes! Work Life Balance options have a proven record to help companies and national economies to deal with severe recessions’. Let me explain how this works. During the last severe recession in the 1980’s work life balance initiatives were used to help companies and countries to deal with the down turn and to help them to get back on their feet again. Multinational companies are looking at Work Life Balance and flexible working initiatives to help them through this down turn as the cost associated with the recruitment and training of new staff is great. Even companies who had to seriously restructure their organisation in good economic times used Work Life Balance initiatives. This is now especially attractive as advice on Work Life Balance can be fully supported for up to five days. There are many examples of how Work Life Balance can assist an organisation during a recession but let me just give you a few: • Part Time Work arrangements / Job Sharing – Giving your existing staff members the option to work part time is a very effective manner by which to boost the efficiency of your staff. Part time workers work more effectively than full time workers and have a higher output per hour then full time staff members. Research has shown that the most efficient and effective employees work 19 hours per week. It is a myth that you need to work non stop to be efficient! Furthermore, establishing part time arrangements is a very effective way to reduce your staff count. Two staff members who start to work part time (50%) have reduced your count by one full timer. This is possibly the most effective and popular manner to reduce your head count. • Sabbatical Leave – Offering sabbatical leave for your staff members to go to travel the world or use it to improve their education is another way to temporarily reduce your wage bill. If you are overstaffed at the moment, but expect you need staff in a year’s time when the economy picks up why not offer your staff the option of sabbatical leave? Look at the recent example of EBS who offered their staff members even a paid break for a number of years in order to reduce the staff members for the coming period. Normally sabbaticals are unpaid. One of the benefits of such an initiative is that you keep your staff members who you have invested in through training and establishing a social network. • Flexi-time – In these difficult times it can be important to extend your organisation’s opening hours without increasing cost Flexi time could have this effect. Extending the starting and finishing times for employees has the effect of being longer available for your customers and your business hours can increase which can be of benefit to service industry organisations. Most organisations are now working in the service sector and fixed opening hours which were necessary in an organisation which was confined by the working of the production belt are no longer necessary. • Term Time – Term time working is that employees work more during certain periods in order to work less during other periods. If these periods relate to your business peaks then both the organisation and the employees are on a winner. If your organisation works less during the summer months why not let your employees work less hours then and let them build up extra hours during the times when the organisation is busy in an employee Working Hours Bank. • E – working – In our time of e-mails and Internet working from home can be of great benefit to the employee and organisations, especially during a recession. Working from home through an internet connection is in fact more productive than working from the office through factors of less distractions and old fashion guilt, which makes employees work extra hours to get projects finished. There is also less time wasted on talking to colleagues, traffic congestion and other disruptions. As you can see Work Life Balance provides creative solutions to meet the needs of organisations during a recession and increase the job satisfaction of your workforce. Taking time to reflect on this topic can give you solutions which suit your organisation ■ Kenneth Buchholtz, MBS, Chartered FCIPD, Campbell International can be contacted at 065 7071933 or info@campbellinternational.net See website: www.campbellinternational.net 5
ANALYSIS PEOPLE FOCUS Imaginative and longterm approach needed as unemployment rises Amongst the by now familiar weekly list of jobs losses throughout the country, one announcement in early February sent a particular chill matched only by the sub-zero conditions sweeping the country. On the day the social partners walked away from a national recovery plan, and with a snow blizzard covering half the country, mobile phone manufacturer, Ericsson, announced the loss of 300 high value R & D jobs at its plant in Dublin The previous month Dell had outsourced 1,900 jobs from its manufacturing plant in Limerick to Poland. Devastating as the Dell move was to Limerick and beyond, it had been expected for some time and while it could not be said publicly there was some relief in government circles that the IT giant had kept over 2,500 jobs in the country - at least for the time being. But the Ericsson announcement was a shock as these were high value R & D jobs and not manufacturing jobs as was the case in Dell. It is these high end jobs that the Government wants to attract and retain. The country’s well educated workforce has always been touted around the globe to attract foreign investors. But the Ericsson decision has cast a shadow over that assumption. The mobile phone company announced that it was moving the 300 jobs to cheaper labour markets in Poland, China and Sweden. Presumably the move to Sweden is based on pressure back home to support the domestic economy as it is hard to accept that Sweden is a low wage economy. But the move to Poland and China shows that not only can these emerging economies offer far cheaper manufacturing wage rates but it can also supply less expensive high skilled workers, most of whom have been educated to third level. While there has been almost a tacit acceptance that Ireland has priced itself out of the global manufacturing sector, it appears that we may also have priced ourselves out of the high-end jobs market as well. Near Collapse While the near collapse of the global financial system and the consequential recession has been at the heart of the job losses in Ireland over the last 12 months or so, a drop in competitiveness which preceded the current recession has accelerated the job losses in the Irish economy. Efforts to regain lost competitiveness and to up-skill the workforce are the key priorities if Ireland is to minimise job losses and avoid a return to the bleak days of the 1980s. The ‘earn and learn’ approach, first mooted by the CIPD, was discussed at Government buildings between the social partners under the ‘flexicurity’ banner. Essentially, the earn and learn proposal means that instead of employers making staff redundant, workers are put on a reduced working week of say three days and attend a relevant up-skilling/re-skilling course for the remainder of the week which will re-orient their skill base and prepare them for the different challenges that lie ahead. The government will fund the training, the employer will pay the individual for the rest of the week and while the employee will be on a reduced wage at least he will remain in the market while also having an opportunity and the time to readjust. It is estimated that every person made redundant costs the exchequer around €20,000 including €12,000 for social welfare payments and €8,000 in tax foregone. This does not 6
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Page 13 and 14: PEOPLE FOCUS RESEARCH whose well-be
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Page 27 and 28: PEOPLE FOCUS COMMUNICATION Communic
Page 29 and 30: PEOPLE FOCUS DEVELOPMENT Education
Page 31 and 32: PEOPLE FOCUS LEARNING A time to ref
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