Employers must hold on to valued members of staff

Feb 9 2009 by Graeme King, The Journal

AT A TUC seminar last week, a number of trade union representatives voiced their concern that there were some businesses seeing the current recession as an opportunistic moment to cut staff numbers and to reduce their terms and conditions.

Certainly, there is much evidence of moves toward shorter working times, as well as the significant numbers of people losing their jobs.

There is, however, also significant evidence of employers seeking to find creative ways of retaining workers, particularly skilled employees, at a time when they are clearly under a good deal of costs pressure from the significant downturn in almost all sectors.

In many cases the reductions in working time and in extended lay-offs from production have been seized on as opportunities to train and upskill workers, ready for the upturn in the economy.

Trade unions have generally seen these developments as very positive and have worked with employers to introduce new working arrangements in a positive environment of working in partnership to find a way through the current difficulties. These relatively innovative solutions have been taken a stage further by Work Wise North East, the campaign group promoting smarter working in the region.

Work Wise has set up a ‘Staffshare scheme’ to encourage and enable businesses avoid making people redundant by sending them out ‘on loan’ to other organisations.

Those employers that are looking to the medium term future are possessed of a fear that if they are not able to retain staff now they will not be able to recruit them again when business picks up.

The Staffshare scheme is a very creative way of helping companies retain key staff, avoiding not only redundancy pay, but also the costs or re-recruiting, at the same time as providing a certain skill or expert input into other organisations.

This is obviously very good news for the employees too. We have probably all come across individuals in the last few weeks who have either been made redundant or are anxious that they are going to be.

Many of those workers are experiencing this for the first time and it is a daunting and challenging time, especially for workers who have been with the same company for a long period of time. Creative efforts like this, to avoid that situation, are helpful.

It does, of course, require employers to buy into the idea.

Kevin Rowan, Regional Secretary Northern TUC