So you want to work in HR?

Interested working in Human Resources? Well, let’s have a look at what that entails… 

HR has never been so popular but here is the problem, there is an oversupply of qualified people with experience who are getting interviews. Then you can add to that, people who fall into the following categories

• Those with academic qualifications but no experience
• Those without appropriate qualifications or experience

Sadly these last two groups are the ones who are struggling in finding a HR role.

With those working in HR, you will often find people who had no real plan to be there, they just fell into the role!

Academically qualified versus professionally qualified

What does that mean? Someone who is academically qualified will often have done a first degree (in any subject) then opted to undertake a Masters (whether an MA or MSc) in an HR subject. This means they will have studied the theory but won’t necessary be able to benefit from its application. The reason is a Masters is a Level 7 and that covers strategy and doesn’t cover operational HR. So anyone thinking that having one will be head and shoulders over the competition is likely to be disappointed. as it is a massive miscalculation and pretty much overkill if you are going to be applying for entry level roles.

So what is this Professionally qualified about then?

In the UK the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) is the lead body for the profession, and they developed a professional qualification structure .

A professionally qualified person will have looked at where they were at the start of the process in determining what qualification was most suitable, it is about developing .

So if you are entry level you will probably have or be studying the Foundation Level, this is a Level 3 qualification  and covers HR support at an operational level. It is available as an Award, Certificate or Diploma depending on how credits/modules have been completed. It is advisable to do all the modules and gain the Diploma.

The same structure can be found at the Intermediate Level which is Level 5, make sure that you have enrolled for the full Diploma as this can open more doors/avenues in your career and qualifications. This level does not cover any of the subject matter covered at Level 3 and is intended for those with experience and who have completed Level 3. It is meant to be for those who are Middle Managers, for example, HR Advisors. It is not a suitable qualification for entry level roles.

The final level is the Advanced Level and this is set at Level 7, again available as Award, Advanced Certificate (equivalent to a Post Graduate Certificate) and Advanced Diploma (equivalent to a Post Graduate Diploma). The CIPD also recognises select University Masters degrees as meeting the same requirements. Realistically you should be in a Management role.

You should only be attempting each level when you are ready and it will benefit you careerwise.

Mike Morrison FCIPD of RapidBI makes a very good point about qualifications:

Please do not follow the “academic” attitude to qualifications and always seek the same or higher “levels”.
Think of the “levels”, not as levels but of packages of learning.
What you do at “level 5” is not more then level 3 or less than level 7 but different.

If you truly want to be a rounded and balanced professional in any topic.. start at the bottom – not the middle – for there will be a lot you miss.

Remember HR is a specialist area on its own, and whilst you will have adjunct information, you will not have ALL of the underpinning knowledge.

To clarify:

The levels are a little like house building.

There is no point having a roof, if you have not foundations (level 3) and walls (level 5).

The term “level” is IMHO a hinderance. Level 7 is not “better” than a level 3 – it’s different content.
Lower level and entry jobs need the content of a level 3 not level 7

Build a career.

Careers are pretty much like marathons, you will do a lot better if you prepare for the long haul instead of a manic race to where you think you should be.

One bit of exciting news is that the University of Staffordshire is now accepting CIPD Level  5 Diploma holders onto its BA (Hons) Business and Management top-up course which runs for a year. This means students will be studying business and management subjects with an HR overview, which will be very beneficial to someone building an HR career.

Recruiting from overseas for regulated professions

 

In a previous post, I talked about the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checks which were formerly known as Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) checks. If you are recruiting people from overseas or have people who have lived overseas for more than one year, a DBS check may not provide a complete picture of any criminal record history they may have.

So for example, you are an employer that has a business in a regulated business, such as working with children or vulnerable adults and employ staff that are from overseas (and that includes the EU) then you will be required not only, to obtain a DBS check but an overseas police check for each individual who meets the criteria of living outside the UK for more than a year.

Unfortunately, it is not as simple to process an overseas police check as it is a DBS check. To explain this, let’s look at an example.

Ilena has arrived in the UK looking for work and has applied to a nursery looking after children. Her prospective employer sends off her DBS documentation to be checked and this is received and nothing of concern is found for the two months she has been in the UK. The employer then will require a police check from Romania, which is where Ilena is from, and this is where it starts to get slightly awkward.

Her prospective employer cannot apply to get a check done nor can any third party on behalf of the employer. Ilena either has to get the check done herself whilst in Romania or she can get third party representatives on her behalf, can apply with a notarised written consent or power of attorney. Local and overseas applicants must supply a completed application form which is online.

As she is in the UK she could apply through the Romanian embassy/consulate, however, she will need to do this in person

The process so far should cost no more than a few (GB £) pounds, however, the document will need to be translated. There is also the issue for the employer in that how do they know what has been given to them is genuine? One way around this have is to have the original document legalized with the Hague Apostille.

Hague Convention 12 entered into force in January 1965, the full title of the Convention is – Convention abolishing the requirement of legalisation for foreign public documents.

The purpose of this convention is to remove the need for diplomatic or consular legalisation of foreign public documents. In place of the then complex and drawn out legalisation process was to be a simple certificate issued to a specific format. This certificate is the Apostille Certificate which once attached to a document would remove the need for any further authentication or legalisation of the document when presented in another member country. The UK is a member of the Hague Convention.

The process may vary a bit from country to country, although most EU countries seem to follow a similar format. As I mentioned earlier, in this case, it probably cost no more than a few pounds for the initial documentation, however, having it legalized with the Hague Apostille costs around £27 and you have to factor in translation costs as well. These costs will vary from country to country. One additional cost that may be incurred is that some countries require applicants to supply fingerprints as part of their application, this can be expensive.

The need for these checks are more important than they ever were, it is a shame that some small employers think they can by-pass overseas police checks. However, Ofsted and the Quality Care Commission do make periodic checks. HR Professionals cannot plead ignorance as the information is out there.

If you are employing foreign nationals and want some to talk through the process then please do get in touch.

Update Sept 2018: The qualifying period of one year has now been raised to three years and some Umbrella companies (Security Watchdog) are processing Overseas Police Checks.

 

Research Ethics Steering Panel (CIPD) – Vacancies

For over 100 years CIPD has been setting the benchmark for excellence in people and organisation development. The CIPD’s purpose of championing better work and working lives has implications for how the institute operates. In order to provide advice that is trustworthy, It must ground its point of view in robust and relevant research. The institute also has a responsibility to role model good practice, promoting positive experiences for people contributing to its work, including those participating in the institute’s research.

As the CIPD develops its research capability and brand, it believes that a Research Steering Panel, composed of independent academics and practitioners, would help the institute achieve the high standard of outputs we aspire to produce. Therefore, there are eight vacancies on the CIPD Research Ethics Steering Panel and if you are interested in joining the panel then please look at the following link.

http://www.cipd.co.uk/cipd-hr-profession/jobs/research-ethics-steering-panel.aspx?utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkedin&utm_campaign=social

It started with a brick!

Those immortal words which actually were never sung by the late Errol Brown of the soul group Hot Chocolate, but it is something inbuilt to the culture at Lego and permeates throughout the organisation, which literally lives the brand.

A true story told by Mark Hutton who is an Applications Engineer with Daikin Airconditioning UK Ltd.

“A few weeks ago, my 5-year-old son wrote a letter to Lego saying how he wants to work for them when he grows up. He was so excited when an envelope arrived with their logo on it and even more so when we read the reply to him! How many large organisations take the time to indulge their customers with a few lines of encouragement?! Thank you Lego, you have one inspired, excited little boy here who cannot wait to go to school so he can work hard like you said. To me, that is exceptional customer service. Will we shop with them again? Of course, I’ve got 2 kids…I can’t avoid it!!”

I can promise you that for the rest of the day you will be humming that song and thinking of those immortal words ♫”It started with a brick!” ♫

National Living Wage – Stiff penalties for non compliance

On the 1st of April 2016 the National Living Wage takes effect, this means employees that are 25 years old and over are legally entitled to receive a ‘National Living wage’ of £7.20 per hour, which is a 50 pence increase in the National Minimum Wage.

Employers that don’t comply will risk being named and shamed and tough penalties of up to 200% of arrears and a maximum of £20,000 per worker.

Payroll departments should be assessing before this date whether or not they should be making any changes and making sure that employees are informed of any changes.

Also from April 2016

The personal allowance is set to increase to £11,000 from April removing more lower paid workers out of the tax bracket.

For employees under 25, the ‘National Minimum Wage’ will still apply, the rates will be rising to;

£6.70 for 21s and over
£5.30 for 18 to 20-year-olds
£3.87 for under 18s
£3.30 for apprentices (the rate applies to all apprentices in year 1 of an apprenticeship, and 16-18-year-old apprentices in any year of an apprenticeship)

Disclosure and Barring Service checks

If you work for an organisation that is involved in regulated activity with children or vulnerable adults then you will be familiar with the term “Safeguarding”

Safeguarding from an HR perspective starts with recruitment and I’m sure many reading this will be familiar with Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) criminal records checks known as “disclosures”.

Disclosure and Barring Service checks

The purpose of the DBS is preventing unsuitable people from gaining access to work or volunteer with children or vulnerable people. The DBS was formed in 2012 by merging the functions of the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) and the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA) under the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012. The DBS does not cover Scotland or Northern Ireland where comparable organisations exist but may have different disclosure certifications.

The ISA came into being in England & Wales after a school caretaker named Ian Huntley murdered two 10-year-old school girls in 2002 at Soham in Cambridgeshire. Despite Huntley being known as a sex offender in an another police force area, there was nothing that would alert his employer to his past. In fact, it was only the subsequent police investigation into the murders that uncovered Huntley’s past.

In 2003, the Government ordered an inquiry which was led by Sir Michael Bichard with the brief:

“Urgently to enquire into child protection procedures in Humberside Police and Cambridgeshire Constabulary in the light of the recent trial and conviction of Ian Huntley for the murder of Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells.
In particular to assess the effectiveness of the relevant intelligence-based record keeping, the vetting practices in those forces since 1995 and information sharing with other agencies, and to report to the Home Secretary on matters of local and national relevance and make recommendations as appropriate.”

The Humberside and Cambridgeshire police forces were heavily criticised for their failings in maintaining intelligence records on Huntley. Humberside, in particular, had been destroying records on sex offenders.

Prior to this, there had been public concern over the safety of children, young people and vulnerable adults, the CRB was established under Part V of the Police Act 1997 and was launched in March 2002.

Types of Disclosure

• Standard DBS Check

This checks for spent and unspent convictions, cautions, reprimands and final warnings.

• Enhanced DBS Check

This includes the same as the standard check plus any additional information held by local police that’s reasonably considered relevant to the workforce being applied for (adult, child or ‘other’ workforce).

‘Other’ workforce means those who don’t work with children or adults specifically, but potentially both, eg taxi drivers. In this case, the police will only release information that’s relevant to the post being applied for.

• Enhanced with list checks

This is like the enhanced check, but includes a check of the DBS barred lists.

This will check whether someone’s included in the two DBS ‘barred lists’ (previously called ISA barred lists) of individuals who are unsuitable for working with children and/or adults.

It can take 8 weeks to get a check processed.

A point to remember is It’s against the law to refuse someone a job because they’ve got a spent conviction or caution, unless it’s because a DBS check shows that they’re unsuitable. That means the conviction or caution should be relevant as a reason to refuse.

It is also illegal to employ someone who is on a barred list (Enhanced with list check).

More information can be found at:

• England & Wales  Disclosure & Barring Service
• Scotland Disclosure Scotland
• Northern Ireland AccessNI

My next post will be looking at why employers in regulated activities are failing to be diligent when employing migrant workers.

Age Discrimination in Recruitment

In July 2014, I wrote a piece that I posted in LinkedIn on how Age Discrimination despite legislation is still a problem in the UK and has been highlighted in the past week by Business In The Community (BITC) in their report “Pathways back into employment”. you can also see the write-up in Personnel Today.  

The following is my original LinkedIn post:

Age discrimination during the recruitment process is a growing problem in the UK.

This is despite that since 1 October 2006 the Employment Equality (Age) Regulations make any discrimination on the grounds of age in employment unlawful. This means that employers and their agents cannot discriminate against employees, job seekers and trainees on the grounds of age. This was further updated by the Equality Act 2010. There is no defined starting point when Age Discrimination starts and the legislation recognises and caters for this.

Someone who is in their 30’s may be likely to face Age Discrimination as much as someone who is 50 +. I was recently contacted by a recruiter who said they had seen my CV on a job board and would I be interested in a role they were handling for a client. During the conversation, they slipped in the question “What is your date of birth?” and almost immediately said, “I’m going to put that on the top of your CV when I send it over to the client!”

Now my date of birth has never been on my CV, in fact, it is bad practice to have it on a CV, as it is also a bad idea to have a photograph on or attached to your CV. In fact, there is a school of thought about removing dates from qualifications as this can unwittingly lead to bias which manifests itself as discrimination. But just recently I have been hearing more and more complaints about age discrimination, and the worse thing is it has been identified by other HR Professionals!

Despite the risks of heavy fines, there appears to be those who are happy to flout the legislation, HR and Recruitment professionals who should know better. The biggest problem is online application forms which will ask your age and date of birth twice, once in the main body under personal details and second in the monitoring information.

Would an employer include a question about ethnicity in the main body of an application form? No! So why should a date of birth feature so prominently? OK there is an issue that employers have a duty under the Immigration and Asylum act to check the identity of a potential employer although it isn’t unlawful to ask age or date of birth on an application form, it is preferable to separate personal details to ensure that any decisions are objective and not based on age If you have a diversity monitoring form, by moving the age or date of birth on the form, the recruitment process can be seen as fairer – these can then be re-introduced at the end of the recruitment process after a decision has been made. Employers should only ask for information which is relevant to the job, and remove anything which is not relevant and has only been included because that’s the way it’s always been done.

Age is one of the Pillars of Diversity

Smart and informed employers know the benefits of a diverse workforce and reap the rewards. As the baby boomer generation retires, employers are going to need to learn to respect and value the skills and experience of older applicants or face being at a major disadvantage with their competitors. If you are interested in finding out more, then you can find more information at The Age and Employment Network or by following the ACAS link above. Remember legislation does have teeth as one employer found out in this Age Discrimination case to their cost!  An employer that dismissed drivers over 67 after claiming that its insurance provider would not insure them has admitted liability for age discrimination and unfair dismissal midway through the drivers’ case and has been ordered to pay over £700,000 to 20 drivers.

The HR Metrics I use the most

I’ve been using Excel for 18 years now and in that time, it has probably been my most used piece of Office productivity software. From collecting data to producing graphs and reports. I’m on a journey discovering how to turn data into analytic insights and how data can make predictions.

I mentioned in a previous post about the difference between Metrics and Analytic’s people still get confused! I am sometimes asked about the metrics that I use in a working environment, and I have given some below. Note: this isn’t an exhaustive list!

Pay and benefits

• Calculating part-time holiday pay
• Calculating statutory sick pay
• TOIL – Time Off In Lieu

SMP and SAP

• Calculating statutory maternity pay
• Calculating statutory adoption pay

Absence and capability

• Calculating the frequency of absence
• Calculating the rate of absence
• Calculating the cost of absence
• Calculating the cost of stress-related absence
• Using Excel as a Bradford factor calculator

Termination

• Calculating staff turnover
• Calculating the rate of staff turnover
• Calculating statutory redundancy pay
• Calculating enhanced statutory redundancy pay

Onboarding – why the basics matter

Just recently I was reading some posts in a LinkedIn group, one, in particular, caught my eye. The poster had left his new job (he wasn’t working in HR) after what he called two miserable days!

On his first day, he was left alone to read through the company handbook, and his second began with being rushed round the company site saying hello to over a 100 employees! The rest of the day he was pretty much ignored and left to find something to do.

This to me is absolutely shocking and shows that no thought had been shown towards a new starter. OK so there may some companies/organisations that have the sink or swim culture but they are very much in the minority.

When you start looking and researching “Onboarding” you soon find horror stories abound.

When you get a new starter you are at risk of losing then over the first so many days (I use markers at 30 – 60 – 90 – 120 days), it’s madness not to onboard new employees, after all, they will have cost the company a great deal of money by the time they walk through the front door on their first day.

What does a good onboarding process look like?

Implement basics prior to the first day on the job
Make the first day on the job special
Design and implement formal orientation programs
Create and use written onboarding plans
Be participatory in nature
Consistently implement onboarding
Monitor progress over time
Utilise technology to facilitate the process
Recognise onboarding takes place over time- use milestones- 30 – 60 – 90 – 120 days on the job up to 1-year post-organizational entry
Engage key stakeholders in planning
Include key stakeholder meetings
Be clear in terms of the who, what, when, where of onboarding
Onboarding isn’t making the new employee spend a day ploughing through a company handbook nor is it sink or swim.

It’s the little things like making sure they have a door pass, computer password (many companies break the law (Data Protection Act/Misuse of Computers Act) by expecting new employees to either use a former employee’s password or borrow one from another employee (perhaps on leave)),

Orientation is important, spending a day in a different department to see what goes on. I know one company that makes all new starters (including if they will be working in an office) complete a week on the factory floor so they understand how the companies products are made.

The Aberdeen Group published a report called Onboarding 2013: A look at New Hires. In this report eBay was used as a case study and the following was discovered. Customer Retention Improved by 15 %; Revenue per Full-Time Employee 17% Higher for Best-in-Class Onboarding Organisations

Challenge: With nearly 30,000 employees in 28 countries around the world and minimal HR resources, eBay recognised their need to improve the new hire experience and create efficiencies through a comprehensive technology solution.
Solution: By using technology, the company has begun to improve the new-hire experience by automating both tasks and socialisation aspects of onboarding.
Results: eBay quickly reduced the administrative cost of onboarding by 25% and saved significant operational costs and improved productivity by reducing its onboarding process steps by 60%.
The report made the link that better onboarding produced better performance. In organisations with best in class onboarding, 91% of first-year employees were retained and 62% met their first performance milestones on time, compared with only 29% in industry average organisations and a poor 17% in the rest.

Aberdeen also found that the best in class organisations using technology to automate payroll forms, benefits enrollment, new employee forms, workflow, tasks management and provision tools to manage permissions/systems access. They also say that there is a strong correlation between onboarding and learning integration as they share similar productivity objectives, as 26% of best in class organisations enrol new starters in L&D programs compared to 11% of others.

In my next post, I will be looking at Strategic Onboarding and how it links to ‘Business Social‘

The report Onboarding 2013: A look at New Hires was sponsored by the Aberdeen Group and may now require a fee to view, please see: http://aberdeen.com/

The item was originally posted in the Numbers Game blog on 17 September 2013

Strategic Onboarding

In my previous blog posting, we had a look at some onboarding basics and found that horror stories abound, with stories of having to read the company handbook (see War & Peace) and being subjected to death by PowerPoint. We can add to this the story of one employee giving the induction who didn’t know how to log onto the company portal or the urls!

Onboarding is still the most immature area of Talent Management

The expectation is to hit the ground running on your first day and start adding value yet nobody knows who you are or why you are there and probably doesn’t care!

Onboarding should be about connecting company growth objectives and retaining top talent. Companies often try to do the right thing but more often than not choose the wrong mentor.

Top Pressures for Onboarding

Need to engage better employees 50%
Pressure to meet companies growth objectives 49%
Shortages of required skill 44%
Know what works and what to measure

Attract talent directly to you
Engage and capture talent inside and out
Select the best
80% of new employees make the decision whether to stay with the company (or not) within the first six months, some make that decision on the first day!

The majority of new hires fail to make their first milestone on time.
50% of senior new hires fail within 18 months
66% of companies estimate that a bad hire in the past year cost them between £25 and 50k

Reasons being can be –

Those expectations are not being met, that there is a difference with reality. What we often see with during the recruitment process is a picture is painted of company as an amazing place to work, that is team orientated, where the people happy, a place of opportunity, if that picture doesn’t hold up on the first day or subsequent days then it will hinder the new employee to ramp up quickly.

Key reasons could be that no milestones have been set or not communicated or even the new hire got bogged down in the paperwork, no systems log-in, passwords, door pass and so on, Assumption that hiring managers understand the process, and expect the new employee to be up to speed, and sink or swim is very much order of the day.

What we need to understand is that bad onboarding can set up the new employee to fail and this is the tragedy, people are failing because of the onboarding process or lack of one and they would have probably succeeded.

What’s the problem?

It’s an immature process that’s not been focussed on because there is not one clear owner. We have disorientated employees facing a new culture. Onboarding is like climbing a mountain, it’s the companies responsibility to get the new employee to the top. It’s obvious saying “but we have given the employee some tools” but are they the right ones? Who is guiding them? Which is the best/Quick way up?

What does good onboarding look like?

Similar to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, if you don’t meet the basics then nothing will happen. For example, if someone isn’t sure they will get paid then they will be distracted and not do their best work.

If you give the foundation for a successful employee then in the long term this can have strategic impact.

The best companies in onboarding have to –

Align objectives: Deep commitment to aligning onboarding to overall company objectives
Get strategic, Combination of both technical and strategic initiatives to drive productivity and engagement
World Class Technology, investment needed to make the process happen
Integrate talent Processes, Integration between onboarding and other areas of talent management, not just recruitment but performance, and learning and Development (L&D) functions
Have Employee Networks
Access to content

Further benefits include that paperwork can be reduced, cost savings made by better processes

Here are three interesting facts:

42% of millennials want mentors
51% use social media and texting during the hiring process, can you afford to go viral for all the wrong reasons?
The buddy system can improve retention by 25%

So who owns onboarding? It sits in the middle and the end result is by guiding and connecting our new employees, we develop socialisation and collaboration and the end result is that we have connected people who start to gel as a team.

1

Legal compliance
Completion of forms and documents
Corporate compliance, benefits and enrollments
Provisioning (equipment, access)

2.
Information about organisation and its culture
Asking stupid questions
What to expect on the first day

3.
Formal and Informal Network
Develop personal connections
Access to relevant content

4.
Employee engagement and organisation goals are aligned
Individual development plan is in place
Employer and Employee feel that new hire is a contributor

This item was originally posted in The Numbers Game blog on 21st October 2013 http://wp.me/p3MIOJ-f