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% […]
Does affirmative action in recruitment work?
Affirmative action in the jobs market, while illegal in the UK, has been key to helping cut US unemployment rates among African-Americans, research has revealed. According to a paper presented at the British Sociological Association’s annual conference in Leeds today, one in 12 black Britons is currently unemployed compared with just one in 16 over […]
Mini workers threaten strikes after claims of being denied loo breaks
Thousands of Mini workers are threatening to strike over a “strings attached” pay deal as it also emerged that they were facing shorter breaks and had to “ask permission” to go to the toilet. Unions have already balloted almost 2,000 of their members who work at the BMW-owned plant in Oxford over what the car […]