Blog: Succession planning – Winning the talent war

I was watching Oprah’s Lifeclass the other day, and one of the things that resonated with me was that statement that one of her friends said about Oprah and why she was successful. Who is next in your pipeline? Who do you have your other hand extended to?    Succession or replacement? You choose.   I read […]

Case Study: Nokia attempts to ‘Bridge’ the gap with employee outplacement scheme

Nokia is attempting to take the sting out of its redundancy programme by introducing an ambitious employee outplacement scheme. Changes to the mobile phone company’s strategy led it to announce the closure of some UK sites during Easter 2011.   The move meant that hundreds of people across all sections of the business from product […]

Legal Insight: Health matters part 1 – Managing sickness absence

Doom-and-gloom tales about the state of the ailing economy are prevalent at the moment and companies large and small are reportedly taking drastic steps to save money.  But if panic has not yet set into your organisation and there are no full-scale redundancy programmes in the offing, consider taking alternative action by reducing costs from […]

In a Nutshell: Seven tips for managing stress-related illness

Cardiff and Vale University Health Board is one of the largest NHS organisations in the UK, providing health services for those living in Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan. The Board employs around 14,500 staff and manages nine hospitals and 17 health centres among other responsibilities.   Its aim is to take a preventative approach […]

Blog: Most employers spend more on office cleaning than staff motivation

Does having a clean office improve your profits and where am I going with this? Most HR professionals recognise that happy employees are more effective, hence our performance equation mantra, happy employees = happy customers = happy profits.   Motivated employees are by default happier and many studies prove that employers with highly motivated workforces outperform […]

Blog: Would you consider crowdsourcing staff performance feedback?

Recognise This! — You can’t have a meaningful discussion about performance, goals, and successes in an environment of fear, dread and anxiety. How do you feel about performance reviews? Personally, I think the annual performance review (as most commonly implemented) is broken.   It’s too infrequent, too fraught with anxiety and fear (for the manager […]

News Analysis: Could Ceridian give SAP and Oracle a run for their HCM money?

A lot of attention has been focused recently on SAP’s SucessFactors takeover, Oracle’s Taleo purchase and Workday’s presumed-to-be imminent initial public offering. But these are not the only moves to be taking place in the Software-as-a-Service human capital management applications space.   Cloud-based HR and payroll provider, Ceridian, for example, recently closed its acquisition of Dayforce, […]

Talent Spot: Rebekah Wallis, HR director at Ricoh

Back-to-back company and employee integration programmes have kept Rebekah Wallis, HR director at printing and IT services firm Ricoh, pretty busy over the last four years or so. This is because HR has been considered core to the success of such integration work by ensuring that staff are supported and helped to make the necessary […]

Book Review: Beyond performance management by Jeremy Hope and Steve Player

‘Beyond Performance Management’ is a book that has been needed for a number of years.  Jeremy Hope and Steve Player point out that many ‘must-have’ management tools have in the past proved unsatisfactory and that only about 30% of change programmes built using them have succeeded: they also back up their views with independent research. […]

MP lobbies to permit maternity leave for mums with surrogate babies

An MP is lobbying to close a “legal loophole” that denies mothers of children born through surrogacy the same entitlement to maternity leave as others. John Healey, local MP for Wentworth and Dearne, took up the case after one of his constituents, Jane Kassim, was told by her employer, Rotherham Council, that she was entitled […]

EC campaign unveiled to promote funded international work placements

The European Commission is to unveil its ‘We Mean Business’ campaign tomorrow in a bid to encourage employers to offer fully-funded international work placements to young people. The aim of the move is to boost young people’s skills and employability at a time of high youth unemployment across Europe.   To this end, the EC […]

Blog: Career development part one – Why employers are investing in it

What does career development mean to you and to your company? Why is it important? How to do it? This is the first of two posts on the subject of career development practices in companies.   First, I want to discuss the reasons why companies are interested in career development. In the next post I […]

Blog: 10 tips for minimising unfair dismissal claims

With 218,000 tribunal claims in 2010-11 and almost 25 percent of those for unfair dismissal, it was likely that the government was going to take steps to reduce the number of claims made. The decision was made that the amount of time an employee has to work for an organisation before being able to make […]

Tube maintenance staff to strike next week

London Underground maintenance staff will go on strike for 72 hours next Tuesday because of a row over pensions and benefits. The Rail Maritime and Transport Workers union, which represents about 1,000 staff who work on the Tube Lines contracts, said that personnel had voted four to one in favour of industrial action, which will […]

Is there such a thing as a typical HR career path?

There is no such thing as a ‘typical’ career in HR.  The diversity inherent in the profession provides the opportunity to take things in a variety of different directions and to influence strategic business decisions.   This is as true today as it was 20 years ago. HR is an evolving profession and entry routes […]

Graduate starting salaries lowest for nearly a decade

Graduate starting salaries are predicted to drop to their lowest in real terms for almost a decade because it is currently a “buyer’s market”, researchers have revealed. According to a survey of more than 100 employers conducted by Incomes Data Services, nine out of ten that run graduate recruitment schemes plan to freeze pay over […]

Inequalities watchdog slammed over pay gap

The UK’s inequality watchdog has been slammed after admitting that it pays male workers more than females and white employees more than those from ethnic minority backgrounds. The situation came to light just over two years after the Equality and Human Rights Commission had vowed to stamp out pay discrimination among its own workers – […]

Blog: Crappy performance management rule 3 – Set objectives that staff can never hit

In my previous two blogs I articulated rule 1 of crappy performance management:  Don’t tell anyone about the vision and rule 2: Never attempt to motivate staff as it will merely be seen as patronising.  In this final instalment of the trilogy the hero of crappy performance management wins the day and their "precious" drops away into the […]

Blog: Boris and Ken – Lessons in leadership

There is something worrying about the struggle for mayoral rights in London, between past and present: Boris Johnson and Ken Livingstone. Perhaps journalist Rachel Sylvester packaged up the problem in the neatest way when she wrote: "It’s not supposed to be about you, Boris and Ken."   But, at the moment it is. It appears that […]

The secret to employee engagement? Just listen

Most people know that engaged employees are much more productive than disaffected ones, but HR professionals also understand the amount of damage that the latter can wreak on the company’s bottom line. You’ll be familiar with the research, but it’s worth a recap. Staff members who are engaged with their jobs will:   Generate 43% […]