What does your favourite emoji say about you?
What’s your favourite emoji and what does that say about you? Statistically, it’s likely to be the ‘tears of laughter’ emoji, but perhaps yours tells a different story? A brief history of emoji Originally conceived in 1999 as a standardised way of coding ‘emoticon’ images into text messages, emojis have quickly evolved into a key piece […]
Book review: Enhancing Employee Engagement: An Evidence-Based Approach
HRZone has a range of books available for review. If you would like to receive one of our business books, free of charge, please contact the editor on editor at hrzone dot com and we can send you a list of what’s available. In return, we ask for a 400-700 word review of the book, […]
Testing Times: UAT, Test, Pilot and Parallel Run
In this 12-part series, Kate Wadia – Managing Director at Phase 3 Consulting – guides the HR professional through how to navigate, succeed and lead with HR tech project-work. From the inception of the business case to the handover into BAU, we’ll follow an indicative project timeframe to explain the way and the why of a project […]
“Meaningful conversations can happen at any time and can be of any length,” says Birthe Mester, Deutsche Bank
Birthe Mester is Global Head of Performance, Engagement & Culture at Deutsche Bank. She has 20 years professional experience in change, including cultural, behavioural and perceptional change. She previously lead a change management consultancy and before that was a diplomat with the German Foreign Office. Birthe will be speaking at the HR Directors Business Summit in early […]
It’s not personal, just business – reflections on the CIPD’s Essential Interpersonal Skills Course
You either earn a reputation, are given a reputation, or declared missing in action because no one knows what you do. So stop worrying about the rise of the robots as it’s people you have to impress. You can be a tough and resilient executive, but if you become too scary, those who fear you […]
HR technology implementation: the Building Blocks
In this 12-part series, Kate Wadia – Managing Director at Phase 3 Consulting – guides the HR professional through how to navigate, succeed and lead with HR tech project-work. From the inception of the business case to the handover into BAU, we’ll follow an indicative project timeframe to explain the way and the why of a project […]
Why HR can’t rely on best practice anymore – part 2
In part one of this two-part thought piece, I questioned the applicability of HR’s use of best practice as a viable way to serve the needs of organisations. I am seeing time and time again that a number of disruptive market trends are driving the chasm between organisational strategy and HR’s mainstream approach further and further […]
HR – no longer the poor relation of the business
Increasingly, the business expects HR to deliver tangible commercial results. So why then, has HR played the poor relation for so long when it comes to investment in new tools and technologies? Every other department – from marketing to finance – seems to win the case for specialist tech. It’s time for a little queue barging from […]
Organisations should approach apprenticeship levy as an investment, not a tax
This is an interview with David Willett, Director of Corporate Sales at The Open University. TrainingZone has worked with The Open University to produce a whitepaper on Higher and Degree Apprenticeships for organisations that want to make the most of the apprenticeship levy. It’s free and available to download now. Jamie Lawrence, Managing Editor, HRZone.com: What’s […]
Digital transformation is workforce transformation: Why HR must assume a leadership role
Digital transformation is top of mind in boardroom discussions today for ample reasons: higher quality products and services, employee productivity enhancements, operational efficiencies and cost savings. In these strategic talks, little mention is given to the need for workplace transformation. But one without the other is a recipe for failure. The risks of employee disengagement, […]
How EI makes your board more effective and benefits the whole organisation
Following the Lord Davies review in 2011 to increase gender diversity in UK boardrooms, 26% of FTSE 100 companies have successfully reached the required quota. But a new target has now been set of 33% by 2020. More women in the boardroom is just one aspect of increasing diversity and I would argue that rather […]
Managing change at Swinton Insurance
As part of Working Transitions regular ‘5 minutes with…’ series, Zoe Bull, Head of Marketing, talks to Hilary Burns, People Director at Swinton, about a recent change programme at Swinton. Zoe Bull, Head of Marketing, Working Transitions: Hi Hilary! Can you talk us through the change programme that you have been involved in recently? Hilary […]
Are we setting our leaders up to fail?
Among the challenges HR have to contend with are the ones that arise from old-fashioned, top-down leadership cultures. These generally expect one person, the one at the head of the organisation, to do the lot, and to know everything there is to know. Leaders are held up as the source of all knowledge, assumed to be […]
Employee benefits: the impact of salary sacrifice changes on cycle-to-work schemes
Last November, in his Autumn Statement, Philip Hammond announced that so-called “salary sacrifice” schemes were to be significantly trimmed back. The chancellor called them “unfair,” because they allowed some employees to end up paying much less tax on benefits in kind – those that are given on top of a salary – than others. For […]
Leaders mustn’t be late to the digitisation game
Leaders are constantly bombarded with mind-boggling complexity, the exponential speed of change, and the application of new technologies. Meanwhile short-term pressure from the investment community continues to intensify. It’s understandable that even the best of the best business leaders will occasionally miss something. Some misses, however, can be devastating, chief among them: the move to […]
HR vs IT: who owns the employee experience?
As with so many industries and job roles that focus their attention on managing people, human resources can be a tricky discipline to define. Its reach spans across everything from recruitment to internal disputes and employee satisfaction right through to finance and remuneration. Given this wide array of specialties, it’s easy to understand why – […]
How leaders can make their dark side brighter
There can’t be many of us who haven’t at some point in our working lives come across leaders who have a ‘dark’ side. Maybe you work for a manager who’s a bit of a narcissist – someone who truly believes they are head and shoulders above everyone else, is arrogant in the extreme and only […]
Implementation tasks: documents and discovery
In our 12-part series, Kate Wadia – Managing Director at Phase 3 Consulting – guides the HR professional through how to navigate, succeed and lead with HR tech project-work. From the inception of the business case to the handover into BAU, we’ll follow an indicative project timeframe to explain the way and the why of a project […]
How to make change easier and smoother
It is getting harder to change. We are surrounded by a heady concoction of accelerating technological change, unremitting global socio-political unrest, and persistent economic frailty. However you want to characterise the times we live in, social, economic and commercial stability is not a part of it. And against this backdrop, it is hard to find […]
HR challenges for 2017 – and beyond
The Hackett Group’s 2017 HR Key Issues report had much to reveal about the state of the profession – and the challenges and opportunities it faces in the near future. Based on a survey of executives from more than 180 large international companies, the report paints a picture of HR at a turning point in its […]
