8 steps to become Best Employer

There are many ways, but these are worth looking into:




The first step on any journey is to seek to understand where your organisation currently stands. Having line of sight of your organisation’s current standing in the minds of your employees is crucial in determining what your current strengths and opportunities are.

1 DIAGNOSE

Diagnosis can be in the form of employee surveys and focus groups ideally in collaboration with a neutral party to ensure confidentiality of employee responses.

2 PLAN

Based on feedback collected during diagnosis, develop a plan to achieve your organisation’s goals. Taking the time to articulate where you want to be, and how your organisation will get there keeps the organisation and HR focused on strategic vision and tactical initiatives.

3 ENROL

Build a business case to obtain buy-in from the organisation’s management team and subsequently, work to enrol the broader employee population. In best employer organisations, people practices are never solely HR’s job – but rather, every manager’s responsibility.

4 BENCHMARK

Once all plans have been set in motion and the organisation is feeling the impact and improvements, it would be a good time to take stock of the level of improvement. Benchmarking against the industry you operate in, or participating in studies that seek to identify best employers are a great avenue to see how well your organisation is doing in terms of engaging your employees and measuring consistency and improvement over time.

5 REFINE/REFOCUS

All organisations are unique in their own way – and any plan/initiative could always be reviewed and refined to better suit the changing needs of the organisation. There should not be hesitation to refocus efforts if a plan clearly does not work.

6 MEASURE

Measures of success not only provide an indication of how effective a plan or initiative is, they also help justify a business case for sustaining successful plans and programmes. Measuring the success of any plan/initiative would provide valuable insight into how you would like to proceed, by refining, refocusing or maintaining status quo.

7 PILOT

Some people programmes/initiatives which impact the entire organisation may be a leap of faith. Instead of launching immediately, a pilot programme on a smaller employee group can be considered to assess effectiveness.

8 EXECUTE, EXECUTE, EXECUTE

There is no single magical recipe to being a best employer. Getting there is actually as much about innovative people programmes, as about getting the basics (e.g. total rewards, performance management, talent development, career management, managerial effectiveness) executed flawlessly. More often than not organisations get caught up with new ideas and lose sight of the fundamentals of execution via people managers.

New: Olympus goes full retro with E-P5

This is new from Olympus.

In a change from the usual kit lens bundle which is usually a zoom, the E-P5 will be bundled together with the black M.Zuiko Digital 17mm f/1.8 lens for RM4,499. A body-only option will also be available for RM3,499.

OLYMPUS has gone full retro with its latest Micro Four Thirds camera, the Pen E-P5.

While previous Pen models already share a similar design to the original Pen half-frame film cameras, the E-P5 takes it a step further with a design and logo that looks very close to the classic Pen F camera.

However, in this case the design is only skin deep, and underneath the sleek exterior, the E-P5 features everything you'd expect from a modern mirrorless interchangeable lens camera plus a few features unique this model.

The E-P5 shares many features with the OM-D E-M5 camera, including the 16-megapixel Live MOS image sensor and excellent five-axis built-in image stabilisation system.

Also unchanged is Olympus' extremely fast contrast detect autofocus also taken from the OM-D, but now with a new "short release time lag" mode which will allow for faster shot-to-shot times, although at the expense of battery life.

New design, updated feature set

With the E-P5, Olympus has once again taken a look at the features of its previous cameras and improved on them.

In keeping with the sleek retro looks, the company has redesigned the camera to have no visible screws on the top and sides. In fact, the only screws are on the bottom plate of the camera.

More importantly, Olympus has also introduced a new LCD screen that is even thinner than the one found on their previous cameras - it now sits almost completely flush with the lines of the body.

Unfortunately, like in the OM-D E-M5, the LCD screen still only tilts forwards and backwards and cannot be rotated.

The E-P5 also comes with a new more reliable shutter unit, and now boasts a 1/8,000sec mechanical shutter speed.

However, the most interesting new addition to the E-P5's feature set is built-in WiFi, which allows iOS and Android device users to not only transfer images from the camera but also to obtain a live view image and snap photos.

While this in itself is not unique in the digital camera market, the method by which the smartphone or tablet pairs with the E-P5 is - when WiFi is turned on, the camera will actually generate a QR code which can be read using the smartphone/tablet camera and appropriate QR code reader.

If the smartphone or tablet does not yet have the Olympus OI.Share software, the user will be prompted to install it from Google Play or the iOS App Store.

If it's already installed, the OI.Share app will be launched and the camera and the smartphone/tablet will be paired together using information obtained from the QR code.



Source