SOUTH AFRICA'S most widely distributed & read INDEPENDENT HUMAN RESOURCE PUBLICATION
ISSN 1684-5722
|
|
Subscribe to Feeds
|
| Workshops & Training |
| Abbrev. & Acronyms |
| BEE Certificate |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Member
Content 
Equity Skills News & Views
Volume 5, Issue 6, 31 March 2006
Registered as an electronic newspaper: ISSN 1684-5722
In This edition:
1.
Confusion And Poor Leadership Hindering Diversity Drive
2. Strategic Partners: Organizational Development And IT
3. Maximizing Value for the Business Through Strategic Human
Capital Planning*
4. Book Review: How People Tick: A Guide To Difficult People And How To
Handle Them
5. Case-Law & Legislation Review: A
Review Of The Most Important Judgments From 2005
6. Downloads: Deloitte Study: It’s 2008: Do You Know Where Your Talent
Is? Why Acquisition And Retention Strategies Don’t Work
7. Unsubscribe & Moving Soon
NB: If your Internet service provider (ISP) or server administrator
filters incoming e-mail, please add Equity Skills News & Views to your
list of approved senders to ensure you receive this e-journal to which you
are subscribed.
www.equityskillsweb.com
jeffs@worldonline.co.za
'A MUST TO PRINT & READ'
>24,000 & still growing!
----------------------------------------------------------------------
1.
Confusion And Poor Leadership Hindering Diversity Drive*
By
Nic Paton who can be contacted at www.management-issues.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Efforts to employ a more diverse workforce commonly come unstuck because
firms fail to manage diversity programmes properly, become confused about
what they want to do and get wrapped up in percentages, a U.S consultancy
has warned.
Novations/J.
Howard & Associates has identified a series of key reasons why
diversity and inclusion programmes so often end in disappointment.
The
first is that firms often get confused between diversity and inclusion
initiatives, it said.
The
metrics firms use to define a successful diversity programme differ from
those used to assess an inclusion initiative, it explained.
While
diversity centres mostly on representation, inclusion needs to reflect
organisational health factors, including employee engagement, it said.
"Companies
frequently implement an initiative expecting it to affect the wrong set of
metrics," the study warned.
"A
diverse company is not necessarily inclusive, and an inclusive company may
be just that, with little impact on representation. So both kinds of
initiatives are needed," it added.
Another
factor is that companies fail to manage their initiatives well, frequently
struggling with who is taking ownership of them.
Directors
or vice-presidents of diversity will end up working in glorious, and often
completely ineffectual, isolation.
"Successful
companies ensure that diversity initiatives are owned by the business
units and held accountable," said Novations/J. Howard &
Associates.
But
the most common shortcoming of diversity programmes is that companies end
up focusing just on the delivery of training and the percentage of
employees who have "completed" such training, it stressed.
"Diversity
directors may provide training and tools, but they will be used by only a
few employees if the organisation's attitude is really one of 'doing what
I should do only while people are looking'," it argued.
"Successful
organisations seek to internalise the commitment to inclusion and look for
evidence in decision-making, promotion criteria, strategic direction and
professional development," it added.
Fourth,
even though many organisations will do good work in diversity and
inclusion, when a new diversity director starts there may be a strong
temptation to get rid of everything that has gone before and start afresh.
"So
the organisation is blanketed with training or cultural awareness events
or activities that look like diversity work," the study concluded.
"The
projects or activities may in fact be worthwhile. Nevertheless, such a
scattershot approach may miss critical targets or 'tipping points' where
less effort and better pacing would have greater impact," it added.
At
the same time, companies were often reluctant to measure and assess where
they are in the diversity process because asking for feedback raises
expectations, and ignoring these answers may make an organisation
vulnerable to litigation, it warned.
"A
well-managed measurement and assessment process can save the company time
and money, and deliver short-term wins that will support the long-term
initiative," it added.
Finally,
management often fear that their organisation will become unwieldy if the
performance curve changes dramatically and so are reluctant fully to
embrace the challenge posed by the diversity/inclusiveness agenda, it
said.
"As
with any business strategy an organisation must be willing to take risks
to make change happen," said Gerry Lupacchino, vice-president of
Novations/J. Howard.
"Management
has to know what it wants to impact, define what success would look like,
work in a focused way and not be afraid of the changes that result,"
he added
*Reprinted
by permission of the editor of Management Issues: www.management-issues.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------
2. Strategic Partners: Organizational Development And IT
By
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Since the explosion of technologies in the workplace that began in the
late 1980s, organizational development and IT functions within
organizations have maintained a somewhat strained coexistence—more like
oil and water than peanut butter and jelly. Interestingly, new
developments in performance management, learning and collaborative
technologies are now bringing the two fields closer together as technology
is leveraged to help deliver tightly focused, high-impact OD efforts in
support of organizational strategies and goals.
The
1990s were marked by the widespread adoption of e-mail and information
technology that automated many of the traditional HR transactional
functions such as the administration of hiring, terminations,
organizational transfers, benefits and payroll. While the adoption of
these technologies resulted in increased operational efficiencies in the
HR function, organizational development professionals would often elude to
the fact that all the new technology was “dehumanizing” the workplace
or driving a wedge through typical “high touch” person-to-person
transactions.
Although
there might have been a grain of truth to that assertion, there is a
convergence taking place within HCM and collaborative technologies that
supports many of the traditional OD functions, which tend to focus on open
lines of communication, organizational growth and alignment, and
maximizing the potential of all the organization’s members while
executing organizational strategy. This convergence is being driven by a
shift in the perspective of executives who now see the HR function as
strategic rather than as a cost center and an evolution in system
integration technologies that allow systems to work together more easily.
Technology vendors are tapping into the opportunities these trends
generate and developing applications to meet the demands of customers.
Astute OD professionals realize the value these new technologies bring to
their efforts and use them to achieve the other side of the HCM
equation—business value creation.
Talent
Management
Talent
management is a term that represents the convergence and integration of
functions associated with succession planning, recruiting, developing and
deploying talent, engaging, rewarding and retaining top talent,
performance management and workforce planning. Using software offerings
from the major ERP suite vendors or “best-of-breed” performance
management and learning management system vendors, OD professionals can
now get an accurate inventory of talent within their organizations,
identify gaps between the staff executing organizational strategy and the
current talent pool, and create strategies to close the talent gaps. The
use of standard competencies enables each staff member’s skill set to be
defined, tracked and flagged for development if necessary. The completion
of specific learning and development activities can be linked to the
achievement of competencies and automatically updated via integration with
an LMS, thereby ensuring that the talent and skills inventory is current.
Prior
to the tight integrations of the disparate processes the new systems
offered, talent management processes were mostly manual and
labor-intensive. OD professionals can now report on the talent inventory
of their organizations with relative ease, allowing them to devote more
time and effort to the true mission of their roles—developing strategies
and interventions to improve the effectiveness of their organizations. The
accuracy and depth of the data the new systems provide enables them to
focus their efforts on quickly developing strategies to close specific
talent gaps in support of the most pressing business goals.
Link
of Performance Management and Learning
The
convergence of performance management and learning technologies provides
OD professionals with the tools to accomplish two of their primary goals
more effectively:
>>
Provide relevant learning activities to targeted audiences.
>>
Enable managers increased depth and relevance in their conversations with
their team members regarding performance.
Many
of today’s LMSs allow “prescriptive learning,” which targets
specific audiences with learning activities relevant to their roles,
improving the operational efficiency of what has traditionally been a
manual process. For example, over the past several years much attention
has been focused on Sarbanes-Oxley and corporate compliance and the
requisite training they entail. The new convergent technologies allow
role-based e-learning compliance training to be added automatically to the
online development plans of specific employees upon hire, monitored
through the performance review process and taken into account for
succession planning and internal mobility decisions. The completion of
this training can be tracked automatically and reminder e-mails triggered
at specific date intervals for those employees who have not completed the
training. OD and compliance professionals then have access to current,
accurate data detailing the organization’s compliance level. These same
processes also could be used to track training for sales staff during new
product launches or any other organizational change requiring a mass
training effort.
With
the help of integrated systems, managers and employees can craft specific
development plans at the time of a performance review. By leveraging
leading performance management technologies and standardized competency
models aligned with business strategy, organizations can help managers
coach team members on ways to improve specific skills and competencies and
more effectively meet goals. Besides bringing context to often-ambiguous
performance evaluation conversations, linking performance management to
learning allows managers and team members to assign specific learning
activities and timelines for completion based on team members’
competency profiles. Development plans are accessible to both managers and
team members throughout the year, providing insight into employee
progress. Once competency profiles are established for all employees, they
are included in the organizational talent inventory as detailed in the
previous talent management section.
HCM
technologies also have enabled the organization-development mission in
some unexpected ways. For example, some of the newest authoring tools to
hit the market, originally intended to ease the creation of e-learning and
online tests and evaluations, are now being leveraged by OD professionals
to assist in their data collection efforts for organizational assessments.
Typically, data collection efforts have involved hours of live interviews,
paper processes and subjective filtering of the data collected. Using the
new testing and assessment tools in conjunction with LMSs, OD
professionals can craft online surveys that can be pushed to targeted mass
audiences within the organization regardless of geography, size or
hierarchy. The results are stored in a database, which enables reporting
that yields more meaningful results (correlations, trends, modeling,
etc.). The new technologies enable data to be collected on a much larger
scale and to be evaluated much more efficiently and objectively. This
allows OD resources an increased level of specificity and visibility into
trends within their organizational data and the ability to deliver focused
interventions based on the increased visibility.
Collaborative
Technologies
In
addition to the realization of true, integrated talent management and the
ongoing convergence between the performance management and learning
functions, the evolution of collaborative technologies such as portals,
online discussion groups, real-time chat and webcasts also have provided
valuable capabilities that promote the organization development mission.
Portal
technology offers a wide variety of tools for the OD professional to
promote increased organizational effectiveness, enable open communication
and knowledge sharing and deliver multi-dimensional organizational change
efforts. Properly implemented portals knit together disparate business
applications and, in effect, present a composite application tailored to
the role of the user in the organization. By presenting business tools,
data and content to users via an easy-to-use, personalized interface,
portals support the primary OD goals of increased organizational
effectiveness and performance. Used in combination with content management
systems, portals also become valuable communication and knowledge-sharing
vehicles by presenting online content filtered by the language, geography
or role of the user. Best practices, compliance information and strategic
content can be pushed simultaneously to geographically diverse internal
and external (customers, partners, suppliers) audiences. The top portal
vendors also integrate search capability into their products, allowing
users to search for the content that meets their needs. Prior to the
advent of portal technologies, organizations were restricted to a “one
size fits all” approach to pushing applications and content to
employees. Portals allow the creation of a user experience that is
tailored to the employee’s demographics.
In
addition to the delivery vehicle of portals, the popularity of online
discussion groups, instant messaging and webcasts in the public domain
illustrates the immense potential for these mediums to facilitate
organizational communication and knowledge-sharing. Organizations are
becoming increasingly adept at using these technologies, and OD
professionals are recognizing their potential to promote organizational
effectiveness and change.
Online
discussion groups, weblogs and wikis offer users the ability to post
questions, comments and general information at a central online location.
These types of forums are particularly well suited for the ongoing,
system-wide communication required during large organizational change
efforts. Typically, these discussion forums are created to focus on topics
related to specific training programs, practice areas or operational best
practices. The questions or comments posted can be directed toward
specific experts, facilitators or to the general group membership,
creating an open, collaborative process. Unlike real-time communication
vehicles, these online discussions can take place over a period of weeks
rather than minutes. The content of the discussions can be made searchable
and becomes part of the organization’s knowledge base for future
reference. When delivered through portal technology, links to specific
discussion forums can be made available to individuals based on their
demographics.
In
contrast to asynchronous online discussion groups, instant messaging and
online chats offer organizations a much more immediate form of real-time
collaboration. Both of these mediums combine the immediacy of the
telephone and the audit ability of e-mail. Most enterprise instant
messaging applications now allow users to form real-time instant group
chats by pulling multiple users into an online discussion as needed. Users
can also share content (documents, slides, graphics) during their chats to
facilitate understanding. Instant messaging technology is particularly
useful when immediate information exchange is required (customer service,
call center, etc.) by a small number of users.
For
larger audiences, scheduled online chats are effective vehicles for mass
interactive communication. Executives and subject-matter experts can
communicate to mass audiences and answer questions on the fly regardless
of geography through scheduled chat sessions. Participation in the chats
is usually voluntary and users also have the ability to join the chats
anonymously, which promotes open, informal and candid discussion. Online
chat sessions are increasingly being used in OD efforts that involve
large-scale organizational change and require frequent mass communication.
The contents of both instant message sessions and scheduled online chats
can be saved and made searchable for future reference. Prior to these chat
technologies, interactive conversations would require conference calls,
real-time office visits and herding masses of people into meeting rooms
for live face-to-face dialogue. Although the online collaborative
applications have not replaced more traditional live meetings, they have
presented viable alternatives that augment the efforts of OD professionals
and lead to increased organizational effectiveness.
Online
audio/video technologies are also becoming mainstream tools OD
professionals use to disseminate information quickly and efficiently. Live
training or informational events are often shared organization-wide via
webcasts and recorded for later use. Audio or video combined with many of
the newer e-learning authoring tools allows other content (slides, text,
graphics) to be displayed along with the video or audio for a media-rich
user experience. The newest of the online audio/video technologies are
podcasts, which combine the standard recorded webcast with
“publish/subscribe” functionality. Publish/subscribe functionality
allows the user to subscribe to specific subject areas and have the
content automatically pushed to their computer or MP3 player whenever new
content is available. The user can then view or listen to the content
whenever his or her schedule allows. Although podcasts are not yet widely
used in organizational communication, their popularity in the public
domain is a glimpse of the potential of this evolving medium. Previous to
the use of the online audio/video technologies, organizations would
distribute videotaped content via mail to all their far-flung locations.
Employees would view the video individually or congregate in meeting rooms
to watch the video presentations.
Building
Strategic Partnerships
In
short, the revolution taking place in HCM and collaborative technologies
has created new and unexpected strategic partnerships between OD and IT
professionals. OD professionals, who were once leery of the influx of
technology into the workplace, are now beginning to realize the value that
emerging technologies offer and use them to achieve the other side of the
HCM equation—business value creation. Whether leveraging these
technologies as tools to promote large-scale organizational change, gain
visibility into their workforce or promote free-flowing communication, the
new integrated solutions are enabling OD professionals to bring increased
efficiency, accuracy and focus to their efforts.
Van
Meter Industrial: HR & IT Team for Cost Savings Olivia
Van
Meter Industrial runs manufacturing and processing facilities in 19
locations across Iowa, building products for several industries including
automation, computer, datacom and electrical. Continually striving to
improve client service, Van Meter looked inward to enhance employee
commitment by automating and improving annual employee performance reviews
for its 400 workers.
The
first step for HR was to consult with the information technology group.
Previously, HR had sourced and purchased an HR system without IT’s
assistance. While the system met HR needs, the product required expensive,
ongoing consulting expertise and a lot of IT staff time—a hard lesson.
HR
and IT need to work together. HR knows what features are needed to fulfill
legal requirements and to achieve business goals. IT understands
technological requirements and what the company’s systems can support.
In addition, IT typically has more experience in purchasing and supporting
large programs and applications.
Together,
Van Meter’s HR and IT teams calculated the overreaching goal—to reduce
the organization’s review process costs by 15 percent. This objective
was calculated by adding the reduced travel by employees and supervisors,
the reduced amount of manual work by the HR department and time saved not
having to sift through a year’s worth of employees’ handwritten notes.
Next,
they developed selection criteria:
>>
Ease of use.
>>
Ease of administration.
>>
Minimal additional support required by IT.
>>
Ability to automate processes and follow-up notifications.
>>
A stand-alone application.
After
assessing several solutions, Van Meter chose Halogen Software’s hosted
eAppraisal solution for its ease of use and simplicity and because it was
not part of an HRIS package. “We believed that if we overloaded our
people with a complicated system, they wouldn’t buy into the process and
would put up resistance,” said Den Henrickson, senior system
administrator at Van Meter.
Van
Meter purchased a training package to get things right from the start. The
vendor trained several HR and IT help desk staff who in turn trained the
remaining staff—one hour for employees and two hours for managers.
Henrickson’s
team had budgeted six months to roll out the new system, but launched its
first appraisal process in less than 30 days after receiving training on
the product.
The
benefits of an automated system include:
Managers
and employees update and maintain notes electronically in a single
location.
By
using electronic signatures, managers no longer need paper processes (less
travel).
Those
managers still required to travel can complete evaluations while on the
road.
Compared
to the previous year’s appraisals, the results were more uniform (format
and the types of comments).
Following
the product’s guidelines, users stay within acceptable corporate
standards resulting in more consistent reviews.
Most
importantly, the majority of reviews were completed in a timely manner.
Van
Meter significantly surpassed its original goal of an overall cost savings
of 15 percent per review to reach an overall cost savings of 85 percent.
“Believe
it or not, the feedback has been universally positive,” Henrickson said.
“This has never happened to me before. Not even the people who are
completely phobic over computers have complained. This was the only
product I’ve rolled out in eight years that I haven’t received any
negative feedback from users.”
Olivia
*Reprinted
by permission of the editor of CLO Media
----------------------------------------------------------------------
3.
Maximizing Value for the Business Through Strategic Human Capital
Planning*
By
Matthew C. Brush and Donald H. Ruse who can be contacted at www.sibson.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------
How
Corning Links Business and HR Strategy to Improve the Value and Impact of
Its HR Function
The
HR function at Corning, Incorporated, considers human capital planning (HCP)
a critical business process because of its transformational impact on the
value the function delivers to the business and the way it delivers that
value. With HCP, HR has the opportunity to get and keep a seat at the
strategic decision-making table. Corning uses HCP to improve its ability
to identify human capital implications of corporate strategy and reshape
HR services to better support the business. This article shares the
evolution of HCP at Corning, the process and tools in place, its business
impact, and key lessons learned in designing and implementing this
critical business process.
Corning:
A Legacy of Innovation
The
evolution of human capital planning at Corning directly reflects the
history of Corning itself. Corning is a 150+ year-old firm with a record
of successful process and materials innovation in support of life-changing
products, a record that stretches all the way back to the invention of a
shatter-resistant lens for railroad lanterns in 1874 (see Figure 1).
Corning
has historically maintained a diverse portfolio of businesses based on a
common desire to be first to market with products that have functional
advantages for customers and strong intellectual property protection
against potential competitors. Talented employees have remained central to
the company’s ability to sustain an innovation- based business model,
regardless of how the specific mix of products in the portfolio have
changed over time.
A
Wake-Up Call for Corning: The Impact of the Telecommunications Bubble
Corning’s
traditional strategy of maintaining a balanced portfolio was sorely tested
by the telecommunications boom of the late 1990s, which ended in one of
the most difficult industry contractions since the boom-bust cycles
experienced in the U.S. railroad and steel industries in the late 19th and
early 20th centuries.
The
collapse of the telecom bubble, and its impact on Corning’s
profitability threatened the company’s viability and forced a serious
re-evaluation of Corning’s business plans and processes. The analysis
included tough decisions regarding the portfolio of businesses on which
Corning would continue to make bets on future growth, and resulted in the
sale of several large businesses. During this time, Corning shed nearly
half of its workforce and shrank from over 40,000 employees to just over
20,000. The mix of talent required shifted away from the optical,
electronic, and systems specialties demanded by the telecommunications
businesses back to materials and process specialties demanded by the
environmental and display technologies businesses.
While
the business portfolio was being reshaped, the corporation re-evaluated
its investments in corporate staffs. Corning considered, and ultimately
rejected, several proposals to outsource a range of staff functions that
included procurement, human resources, information technology, and
finance, choosing instead to centralize these functions to gain greater
leverage from functional structure while significantly reducing costs.
This process generated new performance expectations for each of these
functions. Each group was challenged to sharpen its ability to add value
to Corning’s portfolio of businesses. In response to this challenge,
HR
Transformation at Corning
“We
started rethinking the HR organization during the explosive business
growth we enjoyed in the late ‘90s, but those efforts took on added
urgency during the unprecedented business contraction we faced from 2001
through 2003,” says Kurt Fischer, Corning’s Vice President of
As
often happens with staff groups, Corning’s HR functional growth lagged
behind the organic and acquisition-driven growth of the business during
the boom period, despite its best efforts to staff up. As business growth
slowed and reversed, HR’s workload in support of the restructuring
actually increased. When the dust cleared from the telecom contraction, HR
found itself with a cost footprint much too large when compared to
top-quartile HR organizations, whether expressed as total HR spend per
employee or the ratio of total employees supported to HR employees. The
challenge of correctly allocating resources was heightened by the shift in
Corning’s employee base from a largely Mid-Atlantic North American
concentration to a primarily non-U.S. distribution, a shift that had
profound implications for institutional mindset as well as headcount.
FIGURE
1--100 YEARS OF CORNING INNOVATIONS
Download
a PDF copy of the full text of this article including graphics at http://www.workinfo.com/free/downloads/180.htm
Corning’s
historical business model was that of multiple distinct businesses, as
many as 10 or 12 in various stages of maturity, operating in a mostly
decentralized fashion with little product/technology overlap. This model
enabled the units to develop their specific technologies and products and
build intimate customer relationships based on market knowledge. This
decentralized business model also permeated staff functions, including
Corporate
HR functions at Corning were based on centers of excellence (COEs) in
areas such as compensation and benefits, learning and development,
employee relations, and recruiting. The COEs had a long history of
developing innovative programs, often at the request of senior corporate
managers. This approach occasionally resulted in the deployment of
initiatives that may or may not have been aligned with the priorities of
individual businesses in Corning’s portfolio. The subsequent “hit or
miss” performance in terms of business relevance and, most importantly,
business impact was often disappointing for all parties. It also resulted
in field HR organizations taking on COE-like roles so that their specific
business needs would be met.
Combined
with a decentralized HR field model, this approach to program development
contributed to the perception that HR was not aligned with the needs of
the business and that the function, at an enterprise level, was too costly
in comparison to value delivered.
HR
leadership recognized that a clear set of transformation goals was needed;
that those goals must be supported by a common approach and language that
enabled all of HR to understand client businesses’ strategies and the
human capital requirements necessary to achieve the desired business
results at the division and enterprise level. Doing so would enable HR to
align more effectively with the critical needs of the corporation and
efficiently deliver a suite of HR services that supported execution of
corporate and division business strategy. Corning established four key
goals to direct HR’s efforts to transform itself into a more
value-adding function with a seat at the decision making table. “The
transformational goals we established during the days of rapid growth were
robust enough to remain valuable during the downturn” says Fischer.
“In fact, they’re still at the core of our strategic plans for HR in
the foreseeable future.” The model Corning developed (see Figure 2)
describes a recipe of success that reflects both its recent past and its
future.
FIGURE
2--HR TRANSFORMATION GOALS
Download
a PDF copy of the full text of this article including graphics at http://www.workinfo.com/free/downloads/180.htm
The
first transformational goal, business linkage, requires HR professionals
across the function to draw a clear and direct connection between the
strategies of the corporation’s businesses—both individually and
collectively—and the human capital implications of those strategies.
Through this ability, HR can help the corporation better understand future
talent requirements in terms of the number, type, and quality of people
needed to execute on its strategy and understand what actions are required
to realize the maximum return from its talent investments.
The
global and scalable goals address HR’s need to build capabilities where
and when the client businesses need them—largely outside North America
and in countries and businesses that will inevitably change as current and
emerging businesses continue to evolve. The top-quartile cost goal is
intended to ensure that HR remains within the boundaries of appropriate
total cost to deliver required services. Typical benchmarks include ratios
of HR staff to employees supported, total HR spend per employee, and HR
spend as a percent of company revenues, compared to peer companies with
similar revenues, business complexity, and HR service offerings.
Download
a PDF copy of the full text of this article including graphics at http://www.workinfo.com/free/downloads/180.htm
----------------------------------------------------------------------
4. Book Review: How People Tick: A Guide To Difficult People And How To
Handle Them
----------------------------------------------------------------------
#
How People Tick: A Guide to Difficult People and How to Handle Them
To
buy this book click on: http://www.kalahari.net/e-trader/referral.asp?toolbar=mweb&linkid=5&partnerid=293&sku=28268709
By
Mike Leibling, Kogan Page, 2005
When
dealing with difficult people, it is often just one aspect of their
behaviour that is particularly challenging. But that single characteristic
can be very problematic! This is a practical guide to every type of
difficult person and how best to handle them.
Packed
with useful tips on how to deal with even the most irritating people, this
provides real insights and solutions for a variety of difficult
situations. Each situation is described, how it happens is analyzed, and
then strategies for dealing with the problem successfully are suggested.
Disruptive
behaviour patterns can be addressed once and for all, instead of having to
handle one-off 'difficult' events, time and time again.
How
People Tick is full of tried and tested tips for handling 'difficult'
people in 'difficult' situations, based on a real understanding of their
behaviour. It is for anyone who finds people bewildering or just plain
difficult, and yet still wants to understand them, work with them and live
with them.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
5. Case-Law & Legislation Review: A
Review Of The Most Important Judgments From 2005
Produced
by Perrott, Van Niekerk & Woodhouse Inc.
www.caselaw.co.za
| www.elaw.co.za
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The
end of the last Court term of 2005 saw a number of important judgments
handed down by the
>>
What about the workers? By Andre van Niekerk
Section
197 of the LRA provides for the automatic transfer of employment contracts
when a business is transferred in whole or in part as a going concern. But
when does the business transfer? Is it the date of signature of the
agreement, the date on which the new owner takes control or the effective
date as defined by the contract?
In
EC Van der Velde v Business and Design Software (PTY) Ltd and another this
question assumed some significance, because the contract provided that
employees would be transferred on the effective date (1 January) as
defined by the contract. However, the agreement was only signed on 3
April, and was subject to conditions that were to be fulfilled by 4 April.
In
essence, the
The
Court held that it was not bound by the intention of the seller and the
purchaser, even if there was no fraudulent intent. To allow the employer
parties to fix an arbitrary date as the effective date of the sale could
lead to abuse. For the purposes of section 197, the date of transfer was
the date on which the sale became unconditional and the date on which the
purchaser assumed full control of the of the business bundle that was the
subject of the transfer. On the facts of the case, that date as 4 April,
when the sale became unconditional. Both employer parties were properly
before the Court, and the case was adjourned for a hearing on the merits.
Effective
dates are often inserted into contracts, mostly for reasons unrelated to
labour issues. This decision illustrates the importance of properly
considering and regulating the labour implications of any transaction, and
not to leave these to the commercial and tax lawyers.
>>
A question of detail – what information must an employer disclose with a
section 189(3) notice? By Andre van Niekerk
Section
189(3) requires employers who contemplate retrenchment to issue an
invitation to consult. This notice, which must be issued to defined
consulting partners, must contain the information that is prescribed
relating to the reasons for the proposed retrenchment, the numbers of
employees likely to be affected, measures adopted to avoid retrenchment,
etc. Is this section to be applied literally? In other words, is the
retrenchment procedurally unfair simply because the employer fails to
include all of the information envisaged by that section. In Chester
Wholesale Meats) Pty) Ltd v National Industrial Workers Union of SA and 30
others, the
The
judgment is certainly not a licence to err on the side of inadequacy when
issuing a section 189(3) notice. But it does adopt a realistic view of the
world- consultation is a dynamic process and information demands will
reflect that. The judgment also emphasises that section 189 should not be
technically interpreted- the courts will primacy to the purpose of the
section, which is to ensure genuine consensus seeking on alternatives when
redundancies are contemplated.
Still on the topic of section 189- when must an employer issue a section 189(3) notice? How far down the track of 'contemplation' can the employer go before issuing the notice?
>>
How far does ‘contemplation’ stretch by Andre van Niekerk
In
NEHAWU v University of Pretoria, the Labour Appeal Court had to determine
whether the union had been presented with a fait accompli when it was
notified of a proposed outsourcing of certain services. The union accused
the employer of deciding to outsource before the consultation process had
started. On the facts, the Court rejected this argument and found for the
employer. The Court confirmed that what the employer could not do was
arrive at a final decision to retrench before commencing consultation. An
employer was entitled to come to the consultation table 'with a
predisposition towards a particular method of solving the problem which
has given rise to the contemplation of dismissal of employees for
operational requirements. What is critical is that the employer should
nevertheless be open to change its mind if persuasive argument is
presented to it that that method is wrong or is not the best or that there
is or may be another one that can address the problem equally well or even
in a better way.'
This
is a reaffirmation of the view that in the real world, employers will
think through a number of solutions to business problems before
retrenchments become possible or even inevitable, and that they are
entitled to form preliminary or even preferred views before initiating a
section 189 consultation process. What employers may not do is enter the
consultation process with a closed mind. The section is geared to a joint
exploration of alternatives, and has as its goal consensus on measures
that would avoid retrenchment or ameliorate its consequences.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
6.
Downloads: Deloitte Study: It’s 2008: Do You Know Where Your Talent Is?
Why Acquisition And Retention Strategies Don’t Work*
By
Robin
Athey Deloitte Services LP who can be contacted at rathey@deloitte.com
SPONSORED
BY DELOITTE SOUTH AFRICA: For additional information about Human Capital
Consulting contact David Conradie on dconradie@deloitte.co.za;
http://www.deloitte.com/dtt/home/0,1044,sid%253D23586,00.html
Despite
millions of unemployed workers, there is an acute shortage of talent:
science educators to teach the next generation of chemists, health care
professionals of all stripes, design engineers with deep technical and
interpersonal skills,and seasoned marketers who understand the Chinese
marketplace. Resumes abound, yet companies still feverishly
search
for the people who make the difference between 10 percent and 20 percent
annual growth, or between profit and loss. Critical talent is scarce, and
about to become much more scarce because of two looming trends: the
retirement of the Baby Boom generation and a growing skills gap. By
“critical talent,” we refer to the groups and individuals that drive a
disproportionate share of their company’s business performance and
generate greater-than-average value for customers and shareholders. A
company’s critical talent possesses highly developed skills and deep
knowledge—not just of the work itself but also of “how to make things
happen” in the organization. Without these people, organizations could
not achieve their strategies. (See sidebar,“Who Is Critical Talent?”)
We
are not necessarily referring to the “A players” or senior executives
who command the highest salaries. More often we’re talking about
employees who don’t end up in the annual report. They include the
scientists and clinicians who discover and develop the blockbuster drugs
that fuel pharmaceutical companies’ growth. In the oil industry, they
include the geologists and petroleum engineers who find and extract oil.
In manufacturing, they include the machinists who perform precision
manufacturing to Six Sigma standards. And in retailing, they may be the
inventory managers who get the right goods in the right stores at the
right time.
When
the knowledge and skills of critical talent become scarce, recruiting wars
erupt. Many leading companies fight these wars differently. They do not
succumb to bidding wars, knowing that the “star” who chases high
offers will be out the door as soon as the next higher one rolls in. Nor
do they bribe talent to stay, knowing that monetary incentives do not
foster long-term commitment; worse still, they can mask discontent that
infects others. Rather than focus on acquiring and retaining talent,
talent savvy organizations support their key people on the issues they
care about most: doing work that engages them, learning how to do it even
better, encountering fresh challenges, and interacting with people in
positive ways.
Firms
like Microsoft, Southwest Airlines, and SAS Institute are exemplary in the
way they nurture and manage critical talent. They go to surprising lengths
to help these employees tap into their core skills and passions. They
expect continuous learning and growth and know that the most important
lessons don’t take place in the classroom, but on the job. They also understand
that positive relationships raise the performance of critical talent to
new levels.
Download
a copy of this research article at http://www.workinfo.com/free/downloads/180.htm
*Reprinted
by permission of the author
---------------------------------------------------------------------
7. Unsubscribe & Moving Soon
----------------------------------------------------------------------
UNSUBSCRIBE: Scroll to the end of the newsletter where you will find a
code directly linked to your name. Click on the unsubscribe link. PLEASE
DO NOT REPLY TO THIS NEWSLETTER TO UNSUBSCRIBE. MOVING SOON: If you are
changing your email address soon and would still like to continue
receiving this newsletter, please email us your new or temporary email
address to ensure that you do not miss out on the next edition.
------------------------------------
About the e-Journal/e-Newspaper
------------------------------------
Equity-Skills News & Views is a free bi-monthly newsletter for
business owners, Line Managers, and Human Resource Practitioners (who
support Line Managers) with the implementation of fair and developmental
people management systems and practices. The style of this e-Newspaper
fits between the traditional email newsletters and printed professional
trade journals & magazines. Subscribers will be kept up to date with
the latest developments in the world of people management, receive handy
people management tips, and feedback about labour court rulings that
relate to the implementation of the key Labour Acts. Please add equity
skills news & views to your list of approved senders if your Internet
provider or server administrator filters incoming e-mail, to make sure you
receive periodic e-mail alerts and this newsletter to which you are
subscribed.
------------------------------------
Opinions expressed by contributors DO NOT NECESSARILY REPRESENT the
standpoint of the publisher-editor of Equity-Skills News & Views.
Information published here is for general information, and is not intended
as legal advice. The authors, editors, and publishers do not accept
responsibility for any act, omission, loss, or damage occasioned by any
reliance upon the contents hereof.
This message is sent in compliance with the ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATIONS AND
TRANSACTIONS ACT. 2002, Act No. 25, 2002 [South Africa] passed on 20 May
2003.
Sender:
URL: www.equityskillsweb.com
E-mail: jeffs@worldonline.co.za
Telephone: +27 011 485 4943
Facsimile +27 011 485 4943
Publisher-Editor: Equity-Skills News & Views
'A MUST TO PRINT & READ'
------------------------------------
Copyright (c) 2004 Registered electronic newspaper: 1SSN 1684-5714