Are you employing a corporate psychopath?
This article was written by Clive Boddy and Derek Miles. Clive and Derek are, respectively, Professors in Leadership and Human Resource Development at Middlesex University Business School. You can email them at c.boddy@mdx.ac.uk or d.miles@mdx.ac.uk. Psychologists report that 1% of the general population are psychopaths and lucky for most of us the violent ones tend to […]
Coherence – the brilliant future for leaders
For decades we have been led to believe that addressing behaviour is the key to consistently improving performance. It's a logical argument, after all behaviour or what we do affects the results we achieve but what about all the things that affect behaviour? If we want to permanently improve performance and results then we need […]
Industrial relations lessons following the Ineos dispute
Many employers have good working relationships with their recognised trade unions, but for others a union presence is a source of conflict and frustration which can all too easily tip into outright dispute. In an ideal world employers would be able to maintain harmonious industrial relations through effective collective bargaining. However, where this fails, the […]
When is a settlement agreement the right choice?
Dismissing an employee is rarely a straightforward or ideal situation. But occasionally, an employer-employee relationship breaks down to such an extent that it is impossible for employment to continue. In these instances, a settlement agreement is a way to constructively end the employment, adding structure and certainty to the process. A settlement agreement allows both […]
Is 360 feedback measuring the ‘wrong stuff’?
This article was co-authored by Gail Wise, Partner at enVision Performance Solutions and Clinton Wingrove, EVP and Principal Consultant at Pilat HR Solutions. Multi-rater feedback, or ‘360’, has been in widespread use since at least the late 80s, with almost all large corporations using it in some form or other. Organisations employ it for a wide […]
Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer hits on HR blunder again
Yahoo CEO Marisssa Mayer has again hit on HR controversy with a new policy that forces managers to rank their employees on a bell curve, with those at the end heading for the chop. The story was reported by website AllThingsD.com, who said that Yahoo employees were increasingly venting their frustration at the policy on […]
Top tips to get the best from your occupational health provider
Employers often find themselves in a situation where medical information is needed to determine an employee’s fitness to return to work, their fitness to continue in their present role, or their ability to attend a meeting. Specialist occupational health (OH) practitioners are often the first port of call for employers seeking guidance. But whilst referrals […]
Employing people overseas – tax and social security considerations
International business expansion normally means recruiting people in overseas territories or sending UK employees to work outside the UK. For HR departments this can present numerous challenges, especially where businesses are operating internationally for the first time. One of the key practical challenges is paying employees who are located overseas, whilst ensuring that the company […]
The four essential components of integrated performance and learning
Performance and Learning are inextricably linked, there is little debate about that. However, this knowledge is not enough to run the two successfully. For an integrated strategy to be effective HR needs to know how and where the connection points between the two are, as well as how they can deliver it with minimum administrative […]
Fifty top tweets from the CIPD Annual Conference 2013
The CIPD Annual Conference took place on November 6th and 7th in Manchester, UK. It was a special occasion for the organisation as they were also celebrating their 100th year anniversary, which was commemorated with a gala dinner on the night of the 6th. Like HR Tech Europe, which happened last month (October 2013), the […]
How to give real meaning to work
Employee motivation and engagement are perennial hot topics for business leaders, management and HR professionals. Every year there is a veritable avalanches of surveys, books, courses and tools published to address issues around the recruitment and retention of talent that are centred on theories of motivation and engagement. Employers have a responsibility for the environment […]
Apathetic workforce? UK employees are suffering from a lack of creativity
The UK is home to an apathetic workforce that doesn’t feel like they are contributing to their place of work in a meaningful way, according to a Microsoft research report. It reveals that organisations are finding that employees are becoming demotivated due to a process-driven culture that focuses too much on managing email traffic and […]
Five ways neuroscience can improve your engagement results
How to create the super powered engagement leader Engagement is a hot topic but do HR functions really care about it or has it become just another process to run i.e. ‘it’s the survey season again’, rather than the outcome of leadership and work practice? Clearly something isn’t working as all the data says our […]
History of employee engagement – from satisfaction to sustainability
Employee engagement may seem a relatively recent concept but actually it goes back over 20 years when the term first appeared in an academic journal in 1990. Prior to that, during the 70’s and 80’s, HR’s (or as it was then ‘personnel’s’) focus was on employee satisfaction. But this had little or no connection with […]
Top 10 excuses for failing to engage with engagement
Over the 25 years or so Great Place to Work® has worked with thousands of organisations across the globe we’ve heard virtually every rationale as to why they’ve not yet engaged with engagement. Whilst we fully understand these barriers or obstacles our experience shows that they are not insurmountable; they may be hurdles but not […]
10 things you didn’t know about engagement
Despite engagement being firmly established in HR circles and endorsed at government level, there is still no universally agreed definition. Engagement is an output – one of the key drivers is trust. Only around 1/3rd of employees say they are engaged, putting the UK 9th out of the world’s twelfth largest economies (based on GDP). […]
Thoughts of an American HR officer on a one-way ticket to Saudi Arabia
“Mr. Thomas, we would like to make you an offer”. I thought of the scene in the Godfather where the Don makes an offer that can't be refused. Well the offer was one that I could not refuse. And with that call, my life changed. I would be leaving New York City to live in […]
Interview: Dr Katherine Jones, Vice President, HR Technology Research, Bersin by Deloitte
We conducted this interview with Katherine at HR Tech Europe, which took place on October 24th and 25th 2013. The next HR Tech Europe will take place on October 24th and 25th 2014. You mentioned earlier that a lot more graduates are coming through STEM programmes. With the ‘dataification’ of HR, will the HR department eventually […]
Is HR a department of cobbler’s children?
Do you hate your HR job? Or maybe you don’t hate it exactly, but just think that there is something else out there that you’d enjoy more? Are you, in all honesty, a bit rubbish at it? HR has been getting a lot of bad press lately. Thanks to that woman at the BBC (HR […]
Stress in the workplace – who takes responsibility?
This article has been written to tie in with National Stress Awareness Day (NSAD) on November 6th. This year will be the 15th annual NSAD. The recent CIPD Absence Management report revealed that stress is on the increase. This is despite the fact that more organisations than ever are investing in comprehensive employee wellbeing strategies. […]