India on top in 'employer-employee relationships'

A new survey has found that the "positive relationship" between the staff and management has increased in countries like India and China, whereas Australia dropped four places to take the 13th spot on the list.

According to ORC International's annual workplace engagement index, just under half (48 percent) of Australian workers reported a positive relationship this year, which is 6 percent less than last year, News.co.au reported.

The survey conducted on almost 10,000 workers surveyed them on their attitude towards their organisation, as well as whether they felt a sense of loyalty towards their job and whether they were willing to go beyond their usual duties to help their organisation to achieve its goals.

The survey found that while India and China's rankings jumped by at least eight places from last year's survey, to occupy the top two places on the list of 18 countries, merely 38 percent of Australian employees said their manager inspired them to be effective in their job.

Countries with a lower percentage of positive relationships between the staff and management than the global average of 53 percent, occupied the seven lowest spots on ORC's Employee Engagement Index (EEI)

ORC International's Global Engagement Index for 2014:

1. India

2. China

3. Brazil

4. Switzerland

5. USA

6. Austria

7. Canada

8. Netherlands

9. Germany

10. Russia

11. Singapore

12. Italy

13. Australia

14. Spain

15. France

16. Hong Kong

17. UK

18. Japan (ANI)

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The Stories That Impacted HR in 2014

HR trends, identify the most popular content and provide a unique and real-time look into what’s happening in the HR marketplace.

So without further delay, here is a selection of the hot HR topics throughout 2014:

January

Continuing the trend from 2013, flexible working was a hot topic, as there was significant growth in companies hiring remote workers and offering expanded telecommuting policies. Driving the spike in the topic was one of the most popular articles for the month of January — Telecommuting Is The Future of Work, by Meghan M. Biro. And we continued to see the topics of remote workers, telework and flexible working popular throughout the year.

February

When the president of the United States gives his annual State of the Union address, the ideas and plans he announces impact HR trends. Two topics President Obama talked about relating to the world of work — equal pay and retirement savings — spiked after his speech. He announced a new “myRA plan” to allow lower income workers to enroll in a new retirement savings plan.

March

Employee appreciation and employee motivation were top trends as Employee Appreciation Day was recognized on March 7, 2014, and many vendors and HR bloggers took advantage by putting out content on how and why to show appreciation to employees, like this post from Blogging4Jobs. Plus, workplace wellness vendor Virgin Pulse released its U.S. employee survey, which revealed some fascinating insights about how employees really feel about their employers. The results also provided some ideas in what works to motivate employees – it’s not massage chairs or nap rooms.

April

Two independent surveys released this month focused on the issue of workplace stress. Monster Worldwide’s survey revealed how commonly stress at work causes employees to look for new jobs — a whopping 42% have left jobs due to stress. And a Harris Interactive survey looked at the causes of workplace stress — low pay and long commutes topped the list.

May

The big topic, and one that continued for several more months, was HR Certification. SHRM’s announcement that it would be launching its own certification program, in direct competition with the longstanding HRCI, was like“dropping a bomb on the HR community,” John Hollon of TLNT stated. And the ripple effects are still being felt.

June

Paid leave became a trending topic following the White House Summit on Working Families. The summit put a spotlight on paid parental leave, as well as other issues impacting working families. It is well documented that the United States is the only industrialized nation to not provide paid parental leave.

July

The Supreme Court’s decision in Burwell vs. Hobby Lobby caused the topics of contraception mandate, health insurance coverage and Affordable Care Act to spike. However, in spite of the overwhelming media coverage of the decision, some experts in the HR space wrote that the impact on employers would be limited.

August

The topic of job growth typically spikes once each month with the release of the monthly U.S. jobs report. However, this month the focus was on the increase in higher-paying jobs over lower-paying ones — a good sign for the economy.

And the release of PwC’s Future of Work Report drove the workforce analytics trend. The report revealed that 30% of employees would allow their employers to access personal data such as social media profiles. Doing so could expand employers’ access to new data to analyze performance, productivity and motivation.

September

Living wage was trending as the United States celebrated Labor Day and the debate on raising the minimum wage carried on. Additionally, in spite of President Obama not getting workforce-related legislation passed through Congress, he brought about changes through executive orders and new rules such as establishing a living wage requirement for federal contractors. Some HR thought leaders opined that this new policy, which impacts nearly one-quarter of the private sector workforce, will eventually filter through the rest of corporate America.

October

The topic of remote workers spiked again after Reddit announced all of its remote workers had to relocate to its headquarters or be fired. But in spite of this policy change, the growth in telework/flexible working arrangements remained strong.

And another consistently hot topic — equal pay — spiked following a major gaffe by Microsoft’s CEO. Satya Nadella apologized after his comment stating that women should not ask for raises caused a serious backlash. At the same time Gallup released survey results revealing that 30% of Americans think equal pay is the top issue for working women.

November

Open enrollment was hot in part due to the U.S. Affordable Care Act’s health insurance website launching its second open enrollment season. The launch featured significantly fewer problems than the initial launch.

Veteran’s Day / Remembrance Day pushed the veteran employment trend in November, with new data revealing significant growth in the hiring of veterans over the past year.

December

With the holiday season in full swing, the topic of employee rewards has trended as voices weighed in on how to best recognize and reward employees during this busy and often stressful time of year.

And wage growth spiked as new stats out of the U.S. and the U.K. revealed very different perspectives on what’s happening in regard to wages in these two countries. In the U.S. they appear to be on the rise, while in the U.K. they experienced a decline.

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Attrition a major challenge

Attrition simply means “A reduction in the number of employees through retirement, resignation or death. “Attrition can be conceptualized in many forms; the two prominent forms of attrition for the constraints of this endeavor are attrition due to employees leaving 

Attrition has always been a sensitive issue with firms. Despite offering the highest salaries across all business segments, the industry has been plagued with attrition across the board, particularly in the past few years. This ever-growing wage inflation and attrition rates have put financial pressures on firms.

For a generation used to constantly seeing and adapting to change, "getting bored" will happen quickly and easily. Jobs will be increasingly treated like projects and assignments that workers would like to complete and move on. And they would want to have the option of multiple employment contracts - full-time jobs, consultancy, and project-based jobs to retain them. Companies will have to either cater to these needs or lose them to competition.

It is not easy to find out, who contributes and who has the control on the attrition of employees. Various studies/survey conducted indicates that everyone is contributing to the prevailing attrition. Attrition does not happen for one or two reasons. The way the industry is projected and speed at which the companies are expanding has a major part in attrition. If you look within, the specific reasons for attrition are varied in nature and it is interesting to know why the people change jobs so quickly. Even today, the main reason for changing jobs is for higher salary and better benefits.

Employee attrition rate can be never being entirely eradicated. It can only be influenced to keep it in control. How a company can best retain its staff in a competitive environment is the topmost challenge of HR professionals. When employees leave, it is usually due to either lack of appreciation or due to an inability of nurturing employees according to their skills. Following are some strategies to combat the attrition problem

Some ways to curb the Attrition are:

o   Exit Interviews

o   Mentoring

o   Align Career to Business Goals

o   Strategic Compensation Package

o   Learning and Development

       The current scenario where every organization wants to be at its competitive best, high attrition rate can really act as a threat to success. Attrition is a very serious challenge.

         Especially to rapidly growing organizations. Before it explodes, the organizations should seriously workout strategies to reduce the turnover so that the organizations should not suffer. Organizations planning for the future should be giving close attention to why attrition is occurring in the present.

Attrition is not bad always if it happens in a controlled manner. Some attrition is always desirable and necessary for organizational growth and development. 

                                                                                                                         - Ajeya Krishna

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Infosys's attrition rate crosses 20%

Even as high attrition rates continue to haunt Infosys, the country's second-largest IT services firm is confident of bringing it down to 12-14% in the next two quarters as it gets back to the growth trajectory.

The attrition level grew higher to 20.1% in the July-September 2014 quarter as compared to 19.5% in the April-June 2014 quarter and 17.3% in Q2 last fiscal. In comparison, TCS had reported an attrition rate of 12%, while that at Wipro (IT services) and HCL Services stood at about 16% and 15%, respectively, in the April-June 2014 quarter (last 12 month basis). Historically, attrition rates have hovered around the 12-14% range. Infosys made a gross addition of 14,255 employees (net addition of 4,127) during the quarter under review, taking its total headcount to 1,65,411 as of September 30, 2014. Infosys chief operating officer Pravin Rao said.  The firm has already given about 12,000 promotions in April; Infosys had announced a wage hike of 6-7% for offshore employees and 1-2% onsite employees. Analysts had expected the country's second-largest IT exporter to post attrition of around 22% in the second quarter, despite CEO Vishal Sikka engaging with employees, and promoting around 5,000 employees since he took over. Infosys has grappled with rising attrition over the past year, and saw several high-profile exits.

Infosys said it has increased its utilization rate to 75.2% (including trainees) in the said quarter, while that excluding trainees stood at 82.3%. However, most analysts believe that Infosys will be able to slow the exits by the end of the third quarter in December. 

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High attrition rates, talent shortage worry recruiters

Talent shortage and high attrition rates are now issues weighing on the minds of recruiters and company chiefs in Asia, as companies expand more aggressively in Asian growth markets.

Nearly two-thirds of CEOs based in Asia told consultancy PwC in a survey they face a 'limited supply of candidates with the right skills'. Also, 47 per cent said they lose their top people to competitors.

In a report by boutique recruitment agency Ambition Group, about half of the 200 Singaporean executive respondents said attrition rates have risen in 2010 and have raised the trend as a key concern.

The tight talent pool comes at a time when companies are looking to expand in Asia. PwC says that nine in 10 CEOs surveyed in their global CEO survey are expecting their operations to grow in Asia, with a focus on China and India.

Gautam Banerjee, executive chairman for PwC Singapore, notes that Singapore is also a strong destination for businesses and talent.

Paul Endacott, managing director of Ambition Group Singapore, said the recruitment pick-up was at first driven by replacement hiring in Q1 through mid-Q2 2010. 'But by Q2 onwards, it was attrition that began to drive hiring and investment in key areas that led to a candidate-short market.'

Seven in 10 executives in Ambition's report have seen people wooed by higher remuneration packages from other firms. On average, Singaporean candidates are offered pay packages 10 to 15 per cent higher than they used to earn and in Hongkong, they can be as much as 20 per cent higher.

About 41 per cent say people leave because of a lack of career opportunities available.

'Attrition is extremely costly to a company. Some research has shown that replacing a person into a role can cost the company 150 per cent of the person's annual salary,' says Mr Endacott.

About 62 per cent of Singaporean executives have to cast their eyes to overseas talent because they are unable to find the right people here.

In banking, Ambition CEO Guy Day finds recruiters tend to pick from other financial hubs like Hongkong, Japan, Australia.

It gets trickier when the roles get more niches, like in digital marketing, where it's rare to find someone with experience in Asia. Typically, says Mr Day, such companies recruit from the US, the UK or Australia.

Companies are resorting to non-monetary means of shoring up talent erosion. About 65 per cent of CEOs in PwC's survey say they are deploying key employees overseas.

Other popular strategies include retaining workers past their retirement age and tapping more female talent.

'If it's purely money, then it’s going to be very challenging for companies to retain people,' notes Mr Endacott. 'However, if it's career development that's the issue, companies can invest more in training, learning and do more to improve work-life balance by offering flexible working arrangements.

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