Over the past year, HR too has had to deal with our modern version of the Big Bang. We all adopted a ‘new normal’, to use a trendy term. Hopefully 2021 will be better. Thanks to the vaccine - fingers crossed - we shall soon be getting back to our social lives and be able to meet our colleagues and customers in person again more often. The after-effects of the coronavirus will continue affecting HR developments in the year to come, however. We hereby present the most important insights and trends for the new year.

During 2020 we’ve seen trust in employers tumble as organisations have struggled to get to grips with the consequences of the global pandemic.  

Keeping payroll in-house can mean your processes end up out of control. Whilst informed HR and finance leaders know the benefits of outsourcing payroll, others remain cautious. This is understandable; looking after your people is crucial now more than ever as we move towards the flexi work revolution and remote ways of working.

What will 2021 bring? After such a turbulent year, it would be audacious to start making big statements. But one thing seems to be a given: ‘the old normal’ is not coming back. Even more, companies will quickly have to find a way to deal with the likelihood of ongoing changes. A good first step is building an agile workforce and valuing both internal and external mobility. To do so, you’ll need to embrace total talent management.

COVID-19 has a great impact on employees, with mass homeworking as one of the most remarkable outcomes. Many companies are pulling out all the stops to establish viable homeworking policies, implement digital tools and create a renewed organisational culture. What’s often overlooked is the physical workspace. Although traditional offices are on their way out, they can re-emerge as employee experience centres.

In this interview we spoke to Samantha Mann, Payroll Training Consultant for Armstrong Watson and former Chartered Institute of Payroll Professionals (CIPP) Senior Policy & Research Technical Lead. Samantha is a regular panelist of our Payroll Question Time webinar sessions– where a panel of experts gather together every month to discuss the latest legislation and policy news in payroll and HR, as well as answering the audience's burning questions. 

On Saturday 31st October, Boris Johnson announced new lockdown restrictions affecting the UK in response to increasing Coronavirus cases.

Achieving gender equality and diversity is a priority for smart business leaders. 

UK organisations with 250+ people are now required to calculate and share statistics on the gender pay gap (measured by hourly pay, bonuses and on the proportion of male and female employees in each pay quartile) but improving gender equality and diversity goes beyond publishing figures.

Focusing on the analytical capability of the Payroll and HR functions, this blog outlines the power of your people data to help create a fairer, inclusive and more productive workplace.

The workplace has adapted at an unprecedented pace in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The unplanned shift from physical collaboration to mostly online has challenged both mindsets and processes. Some argue that the workplace will never revert, so managers and HR leaders need a mid to long-term strategy to connect the remote workforce effectively.

This blog explores the challenges and opportunities of virtual collaboration and how to optimise working methods to meet business and well-being objectives.

When the Covid-19 lockdown began, The Economist claimed this pandemic would thrust HR and its leaders into the spotlight. It suggested chief people officers would need to play a role similar to that of the CFO following the financial crisis of 2007-2009. “Never before have more firms needed a hard-headed HR boss,” it stated.

The government has announced the launch of policies and measures to protect jobs where businesses are facing lower demand over the winter months due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

It’s estimated that the pace of digital change within businesses has been accelerated by about six years as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Where barriers to digital transformation previously existed – be that a reluctance to abandon legacy systems or a lack of support at board level – the necessity to react to the challenges of lockdown have broken these down.