Hearts and flowers and sexual harassment

It’s not all hearts and flowers and M&S ‘dine in for £10’ candlelight suppers today; Valentine’s Day can be the trigger for an HR crisis in the form of sexual harassment allegations!  According to employment lawyer, Jonathan Maude, there are lots of ways for a business to find itself on the wrong end of a […]

Talent Spot: Marcus Powell, HR Director at Nuffield Health

Marcus Powell, group organisation development and HR director at Nuffield Health, knew what he wanted to do very early on – and it was wasn’t HR.    Powell was fixed on the idea of working for Marks & Spencer and that’s exactly what he did, staying for a total of 16 years. The retail giant […]

Best Practice: wellbeing initiative proves healthy for Ipswich Building Society

Ipswich Building Society is reaping the rewards of its employee health and wellbeing initiative with a dramatic fall in absenteeism and staff churn. The 110-strong building society embarked on a health and wellbeing programme four years ago. Since then, absenteeism rates have plummeted 48%, staff turnover has dropped to a record low and it has […]

Poundland’s graduate shelf-stacker wins back-to-work ‘slavery’ appeal

Three judges in London have ruled key elements of the government’s back-to-work schemes are unlawful and have quashed them.    University graduate Cait Reilly has won her Court of Appeal claim that requiring her to work for free at a Poundland discount store was unlawful.    Reilly had been claiming jobseekers’ benefits since 2011 after […]

Vocational training wins SME backing

Vocational qualifications and apprenticeships are gaining popularity with smaller employers as a means of recruiting, training and retaining skilled employees and boosting business performance.    A survey of 1,000 SMEs by a group of further education organisations found college leavers were better prepared for the workplace, with a better attitude and higher motivation than school […]

HR and the CEO – not quite good enough yet…

CEOs and CFOs believe that the HR function’s expertise and experience in people issues can help companies make difficult but crucial staffing decisions in challenging economic times.   According to a study the Economist Intelligence Unit, senior executives in Western Europe value their relationship with senior HR leaders, with 69 percent of respondents saying that […]

Blog: do we really want charismatic leaders?

Last week our Business Development Director had a meeting with a major High Street Financial Institution. During his presentation of our Charisma Model Programme he was a little surprised when their HR Director asked: “Do we really want charismatic leaders?” After a bit of exploration it became clear that the question was raised out of […]

Employees don’t get the benefit of not being 9 to 5

HR professionals must make a better job of explaining the merits of flexible working, as many workers wrongly assume this is just another way for their employers to slash costs.   Nine in ten UK professionals believed flexible working would soon dominate working practices, according to a survey by recruiter Ortus. Yet, only 12% of […]

Tweeties sweeties, tweeties!

Mars UK has launched a world first for recruitment as the Mars Tweet Shop tours universities around the UK, offering free treats and information on the company’s graduate scheme in exchange for Tweets.   The Mars ‘Tweet Shop’ will be visiting nine universities across the UK this month to encourage students to swap Tweets for […]

Technology: employees need to understand the crime of stealing data

 Businesses must step up efforts to protect their corporate data, as most UK workers believe it’s perfectly acceptable to transfer confidential intellectual property to a new employer when they leave.    More than half of the UK employees in a survey by IT security firm Symantec admitted to stealing corporate information when they left an […]

Are you ready for people to walk out?

HR departments carry the vast majority of the administrative burden when employees decide to leave. But beyond the usual P45 paperwork, how else do HR departments need to prepare themselves and ensure the necessary processes exist for departing colleagues, while ensuring that company property is returned and regulations are adhered to?   Leaver Exit Forms […]

Cancer care not on the priority list for employer-funded overseas health schemes

Working overseas can leave staff vulnerable as employers cut corners on health cover, with over a quarter (23%) of employers wanting to provide international health insurance to staff, but simply can’t afford to. According to the “Anatomy of an international business” report by Expacare, one third of employers (33%) consider international health insurance for staff as […]

Ask the Expert: can you refuse to interview an unsatisfactory former worker?

Question:  Can you refuse to interview an unsatisfactory former worker?    What is the legal position if a former employee who had a poor performance/attendance record but left of their own accord rather than having formal action taken against them, applies to work for your company again?    I can’t seem to find any guidance relating […]

In a nutshell: Lorraine Makepeace, Head of Amazing at The Chemistry Group

Lorraine Makepeace is Head of Amazing at Chemistry Group, which provides predictive assessment to solve complex people problems in large businesses. It’s a small company with 21 staff, but has put in a lot of effort getting the culture right and worked hard to describe its values and ensure that employees live by them every […]

The Children and Families Bill – 21st century working or HR headache?

Last week the government announced plans for more flexible working arrangements for employee, including shared parental leave, as part of the Children and Families Bill.  The government says it wants to “remove the cultural expectation that flexible working only has benefits for parents and carers, allowing individuals to manage their work alongside other commitments”.    […]

Best Practice: how to keep calm in a crisis

Crises happen in the workplace all the time. Some are bigger than others, particularly when they draw media attention, such as the HMV twitter debacle the other week, where one of their soon to be made redundant employees took to the main twitter account to vent their anger.   We all know that the administrators […]

Technology – HCM Cloud customers line up to make their choice

Analysts continue to cite the Cloud HCM market as the great battlefront for business applications in 2013.  With Oracle rolling out its Fusion HCM offering, SAP putting its corporate weight behind SuccessFactors, Workday causing pain to the traditional HR powerhouses and Salesforce.com pitching its Rypple-flavoured offering, there’s certainly enough activity among the vendors to assume […]

Executive deafness to employee voices creating lack of engagement

UK bosses need to start to to listen to the voice of employees as engagement between staff and their employers sinks to a record low.  That’s one of the key findings of the latest CIPD Quarterly Employee Outlook survey which exposes a worrying deterioration in employees’ satisfaction with their ability to feed views upwards, particularly in […]

Mid-Staffordshire: a challenge to HR to show its mettle

The Francis Report into the scandal of Stafford Hospital needs to be read thoroughly by all senior managers for the lessons to be learned about executive responsibility.  The inquiry chaired by Robert Francis QC was set up to assess the wider lessons to be learnt by the NHS from the Staffordshire scandal where up to […]

Blog: how to avoid discrimination in recruiting

It has recently been reported that an African born man is taking Virgin airlines to an employment tribunal for racial discrimination.   He alleges that he submitted his detailed CV to Virgin that contained his African name and did not get through the first stage of the recruitment process.   However when he then resubmitted […]