News: Latest raft of employer-backed technical colleges unveiled
The number of employer-backed technical colleges is set to nearly double to 34 in a bid to provide young people with better quality vocational training. Each state-run University Technical College will be backed by a university and local employers and pupils will be given the chance to transfer from the age of 14 in order […]
Blog: Are you serious about adopting a 70:20:10 development model?
Are business serious about 70:20:10 development? Or is it becoming a lazy way of reducing budgets while expecting already over stretched staff to take on increased responsibility for their own learning? 70:20:10 Development models seem to be gaining an increasing number of supporters in organisations HR and L&D departments. The idea itself is […]
Blog: Dealing with the leadership ‘reality gap’
When someone gets ideas above their station and too big for their boots, it generally pays dividends to bring them back down to earth in the most diplomatic way possible. It’s not always easy, but when it’s a close friend or family member you can afford to be frank. At work it tends to […]
Book Review: Leadership team coaching – Developing collective transformational leaders by Peter Hawkins
A key benefit of this book is its comprehensiveness on the topic of team coaching. It provides a lot of tools and tables to aid practitioners in setting such a relationship up and in enhancing in-house delivery capabilities. The people who are likely to benefit most from this book are HR directors, organisation design […]
Book review: Managing coaching at work by Jackie Keddy & Clive Johnson
The essence of this book is about how to plan and prepare for implementing a coaching initiative. It explores how to embed coaching throughout the organisation by monitoring and coordinating various processes such as coach selection and how to evaluate, promote and extend the scheme’s reach. The work’s main contribution to the field of […]
Book Review: Career coach by Corinne Mills
In today’s tumultuous working environment, who couldn’t use a career coach? As we all need to recognise (with apologies to John Lennon), our career is what happens while we’re making other plans. Job or retraining opportunities may pop up unexpectedly – as can redundancy or business failure. Qualifications change, skills need upgrading and our […]
Blog: Charity needs to begin at home for third sector HR
I find many people tend to assume that the Third Sector is mostly staffed by tree-hugging hippies, and is full of warm and fuzzy organisations where group hugs are on each meeting agenda. (This is usually the view of people who work in the private and public sectors, funnily enough.) But did you know […]
Blog: How to network effectively
Networking – why do it? Are you doing it? Are you any good at it? Did you know that you can greatly enhance the performance of your team and your company through networking? One of the things about networking is that there can be a lot of mystique attached to it. There is the […]
Blog: Why is coaching still an elitist sport?
Nearly every respondent to a recent survey of 250 UK companies said coaching in the workplace has helped individuals and their organizations. As I wrote in my previous blog post on coaching culture, they cited improved personal skills, better communication, higher confidence levels and greater motivation. With so many benefits, one might expect all […]
Blog: The benefits of coaching
In this tough economy, many organizations are cutting back and expect the remaining employees to do more with less. Top performers are feeling the heat and hitting the wall. How do business owners and managers raise the bar in this environment? A recent survey by the Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM) provides an […]
International Coaching Week: Profile of average coach revealed
Just over two thirds of coaches in the UK are female, more than 45 years old and educated to second degree-level, a study has revealed. The majority have also been coaching for more than five years, with two thirds at it for more than 10, with the topic of ‘leadership’ being the biggest money-spinner. Moreover, […]
Book Review: Executive coaching – A psychodynamic approach by Catherine Sandler
Catherine Sandler is a trained psychologist with her own flourishing practice as a coach to senior executives. If I understand it correctly, her view is that in order to coach people successfully, it is essential to help each individual understand their own personality, their implicit underlying values, the experiences that have shaped their character and […]
Creating a supportive culture in stressful times
Stress is now the most common cause of long-term sick leave in the UK, which means that organisations can no longer afford to ignore the issue. But line managers need clear guidance from the HR department on how to identify early signs of stress within their teams and manage the situation so that it works […]
Building much-needed business savvy
Learning and talent development professionals are used to expanding the skills of others in the business. Customer service has to improve and technical skills must be upgraded. Staff need to acquire knowledge of new technologies and leadership capabilities should be refreshed and strengthened. But a key development area that will also pay real dividends […]
Three tips for managing risky employee behaviour
Risk is back on the agenda, not just from the perspective of how organisations operate, but also in terms of how individual employees behave. High profile events at News International and at Swiss banking giant UBS, following the arrest of suspected rogue trader Kweku Adoboli amid accusations of perpetrating a £1.5 billion banking fraud, are […]
Fewer organisations coach, but advocates use it more, says study
Although fewer organisations may be undertaking coaching activity, those that are, are doing more of it, according to a study. The survey among 332 HR professionals undertaken by the Chartered Insitute of Personnel and Development revealed that some 77% were currently using coaching techniques, down from 90% in 2009 when the body last carried out a […]
Holcim cements behaviour metrics into leadership development scheme
Evidence suggests that HR-sponsored leadership development programmes that are deemed to be high quality are 20 times more likely to measure performance than those rated as ineffective. Despite this, however, only 5% of organisations are able to provide meaningful metrics that effectively demonstrate a correlation between HR and business performance. But if HR is […]
UK Association of Coaching gets a code of conduct
The UK’s Association of Coaching has endorsed a Code of Conduct submitted to the European Union earlier this month by two international industry bodies in a bid to professionalise the sector. The European Mentoring and Coaching Council and the International Coach Federation are positioning their code as a basis under which coaching and mentoring professionals […]
Teaching unions vote to strike
Up to 750,000 public sector workers could take co-ordinated industrial action on 30 June after two teaching unions voted to strike yesterday and a third union is expected to follow suit today. The Public and Commercial Services Union has said it anticipates that the vote will come down overwhelmingly in favour of strike action when […]
Teachers likely to strike over changes to pensions
Workers with children could be in for a difficult summer and autumn after two teachers’ unions voted to ballot for strike action against the coalition government’s proposed changes to their pensions. The National Union of Teachers voted this weekend for a ballot on a one-day walkout before the end of the summer term, only days after […]
