Blog: Do jerks really make it to the top?
Recognise This! – Jerks can only rise so high in their careers. Considerate bosses actually achieve the CEO office more. A disturbing news trend I’ve been seeing during the last several months since the untimely death of Steve Jobs is the rise of the “jerk” boss – an aggressive, in-your-face, even insulting management style being […]
News: Whitehall to relaunch grad hiring scheme with Facebook Q&A
The civil service has revamped its ‘Graduate Fast Stream’ recruitment programme and plans to relaunch it next week by offering candidates a live question and answer session with a government minister on Facebook. The Q&A session will take place with cabinet secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood on Thursday 20 September and is intended to provide potential […]
Blog: Learning resilience from going with the flow
As you are no doubt aware, Mihály Csíkszentmihályi (yes – spelling is correct!) is a key proponent of the theory of Flow – whereby Flow is described as the state when a person in an activity is fully immersed, creating a sense of energized focus, full involvement, and success. So what I hear you ask!? […]
Blog: Don’t be done yet – HR still has a lot of work to do
“I’m done.” Those words were uttered by Andy Roddick last month at the beginning of the U.S. Open. Tennis is unlike a lot of sports, where the coach or general manager lets you know in so many words that it may be time to go. Yes, in most sports they tell you when you are done. […]
Maximising your emotional capital
For 10 years the research has told us that, to besuccessful in our personal and professional lives, we need to show emotional as well as cognitive intelligence. Clear links have also been established between specific emotional skills and outstanding success in the leadership arena. Of course, as HR professionals, we’ve always known that having […]
An HRD’s guide to tackling pension auto-enrolment
As the introduction of pension auto-enrolment becomes increasingly imminent for large organisations (from 1 October this year), we have attempted to answer some of the key questions that HR directors raise about the issue in a bid to help them deal with it as effectively as possible: Q. What is the timetable for auto-enrolment? […]
Blog: Is HR doing a good job of delivering learning to workers?
Our major new global research project, ‘Agile Learning: Living with the Speed of Change’ examines how HR leaders around the world are delivering learning at a time when there is huge pressure to deliver new employee skills to the front line more rapidly, more often and with much greater impact than ever before. The findings illustrate the […]
Blog: How to beat the holiday blues and get back to business quickly
With the traditional summer holiday period almost over, many of us are settling back into a working routine after a period of relaxation and recovery. A break from work commitments has provided many of us with the time and space to read, digest best practice and consider our aspirations, hopes and plans for our […]
Blog: Do you undertake workforce planning?
The economic outlook for the UK may still be flat lining but companies appear to be staying resilient and retaining staff, which is reassuring. Our recent survey of 900 companies throughout the country reveals that 81 per cent will be making ‘no redundancies at all’ in the next six months and just 4 per cent […]
Legal Insight: The HR implications of pensions auto-enrolment
From 1 October this year, pension auto-enrolment will start to affect the UK’s largest businesses. While a lot of these employers will already have got to grips with fundamental issues such as identifying their staging date and considering which pension scheme to use to satisfy the new legislation, there are a number of HR implications […]
News: LinkedIn misuse means candidate research ‘should be conducted with caution’
Widespread misuse of LinkedIn means that HR professionals should exercise caution when using it as a tool to conduct research on potential job candidates, a researcher has warned. A survey among 2,028 UK adults undertaken by ICM Research revealed, for instance, that around two thirds of people who have used the social networking site in […]
Blog: Reshuffles – A matter of perception?
As Prime Minister David Cameron tackles the first cabinet reshuffle of his tenure he will have to balance the internal needs and objectives of the coalition, while ensuring that the shake-up of ministerial jobs sends out the right signals to the electorate and Conservative party MPs. Although it is highly unlikely that the changes business […]
Blog: Nine signs that you may be lacking ambition in your career
With the arrival of September, I don’t know about you, but there seems to be a collective gearing up. The phone is ringing again and I know I have a busy few months ahead of me. I have returned from the summer break, energised and ready to rock and roll. (Helped definitely by the imminent […]
Talent Spot: Community blogger, Christina Lattimer
Christina Lattimer, owner of HR and leadership development consultancy People Discovery, has been tackling HR issues for all of her working life, even if she didn’t take up her first official HR position until 10 years ago. “I’ve only been a pure HR specialist since 2002 and was a business manager for lot of years […]
Talking Point: Could HR and internal comms make happy bedfellows?
The business world is in for a turbulent time of it over the next decade, according to Rohit Talwar, futurist, award-winning speaker and chief executive of Fast Future Research. Without doubt, the world as we know it will change as a result of continued economic uncertainty, political instability, the redistribution of wealth from west to […]
Blog: Four leadership challenges faced by Barclays’ new CEO
Over the past few months the commercial banking sector has had its fair share of challenges. The Barclays‘ Libor rigging scandal, negative publicity surrounding bonuses and increased competition from smaller high street banks are to name just a few. No doubt this turbulent environment will present challenges for Anthony Jenkins, who has just become […]
Blog: What is…..mentoring?
Mentoring is a supportive form of employee training that takes place outside the conventional top-down manager-employee relationship. It typically comes in the form of long-term guidance provided by an experienced employee, the mentor, to someone less experienced, the mentee, in an effort to support the mentee’s overall development. A mentor is someone who has […]
Book Review: The Advantage – Why organizational health trumps everything else in business
A key message of author, Patrick Lencioni, is that the financial cost of running an unhealthy organisation is huge because of waste, decreased productivity, increased employee turnover and lost customers – and I agree with him. But the personal cost can be much higher, as he also explains: “When leaders of an organisation are […]
Blog: Disabled workers – Making reasonable adjustments
Most people will no doubt be familiar with the concept of ‘reasonable adjustments’ to accommodate employee disabilities, facilitate a return to work after sickness absence etc. But often that’s when we get a bit stuck for ideas of how to actually do this in practice – in fact we often rely on the person who requires […]
International workforces: Supporting non-native English speakers
It goes without saying that it is much easier for people to work together if they can communicate effectively. But one consideration in this context is the increasingly international nature of the modern workplace. As a result, HR directors have a big part to play in supporting new employees moving to the UK for […]
