Save your local bin man – reacting to the recession

Personnel Today* reports on one local council that is asking staff to work fewer hours, or take unpaid leave, “to help save jobs”. In the same article they quote the CIPD, the CBI and the Bank of England as cautioning (not necessarily referening to this council) that this sort of action may only be delaying redundancies rather than saving jobs. I would add another concern.

By taking this approach the council is implicitly assuming that all its jobs are needed and that as soon as the economy picks up the status quo can resume. If you are manufacturing widgets and orders turn down there will be a fairly simple correlation between orders and production hours. In administration and the public sector the connections are much more complex.

The danger is that, if the economy does not pick up as hoped, the council will be forced to make savings quickly. If this happens the cuts will have to be in the larger staff groups. These, of course, are the ones that deliver the ‘real’ services that we all want – refuse collection, gardeners, teachers, etc. – not all those nice-to-have jobs with obscure titles that proliferate across local government. These latter jobs, often resulting from one political pet project or another, are scattered around in smaller groups so any culling inevitably takes longer. To protect real services they need to start reviewing these areas now.

* I’m eternally grateful that this publication has avoided the temptation to become HR Today

Please sign my Xs, boss – expense claims

Thanks to the shenanigans of our elected representatives, expenses are hitting the headlines as much as bonuses these days. Human Resources Magazine website currently has three contrasting headlines about expenses. “Bogus expense claims average £17 a month per employee” claims a survey by Travelodge; “Business travellers frequently end up out of pocket because of complex expense procedures” claims a survey by KDS and research by CIPD and KPMG finds that “74% of private-sector and 50% of voluntary and charity employers have reduced their travel expenses“.

It would be interesting to know whether the Travelodge findings are the product of staff with fixed overnight allowances choosing budget rooms and pocketing the difference – surely not. The KDS survey has a marketing flavour as they are providers of on-line travel bookings and expenses management. The CIPD survey reflects organisations cutting back on actual journeys.

I have only ever worked for organisations where all expenses required receipts and matched the cash spent; and nowadays I have to be prepared to account for all out-of-pocket expenses to either clients or HMRC. Fixed allowance systems (traditional in the public sector and writ large for MPs) have apparent benefits, avoiding the need to challenge claims and being seen as even-handed. But they take away the need for the employee to be prudent and can, for some, become an income source (MPs again). Significantly they affect the role of the line manager who is also discouraged from being economical, having merely to confirm the trip genuine; leaving HR or Finance to approve or refuse the money claimed. This can encourage line managers to see themselves in the ‘us’ half of ‘them and us’: never conducive to effective leadership.

Total Reward

To a CIPD reward forum on the topic of Total Reward at Browns Hotel (better food but the layout makes networking less easy). These events are usually interesting sessions and provide good value CPD and the chance to meet a wide range of people.

The four sessions ranged from a speaker from HAY who seem to be overstretching the term total rewrad to a description of RBS’s global approach to flex, a fascinating account of what the new borders agency is up to and a graphic description of problems local government employers have in getting staff to think beyond base pay and two per cent increases.