How business savvy are you – really?
Let’s face it, the phrase ‘HR needs to be commercial’ is nothing new. Yet it’s a theme that keeps recurring. Time and again we hear the argument that HR is not business focused enough and more HR directors need to be on the board. Ellie Rich, operations director at Michael Page Human Resources, comments: […]
HRD Insight: Fujitsu UK’s Ella Bennett on HR’s role in supporting change
The rate of change that organisations face appears to be increasing on a daily basis. At the end of 2011, Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, pronounced: “Who knows what’s going to happen tomorrow, let alone next month?” And just to confirm the situation, Harvard Business School professor, John Kotter also wrote: […]
The HRZone Interview: The CMI’s CEO Ann Francke on management
Ann Francke only started her new job as chief executive at the Chartered Management Institute on 12 June, but she is already on a mission. As you’d expect, she not only wants to encourage more managers to gain professional qualifications, but she also wants them – and their employers – to recognise the power of […]
News: HR salaries rise at nearly twice the national average
The salaries of HR professionals grew at nearly twice the national average last year, with HR business partners seeing the heftiest increases due to high demand. Recruitment consultancy Robert Walters’ 2012 Salary Survey revealed that the salaries of permanent UK HR staff grew by an average of 2.6% year-on-year compared with only 1.5% in other […]
Blog: Why a balanced boardroom is a better boardroom
So, it’s a proven fact that having women in the boardroom improves business performance. Now, before you write me off as a radical feminist with a chip on her shoulder pad – hear me out. Drawing upon a database of 441 companies, the McKinsey Women Matter 2010 report found that “companies with the highest share of women outperform companies […]
Is leadership development really the answer to your problems?
The idea that there is a key requirement for ‘better leadership’ as the ‘answer’ to most, if not all, business and organisational problems remains prevalent. Numerous surveys by management consultancies reinforce the notion that there is a leadership talent ‘gap’ and, by extension, a need for more and better leadership development activity. This idea […]
Blog: Crisis stories – What RBS’ Stephen Hester can teach us
RBS‘ Stephen Hester has emerged to apologise to his customers for the ‘technical issues’ that have left millions of customers frozen out of their accounts. Interestingly, he used the analogy of delayed planes waiting to clear after heavy rain to highlight the fact that the backlog of problems needs time to be fixed. I’ve talked […]
Strategy: 5 things to consider when adopting HR shared services
HR Shared Services centres are posited as a way to reduce costs and increase efficiencies in administration, but setting up such arrangements can be a daunting task. HR case management firm Dovetail Software has identified five areas that it says are often overlooked but critical to success. These are: Standardizing common HR processes including […]
Blog: who holds the real keys to the organisation anyway?
What is the narrative of your movie reel? The rank-and-file workforce had weathered layoffs, had their commissions slashed, and on top of that, their salaries had been frozen over the past five years. However, the chief executive’s decision was this — let’s have the senior management team take a lavish trip down to Bermuda and […]
Expert voice: reaping the value of soft benefits
It’s a basic fact of human nature that we all like to feel valued and nurtured. But with tight budgets making it increasingly difficult to reward staff with big pay rises, organisations are, in many instances, looking at offering so-called soft benefits instead. And office perks such as sporting activities, gym membership and in-house […]
Blog: 3 tips for better feedback reception
Recognise This! – How you receive feedback is as important as how you give it. We can’t be great 100% of the time. Yes, we all work hard and want to do a good job, but sometimes we miss the mark. Or perhaps the “mark” moved on us and we didn’t adjust in time. Frankly, […]
Talent Spot: Michael Doolin, HR director at DHL’s Tradeteam
“I swore blind I wouldn’t end up doing what my father did and, 34 years later, I am,” laughs Michael Doolin, HR director at DHL’s Tradeteam. His father had been a shop steward before moving into industrial relations, which meant that there had been lots of very dull-looking manuals hanging around at home that had […]
Blog: leadership personified by inspirational mothers
Whilst watching Breakfast News last week, I was completely in awe of two mothers, Grace Idowu and Margaret Mizen, who have both experienced the dreadful pain of having a son killed in an unprovoked knife attack. Their courage and compassion bowled me over and I was struck by how, as a result, they decided to […]
Blog: The followers guide to what your leaders want
Today, a search on Amazon.com showed 98,516 results for “leadership”. A further search for “followship” came back with a mere 39 results. I searched again for “team player” and received over 101,000 results, although “team player” wasn’t quite what I was looking for. I know sometimes part of great leadership is setting out what […]
Living Leader Learnings: The Redundancy Challenge
The Company: Insurance Company The Challenger: Group HR Director My company is in the process of introducing a series of job cuts across the workforce, and some of the members of my team will be involved. I want to communicate with them directly and prepare them, though I know other board members are not planning […]
Blog: who are the best leaders – men or women?
As John Gray advocated in his 1992 bestseller Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, there are fundamental differences between the genders. According to a new study, these differences are evident when it comes to leadership behaviour. At Talent Innovations, we’ve analysed the 360° feedback results of nearly 14,000 UK leaders and managers, to […]
News: Police shared service move could see 1,100 jobs outsourced
Local press reports suggest that around 1,100 posts across the three police forces of Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire could be outsourced along with back office services, which include HR. Later this month, the three forces plan to publish proposals for private companies to supply HR, finance and IT services to their respective police authorities. […]
In a Nutshell: Five top tips for staying stress-free
Stress is now the leading cause of long-term sickness absence in the workplace. A survey published recently by the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development and private health insurance company, Simplyhealth, revealed that nearly two-fifths of the 592 UK employers questioned had seen an increase in stress-related absence among their employees over the last year. […]
News: Lessons from IBM in going social
With the latest IDC figures predicting that the social enterprise market will reach $200 billion by 2013, it looks like social is set to become an increasingly important part of your business, according to IBM‘s vice president of social business evangelism and sales. Speaking at the Social Business Strategy Summit in London yesterday, Sandy Carter […]
Blog: Steve Jobs and valuing the ‘B’ players
Recognise This! – There are always B players in any organisation who are just as important to your success as A players, if in a different way. During the last few months, one of the top books has been the Steve Jobs autobiography. It’s a fascinating read and doesn’t hold back on both the […]
