"By far the biggest single item on our balance sheet is salaries and wages,
so we need to take steps to ensure this investment is well-targeted"

"Recruiting & Retaining good staff is getting increasingly difficult.
It's time we took another look at our approach to rewards"

"I'm an outstanding performer, but there's no reward for doing a top job"

Research consistently shows strong, positive links between having effective Remuneration Management and financially out-performing ones peers and competitors. HR Equations assists organisations in the development of successful reward & remuneration systems and Incentive Schemes.

Recognition is a key driver of staff retention. Retention is becoming increasingly complex due to attitudinal changes in the workforce, a tight labour market and an aging population. Utilising web-based technology which saves time and increases impact, we design & implement Recognition & Reward programmes.

HR Equations service offering will be customised to suit your circumstances and could include:

• Reward strategy, including the links to Performance and Development
• Development of a system for measuring the market, choosing the best survey data, determining base salaries and undertaking an annual salary review
  
• Salary information on market rates for individual jobs
  
• Incentive schemes for Executives and/or Staff
  
• Sales compensation & sales incentives
  
• Recognition & Reward programmes for Sales Achievers
  
• Recognition & Reward programmes for Values achievement and outstanding Service
  

PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT

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"Everyone is working hard, but productivity would increase
if all the hard work was going in the same direction"

"If our staff and our stakeholders had the same goals, we'd all be better off"

One of the best ways of getting good Return on Investment is to make sure the efforts of your people are closely aligned with your business goals. Significant productivity gains can be made by motivating more of your people to concentrate on 'A-priority' tasks, more of the time. This is a "Win-Win" scenario; people get more enjoyment & reward out of their jobs & careers and the organisation is financially better off. HR Equations will help establish a Performance Management process to achieve this, which will include:

• Design of the system
• Goal-setting
• Link to remuneration & annual salary review
• Link to identifying skills required, development & training
• Management and employee communications
• Performance Management software, for ease-of-use and efficient monitoring of results
  

"Increases in staff turnover, skill-shortages and an aging workforce
mean the old ways of finding good people aren't good enough any more"

"We need to plan our supply of labour like we plan other
mission-critical investments. Just sticking an advert
in the paper after someone has left is too ad-hoc, costly and risky"

One of the best ways of building a great culture is to be genuinely outstanding at recruiting top quality people, time-after-time, into job-after-job. After all, culture is no more than the behaviour of all of the individuals, all added together. It is best to drive culture from the bottom-up. Or in other words, a great culture is only worthwhile if your customers notice the difference in your staff that they talk to. HR Equations can assist with our Recruitment Strategy services. What's included will depend on your goals. The following is a list of possibilities:

• Full review of recruitment channels to the labour market and development of a new recruitment strategy
• Development of new recruitment channels e.g. internet recruitment, "staff-as-recruiters", networking, recruitment open homes, etc.
• Taking time and cost out of the recruitment process (labour supply chain)
• Training managers in recruitment and interview techniques
• Establishing preferred supplier agreements with recruitment agencies
• Planning the future supply of labour

"We need to recruit, how do we make sure we get the right skills and behaviours?"

We offer a full suite of recruitment methods and use leading edge candidate management and candidate search software to back this up:

Headhunting/Executive Search

Headhunting (or 'Executive Search') is the most accurate, effective method of finding key management and specialist talent, because you systematically identify the best people in the market, i.e. in addition to the minority of people currently looking for a new role who apply for job adverts, 'headhunt' enables you to access the majority of the market for your job vacancy-the people who aren't looking. However, ‘headhunt’ is most effective when you are looking for experience from within a particular industry sector.

Advertising

Advertising roles is best when the skills sought for the role could come from a variety of industries or are not highly-specialist.

Assisting you with your own advertised positions

If you have a general vacancy that you are advertising yourself, charged on an hourly-rate basis, HR Equations can assist with part or all of the recruitment process, depending on your requirements. For example, we can handle everything from drawing up advertising copy through to short-listing, reference checks and offers or alternately, just assist you with the screening & short-listing.

ORGANISATION RESTRUCTURES ACCOUNTABILITY REVIEWS

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"The external market and our strategies have changed. We need to restructure and get our accountabilities, relationships and jobs lined up with our direction"

Restructuring can be complex. Staff work effort and jobs must be re-aligned in to the new business direction and done in a way that a way that maximises employee commitment. At the same time, de-motivation, productivity loss and departures of high performers need to be minimised. And this process needs to be undertaken in a legally compliant manner to avoid potentially significant personal grievance costs.

HR Equations offers services in Organisation Restructures, Accountability Reviews and Governance Implementation. Depending on your requirements, this could include:

• Structure-follows-strategy design to produce a new organisation structure. Accountabilities and new relationships mapped out.
  
• Develop the restructure proposal document for employees
  
• Change management process for the restructure, employee communications & consultation process, employee transition from current structure to the new one
  
• Legal compliance, including correct employee letters and documentation
  
• Redundancy management
  
• New job descriptions, recruitment and appointments process for new roles
  
• Outplacement support for redundant employees, including formal career assessments and job search support
  
• Accountability Reviews of 'who-is-responsible-for-what' within the business, to ensure decision-making is clear & effective and authorities for the decisions are aligned with job responsibilities
  
• Designing policies and procedures that ensure the Board of Directors and CEO's governance requirements are met e.g. policy and procedure for financial control and authorisation
  

MERGERS, ACQUISITIONS & OUTSOURCING

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"85% of mergers and acquisitions under-performed due to different
management attitudes and culture"- major consulting firm study on
Delivering the Benefits of Mergers and Acquisitions

M&A has traditionally been the domain of financial, economic and legal skills but studies consistently point to human factors as being a fundamental driver of M&A success. Increasingly, Boards and CEO's are likely to demand that Human Resources activity 'steps up to the plate' and plays a critical strategic and operational role in M&A activity.

HR Equations can assist you with the people-related factors that lead to successful Mergers, Acquisitions and Outsourcing. Depending on the scope of the deal, this could include:

• HR planning
• Governance model
• HR content of Due Diligence
• HR business case and risk analysis
• Transition management
• New organisation structure and appointments process
• Forming leadership team goals, KPI's and management processes

"We need to make sure we are complying with employment law requirements"

Whether it is making sure a redundancy or restructure follows the correct process, a new employment agreement or a health & safety plan for your office, HR Equations can ensure your business meets the requirements of employment law.

"We need to plan how we're going to get our investment in
people lined up with business direction"

HR Equations can assist you in creating a winning people-management strategy.

Research shows that around one-third of an organisations' market value or shareprice is due to people-management practices. Thus, its equally important to have a strategy for people-management as it is for marketing or production. 'HR Strategy' doesn't have to be a large, hard-to-communicate document which gets thrown in the draw until next year; it does have to describe how HR activity will be prioritised in order to drive financial results and other key organisational outcomes.

Similarly, you may be looking for a review of your HR practices. HR Equations can assist in 'auditing' your HR practices to determine how well your organisation's goals are being supported by your people-management approaches.

HR BUSINESS CASES AND MEASUREMENT

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"We need to know if all this expenditure on personnel stuff is
really bringing home the bacon"

Depending on the business, personnel costs amount to between 30% and 70% of total annual expenditure. Given the criticality of people to all organisations, it's essential to measure the success of people-management. Keeping score is how you'll know if people-management is successful. HR Equations can assist you in Measuring the Return on HR investment or preparing HR Business Cases.

Depending on your requirements, this could include:

• Choosing HR measures or KPI's which connect the people-side of your enterprise to overall organisational goals and financial returns
• Calculating financial return on HR projects and preparing the Business Case for major HR expenditure
• Developing an HR Balanced Scorecard