Blog: Does social learning really work?
Have you ever been reluctant to seek assistance from someone inside your organisation, perhaps afraid of losing face because you need help? High performers communicate with their colleagues In a series of experiments, MIT Professor Tom Allen1 found that people are more likely to look outside their own organisation for ideas, while at the […]
In a Nutshell: Five tips for a smooth office move
Moving house is considered to be one of the most stressful things that we can put ourselves through. Although moving office (hopefully) is not likely to be quite as fraught, it does require not only a huge amount of organisation, but also sensitivity in the way that the change is explained to employees. The […]
What does it take to be an HR director?
Securing an HR director job is tough. If you apply for an HRD role, you’ll be faced with strong competition from both inside and outside the organisation. There are some common factors that employers look for when hiring. Ideally, you’ll be someone who is currently a senior HR business partner or a head of HR, […]
Green Office Week: How to promote workplace change
This week sees the start of the fourth ‘Green Office Week’, which is intended to encourage workers across the country to implement simple, practical, step-by-step changes in order to help make their workplaces more environmentally-friendly. Our aim in launching the event was to champion a ‘bottom-up’ approach to encouraging behavioural change by using it as […]
Blog: How to get the most out of restructuring, redundancy and redeployment
For some people it must seem like a merry-go-round when they experience the upheaval of round after round of restructuring, redeployment and redundancies. Every few years the company is turned upside down and yet often doesn’t seem to gain the benefits. This must cause a lot of confusion to those in charge. They […]
How to beat a counter job offer
Against a backdrop of continued economic uncertainty, top talent at all levels is becoming increasingly hard to find and land. Competition for candidates is increasing as companies start to ramp up their hiring efforts after the downturn. This has given rise to more challenging candidate management and the infamous counter offer. Recent research by […]
In a Nutshell: Five steps for managing workplace conflict
Workplace conflict can be caused by anything from differences in individuals’ personalities and style to disagreements over the direction of given ideas and activities. It can even be the result of an office romance. But unresolved conflict can lead to a loss of productivity, increased employee stress levels, less effective collaboration and team-problem solving as […]
The senior HR interim recruitment market: An insight
What’s the current global interim market like? From a UK financial services perspective it’s very competitive, with more candidates than opportunities. The current market consists of career interims, ex-consultants happy to be interims, and those available immediately who are ideally seeking perm but will take a contract in the meanwhile. With the candidate market being […]
How to avoid 10 common employee communication pitfalls
Finding ways to manage employee communications effectively is essential as it helps shape the organisation’s culture and engage employees. It is also vital to ensure that staff understand and buy into organisational change or take up benefits, for instance. As long as communications are regular, open and tailored to the workforce, they can likewise […]
Blog: How to hold on to good employees – Part 1
If you want to attract and retain good employees, you need to (1) understand why employees leave a company, and (2) implement employee retention strategies to get them to stay. This article examines the reasons why employees leave their companies. In my next article, I will set out five strategies for keeping hold of your […]
Blog: Three tips for changing company culture
Recognise This! – Proactive culture change and management is strategy. Company culture is much in the news these days, a development I am very excited to see as it shows more and more buy-in to the importance of culture as something that can be created and, yes, proactively managed. A round-up of articles that […]
Blog: Lessons on dealing with the unions during times of change
Welcome to this weeks Guest Blogger – Paul Myers is the HR Manager for a local transport company. He has initiated significant change in his organisation and has managed to keep his staff on board. He is a people centric manager who has considered how to increase and harness employee engagement at every opportunity. […]
Blog: Eight tips to support staff through difficult organisational change
It's not the organisational change – its how you do it! I recently held a workshop which had a section around organisational change and particularly redundancy. It’s obviously a big subject at the minute, and one which is exercising many managers and HR professionals. What struck me about the difference within this workshop to […]
How to build a positive corporate culture
Every organisation has a culture, which is based on who its people are, what they say and how they act. But wise companies recognise the potential and power that fostering the right culture can generate. Strong, positive cultures are the basis of successful organisations because they tap into workers’ collective energy and define common […]
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. […]
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 […]
Remote working: How to get started
Over the last ten years remote working has been steadily gaining a foothold in the UK workplace, changing the nature of work and the daily commute. For many businesses, it now also forms a key part of their contingency plans, enabling employees to carry on working should unexpected or even expected events such as the […]
Blog: Breaking the taboo – How to tackle redundancy and redeployment
Redundancy and redeployment are taboo words which the HR industry is trying to avoid at the moment, but there are times when, unfortunately, we have to face these processes. Obviously this is not something which we take lightly, and alternatives should be considered in the first instance. But if you do have to take the […]
Blog: The link between culture, brand and PR
WASP males don’t tend to get too many invitations to be involved in the promotion of diversity management; which is a shame really. I’m a firm believer in the notion that the promotion of diversity should embrace the full range of stakeholders and should truly practice inclusiveness in the way stakeholders are engaged with the […]
London 2012: Civil servants ordered to work from home during Olympics
Staff across Whitehall will be forced to work from home during the Olympics and Paralympics Games in order to ease the pressure on London’s public transport network. Civil servants will be ordered not to commute to work for up to seven weeks to prevent the public transport network in the capital from becoming over-congested. Operation […]
