What are the big issues for Human Resources Departments within the UK in 2016?

Prestige Recruitment are committed to giving the best possible service within the HR industry. We have an ongoing commitment to totally understand not only recruitment needs of HR departments, but also pain points and challenges that they face outside of recruitment.  This gives us a global view on the industry as a whole, allowing us to be better informed. We hope we can help by disseminating the information of our findings, hopefully creating discussions and solutions regarding these issues with our industry.   

The chart below is an indication of what hot issues are trending in 2016. We collated this chart by talking to a large array of managers within HR departments. 

The issues

Of course recruitment is always high on the agenda but this year there seems to be a few stand out issues. We also can see there some issues that are not high on the radar at the moment but could affect certain business sectors. 

Absence management

Absence management was one high on the agenda. We noted that some clients were implementing the "Bradford Factor “ into their business and finding it had helped after a period of integration. We have a great article coming on absence management so keep a look out for this on our website. 

Lack of time and resources

A big pain point for HR departments seems to be the lack of time and resources to roll out projects and to keep up with workflow. There were mixed reasons for this but the increase in the amount of actual work, reduction in department staff, and a lack of issue ownership within departments seems to be the core issues. 

Staff retention

Staff retention was another problem within the industry, this was due to many things depending on the market sector. We have decided to produce a article on the findings and build a comprehensive resource, taking a look at issues from company culture to skills shortages. Keep a look out for this soon. 
The following potential issues are low on the radar at the moment but a few people have raised concerns about them.  We feel these could have a large impact over the coming years in certain industries and larger sized businesses.  

The apprenticeship levy

In last year's budget, the government announced its intention to introduce a levy on large employers in order to fund three million new apprenticeships in England by 2020. This was part of its commitment to developing vocational skills and to increasing the quantity and quality of apprenticeships.

The government carried out a consultation on the proposed levy in the autumn last year, following which it has now published draft legislation. The levy is effectively a new tax which will be available to employers to fund apprenticeships.

For some larger employers, the new levy will be an additional cost which will not be fully recoverable through the annual allowance. Then on top of this you have the allocation within businesses for the actual apprenticeships themselves.  

Gender pay reporting

Larger employers in the private and voluntary sectors will have to publish details of their gender pay gaps. By April 2018, affected employers will need to report their annually mean and median gender pay gaps, also gender bonus gaps and the number of men and women across salaries. This will undoubtably add to the workload of those HR departments affected. 

Modern slavery and worker-exploitation

The Modern Slavery Act 2015 has introduced a new annual duty for organisations with a turnover of £36 million plus, this is to report the steps the organisation has taken to ensure that slavery or human trafficking is not taking place. For affected businesses with manufacturing bases overseas this could turn out to have a large affect on reporting and administration duties. 

The round up

As you can see, we have a lot to analyse and work on. Prestige will be talking to more departments over the next few months and hopefully publishing interesting articles on the main pain points that are hitting the HR industry. Having now seen the results of the European vote we feel there may be more issues on the way with our exit from Europe.