TV Review: The Apprentice Week 1 – Honesty is the best policy
Blimey time flies. The rutting season for wannabe entrepreneurs is upon us and once again. The Apprentice has dished up a smorgasbord of egos, preposterous suits and girls who all weirdly look alike. Anyone who read my posts last time will know I do not admire Lord Sugar’ management style. He is a leadership […]
Employee wellness programmes: Proving their worth and paying their way
It’s a known fact that happy and engaged employees are more likely to be productive and loyal. Valuable assets to their employer, they can also help to generate a positive environment for their colleagues, time and resource savings for the HR team and positive financial savings for their employer. Several strategies exist to try […]
Blog: The Goldman Sachs resignation – Three lessons on corporate culture
Recognise This! – Your company culture can withstand a multitude of shocks – but should it? I’m guessing most people in the world of HR, management or leadership have read Greg Smith’s resignation letter from Goldman Sachs – which appeared in the New York Times. Personally, I was more interested in the reaction from […]
Blog: Does jargon really enhance HR’s professional credibility?
I have worked in HR since the mid 1990s and over the years have watched whilst the HR environment has become engulfed with jargon. Developments began in the 1990s where the term ‘HR’ overtook the term ‘personnel’ and came from the States. From the mid 1990s it seems the flood gates for HR jargon were […]
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 […]
Blog: Starting out – HR’s new cost-per-hire standard
Drum roll…For the first time ever, the American National Standards Institute has, like a benevolent genie, granted HR’s wish for an industry-wide widely accepted reporting standard: cost-per-hire. Now, not just in the US, but world-wide (what happens first in the US etc) HR folk can run into the streets (or around the top table – […]
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 […]
Blog: Lessons on empowering staff to win
One of the things I love about being in HR is that everyone always bring you these rich stories that sometimes causes you to have an "a-ha" moment. A major retail chain this past week did something that, for a retail company, needs to be lauded. In retail, you have a workforce that is […]
Salesforce.com to make HR “a weapon for transformation”
Salesforce.com has proclaimed that it wants to make HR “a weapon for transformation” by enabling practitioners to interact with workers in a more social way. The Software-as-a-Service vendor made the statement as it launched the first fruit of its Rypple acquisition in the shape of a performance management application. The offering dubbed ‘Salesforce Rypple’ […]
Case Study: Herts Council’s ‘Transformation’ programme slashes sickness absence
Hertfordshire County Council provides local services to more than a million people in the area and employs around 34,000 staff, of whom about 24,000 work in schools. Last year, it introduced a ‘Transformation’ programme – a new and radically different wellbeing strategy, aimed at reducing sickness absence and improving organisational performance. And, while it […]
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 […]
Talent Spot: Vikki Sly, global recruitment director at QlikTech
The old cliche that people decide whether or not to hire someone within the first few seconds of an interview horrifies Vikki Sly, global recruitment director at business intelligence software provider, QlikTech. “I don’t believe that, and if that’s the way you treat your recruitment, then you’re doing people a huge disservice,” she asserts. For […]
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 […]
HR software deployments: ‘Big bang’ or phased roll-out?
There are two possible approaches to introducing a new HR system – one is to go for a big bang, ‘all-in-one-go’ implementation, while the second is to phase in the deployment over time. And both approaches have their merits as was highlighted at software supplier Unit4’s customer conference in Birmingham last month. Construction consultancy, Cyril […]
International Women’s Day: Only 19% of IT professionals are female
Despite years of IT industry initiatives to boost female representation, a mere 19% of technology professionals are currently women. A poll conducted among 2,000 respondents by recruitment website, The IT Job Board, to coincide with International Women’s Day, indicated that the figure had risen 3% on last year, but it also pointed out that half […]
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 […]
Blog: Creating a company culture post-M&A
Recognise This! – Merging cultures and is as critical as merging “the books.” Be sure to give it the attention it deserves. Earlier, I offered a review of the book Building a Magnetic Culture. Nowhere is that more difficult – or more necessary – than in an organisation that has just completed a merger or […]
Talent Spot: Community blogger, Ron Thomas
Ron Thomas, a principal at New York-based HR consultancy StrategyFocusedHR and favourite HRzone blogger, always knew that business was his calling, even if he didn’t know in exactly which branch he’d end up. “I knew I was going to major in business in college,” he says. “I was always intrigued by people who came to […]
Somerset Council pulls HR out of Southwest One shared service
Troubled shared service operation SouthWest One has hit another speedbump, with one of its customers, Somerset Council today announcing that it is to bring some services, including HR, back in-house. According to the BBC, the decision was taken after a council review concluded that it was failing to perform and it was unlikely to achieve […]
Blog: Appraisals – The menace of ‘soft marker’ managers
There are plenty of aims of appraisal or performance review programmes, but the key one is usually for managers to assess the performance of their staff, often giving them performance assessment ratings. Sounds like a straightforward enough concept – yet like so many HR initiatives, it is so often a good idea badly executed! […]
