Blog: The importance of seeing the why in what we do
As a school girl, I was pretty horrendous at meeting deadlines for handing in homework. At the time I didn’t realise the more I was rebuked and reminded I was going to ruin my future, the more resistant I was to doing the work at all. Luckily I scraped by. Progressing to the world of […]
Talking Point: What’s happened to business ethics?
It seems that every time you open a newspaper at the moment, there’s a new business scandal. The fall-out from Barclays Libor-rigging fine continues to be an ongoing story. The scandal has already claimed the scalps of the bank’s chairman and chief executive – and who knows how many more may follow? Barclay’s leadership […]
News: Whitehall shared service centres fail to deliver expected savings
Shared service centres have failed to deliver expected savings for Whitehall and, in some instances, have cost taxpayers more than they saved, a report has revealed. A study published by the Public Accounts Committee found that, of the five central government departments which signed up to the programme in a bid to cut costs by […]
Blog: Leadership/management lessons from the Diamond debacle
We know that former head of Barclays bank, Bob Diamond, was leading the financial institution during the period in which the well-documented Libor rates or interest rates for inter-bank borrowing, were being manipulated. It has now come to light that Diamond had absolutely no idea it was going on. Surely, if he was at the […]
Barclays and the value of succession planning
The Libor rate-rigging scandal has resulted in the men at the top of Barclays, chairman, Marcus Agius, and chief executive, Bob Diamond, falling on their respective swords. But inevitably any changes to the senior management team have a direct impact on the business, potentially leaving it feeling rudderless and having a negative effect on staff […]
News: Coaching industry under threat from cowboys
The key challenge facing the coaching industry is the number of untrained individuals who describe themselves as practitioners, which is generating confusion in the marketplace. The sector has now become a nearly $2 billion industry, with around 47,500 professionals practising their craft on a global basis. These are the key findings of a survey commissioned […]
In a Nutshell: Five tips for being an effective manager
As chief executive of the Institute of Leadership & Management, Charles Elvin is responsible for setting the UK’s largest management body’s agenda and striving to improve skills through a focus on qualifications. But he is also a fan of the management style of former Tesco chief executive, Terry Leahy. When asked how that style […]
Talent Spot: Gill Crowther, HR director at Nominet
By the time Gill Crowther, director of HR at Nominet, had finished university, she already knew that she wanted to work in HR. She had studied engineering, but the fact that she seemed to be very good at getting people to help her with her studies gave her a “moment of revelation” that management […]
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 […]