19 February 2019
Spain’s ‘sick leave’ benefits have reached their highest ever level and the country’s social security office now has a record budget of €8.6 billion to allocate to sick leave benefits. The budget announcement also includes hiring some one hundred additional doctors to tackle benefits fraud. Trade unions view the benefits budget as a ‘return to normal’ after many years of fiscal and economic crisis. “Workers haven’t dared to take up these rights for fear of losing their jobs,” holds a CCOO...
10 January 2019
According to a survey by audit firm Grant Thornton, 36% of companies are expecting to raise remuneration levels in 2019. For several years Poland’s salary levels have rapidly escalating. In 2018 salaries increased 7%, 5 percentage points higher than in 2017. Workers are clearly happy with this turn of events but economists question its sustainability, because if salaries rise even faster then labor costs could get out of control. If the higher pay translates into increased consumption expenditure then this could...
6 November 2017
The International Labor Organization (ILO) and the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Sécurité Sociale, a French higher education institution specialising in social security, teamed up in 2016 to create an exchange platform for French multinational firms. The aim was to bring together companies that have committed to developing an active strategy to implement a minimum level of social protection for all their employees across the globe. Those companies that are members of the platform have developed a first ‘good...
2 February 2017
Germany’s businesses regularly discuss the issue of individual bonus payments and performance related bonuses that make up the variable part of employee remuneration. At Bosch, Deutsche Bahn, and Daimler for example, the trend is turning away from individual performance based assessments and towards bonus payments based on company results and other more ‘sustainable’ elements.
27 October 2015
At the end of September, the German manufacturer announced that it would no longer pay bonuses for individual performance, to any of its 290,000 employees. The management at Bosch believes that, in fact, the level of motivation resulting from individual bonuses is only limited. This is compared with a job “which has meaning” and is performed in a solidarity-based and participative working environment, where the work-life balance is taken very much into account. While the practice of awarding individual bonuses remains fairly widespread in Germany, it does appear that it is beginning to be called into question, in favour of a movement...
22 April 2015
Being a leader and innovating can get you up to 12% more in salary if you are an employee in the Italian company Manfrotto whose head office is based in Cassola North East Venice. Employing some 900 staff, 550 of whom are in Italy, the company has just established an original new system of performance and behavior evaluation that will directly impact salaries. The principle underlying the evaluation system came up first in 2013 during negotiations over the current five-year company agreement and following a...
3 February 2015
In vogue since the economic downturn, the ‘salary sacrifice scheme’ a provision that allows employees to receive benefits in kind in exchange for a lower salary, is now offered by more than half of British businesses. Ranging from cars, to computers, to childcare, employers offer a plethora of benefits that allow both parties to take advantage of tax–friendly conditions.
24 June 2014
In order to save money and have more effective HR services, a lot of UK firms are now banking on the creation of a single HR pole, following the idea of shared services centers (SSC). Infrastructures, hotels or even telecoms: at a round table organized by HR Magazine, companies gave testimonies of their success in introducing shared HR services, which always leads to savings. However, some say it dehumanizes the trade.
6 March 2013
The information website, people management, recently published a list of new HR jobs no one had heard about 10 years ago which are now appealing to new employees. There is also a list of jobs that will become popular within a few years. Robert Jeffery, senior editor at people management, agreed to comment these lists for Planet Labor. (Ref. 130155)
21 November 2011
