A look at current trends and data

Citation

Nolan, S. (2014), "A look at current trends and data", Strategic HR Review, Vol. 13 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/SHR-11-2013-0107

A look at current trends and data

Article Type: Research and results From: Strategic HR Review, Volume 13, Issue 2

Story 1

Changes ahead for HR structure and service delivery

Corporate HR functions are likely to experience significant change over the next two years as companies around the world face growing pressure to improve the delivery and effectiveness of HR services. This is according to a survey carried out annually by professional services company, Towers Watson. The 2013 HR Service Delivery and Technology Survey, a global research study of 1,025 companies, also revealed that companies are considering new HR technologies and processes.

Shared services the structural preference for changing organizations

A total of 36 percent of respondents planned to change their HR structure by the end of last year. Of those changing structure, 74 percent are doing so to realize operational efficiencies, 53 percent are seeking to improve quality, 37 percent hope to achieve cost savings and 34 percent are pursuing a change in business strategy. The overwhelming move is towards shared services, regardless of the reason for making the change. Just under half (49 percent) are moving toward a shared services environment with HR centers of excellence and HR business partners. The survey noted that the shared services model is the most prevalent among available options, followed by organizations’ intent to outsource additional functions (17 percent) or move to a single HR function for the entire organization (12 percent).

Streamlining business processes ranked as the primary HR service delivery issue this year, cited by 32 percent of respondents, followed by talent and performance management systems and greater involvement in strategic business-driven issues, both cited by 29 percent of respondents.

Technology investment continues

The survey shows that HR technology spending remains steady and strong despite cost reductions in other areas of HR. More than half of organizations (53 percent) indicated their investment in HR technology would maintain the previous year’s investment levels, while over a quarter (27 percent) will either increase or significantly increase their HR technology investments.

HR is also catching on to the mobile technology trend. More than 60 percent of respondents now provide mobile access via Smartphone to employees, and almost a quarter (24 percent) offer tablets. But HR-enabled applications are in their infancy: only about one in ten organizations currently use mobile applications for HR purposes. This trend is expected to accelerate, as 25 percent plan to offer HR-enabled applications in the following 12 to 18 months. However, as many as half of the organizations surveyed have no plans to leverage mobile applications before the end of 2014.

Six out of ten organizations (59 percent) offer an HR portal to HR and employees. Another 19 percent are in the process of developing an HR portal.

For more information visit: http://www.towerswatson.com/en/Insights/IC-Types/Survey-Research-Results/2013/08/2013-HR-Service-Delivery-and-Technology-Survey

Story 2

Leading by example is key to a sustainable ethical culture

The actions of leaders and the quality of their communication are critical factors in embedding an ethical culture. These are key findings from IoIC’s ethics survey, released at the Ethics in Internal Communication Summit in central London in 2013. The online survey was completed by 132 internal communication practitioners.

Respondents said that the most important factor in creating a sustainable ethical culture was "Leaders who lead by example" with 95 percent rating this as very important, and 5 percent as important (i.e. 100 percent of respondents). "A culture of transparency, openness and honesty" came second, rated by 84 percent as very important and 14 percent as important. "Clear organizational values" came third – 67 percent rating it as very important and 30 percent as important.

When asked to rate internal communications activities in terms of their importance in embedding an ethical culture, leadership issues were also high on the communicators’ list. The most important activity was seen as "Promoting open/two-way communication"; 96 percent rated this as very important or important (74 and 22 percent). This was followed by "Helping leaders understand and fulfill their communication responsibilities" at 94 percent (62 and 32 percent) and "Supporting leaders/managers in projecting themselves as open, honest and ethical" at 91 percent (52 and 39 percent).

The survey also revealed that gaining employee trust was proving difficult for many leaders. A total of 34 percent categorized employees’ level of trust in their leaders as "neutral", while another 28 percent said it was low (24 percent) or very low (4 percent).

For more information visit: http://www.ioic.org.uk

Story 3

Boards urged to monitor leaders’ behavioral risk

Company boards should take urgent steps to monitor and review behavioral risk, amid warnings that narcissistic or hubristic chairmen or chief executives can inflict serious damage on their businesses. This is according to a study by board advisory and search firm, MWM Consulting.

The study follows interviews with more than 80 chairmen, CEOs and experienced board directors of leading UK and international corporations. It concludes that boards find it hard to spot and even harder to deal with successful leaders who over time, as a result of their success and power, display characteristics that can endanger the wider organization. MWM warns that boards often lack the focus, the tools and the confidence to address such business leaders.

Michael Reyner, managing partner at MWM and co-author of the report, comments: "We have established that the risk of CEOs falling prey to behavioral distortions is a real and common one that can have a disastrous effect on the business. Such CEOs are often very high profile, both internally and externally, and this creates barriers to addressing dysfunctional behavior. These barriers include awareness – simply being mindful of behavioral risk is important – but in addition boards need to have the confidence to deal with a potential issue and the courage to tackle any problem in a timely way."

Preventative measures

The study identifies several symptoms in business leaders that should alert boards to growing behavioral risk and includes cases studies where businesses have been brought to their knees by once-feted CEOs. The report recommends the following five fundamental boardroom measures to help avert disastrous action by rogue CEOs:

1. Prevention is better than cure. Boards should focus on managing the risks right from the moment of appointing the CEO.

2. Build the right board foundations. It is essential that the chairman has the character and skills to keep the CEO in check and that the directors have the experience and confidence to highlight and address concerns.

3. Develop sharply attuned organizational "antennae". Boards must be able to identify as early and clearly as possible any potential behavioral issues that need to be addressed; direct access to the broader executive team is critical.

4. Put behavioral risk explicitly on the board agenda. Behavioral risk must become an explicit part of the board agenda, routinely discussed so that issues can be identified and explored before they become major problems.

5. Never shirk effective succession planning. Boards must ensure that they are always confident that they have succession plans in place and they are willing and able to enact them when required.

For more information visit: http://www.mwmconsulting.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Electronic-version-Behavioural-Risks.pdf

Story 4

HR professionals think the traditional employee survey is dead

The Future of Employee Research study from Silverman Research shows that 53 percent of HR professionals believe the traditional employee survey is dead. The study, which used a collaborative environment to display comments using data visualization instead of a traditional list based format, found that two-thirds (69 percent) of the participants believe the future in this area will be more qualitative, as opposed to quantitative.

Only a third of participants (33 percent) reported that their organizations currently use social technologies to gather feedback from employees. Michael Silverman, managing director, Silverman Research, comments: "The lack of organizational effort to fully utilize social technologies for employee research is particularly poor considering that many organizations have already implemented some form of internal social network such as Yammer, Chatter, or Jive."

A total of 82 percent of respondents agreed that mobile technology will become the most common way in which employees voice their opinions in the future. Silverman continues: "This reflects a widely held consensus that, in the future, mobile devices will be a vital tool by which employees will articulate their thoughts and opinions about their experiences at work."

Challenges to overcome

The majority (71 percent) of participants agreed that leaders’ fear of transparency is the most powerful factor in limiting advancements in employee research. "Employee surveys are heavily controlled by management, which signs off the questions and the output," says Silverman. "Social technologies present a more threatening state of affairs to leaders by giving people a say in an open forum. For many, this level of transparency may be too much to handle as the perils of an open approach are often overestimated by leadership."

The report concludes that organizations have become so obsessed with scores on employee surveys they have completely lost sight of what they set out to do – listen to their people. It also suggests that the evolution of employee research is already happening in a minority of organizations, but the movement en masse away from traditional employee survey methods is likely to take considerable time.

For more information: for a copy of the report, go to http://bit.ly/HxzsBr

Sara Nolan