Is interim HR management for you?

Leaving behind the stable world of PAYE won’t appeal to everyone in the current economic climate. But even with predictions of a second recession ahead, many HR professionals still crave a new career challenge and some are even brave enough to make big changes.   One career option that commonly appeals to senior HR practitioners […]

Racism claim upheld after pub manager calls black worker “Sooty”

A pub manager repeatedly called a black employee “Sooty” and told him to stand under a light when she spoke to him so that she could see him, an employment tribunal has heard. But according to the Daily Telegraph, when the staff member, Joel Perry who is of Jamaican origin, made a formal complaint about […]

Analysis: Oracle unveils plans for its Taleo acquisition

 While last week it was SAP explaining plans for its SuccessFactors acquisition, this week, it was the turn of the application vendor’s arch-enemy Oracle to talk about its Taleo purchase. Earlier this month, Oracle announced that it would buy Software-as-a-Service-based talent management and recruitment software provider, Taleo, for $1.9 billion. The acquisition is expected to […]

Blog: Diversity is good for business

I have watched with amusement these past few weeks the reaction in the sports world to the phenomenon called Jeremy Lin. Not being much of a sports fan (especially basketball), I had to delve a little deeper than the normal fan. Chinese-American and Harvard-educated does not normally equal star in the NBA — or at […]

Anywhere Working Week: Helping employees switch off in an ‘always on’ world

Workplace change has never been as rapid as it is today. Globalisation and exponential increases in the use of technology have generated a 24/7 culture, where staff are often expected to work anytime and anywhere.   Yet, as anyone working in HR knows, this ‘always-on’ situation is a double-edged sword.    Employees today are generally […]

Ask the Expert: Can we buy back chunks of carried-over annual leave?

The question I have recently commenced working for a company, which has a policy allowing staff to carry over their unused annual leave into the first three months of the new year (the leave period runs from August to July).   If the leave is unused by the end of the three months, it is […]

Legal Insight: Can UK staff be sued for stealing Twitter followers?

Another week, another story about Twitter – this time from the US, where an employer has sued a former employee for allegedly stealing the companies followers. Noah Kravitz, who worked as a reviewer for Phonedog Media for more than four years, created the Twitter account in 2007 when he first started to work at the […]

New employers liable for prior unfair dismissal claims under TUPE

Under TUPE legislation, liability for unfair dismissal claims automatically passes to any new employer, making businesses that have sacked staff in anticipation of a transfer less attractive to potential buyers, the Court of Appeal has ruled. The Court confirmed that it did not matter whether the new employer was known, had been identified or even […]

Change programmes: Asking the awkward questions

As difficult economic circumstances continue, it seems likely that organisations of all types are going to have to find new ways of cutting costs, improving productivity and just generally fighting harder to get business.  This will mean scrutinising activities that do not clearly help them meet their goals in the short-term and potentially terminating them.  […]

Blog: Spotting hidden talent

Recognise This! – Every organisation has critical, but hidden, talent. Finding and utilizing them creates significant competitive advantage. The U.S. sports world has been abuzz with “Linsanity” – hype about the excellent performance of Jeremy Lin, an NBA-league basketball player who came off the bench and immediately displayed stunning numbers.   Regular readers of my […]

CEO Insight: Salesforce’s Marc Benioff – ‘The HCM software old guard can’t keep up’

SAP and Oracle’s respective moves to buy up human capital management software firms is not going to help them and just sends out confusing messages to the market. This is the typically robust claim made by Marc Benioff, the outspoken chief executive of Software-as-a-Service-based customer relationship management firm, Salesforce.com, which is likewise starting to position itself […]

Unpaid overtime saves employers £29.2bn each year

One in five workers regularly work unpaid overtime saving employers a huge £29.2 billion per year, with older workers and long-servers by far the most likely to offer their services for free. According to an analysis of official government figures undertaken by the TUC to mark ‘Work Your Proper Hours Day’, some 5.3 million people […]

Cloud becomes the default for SAP’s HR applications

Since purchasing SuccessFactors, SAP has designated Software-as-a-Service as its default mode of delivering HR applications. The enterprise applications vendor has already moved its talent management software into maintenance mode, although it still plans to support the modules until 2020. It also intends to provide customers with selective enhancements over that period.   As for its […]

HR ‘out of touch’ with workforce realities, claims report

Evidence of a “striking mismatch” between what HR professionals perceive to be key issues and the reality on the ground means that they simply must make more effort to understand their workforces, a report has warned. According to a survey of 350 senior HR practitioners, all too many are out of touch. They are failing […]

Blog: Will your staff be called up during the Olympics?

 You may have heard the news that Reservists will be used for security purposes during the Olympic Games such as in this BBC article. While the use of Reserve Forces has been common place by other countries during the last few Games, it may come as a surprise to some employers who may not have […]

Seven secrets to managing change effectively

Since the start of the recession, organisations have made cuts where they can, but there now appears to be precious little slack left to prune. As a result, over the year ahead, many employers are likely to start refocusing activities and the introduction of change seems to be a certainty.    But while change tends […]

Analysis: Are women being hit hardest by public sector cuts?

Although research indicates that women have been disproportionately hit by cuts in public sector temp budgets, females are not being hit harder than males in the UK jobs market overall, the CIPD attests. An analysis of employment across 74 local authorities and other public authorities undertaken by consultancy, Comensura, revealed an 11.8% drop in the […]

CEO Insight: SuccessFactors’ Lars Dalgaard on new owner, SAP

For the last couple of years, SuccessFactors‘ chief executive Lars Dalgaard has used a slide in his presentations that picks out the headlines in German newspapers reporting when his firm won a major Software-as-a-Service-based human capital management contract at Siemens out from under the corporate nose of SAP.   It’s a slide that we can assume won’t be getting […]

Leadership development is top L&D priority in bid to “sort wheat from chaff”

 Leadership development for senior managers has for the first time this year become the top priority for learning and development activity as employers attempt to "sort the wheat from the chaff". According to the Corporate Learning Priorities Survey 2012 carried out by Henley Business School’s corporate development team, some 47% of respondents made it their […]

Lincolnshire to see biggest ever transfer of police staff to private sector

An outsourcing deal allowing a private security company to design, build and run a police station in Lincolnshire is expected to result in the biggest ever single transfer of police staff to a commercial firm. The agreement between G4S and Lincolnshire Police is thought to be the first of its kind in the UK and […]