HR’s image problem – and how to fix it
It’s time to put the ‘human’ back into ‘human resources’.
Employee engagement: will Black Friday pull you in a darker direction?
Black Friday is a challenging time for customer-facing staff.
Personal development: what is ‘good failure’ and how can employers promote it?
In order to be truly innovative, we need to give our people space to fail occasionally.
Learning culture: why we must champion curiosity and cultivate critical thinking
We are living and working in a technologically connected, digital and globalised world. And one of the main career implications of this digital revolution is a shift in demand for human expertise. There is now a premium on intellectual curiosity and what is being coined as ‘learnability’, the desire and ability to quickly grow and adapt […]
CIPD ACE 2019: fairness as the foundation of good work
The issues of equality and fairness are fundamental to good work.
Employee wellbeing: how does racism affect mental health?
Employees who experience racism are more likely to suffer from poor mental health.
Reimagine leadership: a new job for the CEO
Executives who want to thrive must steer their companies toward value beyond profit.
Reimagine excellence: manage performance to free sustainable value
Shareholder value has a long history as the yardstick of corporate performance. The underlying legal principle dates back to a 100-year-old ruling by the Michigan Supreme Court, in the case of Dodge v Ford. Henry Ford learned that the Dodge brothers, who were investors in Ford Motor Co., planned a rival firm. This prompted Ford […]
Reimagine business value: the world’s changing expectations of companies
For decades, society was content for business to drive economic growth and wealth creation. People looked to governments to keep their worlds secure, while ‘doing good’ was the job of charities. Companies were free to operate in a bubble of employees, products, customers and profits, as long as they made money for shareholders. Trade brought […]
Ten reasons to love doing HR for a small business
Alright, alright. You don’t have access to a ‘Leadership University’ or state of the art breakout rooms. You don’t have an army of HRBPs, and if you want a promotion you’ll have to give it to yourself. That said, doing HR in a small or medium sized enterprise has its perks. Let’s examine them. 1. […]
The ethical employee: a look at moral behaviour
In parts 4.1 and 4.2 of this discussion we looked at how our actions cascade outward through the organisations we work in, and how even our smallest actions can generate dramatic effects. We saw the importance of ‘the whole of us’ to the workplace, and that each of us is far more than just a […]
The ethical employee: what we bring to our business
Let’s begin this part of our analysis with a brief thought experiment… Imagine, just for a moment, that there is a part of you that is nothing more than a ‘work delivery unit’ (WDU). This is the part of you that fulfils your contract of employment to the letter. It’s the part of you that […]
The ethical employee: we have the power
In previous articles in this series I’ve talked about the nature of ethics, outlining three basic moral aims that we can use in assessing the morality of our businesses and our own management practice. These are: To nurture others To nurture our species as a whole To nurture all life I’ve discussed at a high […]
Ethical business: attracting and retaining top talent needs actions, not just words
Right now companies face one of the biggest challenges ever faced in attracting and retaining new talent and every business, large or small, will be affected at some point in the future. The corporate world may be changing, few can argue with that, but talent is changing too and with a multitude of layers, […]
Digital wellbeing: caring for employees in an ‘always on’ culture
In today’s world, digital technology is everywhere and within a relatively short time it has become embedded in our social fabric. Such is the speed of technological change that its absorption into our day-to-day lives has occurred very rapidly, but without the research into its impact that precedes the introduction of medical interventions. As a […]
Business after Brexit: the changing needs of UK employees
Ahead of the uncharted waters of Brexit, the UK labour market appears to be continuing to shrug off the wider signs of economic doom and gloom. According to Office of National Statistics data, the UK labour market has charted its strongest earnings growth in 11 years, with annual growth in average weekly earnings for employees […]
Science fiction and HR: imagining alternative futures
It is more than 200-years since 19-year-old Mary Shelley published her widely acclaimed novel, ‘Frankenstein’– known to some as ‘the first work of science fiction.’ Although it was popular at the time, even Shelley, with her remarkable foresight could not predict how popular her novel, or the genre she was forming, would become. Today, science […]
Why a ‘no-blame’ company culture brings out the best in teams
A striker is through on goal in a football match and takes a shot. The goalkeeper seems to catch the ball at first, but they drop it and it goes past them into the net. It’s a winning goal for the other side in the dying seconds of the match. Whose fault is it that […]
Company culture: the single issue at the heart of organisational failure
Almost every organisational failing – from Oxfam to Barings Bank, from Arcadia to Boeing – can be linked to a single issue: toxic company culture. Despite this, most businesses don’t understand how to accurately measure culture, let alone change it. It is now possible to measure the genuine behaviours within a business and establish the leading […]
Why ‘investors’ (not ‘savers’) are the secret to a high-performing company culture
There are organisational cultures that deliver great performance, and then there are organisational cultures that not only deliver great performance, but crucially, ensure that performance is sustained: next week, next month, when things get tough, when leaders change. Whatever is thrown at the culture, it copes and is exceptionally resilient yet, at the same time, […]
