A round-up of HR-related stories in today’s newspapers.
Staff at the BBC have voted to strike over proposed changes to their pensions, threatening television and radio coverage of events such as the Ryder Cup and the party conferences. More than 90% of employees who took part in a ballot organised jointly by the broadcasting union BECTU, the National Union of Journalists and Unite voted in favour of industrial action. The BBC plans to cap final-salary pension benefits for existing members of its company scheme from April next year, and to close the scheme to new staff. It aims to cap pensionable salary growth at 1% per year, whatever pay rises a worker may receive, reports The Independent.
More than 2,000 police officers were subject to three or more complaints by members of the public in the last year, figures obtained by the BBC through a Freedom of Information request have shown. The forces with the most multiple complaints per officer were in Northern Ireland, West Mercia and Lincolnshire. The Police Federation, which represents 140,000 officers, said many cases were unsubstantiated.
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The life insurance and pensions group Standard Life has announced it is axing more than 500 jobs, mainly in Scotland, according to the Telegraph. Approximately 480 jobs will go from its Edinburgh’s headquarters, about 95 from its regional offices across the UK and 25 from overseas operations. About 100 of the jobs being cut are held by contractors and the firm hopes a further 100 will go through natural staff turnover. However, the remaining 400 will be a combination of voluntary and compulsory redundancies.
The proportion of HR professionals who believe that their organisation, or their client, is poorly prepared to manage the risks around how they reward their staff has grown in the past 12 months, according to a survey of Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development members. Managing Reward Risks: An Integrated Approach found that 15% of respondents think their organisation is poorly prepared to deal with these risks, up from 9% in 2009, while 15% cite that their organisation is well prepared (compared with 17% in 2009).
