Blog: What Celebrity Bake Off demonstrates about disability
In aid of Comic Relief last week the BBC aired Celebrity Bake Off where each day four celebrities showed off their baking skills with one celebrity being judged the winner. It has been a highly entertaining programme watching the celebrities struggling with the requirements of delivering signature bakes, a technical challenge and show stopper […]
HRZone interview – Linda Holbeche, director The Holbeche Partnership
A chance meeting at a conference between Linda Holbeche, director of HR consultancy The Holbeche Partnership and Geoff Matthews, vice president for HR at Merck KGaA, led to a collaboration on a book that has become shortlisted for the CMI management book of the year. The idea behind the book, Engaged, unleashing your organisation’s potential […]
Final pensions RIP for the private sector?
Final salary pensions in the private sector have closed their doors to new staff at the fastest rate on record, with just 13% of final salary pensions were open to new joiners in 2012. According to a study by the National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF) out today, that represents a drop of a third from […]
Technology: the shocking truth about HCM Cloud chief Lars Dalgaard
"What we’re seeing is a shocking uptake, extremely fast!" So declares the never knowingly under-enthusiastic Lars Dalgaard, former CEO and founder of Cloud HCM firm SuccessFactors and now Cloud chief at SAP. Dalgaard stepped up to his current role last year after the German giant bought out SuccessFactors as part of its own push into […]
Ask the Expert: Can staff claim extra holiday under a TUPE transfer?
Question: Can staff claim extra holiday under a TUPE transfer? A group of people transferred to our business under TUPE last month. During the consultation period, we confirmed that we would honour their pre-booked annual leave for the rest of last year, which we have done. But one of the staff has come back to […]
News: ACAS benefits as workplace disputes boom
More businesses are turning to Acas for expert advice on employment disputes, according to a survey of British workplaces. The 2011 Workplace Employment Relations Study (WERs), released this week, revealed a 29% rise in managers seeking advice from Acas since the 2004 survey. This increase was also reflected in online use. Traffic to […]
News: Unilever volunteers staff for volunteering
Unilever is offering staff paid time off to volunteer as part of a scheme designed to build relations with local communities and increase staff engagement. If staff decide to use their holiday entitlement to volunteer, Unilever will now match their time off with paid leave, as well as giving them an extra day’s pay […]
Unemployment falls again
Unemployment levels have fallen to an 18-month low while the number of people in work has reached a record high, in spite of a jittery economy. There were 2.49 million people unemployed between September and November 2012, a fall of 37,000 over the previous quarter, according to the Office of National Statistics (ONS). Meanwhile, […]
HR Summit highlights talent war
Talent optimisation was one of the key themes to emerge from the 11th HR Directors Business Summit held in Birmingham this week. This conference and networking opportunity drew together a large audience of HR professionals keen to learn about and discuss some of the burning people management issues of the day. These issues included attracting […]
The changing market for HCM applications
The market for HR applications is in a state of flux as a wealth of systems start coming up for renewal and cloud computing begins to enter the mainstream. Cloud offerings – where users pay a subscription to access software over the internet instead of licencing and running it in-house at a hefty capital cost […]
News: Bad careers advice is harming next generation of workers
Poor careers advice and lack of understanding about the workplace mean young people are ill-prepared to enter the jobs market, warned the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD). More than half (53%) of the employers surveyed by the CIPD believed youngsters careers advice was inadequate, while 63% said their young recruits lacked insight […]
News: Let’s sack the boss!
More than three quarters of workers would sack their boss if they had the chance, a global poll by job site Monster reveals. A confident one third (30%) of respondents said they could do a better job than their boss, a quarter said they would nominate another colleague, while one in five favoured a […]
Job confidence tumbles?
Job confidence has tumbled 5% as the New Year brings fresh worries about job security. Just under three quarters (73%) of UK workers believed their job was secure, a 5% drop from October 2012 and a 2% slide since January 2012, according to the latest Legal & General Job Security Index. Those fearing redundancy […]
Business meet HR, HR meet the Business – you’ve got a lot in common!
A failure to demonstrate strategic value is damaging HR’s reputation with business leaders, warns a new Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) report. HR is perceived as implementing rather than devising strategy by business leaders, according to the CIPD survey of 369 business leaders and 107 senior HR professionals. This means […]
News: Capping unfair dismissal payments is “soundbite politics”
The Government’s announcement that unfair dismissal awards will be capped at a maximum of one year’s salary has met with a mixed response. Martin Patt, associate at law firm Lester Aldridge LLP warned that the announcement appeared to be “soundbite politics”. He pointed out that the average award for a straightforward unfair dismissal claim […]
News: Management on the move in 2013
Almost a third of UK senior managers are looking to switch jobs this year, according to an independent report commissioned by career advisor AGM Transitions. The research found that the desire for a new job was high among senior managers, prompted by the prospect of better pay (37%) as well as a fresh challenge (18%). […]
Blog: Jodie Foster and Behavioural Intelligence
Jodie Foster’s Golden Globes speech, in which she made her first public acknowledgement of her sexuality, perfectly illustrated an excellent and moving speaker whose powerful use of rhetoric enraptured her audience. By looking at Foster’s speech, which came after she accepted the Cecil B DeMille award for lifetime achievement, we can shed light on […]
British workers beat the blues
Blue Monday, the so-called most depressing day of the year, will claim fewer victims this year, as workers say they are happier and more secure in their jobs in 2013. The third Monday in January, which falls today, has been dubbed the most miserable day of the year. But despite the cold snap in the […]
Talent Spot: Monica Walls, vice president of Human Resources at Nexenta Systems
Monica Walls, vice president of HR at Nexenta Systems loves working for startups. “You can have a bigger impact and see results much quicker,” she says. “I fell in love with working for startups and and cannot imagine going back to working for a company with 13,000 employees.” Walls has her work cut out feeding […]
The pros and cons of SaaS-based HCM systems
Analyses of the human capital management applications market indicate that Software-as-a-Service-based offerings are steadily gaining market share over their on-premise counterparts. While the consensus is that SaaS HR implementations still only make up just over a tenth of all deployments, current adoption rates are far outstripping those of more traditional approaches. This trend appears […]