In a Nutshell: Four considerations when holding a tricky conversation
As an HR pro, being able to talk about sensitive and emotive issues is an important part of the job, but it’s also one of the toughest. If handled badly, such conversations, ranging from performance and conduct to personal matters, can damage team dynamics, lower morale and have a negative impact on attendance and performance […]
News: Top 10 talent trends for 2013
From the continued impact of the difficult global economic situation on HR departments to a growing focus on workforce diversity, 2013 looks set to be a dynamic and exciting year. Recruitment consultancy Futurestep, a Korn/Ferry company, outlines the top 10 trends that it expects to see in the talent management arena: 1. To outsource […]
Blog: Five ways to fire up your team for 2013
Christmas and the festivities may be over, but helping managers to keep the season of good will going with their teams will have a huge influence on how engaged and motivated staff will feel as they return to work in 2013. January is all about new beginnings but it often takes a few weeks for […]
Employee engagement – and how to get it
The McLeod Review concluded two years ago that levels of employee engagement in the UK were disappointingly low, largely because managers had failed to realise the importance of the concept. The review, led by David MacLeod and Nita Clarke, was commissioned by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. Its findings were welcomed by […]
Talent Spot: Lynne Graham, HR director at WSH
For Lynne Graham, HR director of high-end catering services firm, Westbury Street Holdings, employee engagement is more than a buzzword – it has seeped into the fabric of the company. “I have a very strong belief in engagement,” she says. “A lot of companies see engagement as an internal PR exercise – reward and recognition […]
News: EU pension change proposals to cost UK employers £350bn
Proposed EU pension changes could cost UK employers £350 billion in additional costs, reducing GDP by an average of 1.5% per annum and cutting 180,000 jobs by the mid-2020s, the CBI has warned. The European Commission is proposing to introduce a new funding regime, which would require final salary pension schemes run by individual employers […]
That was the HR year that was
If it were possible to sum up a year in a single word, that word in 2012 might be ‘austerity’ – a word that means many things to many people, but which basically amounts to hard times for great swathes of the population. In economic terms, austerity refers to a policy of lowering expenditure by […]
Blog: Workers to burn out unless something gives soon…
HR professionals will have seen more than anyone the ongoing challenges being faced by both employers and workers as the seemingly never-ending economic crisis rolls on. Some may be claiming that the green shoots of recovery are now visible but others are telling us to prepare for a triple dip recession. Whatever future difficulties […]
Talent Spot: Community blogger, John Sylvester
Not everyone always understands John Sylvester. The problem is that, for most people, being a motivation and employee incentives specialist requires a bit of an explanation as to what it means. For instance, after struggling to fathom precisely what their dad did for a living, his two sons eventually hit upon the idea of […]
Employee engagement continues to rise up the HR agenda
Given a perfect storm this year of low pay rises/freezes, increasing workloads in the wake of redundancies and falling levels of learning and development activity, the issue of employee engagement has been rising steadily up the HR agenda. And as the difficult economic climate appears set to continue into the year ahead, it doesn’t look […]
News: Disclosure & Barring Service to offer “one-stop-shop” criminal record checks
A new organisation to oversee criminal records checks, referrals and barring investigations has been set up in a bid to provide employers with a “one-stop-shop” service. The Disclosure & Barring Service was formed out of the merger of the Criminal Records Bureau and Independent Safeguarding Authority in an attempt to make the checking process clearer […]
Blog: Engaging for Success in the words of ITV’s Archie Norman
In my Engage for Success launch blog post last Monday about defining and measuring employee engagement, I also mentioned we heard from Archie Norman, currently chairman at ITV. Archie (I will refer to him by his first name, I hope he doesn’t mind) was invited to talk to us about what employee engagement means to him, and after David MacLeod introduced Archie as […]
Christina’s Counsel: How can I tackle my team’s habitual negativity?
Hello and welcome to this month’s dilemma: The challenge As a result of an internal transfer, a client recently took over a new team. But he quickly realised that some of its members had a negative and unhelpful attitude. This negativity manifested itself in a small clique complaining about customer expectations, some of […]
Case Study: How Norfolk Council maintains staff morale despite tough times
During the last few years, Norfolk County Council has experienced a squeeze on resources common to many public sector organisations. It’s been forced to make savings of £135 million over three years and is now halfway there, but hundreds of staff have been axed as a result. The cuts have arrived in conjunction with […]
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 […]
Blog: Engage for Success – A question of defining and measuring?
I was among a cast of hundreds invited to the QEII conference centre yesterday to bear witness to part of the launch of Engage for Success, the UK based movement centred on the phenomenon that has become known as employee engagement. It’s no secret that I’m not totally bought into employee engagement, whatever that might […]
Blog: Segmentation as a tool for employee engagement
As we work towards the end of the year, one of Melcrum’s research team’s key priorities is to connect with our Strategic Communication Research Forum members to agree on the themes we should focus our research efforts on next year. One of the topics we’ve been discussing year on year is the constant changes around […]
Blog: How to get employee recognition programmes right
Recognize This! – Culture management continues to rise in importance to HR leaders as the ability to measure and analyze culture also improves through strategic employee recognition. A couple of weeks ago, in a broader post on how to get more value out of your core values, I alluded to the SHRM/Globoforce Fall 2012 Report. […]
Blog: Making recruitment pinteresting
With the rise of social media, a 2-page formulaic CV is quickly becoming an old fashioned way of understanding what personality and talents a candidate has. Today, it’s all about their Twitter feeds, LinkedIn profile, Facebook, and increasingly, Pinterest. In June this year, Pinterest recorded a staggering 10.4 million users, and 400% month-on-month growth, […]
All you need to know about hiring a former drug or alcohol user
I’ve spent much of the last 17 years working with current and former drug users, homeless people and ex-offenders in London and Sheffield. Much of that time has been taken up helping them to access services, which include housing, treatment and mental health support, so that people have the necessary assistance to try and turn […]
