Analysis: Oracle’s Taleo buy marks tipping point in talent management sector

Oracle’s takeover of Taleo yesterday could mark a tipping point in the evolution of the talent management software sector, analysts believe. The story so far is this: SAP buys Software-as-a-Service vendor, SuccessFactors, to beef up its next generation human capital and talent management offerings.   Newcomer Workday, which is also an SaaS provider, readies itself […]

Remote working: How to get started

Over the last ten years remote working has been steadily gaining a foothold in the UK workplace, changing the nature of work and the daily commute. For many businesses, it now also forms a key part of their contingency plans, enabling employees to carry on working should unexpected or even expected events such as the […]

Oracle aims to up SaaS HCM credentials with Taleo swoop

If HR directors ever felt that they were being neglected by the software industry, those days should now be well and truly over. Instead there is a big old war brewing to try and woo them over to the next generation of human capital management applications.   And to this end, Oracle swooped on Taleo […]

Blog: Why learning should never end

I will be glad when this is over. I will never have to study again". That was a statement from my daughter during finals week in her senior year of college at Penn State. She sounded worn out.   As I listened on the other end of the phone, I looked at my watch and […]

Workers more ‘stressed and insecure’ than in Queen’s coronation year

In the year of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, it appears that, despite higher levels of personal prosperity, workers are more stressed and more insecure than they were 60 years ago. According to a special Work Audit report published by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development to explore how the world of work in the […]

London 2012: Civil servants ordered to work from home during Olympics

Staff across Whitehall will be forced to work from home during the Olympics and Paralympics Games in order to ease the pressure on London’s public transport network. Civil servants will be ordered not to commute to work for up to seven weeks to prevent the public transport network in the capital from becoming over-congested. Operation […]

Blog: Is there a place for QR codes in recruitment?

As digital technology continues to engrain itself in our day to day lives, we’ve been increasingly looking at how we can reach our candidates through these new channels. It seems that as quickly as organisations get comfortable with one communications channel, another one springs up!   As specialist online recruiters, it’s our job to help […]

Blog: Question for 2102 – why would someone work for you?

As we enter the doors of 2012, the prognosticators have all given their respective thoughts on what is coming into focus for the year. These are all great readings, but if you have survived these past few years of economic turmoil (and the aftermath), you know that, really, who knows?   All organizations have basically […]

Salesforce to Rypple gamification and social media out into HCM space

Just before Christmas, Salesforce.com made a move that was either very surprising or totally predictable, depending on your interpretation of events. The move in question was the decision to acquire Toronto-based HR system provider, Rypple. This was a surprise to the extent that Salesforce.com’s chief executive Marc Benioff had previously been resolute in his intent […]

Talent Spot: Helene Speight, head of HR at Endava

“My experience on ‘The Apprentice’ didn’t teach me anything about business, but it did teach me about the media and it also taught me a lot about myself,” says Helene Speight, group head of talent management at nearshore IT outsourcing services provider, Endava. And having self-awareness and an understanding of one’s own strengths and weaknesses […]

Salesforce.com follows SAP into Cloud HCM market

Following on from last week’s SAP acquisition of SuccessFactors, customer management specialist Salesforce.com has also gone Christmas shopping, and with what looks like a similar idea in mind. Its target is Toronto-based Rypple, which like SuccessFactors is a player in the HCM sector. Unlike SuccessFactors, however, Rypple is a 2008 start up business with just […]

Gamification: How to play ball with staff engagement

Engaged employees are more effective and innovative because they are showing their true selves at work. Involvement is key to engagement and games have always epitomised that. So it stands to reason that an effective route to employee engagement is to encourage people to play games.   In our recent international executive survey, which explored […]

Case Study: Rentokil Initial introduces “cohesion” by integrating HR processes

Rentokil Initial has automated and integrated its HR processes in a bid to make them more cohesive as part of a broader company-wide initiative to standardise administrative and operational procedures. The pest control and cleaning specialist is a £2.5 billion global organisation that employs an international workforce of 66,000. But, according to group HR operations […]

Cloud TV: SuccessFactors’ Paul Roberts on HCM and the cloud

At this year’s Business Cloud Summit, Neil Davey, editor of HRZone’s sister site, myCustomer.com, sat down to mull over cloud computing, HCM and business execution with Paul Roberts, Software-as-a-Service vendor SuccessFactors’ country manager for the UK and Ireland.

Four-year central government HR framework deal goes to Logica

Responsibility for providing transactional HR, payroll and finance services to central government has been handed to Logica under a four-year framework contract valued at between £50m and £500m. Marie-Helene Durif, head of sourcing and category management at the Government Procurement Service, said: "The award of this contract is another milestone in the government’s strategy to […]

News Analysis: The HCM battle begins – Will HRDs finally get technology they like using?

The human capital management software market was always going to be a turbulent place in 2012. The battle lines were to be drawn by Oracle rolling out its next generation Fusion applications, while Software-as-a-Service specialist Workday continued its attempts to steal away customers with ageing PeopleSoft systems from under Oracle’s nose.   But last week, […]

Talent Spot: Andrew Powell, COO of Colt Technology Services

Andrew Powell landed a six-week consultancy contract at Colt Technology Services in 2006 and has been there ever since. Despite falling into employment with the telecoms and IT services firm “completely by accident”, he is now chief operating officer after having held five other senior positions at the company within five years – which includes […]

Police officers left “directionless” during riots due to equipment failure

Equipment shortages together with failings in the Airwave digital radio network led to police officers being left "directionless" during this summer’s riots, a highly-critical leaked report has said. The Police Federation review, which was leaked to the Observer, revealed that the Police National Information Co-ordination Centre, the body set up to co-ordinate the response to […]

Business Cloud Summit: Cloud = the end of tech talk for HR

A key advantage of cloud computing in an HR context is that it removes the need to talk about technology with professionals that have to date shown little interest in it. Teresa Farrell, IT and projects manager for Irish Life and Permanent Plc’s group HR service centre development, said during a panel discussion at the […]

SAP’s $3.4bn SuccessFactors’ takeover to change HCM cloud market forever

Two years ago electronics giant Siemens surprised the world by electing to replace fellow German firm SAP as its HCM and talent management software provider with Cloud HCM firm SuccessFactors. It was a massive propaganda victory for the Cloud firm and resulted in what remains the largest Cloud Computing applications deployment in the world – […]