Confirm your thought-leadership:
A whitepaper on the Information and Consultation of Employees Regulations, Online Surveying and Reporting
By Graham Jarvis,
Editor of CIMTech International, and media services consultant
Confirm your thought-leadership
A whitepaper on the Information and Consultation of Employees Regulations, Online Surveying and Reporting
Index
About the Firm Group / 3About the Author / 4
Paper: Confirm your thought-leadership
· Benefit from informing and consulting your employees· The three steps to implementation
· So what does the regulation require you to communicate?
· Consider your strategy for the implementation of the regulations
· How can online surveying and reporting tools help?
· Conclusion: better surveys for better business / 5-11
Bibliography: Research sources and further information / 12
About FIRM
Future Information Research Management (FIRM) is ‘the world's leading provider’ of survey & reporting software for Market Research and Enterprise Insight Management (EIM).
Confirmit (http://www.confirmit.com) is used by some of the largest market research agencies and Global 1000 companies. Customers include Accenture, AC Nielsen, Barclay's, Crown Castle, Deloitte & Touche, Dow Jones, Egg, Freeserve, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, PeopleSoft, Progressive Insurance, Symantec, Taylor Nelson Sofres, Toyota and Yahoo!
FIRM is headquartered in Oslo and has offices in London, New York and San Francisco. Confirmit is in addition distributed through partner resellers in Amsterdam, Sydney and Tokyo.
Vision: To revolutionize the survey & reporting process through automation and integration.
Mission: To deliver the number one enterprise survey & reporting software for Market Research and Global 1000 companies.
Values:
· Innovative Technology - FIRM takes great pride in providing innovative and superior technological solutions to an international client base. Our goal is to provide a state-of-the-art software application that is scalable, secure and highly flexible to support our clients' constantly evolving needs.
· Global Commitment - FIRM offers technological solutions to a growing and increasingly sophisticated global market. We are committed to the challenge of meeting the needs of a robust international customer base and to acquiring knowledge about and experience in local markets.
· It is important to remain focused on an overall company mission that has a global perspective, while pursuing and developing strategic global relationships. We are results-oriented and committed to building a healthy company that is attractive to global partners, customers, employees, and shareholders.
· Customer Satisfaction - FIRM strives to meet its customers' needs and maintain customer loyalty through the superior quality of its products and services.
· We commit to emphasizing customer feedback, and to having great respect and understanding of our clients' evolving needs.
· Team Players - FIRM employees are talented individuals who take initiative, assume responsibility and demonstrate commitment to their work and to their colleagues. Individual performance is encouraged and rewarded. All FIRM employees recognize that their individual performance is not possible without the full support of the FIRM team.
· FIRM employees are of the highest quality and integrity. FIRM offers a positive work environment with excellent career opportunities. The management team clearly communicates the strategy and objectives of the company.
· Trust and integrity - Trust and integrity are essential components to the success of all of FIRM's relationships. Trust is essential to acquiring and maintaining long-term success. We gain trust through open and honest communication and by conducting business under the strictest and most honourable code of ethics.
Information source for the above: FIRM - http://www.confimrit.com
About the Author
Graham Jarvis MA is the Editor of the Chartered Institute of Marketing’s Technology group’s e-newsletter (http://www.cimtech.org/newsletter), which goes out each month to around 60,000 subscribers. CIMTech argues that Return on Investment-based marketing should be the driver of all implementations of new technology. Otherwise what is the point?
He is also a media services consultant, and his research and articles have covered a number of compliance issues for his clients, from website accessibility, data protection, flexible working agreements and legislation, the Information and Consultation of Employees Regulations, and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.
Graham has also chaired conferences for the SMi Group, been speaker and panellist at events covering Customer Relationship Management and Business Process Management, and he will be speaking with at the Marketing Operations Management Symposium in June 2005.
He is a member of the Chartered Institute of Journalists, the Chartered Institute of Marketing and the Society of Authors.
Confirm your thought-leadership
A whitepaper on the Information and Consultation of Employees Regulations, Online Surveying and Reporting
The legislative burden upon organisations, both public and private, seems to get heavier and heavier as time goes on. However, some have emerged for very good reasons. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the United States emerged from the Enron and Worldcom scandals, and enforced a greater need for corporate transparency and accountability.
There’s also the Freedom of Information Act, The Working Time Regulations, the Disability Discrimination Act (e.g. website and physical accessibility), the Data Protection Act, an increasing number of laws and regulations that enforce equal opportunities, and now – since it came into force in the United Kingdom in April 2005, regarding organisations of more than 150 employees – there’s the Information and Consultation of Employees Regulations. If your organisation fails to comply, it could face a hefty fine of up to £75,000.
What a nightmare? No, not really! With Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in mind, these shouldn’t be seen as resource-draining interferences into an organisation’s everyday life. If you are able to become a thought-leader, and turn these into opportunities rather than consider them as potential threats, then you will be able to create both financial and economic value for all of your stakeholders.
Therefore the UK’s Direct Marketing Association (DMA) welcomes the new legislation, and it believes that most large companies already have had some sort of information and consultation process in place anyway. However, were these regulations to apply to companies and organisations with one or more employees in the future, the DMA fears that the legislative burden could become disproportionate and unnecessary. Even so, an 11th annual survey by DLA – a law firm – showed that 64% of public sector and 56% of private organisations believe that this legislation is more beneficial than interfering.
Benefit from informing and consulting your employees
“In the DMA’s opinion, happy employees will provide better customer-focused service. If the system becomes cumbersome or too stringent, then this places additional burden upon management, which is not in the general interest of the company.”Source: Michelle Wicker, Solicitor, Employment, Legal and Public Affairs Adviser of the Direct Marketing Association.
According to the European Union, The Information and Consultation of Employees Regulations, should help to make the EU more competitive (Source: 3i – ‘Managing Growth, Management strategies – Cutting through the red tape’, by Emma Davis). Companies should therefore focus more on the benefits of the legislation, which should make them more competitive for the reasons cited below. Little value will be derived from failing to comply and concentrating on its negative aspects.
The key benefits include better staff motivation, retention, less absenteeism, better customer service and acquisition (if staff feel respected, they are more likely to empathise with customers), and this will present – tied together with compliance to other laws – an image of greater corporate social responsibility. The end result could be an increase in a company’s share price, which would please shareholders and even staff if the right incentives were also in place. It will also create a more collaborative and harmonious environment for improving industrial relations, helping employees to better understand the day-to-day issues.
The three steps to implementation
This law will, in the first instance, affect 3% of the UK’s organisations. Due to the potential disproportionate burdens that could be placed upon smaller organisations, the legislation comes into force in three stages:
· 2005 for the aforementioned firms;
· Those with at least 100 staff have until 2006 to complete the full implementation process.
· SMEs, those with less than 50 employees, are being given until 2008;
The regulations establish Works Councils, which are elected representatives of an organisation’s employees. It is their responsibility to work with mangers to facilitate and ensure that the process is followed, and that pre-existing agreements are considered, re-negotiated if and when necessary, and abided by.
The regulations aren’t activated automatically though. At least 10% of an organisation’s employees, as shown by the DTI’s flowchart below, must sign and present a petition before they can be enacted. Part of the employee consultation process would include a ballot, and if less than 40% of the organisation’s employees participate, managers have no legal obligation to consult further or negotiate, where an agreement is required, with their representatives. If there is a pre-existing agreement in place, and less than 40% of the employees respond to any consultation, then that agreement continues.
Source (above flowchart): Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) – ‘High Performance Workplaces; Informing and Consulting Employees, Consultation Document, July 2003.’
So what does the regulation require you to communicate?
‘It’s good to talk’, an article published by Business Plus in January 2005, provides a good summary of the legislation and its requirements. A business must inform and consult with employees about the following:
· The current and future development of the company’s activities and economic situation;
· The situation, structure and probable development of employment, especially where there is a threat to employment;
· Where there is an agreement on decisions likely to lead to substantial changes in work practices or contractual relations.
EuroNews states that the consultation process must be:
· Executed with the appropriate timing, method and content;
· Carried out at the relevant level of management and representation, depending on the subject;
· On the basis of information supplied by the employer and opinion supplied by the employees’ representatives;
· Delivered in such a way that employees’ representatives may be meet the employer and obtain a response, with reasons, to their opinion;
· Done with a view to reaching an agreement on decisions within the scope of the employer.
Consider your strategy for the implementation of the regulations
The Involve and Participation Association (IPA) shows below what can and cannot work when it comes to implementing the regulations. Consider these points to create an effective strategy, one that will benefit all of your stakeholders.
What works well and why? / Why does Information and consultation fail?· Working together to build a shared view of the business and its competitive environment. / · A lack of commitment from senior managers.
· Sharing information widely to enable all participants to have a shared grasp of the context within which decisions are being made. / · A failure to consult at an early enough stage and before the key decisions are made.
· Consultative processes which enable the workforce both individually and as a whole to contribute effectively to the debate on issues and to influence the outcomes. / · No dynamism – keep going around the same issues.
· A range of joint problem-solving techniques to address issues. / · Poor agenda
· Feedback systems enabling employee ‘voice’ to be heard effectively and get messages back to the workforce. / · Little of no evaluation, which means that the participants lack clarity about what they are doing.
Information Source:
‘High Performance Workplaces; Informing and Consulting Employees, The IPA’s response to the DTI’s consultation document’ (2003). / · Little or no training in information and consultation for participants (both managers and employee representatives)
· Too much pressure on time and resources for participants.
· A failure to follow up on promises or actions and
· A lack of a supportive infrastructure.
Strategy: measure your employee-customer interaction
The employee consultation process should be seen as a means of evaluating, measuring and managing your company’s interaction between staff and customers. It can help you to analyse the performance variability within internal work groups and to make the necessary strategic and process-driven adjustments. It can also help you to determine your company’s performance with regard to ‘moments of truth’ throughout the career lifecycle of individual employees – from the time they join the company, take on new roles and eventually exit. Online surveying and reporting software can play a key role in automating the consultation process.
There is already much evidence, too, that supports the view that compliance to the Information and Consultation of Employees Regulations can increase a company’s competitiveness.
Tesco is the embodiment of putting into practice the view that happy employees create happy customers. In fact it is part of the company’s success story. Its CEO, Sir Terry Leahy, has managed to instil a culture of trust, respect, and vision that has made Tesco ‘great,’ reports Carol Midgley in The Times on 19th May 2005, ‘Follow the customer, not the competition.’
When describing the way he manages and treats his employees, Leahy notes that “If you talk to people anywhere in the world they want four things from work: a job that is interesting to do, a chance to get on in life, to be treated with respect and a boss who is some help and not their biggest problem. If that’s all you do each day, try to give them those things, and they will follow you anywhere”.
And Leahy knows that these employees deliver better results for his business. He “spends a lot of time listening in on customer focus groups, and this has strengthened his conviction. ‘When I go to customer panels,’ he says, ‘I know at some point they will say, “I shop in your store because of your staff. Not because of the marketing ideas or prices of store refurbishments. It’s the staff.’”
Fully engaged customers are more profitable“Fully engaged customers deliver a 23% premium over the average customer in terms of share of wallet, profitability, revenue and relationship growth.”
‘Manage your human sigma’ by John H. Fleming, Curt Coffman and James K. Harter.
A Gallup Organisation research study - ‘Manage Your Human Sigma’, which involved 1,979 business units from 10 major companies, showed that organisations that managed variance in both customer perception and employee engagement outperformed their “five largest peers during 2003 by 26% in gross margins and by 85% in sales growth”. The authors define Human Sigma as the incorporation and adaptation of Six Sigma theories and practices into the non-manufacturing performance management space, where there is an employee and customer interaction. Each company involved with this process used it to establish a benchmark for best practice and to increase their overall commercial and financial performance, reveal authors: John H. Fleming, Curt Coffman and James K. Harter.