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 […]
HRD Insight: Leigh Lafever-Ayer on Enterprise Rent-A-Car’s women’s mentoring scheme
Many companies are grappling with how to help more women attain senior roles at the moment, especially since the Davies Review shone a spotlight on the shortage of women in the boardroom. Our approach to the issue at Enterprise Rent-A-Car has been to introduce a mentoring scheme in order to focus on helping women progress […]
Video Interview: Sharron Davies on what it takes to be a winner
Sharron Davies, Olympic silver medalist and winner of two gold medals at the Commonwealth Games, talks to HRzone about what she believes it takes to be a winner and what set her off on her prestigious career path in the first place. Davies also shares her opinions on what constitutes effective leadership and what impact […]
Blog: Does HR have the right skills to be in the boardroom?
In a pan European study undertaken by Mercer among over 300 HR Professionals across 25 countries it is revealed that 70 percent of organisations have or are planning to transform their HR functions. A big shift in the way businesses perceives HR seems to be the catalyst for this activity. HR is now seen as […]
Addressing shared HR service challenges
With public sector budget cuts still on the cards and an ever-increasing focus being placed on generating efficiency savings, it is surprising perhaps that more public authorities have not opted to go down the shared services route. But a recent survey that we commissioned among 100 UK public sector representatives from functions such as HR, […]
Unions reject MoD assurances about outsourced HR staff
Unions have raised concerns that the Ministry of Defence’s decision to outsource functions such as HR to a private contractor will lead to “further attacks” on employees’ terms and conditions despite ministerial claims to the contrary. Serco has won a £36 million deal to run a shared services organisation, Defence Business Services in a bid […]
Bridging the leadership communication gap
Trust and Leadership are rare bed fellows – as illustrated by the results of a recent CIPD Employee Outlook survey. In case you missed it, the level of workers’ trust in their senior managers remains worryingly low, while relationships with immediate line managers are found to be consistently more positive across the board. This […]
Talent Spot: Nikki Hall, chief HR officer at SHL Group
An HR professional at an HR supplier is a pretty useful person to have around when a customer perspective is required on strategy and products. But they are likely to prove even more valuable if sitting both at the top table and at the heart of the business is par for the course. So […]
Nearly half of staff slam managers as “ineffective”
UK employers are failing to provide line managers with effective management and leadership training, even though a huge 43% of employees believe they are ineffective. Moreover, a survey among 4,500 managers, which includes 550 HR bosses, which was jointly published by the Chartered Management Institute, HR consultancy, Penna, and Henley Business School also revealed a […]
Blog: Finding the right way to praise
What positive news there was in the HR press in the past week. Not only did support services firm Capita post a 6% rise in profit amid some pretty tough economic conditions, but the ‘headline news’ was the fact that the company’s Chief Executive noted that the climb was partly down to “outstanding” members of […]
Is interim HR management for you?
Leaving behind the stable world of PAYE won’t appeal to everyone in the current economic climate. But even with predictions of a second recession ahead, many HR professionals still crave a new career challenge and some are even brave enough to make big changes. One career option that commonly appeals to senior HR practitioners […]
Change programmes: Asking the awkward questions
As difficult economic circumstances continue, it seems likely that organisations of all types are going to have to find new ways of cutting costs, improving productivity and just generally fighting harder to get business. This will mean scrutinising activities that do not clearly help them meet their goals in the short-term and potentially terminating them. […]
Seven secrets to managing change effectively
Since the start of the recession, organisations have made cuts where they can, but there now appears to be precious little slack left to prune. As a result, over the year ahead, many employers are likely to start refocusing activities and the introduction of change seems to be a certainty. But while change tends […]
CEO Insight: SuccessFactors’ Lars Dalgaard on new owner, SAP
For the last couple of years, SuccessFactors‘ chief executive Lars Dalgaard has used a slide in his presentations that picks out the headlines in German newspapers reporting when his firm won a major Software-as-a-Service-based human capital management contract at Siemens out from under the corporate nose of SAP. It’s a slide that we can assume won’t be getting […]
Leadership development is top L&D priority in bid to “sort wheat from chaff”
Leadership development for senior managers has for the first time this year become the top priority for learning and development activity as employers attempt to "sort the wheat from the chaff". According to the Corporate Learning Priorities Survey 2012 carried out by Henley Business School’s corporate development team, some 47% of respondents made it their […]
Blog: Harnessing employee emotional intelligence to boost productivity
I read an interesting story on emotional intelligence in the workplace in the Guardian a few weekends ago, which I couldn’t resist sharing. The article is based on a recent report from occupational psychologists JCA, which studied 12,400 workers from 2001 to 2010, the results of which got me fairly worried. According to the […]
HR’s critical role in shaping company culture post-M&A
As soon as a merger or acquisition is announced, the culture of both entities begins to change as people start to think about, and behave towards, their immediate environment in a different way. This means that HR directors need to act quickly to help guide these changes and ensure that the transaction fulfils its original […]
Blog: Why is staff engagement in decline globally?
Recognise This! – Employees worldwide are disengaging at work, leaving organisations at a competitive disadvantage. Recent research out of Kenexa is showing employee engagement on the decline globally. “EEI scores declined, not only in the aggregate of these economies, but in each individual country as well. The pattern of scores over time is fairly […]
Ask the Expert: When should we CRB-check our site engineers?
The question We are currently looking into whether we need to undertake CRB checking for some of our site engineers, but are not 100% sure if we require it? As a company, we occasionally (and I have to highlight that it is only occasionally) send engineers out to schools or attend calls in […]
Dept of Health apologises for paying senior execs via limited companies
The Department of Health has apologised for misleading the opposition about paying senior figures via limited companies to help them avoid income tax. According to one insider, the 25 cases identified by The Guardian could be “the tip of the iceberg”. The comment mirrors that of AccountingWEB member, The Black Knight, who commented on […]
