News: Pensions gap widens between top directors and everyone else

The pensions’ gap between top company directors and everyone else appears to be widening, according to research. The TUC’s PensionsWatch survey, which analyses the pension arrangements of 351 FTSE 100 directors, revealed that their average occupational pension was a huge 24.4 times larger than the average UK workers’ of £9,929.   Of the 144 senior […]

In a Nutshell: Five tips for rolling out a global HR system successfully

In July this year, Aviva completed the UK roll-out of an HR system from Software-as-a-Service vendor, Workday, following successful implementations at the insurance provider’s subsidiaries in Europe, North America and Asia. Based on the experience, here are acting group HR director Carole Jones’ top five tips to help ensure that your global applications deployment works […]

Blog: Do you undertake workforce planning?

The economic outlook for the UK may still be flat lining but companies appear to be staying resilient and retaining staff, which is reassuring. Our recent survey of 900 companies throughout the country reveals that 81 per cent will be making ‘no redundancies at all’ in the next six months and just 4 per cent […]

Legal Insight: The HR implications of pensions auto-enrolment

From 1 October this year, pension auto-enrolment will start to affect the UK’s largest businesses. While a lot of these employers will already have got to grips with fundamental issues such as identifying their staging date and considering which pension scheme to use to satisfy the new legislation, there are a number of HR implications […]

News: UK rounds up allies to fight EC female board quotas

The UK has launched a Europe-wide campaign in a bid to block proposals by Brussels to impose a 40% quota for female board representation on FTSE 100 companies by 2020. According to the Financial Times, a pointedly-worded letter has been sent to at least 10 other European Union governments, including Germany and Sweden, that appear […]

News: LinkedIn misuse means candidate research ‘should be conducted with caution’

Widespread misuse of LinkedIn means that HR professionals should exercise caution when using it as a tool to conduct research on potential job candidates, a researcher has warned. A survey among 2,028 UK adults undertaken by ICM Research revealed, for instance, that around two thirds of people who have used the social networking site in […]

Infographic: The latest national salary snapshot

Blog: Reshuffles – A matter of perception?

As Prime Minister David Cameron tackles the first cabinet reshuffle of his tenure he will have to balance the internal needs and objectives of the coalition, while ensuring that the shake-up of ministerial jobs sends out the right signals to the electorate and Conservative party MPs. Although it is highly unlikely that the changes business […]

Blog: Nine signs that you may be lacking ambition in your career

With the arrival of September, I don’t know about you, but there seems to be a collective gearing up. The phone is ringing again and I know I have a busy few months ahead of me. I have returned from the summer break, energised and ready to rock and roll. (Helped definitely by the imminent […]

Talent Spot: Community blogger, Christina Lattimer

Christina Lattimer, owner of HR and leadership development consultancy People Discovery, has been tackling HR issues for all of her working life, even if she didn’t take up her first official HR position until 10 years ago. “I’ve only been a pure HR specialist since 2002 and was a business manager for lot of years […]

Five social media platforms to help boost your career

Social networking can prove a useful tool for finding a new job or moving forward in your career. Here we look at the pros and cons of five key platforms: 1. Link up with LinkedIn   Professional social network LinkedIn now has 150 million users globally, so it’s essential you are using all of its […]

News: European religious discrimination cases could shake up UK employment law

Employers may be obliged to “accommodate expression of religion” by their workers if four Christians win a key test case on religious discrimination heard at the European Court of Human Rights today. Two of the Christians – British Airways check-in clerk Nadia Eweida and NHS hospital nurse Shirley Chaplin – who were refused the legal […]

News: Sailors’ pay docked after £1.2m MoD overpayment error

Hundreds of Royal Navy sailors face having up to four day’s pay per month docked after having been mistakenly overpaid to the tune of £1.2 million by the Ministry of Defence. According to the Daily Mirror, the junior ratings were told in a letter received yesterday that they would be required to pay back the […]

Talking Point: Could HR and internal comms make happy bedfellows?

The business world is in for a turbulent time of it over the next decade, according to Rohit Talwar, futurist, award-winning speaker and chief executive of Fast Future Research. Without doubt, the world as we know it will change as a result of continued economic uncertainty, political instability, the redistribution of wealth from west to […]

Blog: Four leadership challenges faced by Barclays’ new CEO

Over the past few months the commercial banking sector has had its fair share of challenges. The Barclays‘ Libor rigging scandal, negative publicity surrounding bonuses and increased competition from smaller high street banks are to name just a few.   No doubt this turbulent environment will present challenges for Anthony Jenkins, who has just become […]

Blog: What is…..mentoring?

Mentoring is a supportive form of employee training that takes place outside the conventional top-down manager-employee relationship. It typically comes in the form of long-term guidance provided by an experienced employee, the mentor, to someone less experienced, the mentee, in an effort to support the mentee’s overall development.   A mentor is someone who has […]

Providing operational leadership: The emerging role of the HR COO

HR business partners continue to be challenged by both the business and the HR function itself to play a more strategic role.  While the business demands increasingly focused levels of support, the HR department is left balancing such requirements with its own priorities in terms of making cost savings and providing services consistently.   Most […]

Infographic: Q2 employment snapshot

News: ‘Zero-hours’ NHS contracts branded risky “untested experiment”

An increasing use of ‘zero-hours’ contracts by NHS Trusts trying to make the coalition government’s reforms workable amounts to an “untested experiment” that is putting patient safety at risk, critics have warned. According to the Independent, a number of Trusts including Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals, South Gloucester and University Hospitals Bristol are currently turning to the […]

News: State pension age rises to create “limbo zone” for older workers

Increases in the state pension age will lead to the creation of a new “limbo zone” in which many workers are too young to draw their pension but too old and infirm to work. The TUC issued the warning on releasing an analysis of official labour market data, which revealed that a mere 54% of […]