Blog: The high cost of presenteeism
UK employers lost £36 billion last year due to employee absence. Sounds a lot? Not if we look at the other side of the coin. The cost of lower than normal productivity caused by employees showing up for work when they are not feeling 100% could be up to three times higher than absenteeism’s […]
Jive adds gamification to social intranet apps to boost staff engagement
In a bid to boost employee engagement, Jive Software has included a gamification module in its newly unveiled social intranet applications. Based on the vendor’s Social Business platform, the offering can adapt to user needs by analysing social graph data and can also be integrated with third party systems, the firm claimed. The gamification […]
Blog: Four steps to take on finishing your staff engagement survey
Recognise This! — Strategic recognition is a powerful tool to align employees with your goals and take appropriate action after your engagement survey is done. Like 80% of the people on our “My Engagement Survey Is Done, Now What?” webinar yesterday (recasts available here), do you conduct an employee engagement survey? Though we didn’t […]
Blog: Are you wasting 35% of your payroll costs on disengaged staff?
Recognise This! – Lack of employee engagement costs you 35% of your payroll, or up to $17.5 Million annually in a 1,000 person organisation. Like organisation culture, employee engagement is a frequent topic of mine. Indeed, creating a culture of recognition is a foundational element to creating an environment in which employees choose to engage. […]
Blog: Are you an inspirational leader?
Inspiration is the best way to engage people! Or does it make you squirm? You may be an HR Professional, leader or manager relying on HR to help move your business forward. When discussing strategy with people of different roles at many levels, I have often been met with a perplexed look when I have […]
Blog: The racing line for employee engagement
A couple of weeks ago in the lead up to the new F1 season, I heard an interview with ex-driver David Coulthard who is now a commentator on television. In it he used a phrase that I thought was interesting. He talked about ‘The Racing Line’. His comments set me thinking and so I […]
HRDs unconvinced by social recruitment – study
The majority of HR directors are failing to use social media for recruitment purposes, with a huge 70% unsure of whether it is effective or not. A survey of 200 UK HRDs conducted by recruitment consultancy, Robert Half, revealed that a mere three out of 10 were using social networking sites to either source or […]
Blog: Lessons on dealing with the unions during times of change
Welcome to this weeks Guest Blogger – Paul Myers is the HR Manager for a local transport company. He has initiated significant change in his organisation and has managed to keep his staff on board. He is a people centric manager who has considered how to increase and harness employee engagement at every opportunity. […]
Employee wellness programmes: Proving their worth and paying their way
It’s a known fact that happy and engaged employees are more likely to be productive and loyal. Valuable assets to their employer, they can also help to generate a positive environment for their colleagues, time and resource savings for the HR team and positive financial savings for their employer. Several strategies exist to try […]
Budget 2012: Five industries singled out for special treatment
The Chancellor picked out the aerospace, energy and pharmaceuticals, creative media and science industries as being crucial in helping the UK reduce its reliance on the financial services sector. George Osborne said in his Budget speech today that he would be “backing” the five industries as part of a “deliberate strategy to create a more […]
European eSkills Week: Europe to be 700,000 ICT professionals short by 2015
Convinced ICT is a strong part of our national economy and a great destination for young people? Brussels agrees – hence its European e-Skills Week campaign, which is trying to accentuate the positive in terms of the sector. Kicking off in Brussels yesterday, the closing event will take place on 30 March in Copenhagen. […]
Blog: The Goldman Sachs resignation – Three lessons on corporate culture
Recognise This! – Your company culture can withstand a multitude of shocks – but should it? I’m guessing most people in the world of HR, management or leadership have read Greg Smith’s resignation letter from Goldman Sachs – which appeared in the New York Times. Personally, I was more interested in the reaction from […]
Blog: Five ways to get demotivated staff committed to their employer’s future
Effective leaders and managers need to have enthusiastic followers. Since people are the organisation’s key source of competitive advantage, you need every single employee to be fully committed to taking the company forward and doing everything they can to make it a success in the future. Unfortunately, the recession forced many companies to alter […]
Blog: Lessons on empowering staff to win
One of the things I love about being in HR is that everyone always bring you these rich stories that sometimes causes you to have an "a-ha" moment. A major retail chain this past week did something that, for a retail company, needs to be lauded. In retail, you have a workforce that is […]
Case Study: Herts Council’s ‘Transformation’ programme slashes sickness absence
Hertfordshire County Council provides local services to more than a million people in the area and employs around 34,000 staff, of whom about 24,000 work in schools. Last year, it introduced a ‘Transformation’ programme – a new and radically different wellbeing strategy, aimed at reducing sickness absence and improving organisational performance. And, while it […]
National Science and Engineering Week: UK to be 2m engineers short by 2015
Guess how many engineers and scientists we’ll need to remain competitive in the next five years? Some 2.2 million. How many kids are going into engineering at the moment as a career? More like 125,000. That sobering statistic is one of the prompts behind ‘The Big Bang Fair,’ a jobs fair that hopes to […]
Blog: Notes from the TLNT Transform conference – Welcome to the “new era of people”
I have been to the mountaintop. This past week, I was in Austin, Texas for TLNT Transform, which was billed as a new type HR conference. While not a presenter, I served as conference chair. This allowed me to not only sit in on all the presentations, but it gave me insight into all […]
HR too focused on cost when devising policy goals, warns report
HR functions are giving insufficient attention to the potential impact of external social and political influences when designing HR policy goals and are instead focusing too much on short-term issues such as cost. These are the key findings of a survey among 52 HR directors and board members working in large corporates across Europe conducted […]
Talent Spot: Community blogger, Ron Thomas
Ron Thomas, a principal at New York-based HR consultancy StrategyFocusedHR and favourite HRzone blogger, always knew that business was his calling, even if he didn’t know in exactly which branch he’d end up. “I knew I was going to major in business in college,” he says. “I was always intrigued by people who came to […]
CEO Insight: Briggs Equipment’s Richard Close on staff engagement
As fears of another recession continue to mount, many business leaders are looking for new ways to either turn around their balance sheet or ensure that it grows. But all too many simply fail to look at their number one asset: their people. Over the last 20 years, I have worked with a number […]
