Articles

Is your organisation preparing now for the inevitable arrival of Gender Pay Gap reporting?

If employee engagement and retaining people is a priority for your business, embarking on a review of your employee policies and handbook is a great place to start – to enhance the overall employee experience.

I often wonder why we make the topic of the employee value proposition so complex, especially now during a period being called ‘The Great Resignation’. Organisations are fighting to keep their top talent, recruit new employees in a very competitive talent landscape, and work on their employer brand, all the while without speaking to their people. Employee expectations, both current and future, shouldn’t be a mystery – we must simply ask people what they need and want.

With restrictions lifting and things returning to, dare I say, ‘normality’, it’s inevitable that a return to the office will be on the horizon for most of us, if it hasn’t happened already. With this return to the office comes tremendous change and uncertainty.

Grant Thornton were involved in a significant workforce survey taken in the greater Dublin area, across five counties during the month of January 2022. The results provide a good overview of workforce challenges and sentiment at the moment amongst employers, and could be equally applicable to the greater Belfast area and Northern Ireland.

As we move towards phased returns to the office and other flexible working arrangements, many of us will face some challenges and concerns when adapting to the change this brings.

Now is the time for leaders to consider the trends that are impacting people and performance, and make a plan that works for their organisation.

The New Year brings a chance to reflect, review and renew old habits formed, putting New Year’s resolutions into action. These resolutions, however, need not be confined to healthy eating and exercise, but should also extend to the way we run our businesses. Learning and development (L&D), for example, is a fundamental aspect of attracting and retaining talent, and could be a focus area for you in 2022.

I was catching up on some holiday reading over Christmas and reflecting on the various board and C-Suite appointments over the last few months of 2021 in the local business press

As we approach Christmas and New Year it’s common practice in some industries to take the two weeks of Christmas off.

The last twelve months has seen many companies reporting unprecedented growth, with the NI economy set to grow a staggering 6% this year, and a predicted 4% for 2022. The NI job market is also buoyant, or as Forbes like to put it ‘hot’, with record levels of job vacancies being posted, and for the first time in years the unemployment level is down.

Since the onset of COVID-19 we have all seen the shift in working patterns towards a hybrid model, forcing organisations worldwide to now advance their work from home revolution. The pandemic has brought in new working dynamics, forcing a global reconsideration of what it means to work, as well as when, and where, we do that work.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the introduction of the hybrid working model has had a tremendous impact on corporate culture, and has created a perfect opportunity for organisations to revisit their culture and ways of working.

Like me you may have heard of the term the ‘Great Resignation’ over the last few months. The phrase was coined in the US and describes the current mass exodus of employees from the workforce.

Grant Thornton has been approached by a number of clients recently to carry out Working from Home and Hybrid Working Audits and Assurance reviews.

Right now the hot topic most people are considering is ‘where’ staff are going to work, after more than a year of remote working it is no wonder it is at the fore. However, with the recent news that in the US, UK, and Ireland investment is being made to trial the benefits of the four day working week, is the ‘when’ people work getting the required attention in organisational planning and should it?