Talent Spot: Andrew Powell, COO of Colt Technology Services
Andrew Powell landed a six-week consultancy contract at Colt Technology Services in 2006 and has been there ever since. Despite falling into employment with the telecoms and IT services firm “completely by accident”, he is now chief operating officer after having held five other senior positions at the company within five years – which includes […]
Book Review: Future minds by Richard Watson
I have to confess that, given the cover and subtitle ‘How the digital age is changing our minds…’, I approached futurist Richard Watson’s second book with the same trepidation that a 12 year old feels when faced with a Winter cross country run. I expected it to ‘do me good’, but I didn’t expect it […]
Two out of five employers plan to axe Christmas party
Two out of five employers are axing this year’s Christmas party, but half have yet to break the news to staff, according to a study. The survey of 2,532 company bosses undertaken by online restaurant booking service www.table7.com also revealed that, even those still planning to continue with the festive celebrations intended to have a […]
Police officers left “directionless” during riots due to equipment failure
Equipment shortages together with failings in the Airwave digital radio network led to police officers being left "directionless" during this summer’s riots, a highly-critical leaked report has said. The Police Federation review, which was leaked to the Observer, revealed that the Police National Information Co-ordination Centre, the body set up to co-ordinate the response to […]
Employers drag feet in evaluating cost impact of pension auto-enrolment
The introduction of pension auto-enrolment among large companies next year will result in lower wage growth in some instances as well as reduced hiring activity and less generous employer contributions in others. These are the key findings of a survey among 653 HR professionals undertaken by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and published […]
Blog: The golden thread – aligning HR and business strategy
I once worked with an organisation that had introduced a Value Chain methodology. So far so good. But they had made the critical error of trying to pigeonhole HR into one of the ‘links’ in the chain, instead of realising that HR is a support function that, by definition, underpins everything that the company does. […]
HRD Insight: Jack Morton’s Fiona Lawlor on sustainable engagement
If there’s one thing that’s needed to help business survive recession, it’s an engaged workforce. Yet all around, there are signs that such engagement is sadly lacking in British industry today. The majority of UK workers have had much to contend with over recent years, including pay freezes and soaring inflation. Add to this […]
Business Cloud Summit: Cloud = the end of tech talk for HR
A key advantage of cloud computing in an HR context is that it removes the need to talk about technology with professionals that have to date shown little interest in it. Teresa Farrell, IT and projects manager for Irish Life and Permanent Plc’s group HR service centre development, said during a panel discussion at the […]
Business Cloud Summit: ‘Agree entry and exit strategies upfront to avoid lock-in’
Not all vendors selling cloud computing services have developed a commercial licensing model to match, which means that potential customers must agree entry and exit strategies upfront or risk being locked in. This was one of the key recommendations made by Paul Cheesborough, chief information officer at News International during a panel discussion entitled ‘Cloud […]
Blog: The serious issue of recruitment fraud
In March of 2011 there was a topic that was posted on The FIRM’s discussion forum that was quite alarming. One of the members, a UK based recruitment manager, working in-house at a large company had flagged the issue of Recruitment Fraud. I wrote the majority of this post then. It is updated here […]
Ask the Expert: How do I ensure that shift workers get the right holiday?
The question We have a team of 24/7/365 shift workers working four days on, four days off, 12 hours each shift. Using the calculation on the Direct.Gov website (5.6 weeks entitlement x 3.5 shifts worked per week = 19.6 12 hour shifts annual entitlement), the team is entitled to 19.6 shifts off per year […]
Making Christmas incentives magic
For many employers knowing what to offer staff as a Christmas incentive can be tricky. Common benefits that are well-received include Christmas hampers, bottles of champagne, wine or chocolates. The popularity of hampers is certainly on the rise, particularly if they cater to a wide range of tastes. But rewards will inevitably have variable […]
SAP’s $3.4bn SuccessFactors’ takeover to change HCM cloud market forever
Two years ago electronics giant Siemens surprised the world by electing to replace fellow German firm SAP as its HCM and talent management software provider with Cloud HCM firm SuccessFactors. It was a massive propaganda victory for the Cloud firm and resulted in what remains the largest Cloud Computing applications deployment in the world – […]
Finding and keeping disabled workers
Organisations facing cost pressures in today’s challenging economic environment would do well to explore the business case for employing disabled people. Exceptional characters such as Stephen Hawking, David Blunkett and Richard Branson would appear to prove the point that it doesn’t make sense to simply exclude them in the mistaken notion that they have nothing […]
Blog: Facebook will never replace face-time
So-called social media, the much abused misnomer for the relatively new technological, almost virtual, communication gathering points fed largely by constantly evolving gadgets, is literally fantastic. What had latterly been the stuff of fantasy has led to social and business revolutions, has liberated many-a-Dilbert from their cubicle and has clearly added a whole new dimension […]
HMRC slammed for lack of strategy on £96m skills spend
The National Audit Office has slammed HM Revenue & Customs for lacking in skills and having no idea of either how much it spends on skills development or where the money goes. Evidence from a customer survey and external stakeholders, which was cited in the auditor’s report, suggested that the government department did not have […]
High Court rules in Government’s favour on pension change
The High Court has ruled in favour of the Coalition Government’s decision to link public sector pensions to a lower inflation measure than used to be the case up until April. Trade unions had brought a judicial review into the legality of the Government’s switch from using the Consumer Prices Index rather than the faster-growing […]
Live blog: Business Cloud Summit 2011 #BCS11
Replay live coverage from the Business Cloud Summit, the UK’s most established Cloud Computing event, from 9am on Monday 5 December. See below for a live blog of the business stream. The Twitter hashtag is #BCS11. Business stream: cover://v/fdcb4f2a88
Asset-based pension contribution crackdown could put off large employers
Changes introduced in Tuesday’s Autumn Statement to restrict tax relief on asset-backed contributions to pension schemes are likely to make them less attractive to large companies. The new limits on tax relief for asset-backed pension contributions were set out in draft clauses of the Finance Bill 2012, but came into effect from the date of […]
Negative attitudes towards disabled workers “more damaging than disability itself”
Just under two thirds of workers avoid people with disabilities because they are unsure of how to act around them, while a third view them in an actively negative light. These are the key findings of a survey undertaken among 3,000 UK adults by BT. The study also revealed that among those who had […]