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 […]
Book Review: The Advantage – Why organizational health trumps everything else in business
A key message of author, Patrick Lencioni, is that the financial cost of running an unhealthy organisation is huge because of waste, decreased productivity, increased employee turnover and lost customers – and I agree with him. But the personal cost can be much higher, as he also explains: “When leaders of an organisation are […]
Blog: Disabled workers – Making reasonable adjustments
Most people will no doubt be familiar with the concept of ‘reasonable adjustments’ to accommodate employee disabilities, facilitate a return to work after sickness absence etc. But often that’s when we get a bit stuck for ideas of how to actually do this in practice – in fact we often rely on the person who requires […]
International workforces: Supporting non-native English speakers
It goes without saying that it is much easier for people to work together if they can communicate effectively. But one consideration in this context is the increasingly international nature of the modern workplace. As a result, HR directors have a big part to play in supporting new employees moving to the UK for […]
