News: Banks angle for tax-efficient bonuses amid change to police and teachers’ pay
As a row broke out over attempts by bankers to defer bonus payments in order to exploit forthcoming tax cuts, it was announced that the starting salaries of police officers were to be cut by a fifth. According to the Daily Telegraph, the outgoing Bank of England governor, Mervyn King, warned the banks that they […]
Four easy steps to plan for career change
Of course skills, qualifications and abilities are vital, but when I am coaching people who want to change career, it often transpires that they have not stopped to consider what they really want. It’s natural to some extent to want to just move on quickly, but this research and reflection time will be time very […]
Case Study: Staff wellbeing measures cut sickness absence at Julia’s House
Julia's House is Dorset’s only hospice for children with life-threatening illnesses. It opened in 2006 and staff numbers have since grown from an initial 40-odd to 125 today. Despite the harrowing nature of the work, its employees are highly-engaged and, last year, it was awarded top slot in the charity and public sector category of […]
Talking Point: Isn’t it time HR focused on solutions rather than problems?
HR professionals often find themselves carrying out administrative and operational tasks that are the responsibility of line managers. They also end up being dragged into other people’s problems, which is both time-wasting and exhausting. How many times have you found yourself doing something that was somebody else’s responsibility, getting bogged down in negativity and […]
Blog: Body language – Actions speak louder than words
The way someone looks, the way they stand, the way they sit, the way they dress – all of these say something about that person. If we take the time to look and observe with interest we can understand and appreciate so much about a person without them even saying a word. I believe […]
How to reframe your performance review
Imagine the scene… your annual performance review is due tomorrow afternoon. Lots of new projects have kicked off in the last few months and you have been working your socks off. Work is still very chaotic and busy which means you have very little time to do much preparation for your review. So you […]
Blog: Was Europe’s Ryder Cup win the result of emotional intelligence?
Europe’s remarkable comeback from 10-6 down to take the Ryder Cup was not only an incredible sporting achievement, I believe it also illustrated how a great leader made an emotional connection with his team and fueled them with a desire to win. As I was listening to the interviews after the famous win it struck […]
Book Review: How to shine – Insights into unlocking your potential from proven winners
Review 1 The title of this book makes it seem very attractive – we would all like to know how to shine, or maybe shine brighter. The work itself is premised on research that the author carried out in order to understand what makes people great. The author, Simon Hartley, refutes the notion that individuals […]
Engaging for success: Motivating line managers to motivate others
The most successful organisations recognise the crucial role that HR has to play in developing managers to ensure that they are effective at engaging others. But in order to be good engagers, managers need to master five fundamental roles and be able to recognise when each one is required and appropriate. These roles are […]
Blog: Becoming a Time Lord – Progressing your career without benefit of hindsight
Meg Burton’s interview in my last blog prompted some thoughts about how we create that awareness of what our gap is… You know the gap that with hindsight we can see as clearly as the nose on our face (if you missed it click here). Unless you have Dr Who like abilities we don’t […]
Blog: Just what is an executive coach exactly?
What do Andy Murray, Mo Farrah, Jessica Ennis and Robbie Grabarz have in common? They have a coach who has made a difference. Whether it be Ivan Lendl, Fuzz Ahmed, Toni Minichiello or Alberto Salazar, all have been accredited with making the difference between success and failure by their charges. In […]
How to accommodate disabled workers in a post-Remploy world
It isn’t often that workplace disability rights make national headlines. But following recent news that 27 Remploy factories – including five dedicated to employing disabled people – will be shut, that has certainly been the case. Disability activists and employment specialists have been publicly rethinking what equal access to work means and how society […]
Talent Spot: Community blogger, Dianne Bown-Wilson
People are living longer, the overall population is aging and people are going to be working for longer. Everyone knows these facts and yet employers and workers alike are struggling to deal with them. But Dianne Bown-Wilson set up a consultancy, in my prime, to address these very issues, providing advice, strategic guidance and […]
Blog: How family-friendly is your organisation?
Any organisation with more than a few employees will have staff that are having children. It’s a big deal, not only for them, but for the employer too. Even though this is the case, many organisations provide little in the way of learning support for these staff. Interestingly those employers that do assist their […]
Retention matters: How to support adoptive parents
The Prime Minister set out plans to create a “fairer and faster” adoption process recently in a bid to help more people adopt. But because the aim is to introduce the changes “as soon as possible,” employers must to be ready to deal with a potential rise in the number of adoptive parents wanting to […]
Blog: Stories from the HR journey
I don’t know about you but I love hearing about the different journeys people have through HR. Some have been clear about their path all the way through. Others have joined the HR community part way through their working life. Some specialise and some like the variety of a more generalist role. The twists […]
Blog: Performance and teamwork tips from Olympian Steve Williams
This blog post is the distillation of a talk about performance and teamwork given by Steve Williams at the Institute of Internal Communication’s annual conference recently. Steve is a double Olympic gold winner, and he focused much more on his Athens 2004 experience than Beijing 2008, although both were nail-biting close finishes! I’ve kept my hastily scribbled notes largely unedited […]
News: Coaching industry under threat from cowboys
The key challenge facing the coaching industry is the number of untrained individuals who describe themselves as practitioners, which is generating confusion in the marketplace. The sector has now become a nearly $2 billion industry, with around 47,500 professionals practising their craft on a global basis. These are the key findings of a survey commissioned […]
Talent Spot: Gill Crowther, HR director at Nominet
By the time Gill Crowther, director of HR at Nominet, had finished university, she already knew that she wanted to work in HR. She had studied engineering, but the fact that she seemed to be very good at getting people to help her with her studies gave her a “moment of revelation” that management […]
Blog: How can you make performance management more social?
The workplace today has changed beyond recognition; new technology is continuously bringing efficiencies to our way of working. However, one thing remains constant – the performance appraisal process. Now, consider Generation Y for a moment, will they be content to wait for their annual or bi-annual review to find out how they’re doing? Probably not! […]
