Talking Point: Is motivation the secret to employee engagement?
Employee engagement appears to be top of the agenda for today’s enlightened HR manager. It seems that, at every turn, there are consultants and articles in the business press telling us how to create an ‘engaged workforce’ and how much benefit such a workforce will have on your bottom line. Naturally, business academics have […]
Blog: Discretion denied – The implications of change to indefinite leave to remain rules
Before launching into this article, we’d like to wish all our readers a very Happy New Year! We hope that 2013 brings you all success and thank you for following the Newland Chase blog throughout the last year. As ever, we encourage you to get involved and comment below with your own thoughts and experiences […]
Three ways to make the most of your older workers
Times are changing and, henceforth, employers will need to be smarter. This is because a potentially explosive mixture of issues is starting to bubble under. Older workers now comprise a much bigger cohort than those coming up behind them. The imminent retirement of the Baby Boomer generation has been known about for years as […]
Employee engagement = good customer service
New research this week from the Institute for Customer Service reinforces what has now become the received wisdom around customer service. In the battle for customers, it is the behaviour of your people on the front line who have the biggest say on whether they come back for more or do business with someone else. […]
Information security: The role of HR
In 2004, Royal Bank of Scotland found itself and its email policy under scrutiny when an employment tribunal found in favour of an ex-employee. The individual concerned had been dismissed after an investigation into several staff members who had been using the company email system to send pornographic images. Around 30 employees were identified […]
Living Leader Learnings: How can I get my team to trust me?
The challenge A general manager at the distribution division of a national manufacturer says: “We have just completed our annual staff survey and it seems that the basic message coming from HR is that we need to find ways to increase the levels of engagement in our teams. As a manager, of course I […]
Blog: Why are annual performance appraisals so stressful?
Recognise This! – The 5 top drivers of stress in the annual performance appraisal process are easily overcome through crowdsourcing with social recognition. Why does the traditional annual performance review continue to fail as both a performance measurement and management device? There are a litany of reasons but by far the greatest, most overriding […]
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 […]
Three key trends in the world of work (and how to deal with them)
At a time when the pressure is on to do more with less and to keep staff motivated through potentially destabilising change, new and innovative ways of working often become necessary. In the world of HR, we often talk about innovating in terms of products and services, production processes, new strategies, new forms of partnerships […]
Talent management in a post-recession world
The UK may have officially emerged from recession towards the end of last year, but many employers are still worried about the stability of their workforce – especially if greater business confidence and improving job opportunities make it more likely that talented staff will start jumping ship. In our HR 2012 Salary and Market Insight […]
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 […]
