How to stay sane at work
1. All development starts with self-awareness. The greater the level of self-awareness, the more personal change is possible and the more that it will stick. Make sure that management and leadership development is more than education and knowledge acquisition. Build in a self-discovery component and encourage reflective learning that places the prime responsibility for development […]
HR – please stop thinking in ‘years’
No names, no job titles, no companies. HR After Dark features totally anonymised opinion pieces from HR professionals, consultants and industry commentators. No holds barred, no censorship, nothing but raw opinions on issues that matter to HR. When the lights go down, HR After Dark comes out to play. See it all here first. Want […]
Good management to successfully plan yearly appraisals
The article title might, perhaps, give away all-too frequent problems in HR. Let’s try starting with a question: is (good) performance something that is managed, or something that is led? I would strongly argue the latter – good or great performance is not something that comes from being firmly in control as much as it […]
Five ways HR can develop innovation cultures in large companies
Ask any CEO and they’ll tell you that innovation is vital to a company’s long-term success. In fact, a recent IBM study (IBM, 2010) of over 1,500 global CEOs found that ‘creativity’ was the number one most important capability for achieving their ambitions. Yet many large companies will secretly admit they don’t have the capabilities […]
Four deadly mistakes of 360-degree feedback
If you Google the term 360-degree feedback, you’ll get over 17 million results, many of which offer insights ranging from the blindingly obvious to the banal. While 360-degree feedback can be a highly beneficial process, it does need some care to get it right. HR teams must therefore look beyond the basics. In particular, you […]
‘Myopic management’ jeopardising long-term growth
There is a “crisis in management” across UK businesses that is threatening the country’s global competitiveness, a hard-hitting report has claimed. The Commission on the Future of Management and Leadership, founded by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Management and the Chartered Management Institute (CMI), has warned that “myopic management” is a “millstone around the neck” […]
NHS toolkit launched to better link staff pay to performance
An online toolkit has been launched to help place more emphasis on linking pay to performance in NHS organisations. The resource, by NHS Employers, will provide advice, support and best practice examples, and forms part of the Agenda for Change (AfC) framework, which was introduced in 2004 and covers one million NHS staff. Changes were […]
Employee goal-setting – why not?
Why do so many employees start out so well – highly focused on their ambitions within the company – and then, after a year or so, become just one-more drone in the workplace? Listless, time-serving, unambitious and uninterested. Other than the attrition of time and familiarity, what is it the sucks the enthusiasm and appetite […]
Do we still need managers?
We will always need managers – but we can become much smarter about defining what they do. The case of Zappos In November 2013, Zappos, the online retailer launched a bold management experiment. Its CEO, Tony Hsieh, announced that the reporting hierarchy and job titles would be abolished, and replaced with a self-organizing model called […]
Should management be everyone’s career end goal?
"Brilliant people – people who are good at their jobs – are not necessarily management material." Being technically brilliant does not automatically translate into being a brilliant manager of people. Traditional career paths have held up management positions as the ultimate destination. Management has been seen as the holy grail of promotional prospects. But is […]
Finding those leadership moments of power
Leadership is a vital responsibility of every manager, young and old, in every organisation – the team leader and the lance-corporal, the directors and generals. Every manager needs to value their leadership role and spend time on it, acknowledging where they need help. For new start-ups this is particularly challenging as the focus will be […]
Changing world of work must drive management makeover
Management needs a makeover if optimism is to fuel long-term growth and companies are to prepare effectively for the future business landscape, said the Chartered Management Institute recently. CMI’s survey of 750 of the UK’s top leaders identified where managers will need to excel by the end of the decade if the UK economy is […]
Are you in cat or lion mode? Using neuroscience and physiology to manage your performance
Zlatan Ibrahimovic, the Swedish football captain used the terminology above, to describe how Jose Mourinho made him feel when he worked with him at Inter Milan. – "He turned me from a cat into a lion, dragged things out of me at Inter that no one had done before". Why am I writing about a […]
Is 360 feedback measuring the ‘wrong stuff’?
This article was co-authored by Gail Wise, Partner at enVision Performance Solutions and Clinton Wingrove, EVP and Principal Consultant at Pilat HR Solutions. Multi-rater feedback, or ‘360’, has been in widespread use since at least the late 80s, with almost all large corporations using it in some form or other. Organisations employ it for a wide […]
Apathetic workforce? UK employees are suffering from a lack of creativity
The UK is home to an apathetic workforce that doesn’t feel like they are contributing to their place of work in a meaningful way, according to a Microsoft research report. It reveals that organisations are finding that employees are becoming demotivated due to a process-driven culture that focuses too much on managing email traffic and […]
How being brain-savvy can improve performance management
The press coverage of Microsoft’s ‘stack rating’ system has put the whole process of performance management and ratings back in the headlines. I am sure many HR people are rather surprised that a system that was popular in the 80s and 90s is still being used by a ‘modern’ company like Microsoft, especially one that […]
Five reasons the perfect candidate just isn’t so perfect
If you recruit, at any level, chances are you’re overlooking potentially excellent candidates in the mistaken belief that lack of experience makes them unsuitable for the job. Here’s why the person you think is perfect, probably isn’t. 1. Their experience – it might seem a perfect fit, but previous experience, even significant levels, have absolutely […]
What makes a successful management team?
This piece was written by Alison McSparron-Edwards, founder and managing director of Consultrix. Leaders come in all shapes and sizes. It is important for business owners to recognise this. Although many people have different management and leadership skills, there are qualities that must be identified in order to culminate in a successful management team and therefore […]
Six insights into Performance Management best practice
A few years ago, the CIPD report ‘Performance Management in Action’ revealed the shocking statistic that less than 20 percent of organisations said they realised ‘some’ benefit from their investment in performance management. Just pause a moment and think about that number: this means that more than 80 percent of organisations see no benefit at […]
The difference between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ performance management
Guest post by Simon North, Founder of Position Ignition and the Career Ignition Club.What does good and bad performance management look like and how do we ensure that our organisations have good performance management at every stage and in every element of what is a significant process? At one level it is easy to see […]
