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 […]
How to build a positive corporate culture
Every organisation has a culture, which is based on who its people are, what they say and how they act. But wise companies recognise the potential and power that fostering the right culture can generate. Strong, positive cultures are the basis of successful organisations because they tap into workers’ collective energy and define common […]
Living Leader Learnings – How do I stop a valuable employee from dominating meetings?
The challenge A divisional team leader for marketing at an FMCG manufacturer says: “I head up the Divisional Marketing team of 12, and whilst they all have different strengths one is particularly dominant. For example, during meetings I feel this individual dominates to the point that others cannot get their point across. However, when […]
Best Practice: Four tips to help HR become more business savvy
If HR professionals want to gain in credibility, they must evolve from simply being deep subject matter experts to becoming business leaders with a people specialism, the CIPD has warned. Although three out of five HR practitioners questioned for the organisation’s latest report agreed that the profession needed to increase its understanding of business issues, […]
Blog: What makes you happy in your work?
We All Want Happiness! Today the sun is shining and the hope of a beautiful spring and lovely summer are in the air. Most of us know the feeling of happiness and wellbeing that comes with a lovely sunny day. The day made me think about happy days at work, and the happy […]
EU Parliament votes in favour of binding female boardroom quotas
The EU Parliament voted in favour of introducing binding quotas for women at the top table at the same time as a report revealed that UK progress on appointing females to executive board-level positions had been slow. The vote by the EU Parliament followed a consultation that was launched last week by EU Justice Commissioner, […]
Diplomat and influencer: The emerging ‘head of talent’ role
A perfect storm is brewing in the talent management arena due to the cumulative impact of demographics and global mobility challenges. The problem is that, despite record levels of unemployment and ongoing economic difficulties, there is still a shortage of leaders, and specifically, people with the skills required to help large companies meet the demands […]
Blog: Do we encourage a dependency culture at work?
At just aged six, my son is already learning to be independent. He washes and dresses himself he can run his own bath get his own drinks, breakfast and little things like that. At the weekend I took in him for his swimming lesson, and afterwards I told him to have a shower which […]
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. […]