Blog: Crappy performance management rule 1 – Don’t tell anyone about the vision
Over my next three blogs I am going to discuss three rules that you need to implement if you are looking for a ‘chocolate teapot’ of a performance management system. Here is the first: Crappy Performance Management Rule 1: Don’t tell anyone about the vision. It’s a rule well rehearsed in many organisations, […]
Five characteristics of an effective leader in times of crisis
The Bradford Bulls rugby league club is an organisation in crisis. Mounting financial pressure has painted its leadership into a corner, forcing it to make a desperate request to loyal supporters to put their hands into their pockets and dig deep to help fill a £1 million black hole. And the pressure is on because, […]
UK faces spring of discontent
The UK is facing a spring of discontent, with baggage handlers at Stansted airport voting to strike, doctors balloting for action in May and the police planning a protest that month too. Holidaymakers travelling through Stansted over the Easter weekend face disruption after 150 members of the GMB union voted to take industrial action over […]
HP gives contractors a 5% pay cut ultimatum
High tech giant HP is reportedly offering IT contractors at its Enterprise Security Services division a stark choice in pay terms: either take a 5% rate cut next month or lose your post. That 5% is a minimum, by the way – it could be bigger in some cases. (One slice of the workforce, the ones […]
British Safety Council to unveil first workplace health manifesto in April
The British Safety Council plans to unveil its first manifesto for workplace health and safety next month to coincide with the launch of a broader European-wide awareness-raising campaign. The Council will launch its ‘Working Well’ proposals at the House of Commons on Monday 23 April, which will focus on how to reduce risk, increase leadership […]
Agency Worker Regs lead to creation of new staff payment models
Contrary to expectations, the introduction of the Agency Worker Regulations has not had a negative impact on demand for temps, although it has given rise to new payment models in the industrial and driving sectors. These are the key findings of research undertaken by the Recruitment & Employment Confederation to commemorate the six month anniversary […]
Blog: The high cost of presenteeism
UK employers lost £36 billion last year due to employee absence. Sounds a lot? Not if we look at the other side of the coin. The cost of lower than normal productivity caused by employees showing up for work when they are not feeling 100% could be up to three times higher than absenteeism’s […]
Blog: The diversity issue – Is being people-friendly the next eco-friendly?
What does diversity mean to you and your business? Or inclusivity and cohesion? A few zzzz lines in the company report, a policy destined for tumbleweed, an unreachable recruitment target, something largely negative under the umbrella of ‘compliance’ that must be reluctantly ticked? What would true diversity and total inclusivity look, feel, and sound […]
Ask the Expert: Are dads on paternity leave entitled to bank holidays?
The question One of our employees became a father on 22 December, 2011. He requested and took his two weeks of paternity leave, starting on the day that the baby was born and ending on 5 January, 2012. However, during those two weeks, there were three bank holidays. Has he lost these now […]
Do you take visa? How to deal with the new immigration guidelines
There are now a myriad of documents that enable workers to take up different posts in the UK. But even though the UK Borders Agency published new guidelines in relation to its five-tier visa system earlier this month, employers still face a huge amount of risk when dealing with items that all too common such […]
Public sector employers not liable for asbestos claims, rules Supreme Court
Public sector employers no longer risk having to shell out hundreds of thousands of pounds for asbestos-related claims after the Supreme Court finally settled a long-running dispute between insurers over liability. The ruling in the landmark case centred on the question of who was responsible for paying compensation for claims relating to invariably fatal asbestos-induced […]
Jive adds gamification to social intranet apps to boost staff engagement
In a bid to boost employee engagement, Jive Software has included a gamification module in its newly unveiled social intranet applications. Based on the vendor’s Social Business platform, the offering can adapt to user needs by analysing social graph data and can also be integrated with third party systems, the firm claimed. The gamification […]
Saba’s social HR software includes controversial ‘People Quotient’ rankings
Social networking software that links people-centric HR processes with the collaboration tools that those very people require – that’s the claim made by Saba about its so-called People Cloud. The Software as a Service-based bundle of applications brings learning, talent and social collaboration functionality together into one place with voice, video and web conferencing, it […]
Balfour Beatty warns its 12,000 staff of possible redundancies
Just as Balfour Beatty warned all of its 12,000 UK construction services staff of possible redundancies today, the OECD forecast that the UK had moved back into recession. With new infrastructure projects expected to fall sharply after the Olympic Games in London this summer, the building giant, which employ 50,000 people worldwide, said it was […]
Blog: Four steps to take on finishing your staff engagement survey
Recognise This! — Strategic recognition is a powerful tool to align employees with your goals and take appropriate action after your engagement survey is done. Like 80% of the people on our “My Engagement Survey Is Done, Now What?” webinar yesterday (recasts available here), do you conduct an employee engagement survey? Though we didn’t […]
TV Review: The Apprentice Week 2 – The art of listening
After the initial excitement of getting to know the candidates in week 1, I was looking forward to seeing how they all shaped up and settled in this week. Would the boys continue to be the perfect dream team working in peace and harmony? Would the girls continue to scare unsuspecting children and shop […]
Footballing lessons: Is anyone bigger than the company they work for?
Debate-worthy issues between bosses and their employees don’t often turn up in the world of sport, but just recently there have been some fascinating headlines about the behaviour of football players and how the people they work for have dealt with it. For example, there was the case of John Terry, who was stripped of […]
TrainingZoneLive: Booking now open
Excitement is mounting for TrainingZone Live, the live event hosted by our sister site TrainingZone, which sashays into its third year of existence on 15 May at Dexter House. The learning and development market is awash with events that cater for the every need and whim of increasingly diverse set of training professionals. As a […]
Case Study: Pernod Ricard standardises global talent management
Pernod Ricard is in the process of standardising its talent management processes across the world in a bid to support business growth more effectively. The multinational supplier of wines and spirits plans to consolidate a fragmented assortment of talent management procedures and applications into a single Software-as-a-Service-based system from Taleo that will operate across its […]
Blog: Using transparency as a tool to rebuild employee trust
"I am sorry, but we have already identified someone for that role.” The next question was, “how could that be, the job was just posted on the Internet?” What my friend had just found out is a little dirty secret in some organizations. Sometimes when jobs are posted, and even when they are not, […]