Opinion – Page 80
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Opinion
Barbara Allen: The new disclosure regime for executive remuneration
Under the new format, remuneration reports must include a letter from the chairman of the remuneration committee outlining any significant changes during the reporting year, a forward-looking policy report and an annual report on remuneration setting out how the organisation’s remuneration policy was implemented during the year.The policy report, which ...
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OpinionSimon Chinnery: The evolution of default funds
There are many different types and designs of default fund, resulting from more than a decade of market developments, but they can be broadly categorised as old style, lifestyle and alternative style. Old-style default funds are often single funds, and the old-style approach has been used for over 20 years, ...
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OpinionBethany Powell: Employers need transparent reward policies
This is largely driven by three factors: the skills and competencies required for the role; the degree of accountability and impact on the overall performance of the organisation; and the relative supply and demand for the role. Once a market rate of pay is established, organisations will then assess factors ...
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OpinionNick Bacon: Health cash plans can help support staff in an economic downturn
Workplace schemes to improve health and wellbeing, such as smoking cessation and healthy eating, are good for staff and organisational performance: a genuine win-win.Effective health and wellbeing strategies require managerial commitment to develop and deliver an integrated plan of action to improve health and wellbeing. Action plans should be developed ...
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Opinion
Ian Hodson: Financial education will be key in 2014
One thing that has become critical is the provision of financial education in the workplace and ensuring that the right offering is there to ensure that financial planning will underpin employees’ career and retirement planning. This is becoming even more important when looking at the pensions landscape, the demographic changes ...
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Opinion
Malcolm Hurlston: Changing times for EBTs
Last month, the UK signed inter-governmental agreements with Jersey and Guernsey, and prime minister David Cameron confirmed a new ‘British Isles’ approach, as advocated by the Employee Share Ownership (ESOP) Centre.This follows the careful work by the Channel Islands and HM Revenue and Customs to prevent the misuse of trusts ...
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Opinion
Jeff Archer: How to balance healthcare education and interventions
Where busy employees often struggle is with the important question of why they should invest in making changes to their food routine or healthy lifestyle in general when they are already busy enough with day-to-day living. What is clear, however, and we’ve all seen this happen, is that once any ...
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OpinionIan Curry: How to communicate with opted-out employees
After this busy three-month period, millions of employees will have been brought into pension saving under the new pensions regime and, once the enrolment process is complete, employers will, hopefully, return to business as usual.But an ongoing employer duty that could take up plenty of valuable administration time is managing ...
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Opinion
John Lionis: Going back to basics on wellbeing
However, there is an aspect of wellbeing that is often overlooked when discussing strategies, collecting key facts or coming up with specific interventions (see Health and wellbeing supplement, November 2013): the relationship employees have with their line managers.This is perhaps the single most important aspect of employee wellbeing. A positive ...
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OpinionSimon Chinnery: Plenty of guidance on good governance
Evidence points to the majority of savers wanting someone to take responsibility for their investment decisions, so figures of 70-85% of scheme members opting for the default strategy are the norm. The millions of new savers entering DC for the first time as a result of auto-enrolment is likely to ...
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OpinionBela Gor: Employers can benefits from older workers
Employers might think older employees are more likely to have a disability, and so present greater challenges, but this is not the case.In England and Wales, the largest proportion of disabled people (25%) are in the 50 to 64 age group. Among 65 to 74-year-olds, only 20% say they have ...
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OpinionPeter Reilly: Universal benefits trend set to continue in 2014
It is also important, when focusing on the future, to consider the extent to which we will see a surge in benefits take-up as employers become more profitable and the labour market tightens. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development’s Annual survey report 2013, Reward management, published in May 2013, ...
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Opinion
Helena Davies: Employer duties surrounding disability and sickness absence
The claimant in HMRC v Whiteley suffered from asthma and had taken 15 days of sickness absence during a 10-month period, 14 of which were for viral and/or chest infections. The employer’s absence management policy was triggered because, even allowing for three days of absence discounted by the employer, she ...
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Opinion
Suzanne Hughes: Embedding wellbeing and engagement in the workplace
EXCLUSIVE: As a major employer in the UK, understanding levels of employee engagement and wellbeing at Santander is critical. It’s well known that better engaged people are happier people, and the bonus is that the research tells us happier people are more productive too.To help us continue to track and ...
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Opinion
Colin Hodgson: Don't underestimate role of pre-paid cards in global recognition
The first is the way we talk about reward and recognition. It is important for us all to remember that recognition is what employees want and what organisations need to give.Recognition does not always have to be associated with reward, but where it is, the reward reinforces the act of ...
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OpinionDoctor Stavroula Leka and Aditya Jain: Tools to measure workplace stress
Work-related stress is widespread and is not confined to particular sectors, jobs or industries.It is a significant cause of illness and is known to have a link to high levels of sickness absence, staff turnover and other issues, such as human error that can lead to accidents. Therefore, it is ...
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OpinionDavid Batman: How to create a successful health and wellbeing strategy
Healthy, resilient and high-performing organisations are typically supported by healthy, resilient and high-performing employees, and all tend to take a long-term, strategic approach to employee wellbeing.They also embrace employee wellbeing within their existing business objectives and processes, and clearly understand the background of any employee health-related issues and the risks ...
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Opinion
Jonathan Dowden: SMEs do not have bandwidth to deal with auto-enrolment
Smaller employers just do not have as much bandwidth to deal with the increased demand on people carrying out the administration associated with auto-enrolment, or the increased time it takes to understand the legislation and communicate it effectively to employees.The financial burden is also something that small businesses will not ...
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OpinionIan Luck: Tax guidance for auto-enrolling weekly-paid employees
But without doubt, employers of weekly-paid staff will find compliance with the regulations extremely onerous.Any employee earning more than £182 per week must be automatically enrolled, when eligible, with contributions being based upon earnings above £109 per week. With the current minimum wage at £6.19 for over 21 year olds, ...
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OpinionIain Hasdell: Employee benefit trusts are popular option for employee ownership
Such businesses consistently outperform their externally owned competitors.EBTs continue to be a popular option for organisations wanting to implement employee ownership. They can appeal particularly to founding owners who are approaching retirement and who wish to sell their controlling interest in a business to their workforce.In such circumstances, EBTs can ...