Christina’s Counsel: Managing attitude problems remotely
The challenge An HR client recently asked me for advice about how to tackle a situation that may become more commonplace as managing staff remotely increasingly becomes the norm. A manager raised concerns about a team member who worked some 75 miles away in a satellite office. Until recently, the office had been manned […]
Blog: Four survival tips for when the company loses its CEO
Recognise This! – Build a strong culture based on core values that mean something to individual employees. We’ve all read the stories of the new CEO stepping into a strong company culture. The good CEOs express various concerns around wanting to preserve what is strong in the culture and company, etc. Now think how […]
Going for gold with former Olympians
In sport terms, 30 years of age is probably the equivalent of 50 for everyone else. By 35, most sports people are nudging retirement. But what do they do after that? For a significant number of ex-Olympians and other sporting legends, the next move is into training and consultancy, sharing the secrets of their […]
Talking Point: Is it better to outsource training or offer it in-house?
Although employee performance may have improved over the last two years, individuals are still not working to their full potential, a recent poll of HR directors revealed. With the economic climate as it is, however, it is clear that employers must ensure that they get the most out of the talent they already have. […]
How to tackle your first 100 days as HR director – Part 1
We live in a rapidly changing world in which the political and economic outlook for the next 12 months is very unclear. In this unstable commercial environment, uncertainty about the future feeds a growing sense of urgency in the here and now. As a result, judgments are made much more quickly. This means that […]
Putting the Games plan into practice
“The Olympics is a big morale booster for the country this year,” believes Phoebe Leet, head of HR for UK and Ireland at IT network giant, Cisco. And as a technology partner for the Games, the vendor has naturally had the event on its mind for some time. As a result, it has already […]
In a Nutshell: Five ways to boost employee performance
All too often, employees can end up focusing their efforts on work that doesn’t really help to move the business forward. So what can you do to help them make the shift from ‘just doing things’ to doing the right things in order to improve organisational performance? The key is to encourage managers to […]
News: NHS “pay cartel” proposes staff pay cuts and longer hours
Thousands of NHS staff in the South West of England could face the sack unless they agree to take pay cuts and work longer hours under a new money-saving scheme. A document leaked to the Sunday Times showed that NHS managers from 19 Trusts in the region have joined forces to form what is being […]
Blog: Crappy performance management rule 4 – Job descriptions should be old and vague
If you really want to make a disconnect between performance management and your staff here are three must haves for your teams Job Descriptions: 1. The old ones are the good ones: Why go to the bother of updating perfectly good JD’s? If you’ve an old one that’s been faithful in the past, then save yourself […]
Blog: Exclusive HRzone survey – What’s your leadership style?
Successful, high performing organisations don’t just happen. They are created and sustained by leaders and managers who build cultures that enable the talent, energy and skills of their workforce to thrive. From my experience working with some of the best global leaders, I know there are five clear roles that managers and leaders need […]
Blog: Debunking 5 employee performance myths
Deciphering the myths of employee performance: Myth 1: A Mission Statement is Enough Employee performance touches every part of the organisation. However, simply creating a new company vision every three to four years and setting board level objectives of increasing sales or market share is not enough. Such goals have no relevance to […]
Blog: Fact – Improve management practice by 1% or hire 25% more staff
Recognise This! – A little effort to improve management skills is worth as much as a 25% increase in headcount. A consistent source of good advice and cross-industry perspective on company culture, Blanchard Leader Chat is one of my must-read blogs. Last month, for example, they featured recent global research from McKinsey, Stanford, and […]
Talking Point: What’s happened to business ethics?
It seems that every time you open a newspaper at the moment, there’s a new business scandal. The fall-out from Barclays Libor-rigging fine continues to be an ongoing story. The scandal has already claimed the scalps of the bank’s chairman and chief executive – and who knows how many more may follow? Barclay’s leadership […]
News: Land Securities proposes bonus clawback scheme
Land Securities is to become one of the first companies outside of the financial services sector to introduce a clawback mechanism on bonuses and share awards for top executives. The proposals made by the commercial property firm in its 2012 annual report were the result of a review of senior managers’ pay after the sector […]
Blog: Leadership/management lessons from the Diamond debacle
We know that former head of Barclays bank, Bob Diamond, was leading the financial institution during the period in which the well-documented Libor rates or interest rates for inter-bank borrowing, were being manipulated. It has now come to light that Diamond had absolutely no idea it was going on. Surely, if he was at the […]
Blog: How to boost employee engagement
Recognise This! – Recognition, reputation, and performance management are among the top opportunities for improving engagement as identified by Aon Hewitt. Aon Hewitt recently released their 2012 Trends in Global Engagement. Several findings were unsurprising, but worthy of highlighting as many organisations still struggle with getting these basic factors of engagement success right. First, it’s […]
Talent Spot: Gill Crowther, HR director at Nominet
By the time Gill Crowther, director of HR at Nominet, had finished university, she already knew that she wanted to work in HR. She had studied engineering, but the fact that she seemed to be very good at getting people to help her with her studies gave her a “moment of revelation” that management […]
Christina’s Counsel: Help! My boss is creating a long hours culture
The challenge Recently appointed in a relatively new company as its first HR manager, my client has a dilemma. She described with some dismay her fear that the managing director was starting to instil a long hours’ culture in the organisation. No explicit statement existed in this regard, but some behavioural trends, which seemed […]
The HRZone Interview: The CMI’s CEO Ann Francke on management
Ann Francke only started her new job as chief executive at the Chartered Management Institute on 12 June, but she is already on a mission. As you’d expect, she not only wants to encourage more managers to gain professional qualifications, but she also wants them – and their employers – to recognise the power of […]
Is leadership development really the answer to your problems?
The idea that there is a key requirement for ‘better leadership’ as the ‘answer’ to most, if not all, business and organisational problems remains prevalent. Numerous surveys by management consultancies reinforce the notion that there is a leadership talent ‘gap’ and, by extension, a need for more and better leadership development activity. This idea […]
