Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Maternity & paternity
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • Brightmine
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Free trial
    • Request a quote
  • Webinars
  • Advertise
  • OHW+

Personnel Today

Register
Log in
Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Maternity & paternity
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • Brightmine
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Free trial
    • Request a quote
  • Webinars
  • Advertise
  • OHW+

Personnel Today

Letters

by Personnel Today 1 Oct 2002
by Personnel Today 1 Oct 2002

This week’s letters

Profit/enterprise ratios would flag up innovation

Innovative solutions are required to tackle issues raised by the article ‘HR
held back by inability to measure human capital’ (News, 24 September).

One option might be to develop profit/enterprise ratios (P/E). These would
show the proportion of profits derived from new ideas and processes. This
directly relates to the input of individual employees and therefore indicates
the efficacy of recruitment, training and reward strategies in boosting the
bottom line.

While not an exact science, a first shot at arriving at a P/E might be to allocate
profit made over a set period to different generations of product innovations
and ideas.

Each £1m of continuing profit could be divided between products or services
in place for more than 10 years, 5 to 10 years, 3 to 5 years, and less than 3
years.

The idea is to favour profit derived from recent innovations and discount
cash cows. Profits from business processes in existence for more than 10 years
are divided in half, while profits from newer innovations are multiplied.
Profits derived from processes in place between 5 and 10 years remain neutral.
These figures are totalled and set in ratio to the total profit.

While all business leaders recognise the importance of promoting innovation,
few have been as quick to realise the importance of HR strategy. It is up to us
to demonstrate the connection.

Prof. Alec Reed, CBE
Chairman, Reed Executive

Move is wake up call for the UK

Instead of being so willing to transfer call centre jobs to the other side
of the world, perhaps we would be better off concentrating upon improving the
lot of our existing UK employees (Analysis, 17 September).

The article claims that ‘training and motivation is better in India’, yet
these are issues which can be influenced through better training, increased
involvement and setting high service standards in the UK.

UK call centres are not all the same – in our centre we deliver eight weeks
training for all new starts and have made improvements that have led to
dramatic reductions in absence and turnover figures. It is all about better
people management and creating an environment where people want to work.

Let us not forget this is not just about cost, it is about delivering
service to the customer. We should not be so eager to give our jobs away to
other countries.

Keren Edwards
HR director, Kwik-Fit Insurance Services

Lost chance to gauge absence

The new code of practice on employment records (News, 17 September) will be
a major hindrance to our operations.

We employ around 120 labouring staff each year and have a high turnover of
temporary workers. We have just installed new procedures to help combat
absenteeism.

These include friendly return-to-work interviews and monthly individual and
group discussions on workplace strengths and weaknesses.

Sign up to our weekly round-up of HR news and guidance

Receive the Personnel Today Direct e-newsletter every Wednesday

OptOut
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Those employees who may take advantage of the system will not sign
authorisation forms for the code, and I feel the new code will hinder any
attempts to understand absenteeism.

Chris Manson
Personnel officer, Shetland Catch

Personnel Today

Personnel Today articles are written by an expert team of award-winning journalists who have been covering HR and L&D for many years. Some of our content is attributed to "Personnel Today" for a number of reasons, including: when numerous authors are associated with writing or editing a piece; or when the author is unknown (particularly for older articles).

previous post
Unions put weight behind strike action over London pay
next post
Annual hours reap rewards for enlightened companies

You may also like

Why we need to rethink soft skills in...

1 Jul 2025

Five misconceptions about hiring refugees

20 Jun 2025

Forward features list 2025 – submitting content to...

23 Nov 2024

Features list 2021 – submitting content to Personnel...

1 Sep 2020

Large firms have no plans to bring all...

26 Aug 2020

A typical work-from-home lunch: crisps

24 Aug 2020

Occupational health on the coronavirus frontline – ‘I...

21 Aug 2020

Occupational Health & Wellbeing research round-up: August 2020

7 Aug 2020

Acas: Redundancy related enquiries surge 160%

5 Aug 2020

Coronavirus: lockdown ‘phase two’ may bring added headaches...

17 Jul 2020

  • Empowering working parents and productivity during the summer holidays SPONSORED | Businesses play a...Read more
  • AI is here. Your workforce should be ready. SPONSORED | From content creation...Read more

Personnel Today Jobs
 

Search Jobs

PERSONNEL TODAY

About us
Contact us
Browse all HR topics
Email newsletters
Content feeds
Cookies policy
Privacy policy
Terms and conditions

JOBS

Personnel Today Jobs
Post a job
Why advertise with us?

EVENTS & PRODUCTS

The Personnel Today Awards
The RAD Awards
Employee Benefits
Forum for Expatriate Management
OHW+
Whatmedia

ADVERTISING & PR

Advertising opportunities
Features list 2025

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • Linkedin


© 2011 - 2025 DVV Media International Ltd

Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Maternity & paternity
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • Brightmine
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Free trial
    • Request a quote
  • Webinars
  • Advertise
  • OHW+