Grievances Predicted To Rise Throughout 2010

The latest annual State of HR survey, conducted by law firm Speechly Bircham and King's College London HRM Learning Board, has found that workplace and employment stress and grievances brought on by issues with pay, bullying and harassment and relations with management are expected to accelerate this year.

Staff turnover is predicted to rise in the next few months as employees dissatisfied with frozen pay and adverse conditions are expected to “vote with their feet”, creating a more active job market.

The State of HR: From Recession to Recovery? report, launched recently, found that 29% of respondents identified that grievances lodged had gone up in 2009, and 23% anticipate future increases in grievances (owing to a rise in stress and employment-related problems) in the coming year.

The biggest causes of grievances have been bullying and harassment, and relations with senior or line managers. Grievances around pay and conditions, workload, career development, and stress are anticipated to become more important in 2010. A third of those surveyed also predicted an increase in staff turnover.

The survey also found a reported increase in the use of flexible work arrangements: 38% say that there has been an increase in their use over the past year and 37% say that they expect this to go up again in 2010. Less than 50% of the companies who had made redundancies in the past year had used compulsory redundancy, a significant reduction from the previous survey. The survey also found that employee engagement had declined more rapidly in organisations that had made compulsory redundancies.

The survey revealed that absence and disciplinary records rate highly in redundancy decisions - 36% of respondents to the survey reported using absence records as part of the criteria for making redundancy decisions over the past year, while 42% used disciplinary records and 46% used a general performance assessment. 22% used length of service.

Professor David Guest at King’s College London commented on the report: "This report provides challenging reading for the HR profession. The survey shows that most organisations are still mired in recession, and the HR problems are increasing with greater stress levels and more employment relations problems. The report provides clues about how to cope with recession but the HR route out of it is not yet clearly marked."