News: Half of HR departments will be restructured in next few years

Nearly half of all organisations intend to restructure their HR departments over the next few years in a bid to cater more effectively to the changing needs of the business. According to professional services firm Tower Watson’s HR service delivery survey conducted among HR and HR/IT executives working at 628 organisations across the world, just […]

News: It’s official – Oracle will discount heavily to win contracts

Earlier this year, Oracle executives were doubtless among those who chortled as the Software-as-a-Service battle plans of Lars Dalgaard, SAP‘s head of cloud and former chief executive of its SuccessFactors acquisition, were laid bare in a leaked internal document. But the boot is now on the other foot as Oracle’s sales strategy for its human […]

Infographic: How much time do you waste at work?

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News: Marketing agency installs employee ‘mood monitor’

A nascent trend towards using everyday technology to capture employee views has been taken a step further by one marketing agency after it installed a ‘mood monitor’ to understand how its workers are feeling. WAA, which was ranked number 81 in the Sunday Times’ 100 Best Small Companies to Work For listing this year, introduced […]

Analysis: IBM buys Kenexa to create ‘Smarter Workforce’

SuccessFactors, Rypple, Taleo, and now Kenexa. IBM has taken a leaf out of the respective books of SAP, Salesforce.com and Oracle to mount a takeover bid in the cloud human capital management applications space, by making a $1.3 billion punt for Kenexa. The acquisition target’s HR software is intended to help companies recruit and manage […]

In a Nutshell: Five tips for creating a positive company culture

Culture is one of those nebulous things that it’s hard to put your finger on: it’s something you instinctively know is spot on or out of kilter. Get it right and you have a happy workforce who will hopefully ensure that customers are happy too. Get it wrong and there is a chain reaction in […]

Blog: Me and my Blackberry are on holiday….

One of the things we often hear from our HR alumni and network is that, however much they’d love to change the way they and their teams or functions ‘do’ HR, they simply don’t have time. The daily dilemma: you may have found a new way to help their clients solve their business problems, but […]

News: HR pros ‘most likely to share a secret’

The average HR professional spends about half an hour each day nattering to colleagues about non-work-related issues and is more likely than any other profession to share a personal secret. These are the key findings of a survey conducted among 2,000 office staff by Mars Drinks Office Connections.   It revealed that, while an average […]

Talent Spot: Prithvi Shergill, global head of HR at HCL Technologies

Prithvi Shergill, global head of HR at offshore IT and software development provider HCL Technologies, decided while still at university that HR was the career for him. “It was quite evident to me that I enjoyed this area – I was part of a student-run association, ISEC [International Student Education Council], on the national committee […]

Cornerstone’s CEO: Taking on SAP and Oracle in the HCM apps space

The world of work is at a tipping point that apparently suits Adam Miller, chief executive of cloud-based talent management and learning software provider, Cornerstone OnDemand. He has for a while been “preaching” about the inevitable retirement of the baby boomer generation, a lack of skilled or experienced workers in the workforce combined with the […]

News: UK workers put in £157.2bn of unpaid overtime each year

UK workers are now putting in around £157.2 billion per year in unpaid overtime every year, with two thirds experiencing soaring stress levels as a result. According to a survey conducted by hotel chain Travelodge, one in ten employees are now cramming in the equivalent of an entire week’s extra work on top of their […]

Blog: Entertainment, media and tech are HR hiring hotspots

There is no doubt the economy is fragile. Last week it was reported that the UK recession has deepened as latest official figures show the national GDP fell by 0.7% between April and June.   Despite this, sectors such as high-end retail, entertainment and media are still seeing growth, and in times of financial insecurity, […]

News: Microsoft’s Yammer enables HR to monitor staff emotions

Microsoft’s Yammer has teamed up with emotion analysis company, Kanjoya, to enable employers to monitor staff attitudes based on their enterprise social network posts. Kanjoya’s Crane analytics dashboard communicates with Yammer in order to retrieve information from Yammer groups and other communications made over the company network to enable organisations to gauge employee emotions.   […]

Case Studies: UBS and Elizabeth Arden remain loyal to Oracle

In the increasingly febrile battleground of the cloud-based human capital management software market, a number of PeopleSoft customers have opted to stay with current owner, Oracle, in order to adopt its new Fusion system. First of all, UBS, has selected the offering to help it manage its 65,000-strong workforce in 50 countries. John Bradley, global […]

The HRZone Interview: Dr Cary Cooper on well-being at work

Dr Cary Cooper is professor of organisational psychology and health at Lancaster University Management School and author of more than 150 books on topics ranging from occupational stress and women at work to organisational psychology. He is also a regular contributor to TV, radio and the press and, in 2001, was awarded a CBE for […]

Talent Spot: Philippe Ferrie, head of HR at Vallourec

When a global company has a decentralised culture, it can be hard to persuade people to accept standardisation that is handed down from head office, even if it makes their work lives easier. This was the situation that Philippe Ferrie, worldwide employee relations coordinator at Vallourec, found himself in when the company chose to implement […]

Blog: Cracking employee communication codes QR-style

In spite of how you might feel about technology, you must admit that it’s making some aspects of employee communication much easier and improving communication between employer and employee.   Let’s look at the QR (Quick Response) codes for example…used properly and following a few basic rules, these little barcodes can create a huge impact […]

News: Shop floor workers make better leaders than general managers

Bosses who have experience of working on the shop floor make better leaders than career general managers, research has found.   A study conducted by London’s Cass Business School and the University of Sheffield, in which academics analysed every Formula One race – almost 18,000 – that had been staged over the last 60 years, […]

News: Yahoo appoints pregnant CEO

Female chief executives are still lamentably rare, female chief executives in the hi-tech computer industry even more so.  Female chief executives who are pregnant when appointed are hitherto unknown, however.   But, refreshingly, search engine company Yahoo has broken the mould by appointing Marissa Mayer as its latest CEO knowing full well that she’s six month’s pregnant.   Mayer […]

K2 Advisory research note: Is UK-based Fairsail a credible rival to SAP and Oracle?

In the recent past, we’ve seen some significant moves in the HR applications space by SAP and Oracle, which have spent something like $5.3 billion between them on SuccessFactors and Taleo respectively. However, while this is clearly very significant for the market, there are, of course, other suppliers that you should still consider.   At […]