All Employee Benefits articles in Web Issue – Page 578
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Article
James Kirkland moves to Axa
He moves from Telefonica, where most recently he was head of pensions, benefits and recognition for Telefonica Europe.He was previously senior pensions consultant at Xafinity Consulting.
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Article
Interview with Carol Young, pensions manager at Heineken UK
She started her career as a management consultant at the now-defunct accountancy firm before moving into its investment practice. She says: “I loved the consulting side, but I decided I wanted to specialise and, in particular, to use my maths background a bit more.”In 2000, Young joined Mercer’s investment consulting ...
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Article
Confessions of a benefits manager: Old habits die hard
We have just taken over yet another company. For an organisation that isn’t doing very well, we seem remarkably good at vacuuming up other companies that aren’t doing very well, so that we can add their undesirable product offering to our own. Each time we do this, there is a ...
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Opinion
Michael D Haberman: How to achieve commercial HR
The external crisis is a long-held view by management and employees that HR is a necessary evil to be avoided at all costs. Fortunately, this situation is improving as the HR role evolves, but it will not be fully resolved until the internal identity crisis is solved. Quite simply, we ...
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Article
Duncan Brown: Reward and the road to recovery
With ministers such as business secretary Vince Cable openly discussing the possibility of a ‘triple-dip’ recession, the search is now on for measures to stimulate recovery, in the economy and in employee engagement.Employee share ownership and less legislative red tape are two of them.Despite little evident support, Osborne confirmed legislation ...
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Opinion
Neil Morrison: Right language is the key to commercial HR
For example, if he is talking to his company’s publishers about recruiting different skillsets into the organisation, he will explain it in the context of digital publishing.“That is something our publishers understand,” he says. “If I was talking about competency based frameworks and diversification of skill base, they would probably ...
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Article
Debbie Lovewell: Outside activities can be an all-round benefit
But some leading organisations are now taking this a step further and using their benefits packages to encourage employees to adopt environmentally friendly behaviours in their lives away from the workplace.While some might view this as a return to the paternalism of yesteryear, such initiatives have a number of advantages ...
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Article
Debi O'Donovan: Prepare to meet 2013 challenges
Happy New Year! If, like myself, you used the break to take stock of the direction your life is taking, then perhaps you have been considering your career.Not long ago, I was chatting to a couple of consultants from a leading reward recruitment consultancy. They told me how they have ...
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Opinion
Andrew Clark: Staff ownership boosts engagement
One size does not fit all and the debate on how organisations are structured in order to broaden the UK’s economic base and ensure better staff engagement means many alternative forms of corporate ownership are rightly now being explored.How a business engages with its staff has never been more crucial ...
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Opinion
Susan Ball: iPads can be tax-free if you follow rules
Tax breaks under HCI ended in 2006, but several replacement schemes mean staff can benefit from discounts, thanks to their employer’s buying power, allowing them to pay for a computer over a fixed term, with costs deducted monthly from net salary.But as an employer-supplied product, it is still taxed as ...
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Article
Half of Belfry staff take up voluntary benefits
The Belfry has seen 50% take-up of its voluntary benefits scheme since it was launched at the end of November 2012.The hotel resort’s online portal, called Belfry Rewards, includes more than 8,000 offers, such as employee discounts, a health cash plan and childcare vouchers.Jenny East, HR adviser at The Belfry, ...
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Article
Action needed to boost payroll giving
Only 3% of UK employees donated to charity through payroll in 2011/12, according to research by the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF).The research, The journey so far … insights into 25 years of payroll giving, found that £118 million was donated via payroll by 735,000 employees.It also found that only 1.9% ...
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Article
Chamber of Shipping completes pension buy-in
The trustees of the UK Chamber of Shipping’s defined benefit (DB) pension plan have concluded a buy-in arrangement for the scheme.The transaction covers £40 million of pension liabilities, which represent all of the plan’s current pensioner members.The UK Chamber of Shipping is the trade association for the UK shipping industry ...
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Article
Aramark launches healthy-eating campaign
Aramark, a food service business covering employee restaurants, has launched a healthy-eating campaign for employees.Its Eat Yourself Healthy campaign enables employer customers to provide employees with special offers and meal deals on healthy food in the workplace.The scheme will run in Aramark’s participating business and industry, education, defence and healthcare ...
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Opinion
Malcolm Small: Employers will focus on total benefits offering
The jobs market will continue to improve, while unemployment will continue to fall. As automatic-enrolment into pension saving continues to be implemented, employers will start to focus on their total benefits packages once more.Flexible benefits packages will continue to grow in popularity. Sales of group life and sickness plans will ...
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Article
Pay for app developers rises by 27%
The average annual pay for developers of smartphone and tablet applications (apps) increased by 27% in 2012, according to research by ReThink Recruitment.The research found that senior developers previously earning £55,000 per annum can now expect to earn an average of £70,000.App developers have also seen an increase in their ...
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AnalysisWhat is reward strategy?
Valuable insights can come from unexpected sources. For example, in Lewis Caroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland we have the following discussion between Alice and the Cheshire cat: Alice: ‘Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’ The cat: ‘That depends a good deal on where ...
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Article
FTSE 350 pension scheme deficits static in 2012
Accounting deficits for FTSE 350 organisations’ defined benefit (DB) pension schemes in the UK showed little increase in 2012, according to research by Mercer.Its Pension risk survey found that the estimated deficit for DB schemes stood at £62 billion at 31 December 2012, compared to a deficit figure of £61 ...
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Article
Aviva to sell Delta Lloyd
Aviva has announced its intention to sell the remainder of its shareholding in financial services provider Delta Lloyd.The offering is expected to comprise up to 34,288,795 shares in the life insurance and pension provider, which operates in the Netherlands and Belgium. This number of shares is equivalent to 18.2% of ...
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Article
Benefits cap rise limited to 1%
MPs have voted in favour of plans to limit annual increases in working-age benefits to 1% until 2015.The benefits subject to the cap from April 2013 include sick pay, maternity pay, paternity pay and adoption pay.The cap was proposed by Chancellor George Osborne in the Autumn Statement on 5 December ...