Stop wasting training
According to a study which found that a quarter of all training fails to yield a significant performance improvement, UK organisations could be wasting an estimated £9.5bn on training each year. Kevin Lovell outlines why this is the case and, more importantly, what you can do about it. The best training course in the world […]
Happy employees, happy customers – engage and grow
Doug Shaw recently met with Kate Davies, the CEO of Notting Hill Housing, to find out how she is leading and encouraging engagement as a way of improving service. Kate started by observing a key difference between west and east whereby the east seemed to get the concept of sacrifice for the greater or community […]
Employers snubbing staff training
While a huge 88% of UK employers acknowledge the importance of staff training, most are either put off by the cost or simply fail to make time to arrange it. These are the findings of a survey undertaken among 1,100 organisations and 4,300 workers in the UK, France and Germany by software company Citrix to […]
Google innovation
Google is well known for innovation, but how can a culture of innovation be fostered in an organisation? People operations director, Liane Hornsey, shares some secrets from Google. A company that has carved a reputation for pushing the envelope, Google has been consistently lauded as one of the most innovative companies in the world by […]
Navigating the new learning map
The CIPD has changed its courses in order to better support modern HR. Trainer Derek Robertson explains what it means for HR. Over the past decade we’ve seen a huge amount of changes in the role HR has taken in the business, from an admin and payroll centre in many cases to a decision making, […]
Do professional HR personnel need professional training?
HR is a profession many ‘fall into’. Whether this is a good or a bad thing, does it really mean you don’t need training? Dave Snow investigates the role of HR today and says training is never wasted. There are some within the HR profession who knew where their future lay from a young age […]
Personal development – essential to managers – essential for everyone?
Personal development starts from the very beginning of our lives and should not end when we start work. John Pope looks at professional and practical development. We start off in life not knowing much about ourselves and what we could be capable of achieving; we know little about managing other people. But we learn gradually […]
Make 2010 your year: Leadership, personal development and talent
New year means new you: personal development is never wasted, making you a better employee, manager and leader: with succession planning a key aim for many HR directors this year, now is the time to invest in you and be part of the plan. With the prospect of a better year and a brighter future […]
Employee development: The role of the line manager
Examining the importance of the employee-line manager relationship in employee development with experts from the Insititute of Employment Studies. Any research that is done focusing on people within organisations almost invariably concludes that the employee-line manager relationship is crucial. Two pieces of research carried out by the Institute for Employment Studies , for example, came […]
Proactive training – the great motivator
With budgets downsized, employers are looking anywhere they can to save money for the initiatives they deem critical. Research shows that training is a great motivator in the workplace, especially when perceived as a form of recognition. Investing money in a worker’s development increases morale and the confidence needed during times of increased redundancies. But […]
HR tip: Anonymous witness to incident
These questions are being answered by Learn HR, a market leader in the provision of HR and payroll training and nationally-recognised professional qualifications. Question: Goods have been pilfered from our canteen. We have a pretty good idea who is the culprit but the only witness refuses to give evidence for fear of reprisals. Can we do […]
Start from scratch: Teambuilding
HR may be handed the task of ‘building teams’ but how best to go about it? John Pope outlines his no-nonsense guide. Within any sector of business, good teams are essential to business function and success. We have teams so that people get better results by working together rather than separately. Members stay together […]
Tesco picking up pieces of ‘woeful’ education system
Standards are so low in schools that employers and HR departments are forced to pick up the pieces, claimed Tesco’s chief executive in a recent speech to grocery retailing body IDG. Tesco’s chief executive, Sir Terry Leahy, called on the government to increase schooling standards and simplify the education system for the sake of British […]
How HR can sell itself to top management
Struggling to be strategic? Dave Millner offers his top tips to help HR directors to win friends and influence people. Many HR functions have been downsized, not because HR provides a lack of strategic value but because of the lack of effective marketing. Too often, HR simply fails to provide quantifiable proof […]
How talent development drives a high-performance culture
A united, high-performance workforce is not just a pipe dream, says Erik Finch, who examines the recommended steps of unified talent development to help achieve this goal. The pinnacle of any talent development initiative is, or at least should be, the creation of a high-performance culture. All businesses should aspire to this ‘utopia’. In […]
HR and learning: Should we be one big, happy family?
In a series on HR and learning strategy, Paul Kearns asks whether it is about time learning and HR specialists were seen to be working much closer together as one, single, coherent source of expertise in people management. It is amazing that HR and learning professionals do not work more closely together. Anyone […]
Beyond the crossroads: How to avoid a recession culture
When the economy improves, top talent will leave if they feel they were treated badly during the recession. Bettina Pickering and Amy Finn stress that all measures taken during the downturn are done with the long-term consequences in mind. In the face of the recession, it is unsurprising that a number of companies […]
Staff development is weapon of choice in recession
Employers are choosing to focus on retention rather than recruitment in response to current resourcing issues, finds the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development’s (CIPD) Recruitment, Retention and Turnover survey. This year’s report revealed that 73% of organisations find a lack of necessary specialist skills remains the key resourcing challenge, whilst 56% of employers are […]
Retaining the talent in a recession
John Pope explains how employers can best attract, retain and motivate the high performers in times which have become tough all round. Too many of us thought that the good times were here to stay. As a result, many organisations became sloppy in managing their talented people; some even thought that talent was an asset […]
A business must manage stress or stress will manage the business
The current economic climate can mean an increasing number of employees feel unable to cope with tasks, find it difficult to manage others or feel frustrated about redundancies or reduced working days. Jo Ouston explains how to manage emotions in the workplace. A few years ago, a card on offer in the gift shops […]
