Performance-related pay in the Civil Service: Is the government merely adding to the bureaucracy?

Cabinet Office minister Pat McFadden recently outlined radical ambitions to manage performance across the Civil Service. Quentin Millington of Marble Brook examines whether performance-related pay is a step into, or away from, harmful bureaucracy.
Technostress in the workplace: How to combat this new form of burnout

Technostress is the new burn out. Find out how your employees can combat it and reclaim their digital lives through intentional, tried-and-tested strategies.
Performance Improvement Plans: A guide to acting compliantly in the face of underperformance

A social media producer was recently awarded 22k at an employment tribunal after being sacked for not meeting performance standards. Serving as a reminder of the need for fair procedures, this guide outlines how employers can act compliantly when dealing with underperforming employees.
Five critical mistakes to watch for in underperforming leaders

Leadership expert Nik Kinley identifies five commonly overlooked areas when assessing leadership performance. Learn how HR can address these issues to help leaders, their teams and the wider organisation thrive.
How to have great new year career conversations

It’s that time of the year when many look for a fresh career adventure, be that a project, promotion, secondment or a new role outside of your organisation. Dr Helmut Schuster and Dr David Oxley, Co authors of A Career Carol, offer four principles for how to have open, helpful career conversations with your people.
How to create a winning culture at Man Utd

Over the last 11 years, Man Utd football club has seriously underperformed against its peers and its own expectation. As its about to appoint a new manager, Andrew Loveless outlines how the club might finally create a winning culture (and why the same principles apply to organisational culture).
Next-level relationships: Reset the balance between burnt-out employees and coasting colleagues

How can leaders build transparent, inclusive, adult-to-adult relationships with their teams? How can they re-set the balance between overworked employees and their coasting colleagues? Culture expert Ella Overshott shares tips and candid opinion on building next-level relationships.
How to master personal workflows in a collaborative workplace

Collaborative demands can quickly overwhelm well-intentioned colleagues. Using the practice of ‘Head Heart Hand’ helps build your capacity to get work done.
How to foster better collaboration within teams

Great teams are the mechanism to create extraordinary value, but that potential is only realised with shared clarity on how ‘greatness’ is lived and breathed.
Will you let them fire the doorman?

Human experiences are under threat from our obsessions with efficiency, cost, and, now, AI. As the world becomes lost in these imperatives, HR must step up and work across the boardroom to show how the doorman exists not merely to open doors, but to create value that lasts.
How to strengthen cross-company collaboration

Helping your employees to join the dots across teams, priorities and decisions can eliminate silos and unlock value from stronger synergy.
Better relationships, less red tape: The key to high work performance

What is the one thing we can do to improve work performance? Quentin Millington of Marble Brook argues that we should direct attention to better relationships, and not, as often happens, more systems.
Alcohol abuse in the workplace: Spot the signs and support

With 17 million working days lost each year in the UK because of alcohol-related sickness, this is an issue that HR needs to be alive to. Alcohol misuse does not discriminate, so having preventive and supportive measures is important for all organisations.
How to tackle skyrocketing rise in UK workplace sickness costs

New think tank data reveals UK workplace sickness costs have risen by 30% in six years to £100bn annually. How do we even begin to turn this around? Gethin Nadin recommends three actions for employers.
Performance management: How relationships beat systems

Talk of performance management and we usually think first of systems, data and processes. But in our complex world, vibrant human relationships are the surest way to enable the outcomes and behaviours we expect.
Performance management doesn’t work for 98% of CHROs

A recent Gallup survey found only 2% of CHROs strongly agree their performance management systems are effective. Gallup’s suggestions for turning this around do not go far enough though, says Jon Ingham, who advocates for a more human-centric approach.
How culture brainwashes us into mediocre ambitions

In contrast to people living under totalitarian regimes such as China, we in the West are free to make personal and business decisions. But how far are we brainwashed by old norms, new trends, social media algorithms and the values of others? And how does this limit our imaginations, and so what we achieve at work?
Boreout: What it is and how to prevent it

Peninsula’s Kate Palmer explains the new buzzword ‘boreout’, along with how to spot it, prevent it, and what to do to address it when it is found lurking in your team…
Are we taking employee wellbeing too far?

With growing concerns about the impact of hybrid working on connection, team management and culture, is the focus on individual wellbeing being prioritised over that of the needs of organisations and customers?
Self-management part two: Performance, learning and reward

In part two of ‘Powered by people’ self-management series, Perry Timms and Kirsten Buck provide case studies of organisations successfully using self-management approaches for performance, learning and reward.