Onboarding: 10 ways to make your new hires feel welcome from week 1

Whether you currently do anything about onboarding new hires or not, onboarding always happens. It’ll either happen naturally if left to itself, or you can shape it through a structured process. Either way, it will happen, leaving your new employees with a good, neutral or maybe even a bad impression of their team and the […]

Why you need to nurture Emotional First Responders in the workplace

Wherever there are people, there are emotions. This extends to the workplace, even though we often don’t like to admit it. Our offices are filled with intricate, interpersonal dynamics like hurt feelings, excitement, and fear, and these emotions are heightened during times of change, transitions or uncertainty. Managers often think of an emotional workplace as […]

Employee benefits for SMEs: all about the little things

How do small medium enterprises (SMEs) provide a benefits package which is right for their teams, doesn’t break the bank and helps retain their best talent – and why is the right benefits package so important?  Is it all about the cash? Working for a company is sometimes just seen as giving over your time […]

Supporting Success: How to Safeguard the Early Days

In our 12-part series, Kate Wadia – Managing Director at Phase 3 Consulting – guides the HR professional through how to navigate, succeed and lead with HR tech project-work. From the inception of the business case to the handover into BAU, we’ll follow an indicative project timeframe to explain the way and the why of a project step-by- step, […]

Talent retention: the vital few and trivial many

Talent retention implies that a company actually knows who their ‘talent’ is. One of the most robust ways of retaining talent is to identify who your ‘vital few’ are, and retain them – something very few executives can do with confidence. Approaching retention according to your vital few is hard and takes resources, but what’s the […]

Physical exercise at work: what can be done?

The working world is going through some seismic changes at the moment, which mirror the nation’s changing demographics as we enter 2018. The burden of ill health on the economy and the burden of ill health on employers is significant as people work harder and for longer. Now more than ever the prospect of having […]

Leading remote teams: how to deal with conflict

At the other end of every computer, every mobile device, there is a person. Every person holds a range of thoughts, a range of assumptions, and a set of preferences about how they want to be treated and how they should treat others. In the third and final article of this series on leading virtual […]

Leading remote teams: the role of performance management

“At the core of effective performance management are frank, yet supportive performance conversations that include ongoing feedback. Occasional processes, such as annual performance reviews and pay setting, can be useful, but shouldn’t be the main focus.” This is a quote from the CIPD Factsheet  of 31 July 2017. The essence of performance management remains the […]

Leading remote teams: why you need a different mindset

The good news is that, in essence, leading remote teams is just like leading any other team. The bad news is that if you’re used to managing by watching what people are doing, you will need a shift in mindset. “Work is far less meaningful and pleasant than it needs to be because well-intentioned leaders […]

Will 2018 be the year for multi-generational flexible benefits?

There can be no doubt that today’s workforce looks and works differently to that of just 10 years ago. For instance, we’ve seen a dramatic increase in workers over 65 remaining in employment – from 5.5% in 1992 to 10% in 2016 – and are now seeing up to four generations in the workplace. From […]

Can we make hiring great again?

Despite the fact that technology has invaded and simplified almost every single aspect of our life (think of Lyft, Amazon or Google), applying for a job seems to remain the same old boring experience. Candidates scroll down never ending pages of job adverts. They read disembodied company descriptions. They look at lists of random tasks […]

What to do about team conflict

There’s conflict and there’s conflict – the productive conflict that energises us when we’re grappling with complex tasks together (we often see that in winning teams)   – and the non-productive, energy-draining conflict which is something different entirely. The latter causes people to dread Monday mornings; to loathe team meetings   and to focus on survival (which […]

The reality of performance: no team is an island

In my last three articles, I’ve spoken about the things a team needs to focus on to become a winning team – with the main emphasis being on the team itself and its members. It’s fair to say that some people object to the term ‘winning’ to describe a business team because the implication is […]

The six habits that help teams win

In my last article I outlined the five steps to building a winning team. There are some meaty things to do and it’s not a quick fix. But if you focus relentlessly on those five things you’ll see significant progress and a stronger, more successful team will emerge. In this article I want to focus on six […]

5 steps to building a winning team

In my last article I described five different team types including the Winning Team. The Winning Team is the one that gets exceptional results. Results which benefit the organisation(s) and clients they serve. (And they get results without exhausting themselves. That’s an important distinction as many teams get great results but at significant personal cost).  These teams pay equal […]

Team types – which one are you?

Six years ago my colleague Lois Burton and I identified five different team types – this was not an academic exercise – (goodness knows, there’s enough theory about teams out there to last a lifetime) – but one based on our experience of working with numerous leadership teams across all sectors over a ten year […]

Improving pensions comms: a creative nudge

Last week auto-enrolment hit the ‘1 million-business’ milestone. And with over 9 million UK employees eligible for auto-enrolment it’s time to look at how organisations can effectively communicate updates to pensions regulations to their teams. Let’s start with a little Nudge. The UK’s a long-time believer in Nudge  – the theory of positive reinforcement to […]

Four social factors to consider for successful employee engagement

Recent research conducted by Gallop in its latest State of the Workplace poll has found that only 11% of the UK workforce currently feels engaged. Creating a culture of open and transparent employee engagement in the workplace is vital for every business, although this is much easier said than done. There are many reasons proposed […]

Interview: Kim Wylie, Head of Customer Change and Culture, Google

Kim Wylie is Head of Customer Change and Culture at Google. She will be speaking at UNLEASH 2018 in London on March 20th and 21st. HRZone readers get a 20% discount to UNLEASH by registering through this link. Jamie Lawrence, Managing Editor, HRZone: What are your current priorities/projects in your job? Kim Wylie, Head of Customer Change and Culture, Google Cloud […]

Global employee benefits: what should international companies be offering their workforce?

As an increasing number of employees live, work and travel abroad, the right employee benefits matter more than ever. This is especially the case as access to local healthcare systems is becoming ever more complicated and restricted, largely due to the burden of ‘the big three’: diabetes, cancer and heart disease. Accordingly, there’s growing recognition that […]