Any company or organisation that employs people, which is after all your most important asset and resource, will from time to time encounter ‘people issues’ which can range from someone’s poor attendance, under performance, conduct problems, lack of motivation or employment relation (trades union) matters.
You and your managers can find yourselves spending as much time managing your team than you may do running the business which can be a strain on time, people and financial resources as well as hitting the all important ‘bottom line’.
This is where an HR Consultant can be of use, and I can help you to address these matters either strategically (e.g. by helping you introduce a better way of managing employees) or individually (e.g. proactively addressing individual cases). The benefits this can bring include:
- Reduce sick absenteeism thereby reducing your costs and making more of the workforce productive
- Improving levels of employee engagement – ‘switched on’ staff are productive ones and they are more inclined to go the extra mile for you and stay (or join) with you
- Reduce the administrative burden on staff and managers so they can spend their time helping the business make money or provide a service to your clients and customers
An example of how my services could help your business was the work I did to improve sick absence in the public sector at the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD). In a part of the MOD, sick absence levels amongst staff had risen to an average of 17 days per employee. This meant that at any given time 13% of staff were off sick and around £250,000 was being paid in sick benefit/pay.
As an HR Business Partner, I devised and introduced a Well Being programme to encourage individuals and managers to recognise that by changing their behaviours they could improve their health and work attendance. I did this through a series of initiatives which included the publication of a Well Being Handbook.
Other initiatives included setting up a ‘Well Being Day’ where a number of well being related providers attended to promote healthy living such as to stop smoking, to lose weight, to take up complimentary arts such as meditation or tai chi etc. ( a photo of the event is on the right).
As a result of these initiatives being implemented, sick absence reduced by 35% with absence reducing from 17 days to 11 days per person per year and the project was believed to have saved around £100,000 in opportunity costs.
This project was championed as an example of how HR intervention can enhance organisations as demonstrated by the testimonial I received.
Testimonial
“Your work within D CTLB on promoting staff well-being was impressive, setting an extremely high standard and led directly to similar approaches being adopted across the Department”
Official MOD valedictory letter. Original available on request.
