Blog: 3 Tips to Build and Sustain a Strong Company Culture

Recognise This! – Creating a strong culture requires careful focus and intention. What’s your ambition for the culture of your organisation? If you intend to create and preserve a strong company culture of recognition – one that drives engagement, productivity and performance – how do you that? 1) Focus on Your Culture If culture is […]

News: HR employers do little to keep staff despite skills shortage fears

While two out of five employers in the HR sector are worried about losing staff, around the same number are doing nothing to keep them, according to a study. Unsurprisingly then, Reed’s HR 2012 Salary and Market Insight report also revealed that nearly half of all junior HR managers were either actively searching or plan […]

Blog: Steve Jobs and valuing the ‘B’ players

Recognise This! – There are always B players in any organisation who are just as important to your success as A players, if in a different way. During the last few months, one of the top books has been the Steve Jobs autobiography.   It’s a fascinating read and doesn’t hold back on both the […]

News: 60% of workers plan to watch Olympics – with or without consent

More than half of employers plan to enable their staff to work more flexibly during the Olympics – which is just as well as nearly three out of five employees intend to watch Games, with or without consent. According to the initial findings of a joint survey undertaken by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and […]

Analysis: SAP outlines its cloud-based HCM apps strategy

HR has been a core component of SAP’s Business Suite for some time. But, while David Ludlow, its group vice president of HCM solutions, is the first to admit that the functionality has been under-marketed in the past, it seems that is all about to change.   At an event held with the firm’s SuccessFactors’ […]

Talent Spot: Fiona Lawlor, HR director at Jack Morton Worldwide

During Fiona Lawlor’s time at Jack Morton Worldwide, she has seen the HR function develop from being a lowly back-room admin operation to become a strategic partner of the business. Today, Lawlor is HR director and a senior vice president of the brand experience agency, but when she joined 18 years ago, it had no […]

State of the nation: The HR recruitment market

Without doubt, the overall HR recruitment market has been going through an ‘interesting’ 2012 to date.  In general terms, the increased demand for interim hires is currently driving the market while continued economic uncertainty has a sustained impact upon permanent hiring at all levels.   Financial services, for so long one of the key markets […]

Blog: What makes a star performer?

We might like to think that two people doing the same job will produce similar levels of output, but in practice there can be significant differences. Certain people are twice as productive, sometimes even five times as productive, as others.   In these challenging times, being able to identify, recruit and develop these rare performers […]

Blog: How to get the most out of restructuring, redundancy and redeployment

For some people it must seem like a merry-go-round when they experience the upheaval of round after round of restructuring, redeployment and redundancies.   Every few years the company is turned upside down and yet often doesn’t seem to gain the benefits.   This must cause a lot of confusion to those in charge. They […]

How to beat a counter job offer

Against a backdrop of continued economic uncertainty, top talent at all levels is becoming increasingly hard to find and land. Competition for candidates is increasing as companies start to ramp up their hiring efforts after the downturn. This has given rise to more challenging candidate management and the infamous counter offer.   Recent research by […]

Three ways for HR leaders to thrive in today’s changing business landscape

In recent years – and even more so in recent months – the business landscape has changed dramatically. It has become more global, more complex, faster-paced and less predictable.   The competing and conflicting challenges that leaders face today have morphed from the ‘tame’, if complicated, issues that could be tackled successfully using tried and […]

Six steps for succession planning success

The identification and development of future management candidates – otherwise known as succession planning or talent management – was recently identified as one of the top three immediate HR issues that needed to be dealt with (Bersin and Associates, 2011). Over 50% of the employers surveyed struggled to fill key positions and believed that their […]

Analysis: Oracle’s future product roadmap for Taleo

In part one of this two-part news analysis, Oracle’s senior executives explained the shifting nature of the human capital management applications marketplace and the vendor’s rationale for acquiring Software-as-a-Service-based recruitment and talent management systems supplier, Taleo. In part two, Jason Blessing, the man in charge of Taleo’s product line, explains what the merger is likely […]

Analysis: Oracle – Why we bought Taleo

The cloud human capital management application wars are set to be one of the prevailing technology topics of 2012 and beyond. SAP’s acquisition of SuccessFactors, Oracle’s purchase of talent management and recruitment firm Taleo, which completed last month, and Workday’s forthcoming stock market flotation all bear testimony to the importance of the HR marketplace to […]

News: Employers cling to ineffective training methods – study

Too many employers are clinging on to traditional training methods despite having reservations about how effective they are, a survey has found. The poll was undertaken by Software-as-a-Service-based learning and talent management software supplier, Cornerstone OnDemand, and the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, which published the findings today to coincide with the start of […]

Blog: Using employee segmentation as a tool to cut staff turnover

“What time did you get in last night,” I asked my daughter. “Around 3 am,” she answered. It was now 5:45 am and I was leaving the house.   As I walked downstairs from her room, I shook my head in wonderment. My question was this: how can you continue working people all these hours? […]

Cultivating emotional intelligence: Lessons from two public resignations

There was a time when the manner and timing of your arrival was the coup de grace moment. But, if two recent articles that are getting considerable attention in online circles are anything to go by, the golden moment might now actually be the method of your departure.   It all began when Greg Smith […]

Blog: Succession planning – Winning the talent war

I was watching Oprah’s Lifeclass the other day, and one of the things that resonated with me was that statement that one of her friends said about Oprah and why she was successful. Who is next in your pipeline? Who do you have your other hand extended to?    Succession or replacement? You choose.   I read […]

Blog: Career development part one – Why employers are investing in it

What does career development mean to you and to your company? Why is it important? How to do it? This is the first of two posts on the subject of career development practices in companies.   First, I want to discuss the reasons why companies are interested in career development. In the next post I […]

Blog: Are annual performance reviews strictly necessary?

Recognise This! – Yes, getting rid of the annual review can be done successfully. Do we really need annual performance reviews?   I’ve written before that there is a balance between ongoing feedback from multiple sources and annual feedback from one source. I’ve also written about what it would look like if you scrap the […]