Lookingforward

Page 04

Happyengagement

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Leaders’challenge

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Dressingfor work

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HOURGLASSHR

Issue 17 – March 2010 Enhancing value through people

Are your people engaged?HR and sustainability

Where next for remuneration?

Manage tomorrow’s people today.

© 2009 PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. All rights reserved. ‘PricewaterhouseCoopers’ refers to PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (a limited liability partnership in the United Kingdom) or, as the context requires, the PricewaterhouseCoopers global network or other member firms of the network, each of which is a separate and independent legal entity. Design Services 23747 (06/09).

A constantly changing business environment is forcing companies to make some important and difficult choices about how they manage and motivate people. As part of our Managing Tomorrow’s People series, we explore the impact of these changes on people management, the different options open to companies and some of the scenarios we believe will play out of this time of great change.

To download a copy of Managing tomorrow’s people: how the downturn will change the future of work, visit pwc.com/managingpeople2020

Editor’s Welcome 01

topic page

As the world begins to recover from a damaging recession we are left with deep-rooted issues to address. The cuts made by many organisations during the downturn have been drastic and harmful. Many are left with a reduced workforce that is demoralised, driven by fear and concerned for its future. The challenges for HR are considerable — in particular, how can these workers be re-engaged and motivated to produce their best for the organisation?

Employee engagement has become a recurring theme in the post-recession world and, in this issue, we take an in-depth look at the many issues surrounding engagement. As Kevin Chapman argues on page 18, the credit crunch

and financial crisis has damaged the reputation of many companies in the financial sector, so what does engagement mean for them? How can staff be persuaded to perform well in an organisation that is suffering from a poor public image?

On page 26 Liz Loxton looks at the subject from another angle, and examines the link between sustainability and employee engagement. The experience of Hourglass’ sponsors, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and its attempts to drive a successful sustainability strategy through employee engagement leaves important lessons for us all.

Of course, the recession has also left lasting questions over the future role of remuneration, and in our lead article Sally O’Reilly looks at the legacy of the downturn in terms of incentive-based pay. With many blaming much of the crisis on short-term bonuses, she asks if we have learned any lessons over the past 18 months. Will we change? Does the recession mark a new era of corporate responsibility? Only time will tell.

Douglas BroomChief Editor

Editorial OfficesHourglassCroner145 London RoadKingston-upon-Thames, Surrey KT2 6SR

Chief EditorDouglas Broomhourglasseditor@croner.co.uk

Editorial CommitteeMichael Rendell, Isabel McGarvie and Lydia Ruffles(HR Services Consulting, PricewaterhouseCoopers), Douglas Broom, Liz Fisher (Croner, Wolters Kluwer)

Commissioning EditorLiz Fisher

Advertising SalesSP Media LtdOld Byre House, East Knoyle, Salisbury SP3 6AWsabrina.croner@spmedia.co.uk

Design and ProductionRick Fishenden

Published byWolters Kluwer (UK) Ltd145 London RoadKingston-upon-Thames,Surrey KT2 6SR

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© Wolters Kluwer 2010

Thought leadership without the padding, Hourglass cuts through the clutter to reach the key issues.

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The articles and content within this magazine have been prepared as general information on matters of interest only, and do not constitute professional advice. No representation or warranty (express or implied) is given as to the accuracy or completeness of the information contained in this magazine, and, to the extent permitted by law, the authors, sponsor and publisher accept no liability, and disclaim all responsibility, for the consequences of you or anyone else acting, or refraining to act, in reliance on the information contained in this magazine or for any decision based on it.

© 2009 PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. All rights reserved. ‘PricewaterhouseCoopers’ refers to PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (a limited liability partnership in the United Kingdom) or, as the context requires, the PricewaterhouseCoopers global network or other member firms of the network, each of which is a separate and independent legal entity.

Are youpreparedfor businessclimatechange?

Businesses can no longer ignore sustainability and climate change. Or can they afford to merely pay lip service to it. Companies have started to realise that a strategically sound approach to sustainability around their people agenda can be a competitive advantage. At PricewaterhouseCoopers we’re working hard with clients to ensure that, when it comes to sustainability they’re prepared for change, whatever the weather.

pwc.com/uk

Contents 03

topic page

06

18

26

Looking forward The HR function has been found wanting in its ability to support management through the recession. As we emerge from the downturn it has some hard work to do in proving itself as a trusted adviser.Michael Rendell 04Remuneration As the world’s economies begin to emerge from recession, the focus is turning towards executive pay and the bonus culture in particular. Have our views of incentive-based pay changed as a result of the financial crisis? Or is it just business as usual?Sally O’Reilly 06HRD profile — Gery Bruederlin One of the least enviable roles of recent times has to be HR director of a large bank. Gery Bruederlin of the Swiss investment bank UBS explains what it felt like to be at the business end of the credit crunch.James Ashton 10Engagement A new report has shown that engaged employees achieve significantly better bottom line-results. But what does engagement really mean?Steven Webb 14The employment relationship Every relationship needs work, so what can HR do when an organisation and its employees have fallen out of love?Kevin Chapman 18Leadership In spite of a CEO’s best efforts, he or she is not always viewed by employees in the way they intended. But this is a problem that HR can help to solve.Dr Phyl Johnson 22Environment Copenhagen may have stalled, but businesses still realise that they need to do more than pay lip service to sustainability if they are to attract and engage Generation Y. HR can work with their sustainability colleagues to make a real difference.Liz Loxton 26Remote working With more of us working remotely and flexibly, what does the future hold for the office and the daily commute?Alex Blyth 30Dressing for work Corporate dress can be a can of worms but to what extent should HR dictate what employees wear to work?Beth Holmes 32A letter from Qatar Prospects for further growth in the Middle East are under jeopardy because of a serious shortage of talent. Christopher Box 36

Description Page No.

topic author

The HR function has been found wanting in its ability to support management through the recession. As we emerge from the downturn it has some hard work to do in proving itself as a trusted adviser.

Could do betterLooking forward Michael Rendell

04

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05

We know that some of the biggest challenges facing organisations at the moment include the availability of finance, changing risk requirements and market adaptability, together with responding to new customer demands and change management capability. But do we, the human resource function, know how to galvanise our employees and executives so our organisations can operate and compete effectively in this emerging environment?

There are some big picture issues at play that will, in part, influence how successfully these new challenges are met — for example, how supportive governments are in helping to create a skilled future workforce and how politicised debates around education and compensation become.

Additionally, some big questions are being raised that could impact whether HR will actually be trusted as an appropriate adviser during and beyond recovery. The unanticipated scale of the cost-cutting, headcount and redeployment changes required by organisations during the downturn meant some of the processes in place could not support rapidly-changing needs and brought some human capital failures to the surface. There is some debate about whether HR did its job during the downturn and whether the function is broken — particularly in terms of the reward models it champions and its ability to cultivate an agile, flexible workforce. If not satisfactorily answered, some speculate that these questions could jeopardise HR’s opportunity to prove itself and see it reduced to an administrative function.

These external and legacy issues aside, the responsibility lies with HR to demonstrate in a measurable way that it can provide the kind of directional people management that CEOs will rely on to navigate this new terrain. And while some big employer brands fell down at the end of the ‘noughties’ in terms of their people strategies, insight from PricewaterhouseCoopers’ 13th Annual CEO Survey, launched at Davos earlier this year, suggests that CEOs are prioritising the people agenda as a means to recover and grow.

We are all well-versed in the assertion that the long-term legacy of the deep cost-cutting and headcount reduction could be felt in terms of speed of recovery and competitiveness. Fortunately, many CEOs recognise the importance of having the right people in the right place — with over a third (39%), according to the PwC survey, hoping to increase headcount over the next 12 months while three-quarters (77%) expect to increase investment in training and development.

The research also found that 79% of CEOs expect to overhaul the way their organisations manage people during change as a consequence of the economic crisis. Attending to staff morale was highlighted by three in four CEOs as an area also in need of reform and increased investment. And CEOs are right to be concerned. As the population ages, organisations’

and countries’ prosperity will depend on an increasingly-limited number of talented people producing wealth.

Preparing for the upturn is a clear platform of opportunity for HR. As Phyl Johnson explains in her article on page 22, many CEOs have spent the past few months easing their company and employees through the recession. But, to move forward, the CEO has to show another side to his or her personality, moving to a more positive outlook and leading from the front. And, with leadership increasingly seen as a shared responsibility, HR must be committed and competent in delivering the ‘followship’ needed to support the business. In the near future, this will mean refocusing on managing through change and engagement programmes as talent gaps need to be closed and roles redefined.

Given the strong focus CEOs appear to be placing on people management strategy and processes, we expect to see significant changes to HR models over this decade.

‘‘� ’’

There is some debate about whether HR did its job during

the downturn and whether the function is broken —

particularly in terms of the reward models it champions and its ability to cultivate an

agile, flexible workforce.

Michael is a partner and global head of the HumanResource Services practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

topic author

As the world’s economies begin to emerge from recession, the focus is turning towards executive pay and the bonus culture in particular. Have our views of incentive-based pay changed as a result of the financial crisis? Or is it just business as usual?

When will we ever change?Remuneration Sally O’Reilly

06

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07

Are incentives the best way to motivate staff? At first glance, this looks like a no-brainer. If you want the best staff you need to pay them well, and if they do a good job, you should reward them with a little extra (or, if you work in one of the key financial centres, such as the City, quite a lot extra.) In business, highly paid executives expect large bonuses, and the accepted practice has been to make sure they receive them.

However, the financial crisis and the attention it has focused on executive pay (particularly incentive-based pay in the banking sector) has changed our outlook on reward. We don’t just want value for money, we want responsible behaviour for money. Public concern about how high performers are rewarded is growing. Even those high performers themselves acknowledge that not everyone accepts that they are being rewarded fairly. Giving evidence to the UK’s Treasury Select Committee in January, Stephen Hester, chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), admitted that his own parents are among those who think his reward package is too high. Depending on the RBS share price, it could be worth a cool £10 million over three years.

So what does the future hold? In the UK, in common with other countries that have suffered during the financial crisis, the government has moved relatively quickly in its attempts to limit excessive pay. City pay practices could face a crackdown after last year’s Queen’s speech handed more powers to the Financial Services Authority (FSA) in a new bill that is expected to cover bank bonuses. The Treasury is intending to use the coming year’s legislative agenda to give the FSA extra powers to tackle bankers’ contracts that breach its rules. Although the FSA won’t have retrospective powers, the law will be changed to allow the City regulator to veto any contracts drawn up since 1 January 2010 that breach rules on guaranteed bonuses or which encourage bankers to take unnecessary risks.

In fact, the assumption that financial incentives boost the performance of high flyers may not be supported by the evidence, according to Bill Cooke, professor of management and society at Lancaster University Management School. “Most studies which connect financial reward to performance avoid (explicitly or tacitly) very high salaries, because of issues with sample size,” he says. “This means there is no evidence that, for example, an extra £250,000 will make that much difference to performance.”

The problem with reward in some instances is not that it doesn’t work; it’s that it works too well in terms of influencing behaviour. At worst, ambitious targets backed up with financial incentives are still tempting some employees into fraud.

This is demonstrated by PricewaterhouseCoopers 5th Global Economic Crime Survey, carried out in collaboration with the INSEAD business school

in France. The survey found that corporate executives are under mounting pressure to fudge their numbers as the recession has affected earnings. Overall, 35% of US firms surveyed reported incidents of economic crimes. Accounting fraud comprised 38% of the crimes reported in the 12 months immediately preceding the survey, an increase of 41% from the 2007 level. Meanwhile, asset misappropriation or embezzlement was reported by 67% of respondents to the survey.

What’s more, an incentive package which appears to favour senior staff can demoralise those further down the ranks. The survey also found that middle managers carried out 42% of embezzlement fraud, an increase of 26% since 2007. Many respondents to the survey said that they thought that these wayward middle managers were driven by a desire to maintain their living standards.

Where, then, do we go from here? Most countries may have emerged from recession, but straitened circumstances will be with us for some time to come. When it comes to rewarding staff appropriately, the key is to develop a scheme that is responsive to the organisation’s needs. This will vary according to the business sector, levels of seniority and the nature of work roles.

A ‘one-size fits all’ approach won’t deliver — but the problem is that,

When will we ever change?‘‘� ’’

All too often, HR will do a staff survey, but the rewards and benefits scheme will be covered by only half a dozen

questions. You need to go into this in far more detail, and

get a better understanding of what motivates people, what

they want and what they think of their existing benefits.

traditionally, most organisations do not spend time or money on finding out what sorts of rewards and benefits will be most meaningful to staff. And reward schemes should not be seen to reward only those at the top.

Peter Reilly, director, HR research and consultancy at the Institute for Employment Studies, believes that in future, HR directors should take a more strategic approach to rewarding staff. “All we are really doing is re-learning what we already know,” he comments. “It’s not new. We have known for some time that rewarding certain behaviours can be powerful, and that with some people in some situations you can get a positive effect: if you do X, then you will get Y reward.”

Surveying staff may seem like the answer, but Reilly says that organisations frequently assume that they already know what rewards will work. “All too often, HR will do a staff survey, but the rewards and benefits scheme will be covered by only half a dozen questions. You need to go into this in far more detail, and get a better understanding of what motivates people, what they want and what they think of their existing benefits.”

Instead of asking searching questions, organisations tend to proceed on the basis of a set of assumptions based on their own experience, he adds: “Most senior managers have always performed to a high level, so they have done very well out of PRP, therefore they think PRP must be an effective tool for motivation. But that is because they were always in the top 10%. If they had not been in the top 10%, they may have had a different view.”

And responses to incentive schemes are not necessarily rational, says Tom Gosling, a partner with PwC’s Human Resource Services. “There tends to be a very negative reaction to complex schemes, and people often think they are more complicated than they actually are,” he says. “I’ve sat down with so many senior executives who say: ‘I don’t like our rewards scheme, and I don’t understand it.’ This is an emotional reaction: their incentive scheme is usually nothing like as complex as the business environment they are operating in quite happily. But it is the emotional reaction that determines how executives view these plans, and organisations need to recognise this.”

One problem for HR and organisations is that staff at all levels tend to think short term. So reward schemes have traditionally responded to short-term thinking — which does not benefit the long-term future of organisations. “Our core psychology was formed thousands of years ago on the savannah: it has changed very little since then,” Gosling points out. “There was no particular advantage about being able to strategise about what would happen in three years’ time. There was just about some value in looking 12 months ahead, in terms of planning your food and livestock. And people tend to think in the same way now.”

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09

Our ancestors also remembered bad experiences more vividly than they did happy ones — an understandable response to being chased by a wild boar, but less useful in corporate life. But the same clear recall of negative experiences persists. “Everyone remembers the years they don’t pay out much more vividly than the years when they do pay out,” stresses Gosling. “So you often hear people saying their rewards scheme is ‘worthless’ when in fact it has paid out to staff more often than not.”

But giving staff more technical information about a rewards scheme is not necessarily the answer. “The advertising industry has known this for a long time. They don’t tell you how a car works, they tell you how you would feel if you owned it.” By the same token, when communicating to staff about a bonus scheme, organisations need to tell them not just how it works, but what it can do for them.

There is a key role for HR here, according to Peter Reilly of the IES. “Management needs to be encouraged to think through its reward options and to consider what is right for the organisation,” he says. “They need to look beyond their own preferences and they need to think about what will have the best impact on organisation performance. The bankers bonus crisis is no different from the mis-selling of pensions or endowment mortgages — incentivising this worked very well, but the result was that pensions and endowment schemes were sold inappropriately, ultimately at great cost to the companies concerned. HR should not just focus on the technical aspects of these schemes, but issues such as group dynamics, and at the individual within the team, the team within the organisation and so on.”

Kai Peters, chief executive of Ashridge Business School, says that whatever the future holds for the world economy, the days of handing out financial benefits to staff without making this an integral part of HR strategy should

be behind us. “I do believe that we need to rethink incentives. There are two components here. The first is what we are rewarding and the second is how much we are proposing to reward that particular target or set of targets. Where there is a clear target with no potential downside, then there is no problem. Alas, the world does not work that way. We have all seen how incentives distort behaviour. We must therefore reduce the size of the incentive so that it does not become an all encompassing target.

“I would hope that there is a wind of reality coming through,” he says. “If companies focus on smaller bonuses, if compensation consultants stop pushing the line that incentives are great, and if there is a better balance between the individual, the team and the overall performance of the organisation, then this area will decrease in significance. I’m not holding my breath, though.”

Will this recession herald a new attitude to incentive and reward? Will executives learn that thinking short term went out with chasing woolly mammoths? Or will it be business as usual for incentives and rewards in the new decade? There are no prizes for guessing.

‘‘� ’’Our core psychology was formed

thousands of years ago on the savannah: it has changed very little since then. There was no

particular advantage about being able to strategise about what would happen in three years’

time. There was just about some value in looking 12 months ahead,

in terms of planning your food and livestock. And people tend to

think in the same way now.

topic author

One of the least enviable roles of recent times has to be HR director of a large bank. Gery Bruederlin of the Swiss investment bank UBS explains what it felt like to be at the business end of the credit crunch.

Caught in the eye of the stormHRD profile James Ashton

10

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When Gery Bruederlin was promoted to the top human resources job in UBS, no-one could say he had not spent enough time preparing for it. The appointment as group head of human resources, in September 2006, came after almost 20 years at the Swiss investment bank. Bruederlin had worked his way through numerous divisional HR jobs, the latest currently being global head of HR in global asset management. His long career meant that Bruederlin had become a good advert for the firm’s own graduate scheme.

But if he thought his time at the top would be the same as that of his predecessor’s, then he was sadly mistaken. Together with the rest of the banking world, Bruederlin had little idea of the looming storm that was just around the corner. The financial crisis wrought havoc at every major bank around the world.

For those that avoided collapse, it threw up new challenges — such as slashing thousands of jobs, rebuilding morale among those that remained and, when markets rebounded, tiptoeing through the political minefield of rewarding high earners with rich compensation.

Bruederlin, who announced last October he was stepping aside from the job (although he will remain with UBS in a new role), helped reduce the headcount at UBS from 84,000 at its peak to 65,000. It is putting it mildly when he states that the challenges he faced were different ones to the executives he succeeded. “I wouldn’t say my predecessors had an easy job but compared to what I had it was really different,” he says. “Being group head of HR in the 1990s or in 2000 and 2001, they were all good years. I had to deal with new situations on a daily basis.”

In the eye of the storm, he admits that planning for the long term, something he usually insists on, fell by the wayside: “It is good to think ahead but I was not really able to take a strategic view on things. It was about trying to keep your head above sea level. But I will be able to look back at the economic crisis, something that made history, and say I was part of it.”

In common with many of its peers, UBS has had to write down the value of investments made in risky asset classes exposed by the credit crunch. But those $50 billion of impairments only served to unnerve clients of its wealth management arm, many of whom withdrew their funds. UBS also became embroiled in a US tax fraud case. In the three-month period before it was resolved, the poor publicity that the bank suffered from showed up in its accounts. Some $5.8 billion of client funds flooded out of UBS during the quarter.

In short, it has been an incredibly tough time. Now in a relative period of calm, Bruederlin is convinced that the bank is on the up. “Compared to six or

seven months ago, the situation has improved dramatically,” he says. “The results are not good, but they are getting better.”

Bruederlin reports that some staff, notably in wealth management, stuck together in teams during the tough months. Nevertheless, there was an exodus of talent, both intended and unintended. For the majority that remained, UBS put together ‘Leading Now’, an event to educate managers on the changed environment, consisting of 90-minute seminars attended by senior leaders.

Bruederlin said it was initiatives such as this that helped stabilise the business and ultimately bring about a return of confidence, together with financial markets bouncing back. He expects to recruit between 4,000 and 5,000 staff this year. Many of those will replace the high-earners that jumped ship. There will also be new blood to capitalise on slimmer competition in the market place after some of UBS’ rivals, such as Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns, went to the wall.

Bruederlin says that some are seeing the opportunity at UBS, including several well-known heavyweights who sense a chance to make a name for themselves as the bank aims to rebuild its reputation for caution and reliability. One of the new recruits was Robert McCann, who arrived from Merrill Lynch to become UBS’ head of wealth management in the Americas with a brief to stop the outflow of clients’ money.

Newswires reported that, to rebuild its position, UBS had one of the highest

11

Caught in the eye of the storm‘‘� ’’

It is good to think ahead but I was not really able to take a

strategic view on things. It was about trying to keep your head

above sea level. But I will be able to look back at the economic

crisis, something that made history, and say I was part of it.

Gery Bruederlin

Bruederlin has spent almost 20 years at UBS since joining the bank’s graduate training scheme from university. He was educated at Zurich University and later wrote his PhD at Yale University jointly with Zurich. After 12 years at UBS he took a year’s partially paid leave to study for an MBA at the University of Rochester in New York.

“That helped me to develop a different kind of thinking around HR that is much more business-driven than perhaps a classic HR career somewhere else,” he says.

Specialisms: Finance and marketing

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signing bonuses on Wall Street last year. To lure wealth management advisers in the Americas region from competitors, it often offered a golden hello worth four years’ annual salary, or 200% of the commission and fees a broker can expect to collect annually.

On his arrival, McCann pledged that he wouldn’t pay the highest in the market and instead concentrate on keeping its own advisers. Bruederlin admits that how much to pay remains a key debate within the bank. “You cannot be so realistic as to be uncompetitive,” he says. “From what I read in the press, some commentators do not consider our approach to be competitive enough. Compensation will continue to play a very important part of our wealth management division. It is critical to retain the senior elements that have the key clients with them but it is still very important also to continuously attract good new client advisers. The strategy in the end will not change. But the question is whether there is an end to the spiral that becomes somehow dysfunctional.”

Not surprisingly, Bruederlin thinks setting remuneration levels is a matter for investment banks, regardless of whether they have benefited from government support in the aftermath of the financial meltdown. Efforts by Alistair Darling, the UK Chancellor, to crackdown on giant bonuses has led to a one-off supertax for British bankers that will sting bankers’ bonuses worth more than £25,000 with a 50% tax rate.

“There were so many uncertainties over the way the supertax was communicated,” says Bruederlin. “It was not clear what their intention was, other than the political one, obviously.”

Before pay had become such a flashpoint, Bruederlin succeeded Thomas Hammer as group head of human resources, who had told UBS that he wanted to return to his professional roots in executive search. His legacy was to begin the transformation of the HR function to support the UBS strategy of growing as one firm. That was something that Bruederlin was charged with continuing. He implemented a single IT operating system across all divisions.

“That really differentiates us from many of our competitors — we don’t have to consolidate now,” he says. That difference will begin to show itself as UBS puts a greater impetus on outsourcing some of the business processes associated with its HR operation. “On the one hand we are able to put more administrative activities on that platform, but we can also outsource from

it, really get the labour arbitrage benefits out of it. That is what we are concentrating on now. There is an optimal line of demarcation between what we are keeping in house and what we are trying to outsource.”

Training is also back on the agenda after the disruption of the previous two years. UBS launched a group-wide business university in January. It has three

faculties: leadership, control (covering legal and compliance areas) and, the biggest of the three, business, which incorporates technical education and sales training to give staff more intensive training along their career path. This year, Bruederlin forecasts the university will deliver some 300,000 training units. “We have done a lot of conceptual work, designed the curriculum and brought together the relevant people who have been working in separate divisions,” he says. “Now we are ready to get something concrete out of it.”

Not surprisingly, after almost two decades with the Swiss bank, Bruederlin’s future remains in HR. His successor is John Bradley, who held a similar role at former employer JP Morgan Chase & Co. By last November, when we first spoke, the transition had begun. A month later, it was announced that Bruederlin would cover HR in UBS’ two major businesses, wealth management and the Swiss bank. “The challenge of HR in this area will be to help to defend and grow UBS’ leading position in this business,” he says. “It brings me back to a function where the direct commercial impact of HR on the business is more obvious, something I always preferred.”

13

‘‘� ’’Some staff, notably in wealth management, stuck together

in teams during the tough months. Nevertheless, there

was an exodus of talent, both intended and unintended.

topic author

A new report has shown that engaged employees achieve significantly better bottom-line results. But what does engagement really mean?

Are your people happily engaged?Engagement Steven Webb

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Just say you have managed to sneak a copy of David MacLeod’s report, ‘Engaging For Success’ (a wide-ranging report on employee engagement commissioned by the UK’s Department for Business), into the carry-on luggage of your CEO ahead of their next flight (no small task this as it’s a whacking great tome, so it had better be long-haul). And just say that between the free-flowing champagne, the lavish food and on-demand movies that is the preserve for those on ‘that side’ of the curtain, your CEO reads it.

They will see the beaming face of Lord Mandelson, the UK’s Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills exhorting British industry to think about the benefits — and you don’t dismiss him lightly do you? They will also see study after study by the worthy and good showing that companies with highly-engaged employees demonstrate significantly stronger bottom-line results than companies with low employee engagement scores.

They will have a little more difficulty in determining what ‘employee engagement’ is, though. Maybe it’s a combination of the wine and the time-zone changes, but it appears that different companies have different ideas about how you should define, or even label, employee engagement. Even MacLeod doesn’t attempt to come up with a definitive statement of what engagement is. Never mind, the upshot is the same. It’s all about a willingness by employees to give discretionary effort — to go the extra mile — for the company.

Your CEO lies back and reflects (after all, in this part of the ‘plane, the seat reclines to become a flat bed). It all appears to make sense and it reflects what he instinctively feels — that there is a link between levels of engagement, focus on customers and financial and operational performance. They think of their own company. In the current downturn, they are struggling with cutbacks and financial pressures, and yet investors still are on their back to improve performance. What they would give to have their employees freely giving their effort — and here he does a quick calculation on the back of the sick bag — why, it could save the company money and, more importantly, get them their bonus.

This ‘lightbulb moment’ happens at 40,000 feet. By the time the plane hits the tarmac and the JetWay is being positioned, they have already got their phone out and are calling the office. But who do they call? Who in the organisation is going to ‘deliver’ this most elusive of prizes? Who can they hold accountable? It’s a surprised HR director who is woken from their sleep that picks up the bedroom phone in the early hours of the morning to hear the CEO demand a report on “this engagement thing” when they return to the office. The surprise quickly turns to concern when they put down the receiver. “They are not going to like the answer” the HR director thinks.

Why not? Surely, the CEO has found the panacea for the company’s woes. Well, let’s presume the company they work for is typical, which means that in a baseline survey, only three in ten of their employees would describe themselves as ‘highly engaged’ (a figure determined by a YouGov survey for the Trades Union Congress in 2008). This leaves a large number of moderately engaged — whom the consultancy Towers Perrin (now Towers Watson) terms the ‘massive middle’ — whose engagement needs to be strengthened. Indeed, the sheer size of this group — probably the single largest group in any organisation — means it will have a disproportionate impact on the performance of the company.

Towers Perrin goes on to say that this group only exerts discretionary effort when they believe in the value of their job, their team, or their organisation. In fact, they estimate emotional commitment is four times as valuable as rational commitment in increasing effort levels.

So how can an organisation tap into this emotional commitment? Where should companies be putting their time and focus? To understand this we have to get action-orientated and unpack the parts that comprise engagement. Saratoga research concludes that engagement can be broken down into three elements:

15

Are your people happily engaged?‘‘� ’’

Employees feel more engaged when they work in a safe, co-operative environment.

‘Safe’ in this context means that employees trust one

another and are able to quickly resolve conflicts when they arise. They want to be able

to rely on one another and to focus their attention on the

tasks that really matter.

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Individual value: Employees feel more engaged when they are able to make a real contribution, are empowered by the organisation and have opportunities for personal development. Issues such as being able to affect the work environment and making meaningful choices are critical. Indeed, this perception is one of the most influential factors in determining employees’ willingness to give of discretionary effort.

Focused work: Employees feel more engaged when they have clear direction, accountability for performance and an efficient work environment. In other words, employees need to understand where to focus their efforts. Without a clear strategy and direction employees will burn valuable time on activities that do not make a difference for the organisation’s success. Additionally, even when they have a direction employees must receive feedback to ensure that they are on track and being held accountable for their progress. Employees also want to work in an environment that is efficient in terms of time and resources. People lose faith in their organisation when they see excessive waste.

Interpersonal support: Employees feel more engaged when they work in a safe, co-operative environment. ‘Safe’ in this context means that employees trust one another and are able to quickly resolve conflicts when they arise. They want to be able to rely on one another and to focus their attention on the tasks that really matter. Conflict wastes time and energy and needs to be dealt with quickly. Other research from companies, such as The Great Place to Work Institute, also finds that trust and interpersonal harmony are fundamental underlying principles in the best organisations. In addition, employees need to co-operate to get the job done. Partnerships across departments and within teams ensure that employees stay informed and get the support they need to do their jobs.

It’s getting the blend of these elements right for each individual that gives them a Maslow ‘comfort blanket’ allowing them to then concentrate on the ‘higher’ ambitions of giving that much desired discretionary effort. The real key to releasing this discretionary effort is to offer these elements flexibly throughout an employee’s job lifecycle and there is only one group in the organisation that can do this. Step forward, middle management.

Yes, maybe there is a point to this much maligned group after all. In fact, organisations should be trying to improve the quality of the relationships individuals have with their managers. Only they are able to factor in the elements of engagement with flexibility around lifestyle considerations.

Again, it’s not worth trying to second guess a lifestyle model for all employees — it’s not the same for any two people (and hence the reason why centrally driven engagement ‘initiatives’ never fulfil their promise). The

key in this respect is to offer flexibility and choice throughout an employee’s job lifecycle. For example, family dominates many of our decisions but means different things to different people and year on year, our requirements are not the same.

This is the first hurdle for two reasons. First, the CEO has just spent the last few months cutting a swathe through middle managers “to reduce costs” with little attention to who is left and what management skills they possess.

Second, our company CEO is typical of the ‘command and control’ brigade. They like to bark orders down through their directors and expect their will to be carried out in the rest of the organisation. Employee engagement, meanwhile, has clear implications for leadership, moving it from a coercive to a more inclusive style. How do you convince the CEO that the way forward is more two-way communication? This goes beyond just keeping employees informed about what is going on (the company already has a tame internal communication team that pump out endless missives doing just this). It’s more about establishing a platform where employees can comment, share ideas and give input regularly. This new openness doesn’t mean that responsibility for running the company is given over to an employee forum in the canteen; rather it requires a willingness to listen as well as inform, and to present both good and bad news with sufficient context every day on all issues.

For managers, it requires leaders of the organisation to set clear expectations for middle management and hold them accountable. They also need support and training in delivering against those expectations. Employee engagement is therefore about managing decision-making by opening it up to the right groups within a disciplined contract. This contract must provide opportunity for employees to contribute, together with clear obligations to them to recognise and respect the boundaries of the invitation to them.

When the CEO returns the report is on their desk, they are surprised that it is longer than the MacLeod report. “Hmmm,” they think, as they flick through the headings, “It doesn’t look as easy as I thought. Maybe, I’ll save it to read on my next flight. Now, how’s the cost cutting programme getting on?”

David MacLeod and Nita Clarke’s report on employee engagement and its potential benefits for organisations and employees can be found at:

http://www.berr.gov.uk/whatwedo/employment/employee-engagement/index.html

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Every relationship needs work, so what can HR do when an organisation and its employees have fallen out of love?

Working to keep the flame alive18

Employment relationship Kevin Chapman

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Every relationship has its ups and downs, and that includes the one between employer and employee. This psychological contract has been subject to extreme pressure over the past two years, due mainly to the prevailing economic conditions. As a result, HR is having to step up to become the relationship counsellors of the 2010s.

I heard the true story recently of an employee who walked into his HR department. “I’ve been working for this great bank for over 20 years and taken up every share offer we ever had,” he told the HR director. “Not that long ago my shares were worth over £200,000, today they are worth less than £20,000. My retirement plans are ruined. What do you advise me to do?”

Aside from the worryingly typical fact that employees continue to hold vast proportions of their personal wealth in one single share, the downfall of the bank is a stark reminder as to how quickly the love affair between employer and employee can be broken. One minute you are working for a reputable, long-standing financial institution doing a job which your friends consider to be an honest way to earn a living. The next minute, you’re part-public owned, personally out of pocket and uncertain about your future employment. And perhaps the hardest part is that cocktail party (or more likely, kids’ birthday party) conversation about greed, incompetence and your role in the current financial meltdown.

Damaging the physiological contract with employees has always been easy. A single comment about the quality of a set of cut-glass sherry decanters (complete, famously, with six glasses on a silver tray) and your employees are left working for a company associated with selling goods of dubious quality. In 1991 Gerald Ratner, then chief executive of the UK high street jeweller Ratners, gave a speech to the Institute of Directors’ annual conference in which he jokingly described the decanter set as “total crap”. The speech remains a great example of how a corporate brand can be virtually destroyed in a careless breath — the value of the group fell by £500m in the months following the speech — and is one that no HR professional could have saved. But many others have been tarnished through operational mistakes. Accusations of improper propane trading and the accident at its Texas City left BP’s reputation tainted in recent years. Not helpful when you’ve invested years in creating employees who live and breathe the brand and who believe that BP is a global force for good.

Employees in many organisations are also losing the sympathy of customers. It seems like the public may even want to take on the role of compensation manager — celebrity-led Facebook campaigns have as much power as the anti X-Factor voters in influencing how much bankers get paid. The next general election is likely to be a vote for a party that freezes public sector

pay and one that reduces it. Either way, there is a growing belief that civil servants need a lot less hugging for doing their jobs than we all thought.

Some of the tension in the employment relationship is, on the face of it, quite irrational. Take British Airways, for example. On the face of things, it’s obvious that running an airline is a precarious business, particularly in the current economic climate and especially when you consider the crippling debt of their huge pension costs.

So what can HR do to help? My first piece of advice would be, be honest and confront the facts. When CEO Mark Hunter launched Molson Coors UK, he branded his turnaround strategy as “from surviving to winning”.

“We needed to help staff understand the brutal facts behind our business and industry. This meant that we could provide the fundamental context for all the changes we needed to make,” said Kirsty Derry, HR director. “When the profits from two in every five pints of beer are simply funding staff pensions, you’ve got some serious headlines to get everyone’s attention. It was the responsibility of our leaders to be honest about the challenges we faced. Our honest approach helped us raise engagement scores from 76% in 2008 to 88% in 2009.” Their desire to embrace their staff resulted in a new employment brand, beautifully titled “Love Beer, Work Here”.

Paul Farley, head of reward at BA, describes the potential disconnect of employees being engaged with the company they originally chose to join rather than with a very different company which exists today. Bank employees have become civil servants. Postal workers at the formerly

Working to keep the flame alive‘‘� ’’

Employees often struggle to come to terms with the

fact that the company they joined has changed. Wanting

things to be like “the good old days”, when coupled with denial of the true problem, is

a dangerous human trait.

government-owned Royal Mail no longer work for a protected monopoly. And some companies have changed beyond recognition. A great example is staff at Lehman Brothers who are now in the business of winding down an insolvent entity — not building the wealth of a global investment icon.

Paul argues that employees often struggle to come to terms with the fact that the company they joined has changed. Wanting things to be like “the good old days”, when also coupled with denial of the true problem, is a dangerous human trait. This leads to apparently irrational behaviour and a desire by employees to have an employment deal that is decades out of date. Continued strike threats from BA cabin crew demonstrate a clear example of this. Paul explains how BA has taken the extraordinary measure of personally calling and writing individually to all 14,000 cabin crew to explain why changes are necessary and to set out the consequences of strike action, including the loss of eligibility for staff travel benefits. Make no mistake, this is “hard talk” not “pillow talk” and reflects the frustration of other employees who have made sacrifices to support BA’s survival and who feel this is a long overdue wake up call.

My second piece of advice to HR is, take a look at employee engagement. HR has the opportunity to turn the perceived soft topic of employee engagement into a hard-nosed, top table conversation. If employee engagement is about creating conditions similar to being in love, HR have all the cards required to give that much-needed first kiss and start to recreate an organisation that employees say great things about and have a deep desire to be part of.

But that may mean taking a fresh look at your employment proposition. Many of the banks face some pretty basic issues. Stephen Hester’s recent admission that recruitment is his “single greatest business problem” at the part-nationalised Royal Bank of Scotland is a clear sign that recruiting into banks will be a huge challenge over the coming years; HR will need to be acutely in-tune with the prevailing mood in order to create a new employment deal that will attract new talent and will retain those who are still resentful at the downfall of their great company. One of the obvious areas for improvement is leadership communication.

Which brings me to the third piece of advice: re-build trust in your leaders and your values. For staff to move on, they probably need to hear leaders say “sorry” as they begin the long journey to rebuild trust. If you have lost a personal fortune, you are going to want to blame someone and without an apology this bad feeling could last for years. And for organisations that have made wave after wave of redundancies and are announcing pay freezes, now is the time to be truthful about what’s next. Are your promises that things are going to get better a hollow soundbite?

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Leaders must also demonstrate the values that really matter. Partners at the global financial services company Goldman Sachs have sent a strong signal to staff by capping their own pay to acknowledge their personal responsibilities. This can only help improve the credibility of their leadership teams and external reputation. BP introduced a compulsory training programme, “passport to work”, for all traders in response to the US trading scandal. This was an important step in sending a very clear message that BP was and would remain an ethical trading organisation.

Jackie Hopgood, head of pensions at Santander, comments on the need of the organisation to be true to its values when it undertook a major change in pension provision last year following the group’s takeover of Abbey National in the UK. “Santander was a new, unknown employer for all of us in the UK. Their brand promised that staff would be better off working for Santander than Abbey.

“The core values include fairness and meritocracy and we spent a considerable effort communicating this as the reason behind making changes to our defined benefit schemes in order to help us create a more attractive and sustainable pensions offer for the other 14,000 UK staff. It was critical that staff trust our motives if we are going to maintain the goodwill between us.”

The final piece of advice: focus on the elements of the deal that will give you the greatest return. With pay and bonuses so tight and in the spotlight, it

might be time to turn to other areas such as training and development to help with the courting process.

Sarah Lewis, head of HR and a managing director at Lehman Brothers in administration, explains the need to “capture and sell” the employee experience: “It’s important that we help our staff understand that despite the fact that our firm has entered administration, the employees here are in a unique situation. With our team of like-minded, focused professionals, they continue to make a significant contribution, develop their skills and — ultimately — for many employees this experience will enhance their future career opportunities. Understanding what individuals gain from working at Lehman Brothers is an essential message for retaining our current team and for when we need to bring people on board. There are real opportunities here for high achieving talented individuals to continue to develop and build their careers.”

So the message for employers seems to be that honesty and trust are key factors in the process; something that any marriage guidance counsellor will tell you when talking about how to maintain a special relationship. HR needs to work on engaging its employees in new ways and, with the right focus, the flame can certainly be kept alive.

Kevin Chapman is a director with PricewaterhouseCoopers Human Resource Services. kevin.chapman@uk.pwc.com

topic author

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In spite of a CEO’s best efforts, he or she is not always viewed by employees in the way he or she intended. But this is a problem that HR can help to solve.

Tackling an image problemLeadership Dr Phyl Johnson

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The recession has been, and continues to be, a period of deep uncertainty for organisations of all shapes and sizes. At best staying competitive and at worst simply staying afloat have been the priorities for corporate leaders. But in this current period of flux, with many national economies now out of recession and others heading in the same general direction, should the tempo inside our organisations be turning once again to strategic change, innovation and the search for competitive advantage?

We are simultaneously in but also need to head out of recession, and this creates a challenging situation for leaders and their HR directors alike. Telling the team that the heat is off, the business is back and the skies are turning blue too early could lead the cultural tempo of the business into “easy street” too soon. Alternatively, leaving it too late to enliven the pace of adaptation and perhaps pioneering change could see your organisation left behind. The way forward is not at all clear for many leaders, but one thing almost certainly remains true: doing nothing will impact. The question is, what do we do?

Cost cutting and recent job losses mean that many organisations are simply not in a position to envision a bold future, much less allocate the budget to achieve it. But I would like to put forward a simple idea that involves and engages leaders in an organisation, costs nothing, has a subtle impact and begins to establish a new rhythm that is all about readiness for change while delivering business as usual.

In my experience, HR professionals are supremely well-positioned and skilled to help choreograph leaders to set the right rhythm for change. After all, now is the moment, on the cusp of change when a leader who knows what we do not know, who has an eye to the future and, whether prophet or fool, gets people in the organisation thinking about the world beyond today, will empower the bravest and brightest employees to sense a change and be driven to have an edge.

Let us start with the academic research I have undertaken alongside colleagues from two UK business schools. Our starting point was the idea that the way in which employees read their CEO (and other power holders) reveals something of how they read the strategy of their organisation. Our research found that how the CEO of a firm was perceived by the employees was a media that could reveal where the shared cultural mind of an organisation stood in terms of its attitude to change.

It seemed that something called “projected CEO-identity” (how employees imagine the CEO to be) kept pace with employees reactions to, and experiences of, a lengthy period of strategic change. In the early stages of change, when the tangible effects on employees had yet to bite, the personality of the CEO was cast in a heroic light. Then, unsurprisingly as

employees started to directly witness and feel change, the projected persona of the CEO became more villainous. Finally, when the change was embedded into the hearts and minds of employees, the CEO was seen as a guardian of their cultural ideals.

A good metaphor for this process is a caricature. It is as though employees (alone, or more commonly together through gossip and stories) conjure caricatures of the CEO and other powerful or interesting leaders in the organisation. These are imagined images of people and have ideas, values, motives and agendas that employees unconsciously use to make sense of their own experiences of change. So if I am experiencing the organisational climate negatively, I am more rather than less likely to turn the boss into a villain and vice versa.

It is, perhaps, our role in the world of HR to encourage leaders to become aware that they have this image and enable leaders to make good use of it

Tackling an image problem23

‘‘� ’’It is as though employees (alone,

or more commonly together through gossip and stories)

conjure caricatures of the CEO and other powerful or interesting

leaders in the organisation. Employees unconsciously use

this image to make sense of their own experiences of

change. So if I am experiencing the organisational climate

negatively, I am more rather than less likely to turn the boss

into a villain and vice versa.

© 2009 PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. All rights reserved. ‘PricewaterhouseCoopers’ refers to PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (a limited liability partnership in the United Kingdom) or, as the context requires, the PricewaterhouseCoopers global network or other member firms of the network, each of which is a separate and independent legal entity.

What’s your greatest asset – your employees, or your relationship with them?

At PwC our Human Resources Services team take an end-to-end view of employee engagement. Whether you need to diagnose the effectiveness of your HR and communication functions in driving engagement, you want to measure engagement and its effect on business performance or need to implement effective engagement strategies, we have the experience to help.

To find out more, contact Angela Mohtashemi on 0207 804 0952 or at angela.mohtashemi@uk.pwc.com

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to send the right messages about strategic change. In fact, all of us have the potential in our relationships with other people to be active in our image management. But when power is around, as it is for our leaders and people in positions of influence, the larger the opportunity. The simple reason behind this is that we have an unconscious need to keep testing and retesting who the people are that have power and influence over us. So the end result in organisations is that we boss-watch.

The downside of this is that if a leader is inactive in his or her own image management, he or she is at the mercy of the character (or, to be more realistic, caricature) that the employees create for him or her — he or she has less space to act. The upside of a well-managed and more expansive action space is that it can be used in many ways to help employees link into the themes of and deliver a strategic agenda.

During my research I coached one CEO to encourage him to disrupt the identity being projected on to him by his employees. This allowed him to amplify and soften aspects of his behaviour in order to send the right message to his employees and, in turn, to allow the rhythm of change the employees unconsciously experienced to move to his beat.

If CEOs and other leaders in an organisation are able to adapt their behaviour to produce a projected identity that has a desirable resonance with the direction they wish the organisation to travel, then the argument is that employees will be more of a mind to follow a new path before it has become any part of a formal change management process. My view is that although specific and explicit statements of a change of gear may not feel appropriate just yet, CEOs and other power brokers in an organisation can express themselves to begin to make their organisations fighting-fit for the next economic climate they face.

It is critical that the best and brightest employees’ minds are turned toward exploration, innovation and confidence in the competitive position of the firm long before competitors have woken up. The key role in this for the thought leaders of the organisation is to have one foot in the here and now and one foot in the future.

Now is the time for leaders to stimulate their employees’ curiosity about “what does the boss think the future holds? Are we OK? What is around the corner?” Now is the time for leaders to use who they are to lead employees toward a future that they have already envisioned, and on some level walked ahead and made camp in.

How to achieve this? Not with memos, committees project groups, market research or town meetings but with aspects of behaviour closer to home —

language, attention, and boldness. Dropping them in an overt, repetitive and at times exaggerated way into their caricature’s performance can create a subtle shift in the personality of the imagined figure that inhabits their action space — a leader, and so by inference a culture that is ready for action:

• Language — encourage leaders to bring into their linguistic practice (words, phrases, catch phrases and stories) themes of curiosity, courage and exploration.

• Attention — coaching leaders to pay overt attention to their noticing-of and focusing-on areas of initiative (from specific areas of the business down to moments in a meeting) that are innovating and are challenging of the status quo. This signals an attraction towards change.

• Boldness — a culture that is ready to change, compete and win has a cultural tempo more associated with ambition than with austerity and survival. It is important for leaders to project now that which will be needed tomorrow. So in their daily dealings with employees, as well as more spotlit moments, leaders need to think about increasing the volume and intensity of their challenges and question assumptions that others take for granted. This sends a signal that things are about to change. Also, positively re-enforcing free and slightly over-confident thinking sends out subtle ripples of boldness and projects the persona of a leader with forward momentum in mind.

As I said earlier, doing nothing will impact. So now is the time to use that resource to ensure that your organisation does not sleepwalk past opportunities to get ahead of the competition.

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Dr Phyl Johnson is a partner with Strategy Explorers(www.strategyexplorers.com) and lecturers in Organisational Behaviour at several European Business Schools.

‘‘� ’’If a leader is inactive in their own

image management, him or her are at the mercy of the character that

the employees create for them.

topic author

Copenhagen may have stalled, but businesses still realise that they need to do more than pay lip service to sustainability if they are to attract and engage Generation Y. HR can work with their sustainability colleagues to make a real difference.

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Linking people to sustainabilityEnvironment Liz Loxton

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It would be hard for the average person not to notice that, along with widespread public dismay over politicians’ failure to come to a meaningful agreement at last year’s climate change summit in Copenhagen, a general sense of disappointment prevails around the issue of sustainability. But while politicians continue to dodge the issue, the debate around changing people’s behaviour may be about to find new impetus.

Many business leaders appear to remain privately sceptical about the realities of global warming but are more readily persuaded by the needs of their own operations. Businesses are continuing to scramble when it comes to attracting the brightest and best talent and are finding that they cannot afford not to pay attention to the views of the next generation on climate change and social responsibility. Enlightened self-interest within the business community may just be enough to start changing behaviour within large corporations.

Matthew Thorogood, the partner who heads up the PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Human Resource Services client offering on sustainability, argues that the latest generation of recruits — the millennials — are bringing a new dynamic to the war for talent. “Whether or not you believe in climate change, the next generation think it is really important and we are starting to see organisations respond to that, particularly in the people space,” he says.

The failure of Copenhagen, says Thorogood, has at least had the unintended consequence of showing that sustainability and action on climate change cannot be left to the politicians. What is more, the level of commitment of millennials to the cause of sustainability is becoming difficult to disregard. In a 2008 survey carried out by PwC, 86% said they would consider leaving an employer whose corporate social responsibility record failed to impress them, while 75% of those who believed their employer was suitably committed to environmental causes and sustainable development returned the favour with a high level of engagement with their organisation, according to an earlier study by Ipsos MORI (see box overleaf).

“This is a talent retention and attraction tool,” says Thorogood. “Why wouldn’t you invest time in this space rather than putting statements in the annual report that amount to ‘greenwash’?”

Engaging with sustainability provides an opportunity for HR professionals to make a strategic contribution towards their organisation. By embedding sustainability in people strategy, in areas such as onboarding, development, recruitment and reward, HR will support what is a key strategic objective for many companies, while simultaneously improving employee engagement, motivation and retention. HR can also play a critical role by working with corporate sustainability colleagues to engage leadership via sustainability leadership development programmes and, equally importantly, by embedding consideration of sustainability into leadership development programmes generally.

“Our clients are realising that they need to increase their leaders’ awareness of sustainability issues and of opportunities to enable them to take ownership for leading the changes required for the organisation to be successful in a low carbon economy, and to meet the expectations of the millennials’ generation,” says Geoff Lane, a partner in PwC’s sustainability and climate change team.

Matilda Venter, a director in PwC’s Human Resource Services division, says the HR function — hitherto sitting on the sidelines of the sustainability movement — has begun to engage with the issue. HR professionals, she says, have struggled to see what their role should be in the corporate social responsibility arena. “As we start to come out of this constrained environment, businesses are going to have to look at how they promote sustainability and provide employees with information and support,” says Venter.

The problem, she says, is that when it comes to operating in a more sustainable way many people struggle to move beyond the basics, like recycling. But HR professionals, if they build their knowledge about

27

Linking people to sustainability‘‘� ’’

“How many organisations have undertaken to build in, at a

senior level, measures to reduce their carbon footprint? Very few.”

People stumble when it comes to the practicalities, it seems.

What do we mean by “sustainability”?

For the purpose of this article sustainability means “sustainable development” or “corporate (social) responsibility”. It typically involves three aspects: social — for example, an organisation’s impact on its own people and the wider communities in which it operates; environmental — its impact on the environment; and economic — its own financial sustainability and wider direct and indirect economic impact.

successful and measurable green initiatives, have the potential to fulfil their remit on building talent within the organisation and also have a positive impact on employee morale — itself a key ingredient when it comes to attracting and retaining the best.

PwC speaks from experience when it comes to seeing how environmentally-minded practices can create a virtuous circle of cutting costs, empowering individual employees to act in a more environmentally-conscious way and helping to fund efforts in the local community to do the same. The UK firm wanted to encourage energy-efficient practices in two local schools, which it achieved by installing energy meters at the two sites. It funded this initiative by redirecting the money it saved on energy after power meters were installed on three floors of one of its own offices.

Venter says creating a sense of competition between the three floors successfully encouraged individuals to switch off lights, monitor their printing and generally trim their use of resources. Crucially, employees were able to take decisions themselves on energy consumption and could see tangible results on savings made when the reduced usage was reported back to them. “People commented very positively on the way in which they could adjust

their behaviour to be more environmentally-friendly,” she says. Reactions were also fed back from the schools, with videos of the children and teachers screened at team meetings — a move that helped to build a sense of connection. “It became not just about energy consumption but about building more of a community,” says Venter.

While some organisations have made very public stands on their social and environmental commitments, environmentally-conscious reviews of benefits and reward policies remain thin on the ground. “How many organisations have undertaken to build in, at a senior level, measures to reduce their carbon footprint? Very few,” says Thorogood.

People stumble when it comes to the practicalities, it seems. When it comes to securing business, face-to-face meetings win out over video-conferencing, even if hundreds or even thousands of air miles are racked up in the process. Thorogood believes that, amazingly, the connection between being energy efficient and cost efficient has yet to hit home. People seem to lack the confidence and the will to put greener policies in place. “A bit of glazing-over occurs,” he says, “a sense of ‘I need to speak to an expert before I do something on this’.”

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Talent and sustainability: the figures

86% of “millennials” would consider leaving an employer whose corporate responsibility behaviour no longer meets their expectations.

PwC Managing Tomorrow’s People, December 2008

75% of employees who consider their employers to be paying enough attention to environment protection and sustainable development exhibit high levels of commitment.

Engaging Employees through Corporate Responsibility, Ipsos MORI Employee Relationship Management, November 2006

Employees most committed to their employer perform 20% better and are 87% less likely to leave the organisation.

Driving Performance and Retention through Employee Engagement, Corporate Leadership Council, 2004

74% of CEOs recognise their organisations’ responsibility to create management structures that reward long-term thinking as a critical or important element of a solution to climate change.

PwC 12th Annual CEO Survey, 2009

Sustainability: questions for business leaders

• Do your employees believe they work for an organisation that acts responsibly towards society and the environment?

• Are your leaders visibly and proactively demonstrating their commitment to sustainability?

• Are you trying to encourage behaviour change around sustainability?

• Do your reward programmes support your sustainable objectives?

• Can you measure the impact of your sustainability programme on your people’s motivation and commitment levels? Or on the success of your recruitment and retention activities?

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To take sustainability further into their businesses, HR professionals will need to engage their own, possibly sceptical, leaders. Venter argues that in a post-credit crunch world, however, leaders are likely to be more open to ideas, but HR professionals will still need to consider how they influence people and how they address the issue with the C-suite. “HR directors need to think about who they are talking to and what will appeal to them,” she says.

Recent work with a FTSE 100 hospitality company demonstrated the need to try to reconcile the views of the executive team with the company employees. PwC worked with the chief executive’s office to gather the opinions of directors on sustainability and future strategy. The firm also surveyed 5000 employees on their views of the company’s approach, facilitated workshops with senior management to support development of the strategy and seconded a member of the PwC sustainability and climate change team to further strategy implementation.

To persuade the executive team, HR professionals need to pitch arguments on sustainability at a strategic level. Selling sustainable policies to the finance director, for instance, means focusing on costs, but there is also an opportunity to sell the idea that a sound environmental policy is an effective means of increasing motivation, and therefore productivity. For the CEO the debate is also likely to resonate if it is focused around retaining the right talented individuals.

Persuading the people in charge of an organisation on sustainability has real merit since it is more likely to help influence actions. Policy change needs to be driven from the top.

‘‘� ’’

In a post-credit crunch world, leaders are likely to

be more open to ideas, but HR professionals will still

need to consider how they influence people and how

they address the issue.

topic author

When Andrea Plasschaert’s husband was offered a job in Geneva, she worried she would have to leave her job as a communications manager in PricewaterhouseCoopers’ London office. “It was a great opportunity for him so we had to take it,”

she recalls, “but I loved my job and didn’t want to leave.” Fortunately there was a solution to the problem. “I talked to my manager, and we agreed that I could work remotely,” she explains. “Through phone, e-mail and the internal instant messaging system I can do everything I used to do in the London office, such as writing articles for newsletters or connecting our experts around the world with the media, from our office in Geneva.”

Andrea is one of an increasing number of people who are working remotely. As Guy Fletcher, innovation specialist at e-learning provider ThirdForce, says: “Remote working is becoming more widespread. 11% of the UK workforce are now remote, which equates to 3.5 million workers. And 60% of all new businesses last year were launched from home.”

There are, of course, many drivers behind this dramatic shift. One of the most significant is Generation Y. “Many businesses are finding that the traditional nine to five doesn’t necessarily suit everyone,” says Andrew Millard, director of eCommerce, EMEA, for remote access service providers Citrix Online. “The rise of this tech-savvy, web-enabled Generation Y is bringing new technologies into the workplace, from instant messaging and Twitter to web collaboration, remote access and home-working tools that are internet enabled.”

And of course many employees welcome the chance to avoid the commute and the office. However, many employers are equally enthusiastic. As the recession drags on into a second year, businesses look for yet more ways to cut costs, and so reducing the need for expensive office space and all the associated utility and IT costs becomes increasingly attractive. Remote working can also help a company reduce its environmental impact, something that many are now very keen to do.

Furthermore, there is evidence that working remotely can make workers more productive. Business communications provider Avaya recently commissioned research among more than 3,500 workers across France, Germany, Italy, Russia and the UK. It found that 96% of flexible workers have more time because they no longer have to commute, that this equates to a saving of 39 working days each year for every worker, and that crucially, 21% of workers use that extra time to do more work.

Avaya also discovered that 75% of employees would consider some sort of reduction in their remuneration package in exchange for flexible working. On average they would be prepared to sacrifice 11% of their remuneration, but 9% would sacrifice more than 20% of their salary in exchange for flexible

working. It is little wonder then that remote working is becoming so popular — to the extent that many observers are predicting a time when companies will no longer need to have an office.

Venue-finding service Conferences Group allows all its sales agents to work entirely remotely, and Clare Webster, HR Manager, comments: “We’re a forward-thinking company, and we value our staff highly, so we’ve invested heavily in IP telephony and remote access software so our sales agents can work anywhere in the world. This way of working fits with modern living and contemporary social structures. It helps us attract the best salespeople, and it also means we don’t come to a standstill when there’s a bit of snow!”

With all these potential benefits it can be easy for a business to get carried away with the idea of remote working. It is, though, a major change and so needs to be introduced carefully. The first issue is the technical infrastructure, and ensuring that your servers can handle the volume of remote access. Get this wrong and you don’t have remote workers, you have an absent workforce. It is also essential to give proper consideration to the issue of information security. William Beer, director in PwC’s information security

With more of us working remotely, will there come a time when we talk with nostalgia of the daily commute?

Is this the end of t he office?Remote working Alex Blyth

30 Ten top tipsFounded in 2004, Yuuguu provides web conferencing technology and is an entirely virtual company. It has never had a head office. Anish Kapoor, co-founder and CEO offers these ten tips on getting it right:

1 Find the right people. Virtual working doesn’t suit everyone’s personality or it may be the wrong time in their career.

2 There isn’t a one size fits all. You need a strategy to suit different people.

3 Bear in mind that some roles may not suit remote working. 4 Have a clear vision. All team members must be clear on what the

business is trying to achieve.5 Trust your team. If you employ the right people, they will repay your

trust in delivering projects.6 Measure output not hours.7 Communicate with direct reports regularly. Speak once a day or

every other day at the least.8 Don’t allow email arguments as they reflect a lack of

communication.9 Get together to socialise.10 Never make a decision in a meeting. Discuss and debate during a

call and then make a final decision.

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practice offers this advice: “Get people to lock their computers when they’re not at them. This can avoid problems from housemates who work for competitors or children doing something they shouldn’t to the corporate system. You then need to do all the things you do with data in the office, such as encrypted hard disks and so on.”

However, it is perhaps the HR department that faces the two most intractable challenges with remote working: firstly, how to ensure that staff are actually working when you can’t see them, and secondly, how to build and maintain a cohesive company culture when staff see each other so infrequently?

“It’s about building a positive relationship of trust between the company and its employees,” says Sean O’Hare, a partner with PwC’s Human Resource Services practice. “There’s no simple solution. You need to communicate clearly and effectively with your staff. Let them know what you expect of them and monitor their outputs while you build the trust. Do all this properly and it’s really very rare that people will abuse your trust.”

For Fletcher at ThirdForce building a strong culture is key to the success of remote working arrangements: “Working remotely can be a lonely experience unless the workers are provided with a support infrastructure that enables them to feel a part of the larger organisation.” He goes to outline how to build that engagement: “Ultimately the key to managing and integrating remote workers is to offer ongoing support programmes that add value to their role. An employee, remote or office based, will feel more empowered to work productively for a company that is forward thinking in its approach to development. The key to success lies in ensuring that remote workers feel included and supported.”

There is much then to get right with remote working, but that is certainly not stopping the many employers and employees who are now embracing it. And this is just the beginning. In a recent survey from collaboration software provider oneDrum of more than 1200 small to medium businesses across the UK, 24% of employees interviewed said that they found themselves working from home more this year than they did last year, and 33% of them said they could do all or most of their job from home.

On top of the existing inducements for individual companies and their staff, the rising cost of city centre property combined with a transport infrastructure that simply cannot sustain more commuters will make remote working an even more attractive option. As Mark Dixon, CEO at virtual office provider Regus concludes: “In a few years’ time many companies are going to look radically different as they rethink the way they recruit, train, motivate and deploy their workforces. In the future our children will reminisce about our daily commute to the office in much the same way as we recall life without the telephone.”

Is this the end of t he office?31

‘‘� ’’Working remotely can be a

lonely experience unless the workers are provided with a

support infrastructure that enables them to feel a part

of the larger organisation.

Cisco

Network provider Cisco has been an enthusiastic adopter of remote working practices. HR Director, UK & Ireland, Charlie Johnston, explains:

“We’re adding 15% to our headcount every year, so we would struggle to provide office space for them all. Our staff also tend to be keen users of new technology and they tell us they want to work remotely. Finally, we are committed to reducing our environmental impact.

“So, four years ago we embarked on a global cultural transformation, allowing and encouraging our staff to work wherever suits them best, be that the office, the home or somewhere else. Even for a technology company the strain on our infrastructure has been enormous, and we’ve had to work hard at building relationships of trust with our staff, but we’ve been very successful at it.”

More than half of the work Cisco staff do is accomplished away from their desks. 40 per cent of its staff report to a manager in a different city, state or country. It is a remarkable transformation and perhaps the best proof of the success of the programme is that Cisco has one of the lowest rates of voluntary staff attrition in the IT industry, with just five per cent choosing to leave each year.

Johnston concludes:

“Be brave. Don’t see this as a threat — it’s a great opportunity.”

topic author

Corporate dress can be a can of worms but to what extent should HR dictate what employees wear to work?

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Are you what you wear?Dressing for work Beth Holmes

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A firefighter doesn’t have an enormous amount in common with a priest but there is one workplace dilemma that neither has to worry about, whatever other challenges they face — that of what to wear.

For those of us not in the position of being able to declare our occupation or rank within a profession sartorially, the world of corporate dress can be a minefield. Not only has what is acceptable changed, but the blurred line between what is appropriate and what is not has seen a rise in formal dress codes being introduced. This in turn throws up questions of personal style over corporate expectation, and the fine line between prescription and discrimination. As ever, HR is on the front line.

White collar workplace clothing has changed through the years. In the more austere and traditionalist decades of the past, like the 1950s, a suit and tie — possibly a bowler hat — was as much a uniform as a cassock. Women in the office would be expected to wear a skirt and blouse, certainly not trousers. Although there was a gradual relaxation of corporate sartorial style throughout the next 20 or 30 years the biggest change happened in the 1980s. Casual wear entered corporate culture thanks to technology companies who didn’t care what their techno-savvy dweebs looked like, only that they could come up with the next big operating system (and often the dweeb had founded the company in the first place). This more relaxed approach was contagious and it wasn’t long before old school industries started to accept more casual attire in the office, with many of them introducing policies like ‘dress down Friday’ when workers were ‘allowed’ to dress more casually.

“Dress down is both a blessing and a nightmare,” says image consultant and personal brand coach Penny Sloane, founder of Penny Sloane Associates. “When we all had to be suited and booted, it may have been boring but in many ways it was so much easier because we kind of had a known ‘uniform’. People, and especially women, find business casual much harder to get right. Part of the problem is that a business may adopt the notion of dress down but then fail to define it properly so it leaves people in the dark as to how casual they can go.”

Running parallel to this is the fact that, contrary to popular supposition, the shirt and tie has not been left behind in the last century — in fact the credit crunch may well be responsible for its resurgence. “Interestingly, when recession hits we tend to up the game in terms of the way we approach office dress. The old saying ‘dress for the job you want’ has never been more true although at the moment we could add ‘to keep’,” claims Sloane.

But why should any of us, employers or employees, really care about what we wear? “A picture paints a thousand words and the way we choose to package

or present ourselves can either support who we are and what we have to offer or, negate and undermine it,” explains Sloane.

More crucial, though, is the correlation between how you look and how successful you could be in your career. “Looking good at work is important if you want to be taken seriously,” says fashion expert Nicky Hambleton-Jones, presenter of the television series Ten Years Younger. “It’s important to reflect a little of your personality in what you wear. I always try to wear bright colours, and I have my signature glasses. Maintain your personality and you’ll stand out — and that’s how you get noticed.”

It isn’t just an individual’s personality that is reflected by the way they present themselves, but that of the company as well. Would Google or Apple have their hip reputations if their employees all dressed like 1960s accountants? Sally Bailey, chief executive of the clothing company White Stuff, argues that her organisation functions well when everyone feels relaxed, and that includes in what they wear. “More and more businesses are realising that you don’t have to wear a black suit to actually do well and for your company to do well,” she says. “At White Stuff we feel comfortable coming to work in shorts;

33

Are you what you wear?‘‘� ’’

Dress code is a part of a company’s culture and it

works best when it reflects the values, ethos and brand of that

business. A lot of businesses don’t think about the image and impact of their employees in the

same way and with the same vigour that they might approach

the image and impact of their company brand…and yet, their

people are their company brand.

What’s in for Spring?Fashion expert Nicky Hambleton-Jones looks at the workplace trends women can expect for the Spring/Summer 2010 season.

“Trends from the catwalk are easily replicated within the workplace. For Spring/Summer 2010, tailoring is still prevalent, allowing women to power dress without looking too stiff and masculine.

“The trench coat is as popular as ever. You can invest in a designer one or easily pick up a fab style on the high street. This classy, classic coat is one that can be worn over anything at almost any time of year.

“You should never be without your wardrobe staple, the classic white shirt. This is perfect for the early-week meeting with

a black pencil skirt or a more relaxed ‘dress down Friday’ as it goes with just about anything and always looks stylish. Team with a flattering pair of jeans — invest in a designer pair for the most flattering look or a tailored pair of black or grey trousers.

“Spring and summer office attire is very different from winter work wear. It means you can pull off colours that you wouldn’t be able to during the cold weather such as bold brights, pretty pastel colours and white. Adding a bright colour to a navy or black suit or skirt will instantly update your winter look without you having to invest too heavily. Nudes and pastels are set to be a huge trend this season — add a nude top under a tailored jacket for a bang on trend summer look. I am a big fan of ruffled blouses and these look great for office wear.”

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35

that makes us all happy and if we’re happy then we work better.”

“Dress code is a part of a company’s culture and it works best when it reflects the values, ethos and brand of that business,” says Sloane. “In my experience a lot of businesses don’t think about the image and impact of their employees in the same way and with the same vigour that they might approach the image and impact of their company brand…and yet, their people are their company brand.”

Hambleton-Jones agrees: “How you and your employees dress speaks volumes about your company and its image and serves as a clue to your culture. Too far out of bounds, it can embarrass or offend people with whom you want to do business. Inappropriate dress could potentially unravel business deals and other types of support.”

Which is why, she says, “it’s a good idea for companies to adopt a dress code so everyone is on the same page. The dress code should be set out for employees as soon as they begin work to avoid any confusion or embarrassment on their first day. I have nothing against freedom of expression, but employers do have the right to determine what appropriate dress for the business is.”

This introduces an interesting point: With an increasingly litigious society the pressure is on companies to strike the balance between introducing reasonable guidelines while still allowing for personal style. This is where sensible professionals bring in the lawyers. “If the standards in the dress code are reasonable and apply broadly the same standards for men as for women, an employer can oblige an employee to adhere to a dress code,” says Michael McDonough, principal of employment law specialists Michael McDonough & Associates. “If an employee departs from this or refuses to continue to wear the ‘proper’ attire for the job then he or she can be subject to disciplinary proceedings for ‘refusing to obey a lawful order’ and if the refusal persists it may be fair to dismiss the employee as a last resort.”

Dress codes usually arise in the context of discrimination law and there are some obvious areas of sensitivity, religion being a key one. Generally, if a dress code contains a generally applied provision that puts persons of a particular religion or belief at a disadvantage it will be actionable discrimination unless the dress requirement is proven to be ‘a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim’.

Two recent UK cases on clothing and alleged religious discrimination show how law is applied when tested. In Azmi v Kirklees Metropolitan Borough Council the Employment Appeal Tribunal held that it was legitimate for a school to require a Muslim teaching assistant to remove her veil while in class

as although this was indirectly discriminatory it was a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim. The aim being interacting with, and educating, the children. In Nadia Eweida v British Airways a British Airways employee working at Heathrow airport was suspended (and then reinstated) for wearing a Christian cross. She lost her employment tribunal claim for religious discrimination, a decision that was later upheld on appeal. BA subsequently changed its corporate policy to allow all religious symbols to be worn openly.

Of course it is likely that the law will continue being tested and not just under the British constitution. Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights allows for the right of ‘freedom of expression’ but the court rejected a claim from a transvestite that this allowed him to wear women’s clothing at work. “It is my view that these type of cases are rare and if HR professionals ensure that staff are fully aware of dress standards and bring breaches to their attention they will have very few problems,” says McDonough.

Prospects for further growth in the Middle East are under jeopardy because of a serious shortage of talent. This is where HR can make a difference, writes Christopher Box.

The West has many set perceptions about the Middle East. One is that it never snows on the burning land at the heart of the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC). But the fact is that Jordan, Lebanon and Syria all see snow during the winter season.

Contrary to popular assumption, the Middle East does not mean desert, people living in tents and driving a Mercedes Benz. No one can deny the fact that GCC countries are built on sand, but that hasn’t stopped Dubai from constructing the tallest tower in the world and Qatar from building the world’s largest gas-to-liquids plant.

The Middle East in itself is a complex environment. It is true that most Arabs speak Arabic, but what most people don’t realise is that not all Arabs understand each other. Arabs share classical Arabic, but it is only used when writing and is hardly spoken. It may surprise many to know that Somalia, for example, is an Arab country that has its own distinctive language. Islamic traditions, cultures and a family-focused society are among the major common features in the Middle East, but day-to-day traditions and cultures differ considerably. Many see the Middle East as one entity, but that would be like referring to Europe as one country.

Variations within the Middle East are not confined to language and dress but extend to wealth. The GCC countries have wealth from oil and gas. Qatar has the largest single gas reserve in the world but 10 years ago would happily have swapped it for oil. This view soon changed with advancements in liquified gas technology. Qatar is now the land of growth and opportunity and the future is looking promising. Its income per capita of US$67,000 is one

of the highest in the world, Qatar’s national vision for 2030 is to ‘transform’ into an advanced country based on four ‘pillars’: human development, social development, economic development and environmental development.

It’s impossible to talk about HR without discussing the GCC’s tourism capital, the much-developed Dubai. The financial crisis has had a much-publicised impact on growth and as a result the government is taking greater steps to risk-manage its investments, which will have a knock-on effect on organisations. The recent crisis in Dubai has led many expats to return home and in the current climate, organisational focus may change to look at issues such as redundancy and redeployment. Employers will need to revisit their recruitment strategy to adapt to the changes in the market.

HR has played a key part in the growth and development of the GCC countries, introducing initiatives that allow organisations to grow by focusing on their employees. The booming economies are highlighting the need for effective talent management as companies invest in their people to retain, reward and engage their employees.

The diversity of the population in the Middle East and the need for top-class performance is reshaping how HR is being viewed. Previously seen as an administration function, HR is now recognised as playing a more strategic role in organisations. In Qatar, one in three believes that motivating employees and sustaining an engaged work force are their biggest challenges.

There are ongoing concerns that a shortage of talent combined with the growth of the region will cause sustainability problems. The challenge of employing female workers due to cultural and Islamic constraints is raising the pressure, especially into the private sector. And with expats historically dominating the working population in most of the GCC, the challenges are growing as more return home.

In the Middle East, the concept of being an ‘employer of choice’ is relatively new. Organisations must realise the power of strategic HR policies in improving engagement and retention, and show an increased willingness to develop HR policies to ensure talent supply issues do not jeopardise long-term growth.

The future of the Middle East is looking dynamic but human capital remains the number one priority. The critical challenge that organisations face is to adapt the right tools to deliver sustainable value in a constantly changing environment.

Solid foundations

topic author

Letter from Qatar Christopher Box

36

Christopher Box is a partner with PricewaterhouseCoopers, currently based in Qatar.

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References and further reading

Page 6

PwC’s 5th Economic Crime Survey can be downloaded at

http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/economic-crime-survey/download-economic-crime-people-culture-controls.jhtml

Page 14

David MacLeod and Nita Clarke’s report on employee engagement and its potential benefits for organisations and employees can be found at:

http://www.berr.gov.uk/whatwedo/employment/employee-engagement/index.html

Towers Perrin is now known as Towers Watson following its merger with Watson Wyatt. www.towerswatson.com

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PwC’s 2008 report Managing Tomorrow’s People can be found at

http://www.pwc.co.uk/eng/issues/managing_tomorrows_people_the_future_of_work_to_2020.html

For more information on Ipsos Mori’s work on employee relationship management, see

http://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchspecialisms/ipsosloyalty/erm.aspx

PwC’s latest annual global CEO survey can be seen at

http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/ceo-survey/index.jhtml

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Penny Sloane Associates can be contacted on 01844 290280, www.pennysloane.co.uk

Nicky Hambleton-Jones can be contacted on 0845 430 9388, email info@nhjstyle.com, website www.nhjstyle.com

Lookingforward

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Happyengagement

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Leaders’challenge

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Dressingfor work

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HOURGLASSHR

Issue 17 – March 2010 Enhancing value through people

Are your people engaged?HR and sustainability

Where next for remuneration?

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© 2010 PricewaterhouseCoopers. All rights reserved. “PricewaterhouseCoopers” and “PwC” refer to the network of member firms of PricewaterhouseCoopers International Limited (PwCIL). Each member firm is a separate legal entity and does not act as agent of PwCIL or any other member firm. PwCIL does not provide any services to clients. PwCIL is not responsible or liable for the acts or omissions of any of its member firms nor can it control the exercise of their professional judgment or bind them in any way. No member firm is responsible or liable for the acts or omissions of any other member firm nor can it control the exercise of another member firm’s professional judgment or bind another member firm or PwCIL in any way.

The global economic downturn has forced companies to make important and difficult choices about how to manage and motivate their people. As businesses begin to emerge from the crisis, key questions are being asked:

• Is our reward model broken?

• Have we got the right talent deployed in the right places to stay ahead of the competition?

• Do our people have the right skills and flexibility to operate in the emerging environment?

• What are the long term effects of our people cost cutting actions?

• Is our HR operation delivering what the business needs?

Our fourth annual European based conference will focus on what the emerging environment or ‘new normal’ means for reward, pensions, talent management and international mobility.

The conference will feature a diverse range of keynote speakers and will be supported by a comprehensive workshop programme.

To register your interest, please send an email to: HRS.conference.info@uk.pwc.com

Coming out of the crisis:Rethinking and reshaping HR for the ‘new normal’

19-21 May 2010 Grand Hotel Huis ter Duin, Noordwijk aan Zee

Save the datePwC Human Resource Services international conference 2010