Eight lessons from the 2015 Employee Engagement conference
On September 10th 2015 180 HR professionals attended an event dedicated to making their engagement efforts more organisationally-focused – so they added real business impact. Follow all the commentary on the hashtag #EEUK2015. #1 Giving people space is not always the best choice Keynote Alison Lowe, CEO of Leeds mental health charity Touchstone, told a […]
A collaborative approach to reduce HR complexity
As organisations look to address budget challenges, many are starting to focus on HR as an area where delivering the right changes can make a difference. Sally Campbell, Director of Health at arvato UK, explains how Action for Children – a national charity for children and young people – took a collaborative approach with their […]
Your guide to ‘relationally-intelligent’ leadership
Effective leadership today is dependent upon a new covenant between leader and led which guarantees not only acceptable levels of security and prosperity for employees but also a sense of tangible contribution to decision making. In this article we justify the changed details of the covenant which optimises energy, engagement and active participation, utilising long […]
Making collaboration work in large complex organisations
To get the best possible results for your organisation, collaboration is essential. Different thinking leads to better ideas and solutions. Shared experience ensures effective implementation. And no matter how high your IQ might be, you are still not bright enough to have all the answers. Yet in my experience, making collaboration happen – especially in […]
How to create a collaborative workplace
The way we work today is vastly different from how we did in previous decades. Today’s workforce is increasingly diverse, with more women and older workers than ever before, as well as being more globalised and connected. In order to understand how these changes are impacting employee wellbeing and how employers can successfully manage this […]
HR needs the CIO – a new law of attraction
HR is just one example of the major business functions that is consuming more IT bandwidth from the CIO as it becomes increasingly reliant on technology to improve the way that it functions. This technology can take multiple forms, including an HR solution to track employees’ performance, an e-learning platform for training initiatives or an […]
“Thank you, I’d love to speak at your event…”
No names, no job titles, no companies. HR After Dark features totally anonymised opinion pieces from HR professionals, consultants and industry commentators. No holds barred, no censorship, nothing but raw opinions on issues that matter to HR. When the lights go down, HR After Dark comes out to play. See it all here first. Want […]
Four principles for instilling cultures of creativity
The number of job descriptions that now list ‘entrepreneurial spirit’ amongst the list of characteristics applicants need to have seems to have skyrocketed. Really, they just want someone who can take the initiative and think outside the box. But organisations don’t need to hire in new talent to find these qualities. Instilling a culture of […]
Collaboration between practitioners and academics crucial to developing HR agenda
There’s so much rich insight coming out of the academic sector that HR professionals need to know. At Academics’ Corner we feature the best HR researchers that tell you what they’ve found and what you need to do differently on the back of the research. Get connected to the academic sector through Academics’ Corner and […]
Smart working in Whitehall – and what it means for HR
As the election approaches, we’ll hear more and more about government ‘efficiency savings’. Big holes in the parties’ ‘costed proposals’ will be filled by this kind of seemingly inexhaustible manifesto polyfilla. But what is really going on in reforming the way government works? Across all parts of central government there are concerted moves towards ‘Smart […]
Connecting the employee experience with customer satisfaction
Paul Barnes is UK Country Manager at enterprise feedback management (EFM) company Questback. 1) What's the impetus behind the recent movement towards connecting employee engagement with the customer experience? When asked to name their two top business priorities, CEOs consistently rank the customer experience and getting the best out of staff at the top of the […]
Sharing proprietary practices to drive performance across regions?
With the global economy gradually moving out of recession challenges are returning for businesses; such as managing the financial pressure of maintaining a highly skilled base of human capital and the rising recruitment cost of attracting talent. In this highly competitive economic environment, companies have recognised the need to provide more innovation, greater value for […]
The relationship between HR and IT is driving process improvement at a global children’s NGO
We recently interviewed Mark Banbury, Global CIO at Plan International, on how the NGO is using HR technology to save children’s lives. Here Mark tells us more about how the IT and HR departments are working to maintain and leverage the cloud HR technology that now adds value across Plan. For Mark, creating greater connection […]
Why HR is its own worst enemy when it comes to employee engagement
In recent years, the use of the written term ‘employee engagement’ has overtaken phrases such as ‘staff incentives’ and ‘employee motivation’1 for the first time since 1920, demonstrating an emerging new ‘engagement’ model when motivating staff, particularly those who work for large, global organisations. Employee engagement is a compelling proposition and there have been dozens […]
How to present your case for self-service technology to the board
Transversal recently hosted its annual HR Knowledge Summit in London. Attended by over 50 senior HR decision makers from across the public, retail and financial services sectors, the event provided delegates with the opportunity to hear about the importance of internal knowledge solutions in HR, directly from Transversal customers and other HR professionals. Lively discussion identified […]
Move over teamwork – what about the other forms of co-operative working?
Taken very broadly, there are two kinds of management or business research thinking when it comes to teams: perspectives that think teams are a decent functional way to organise workers to work effectively, and perspectives that are much more critical of the very concept of teamwork. Instinctively, anecdotally, and from much research over the last […]
News: CIOs increasingly collaborate in face of changing business environment
New research highlights the increasing need for business divisions to collaborate in order to respond to the changing business environment. A Forrester Consulting study commissioned by Colt Technology Services, which investigated the relationships between IT and other business divisions, revealed that insufficient engagement between IT and customer-facing business departments is affecting positive business transformation. Despite […]
Blog: how not to ruin a team in 10 conference calls
Working in virtual and ad-hoc teams is on the rise. Here at Brother, employees work in changing groups that often involve people in Japan, the States and all over Europe – some from within Brother, some from external suppliers, consultants and partners. Over the last 10 years, remote collaboration has usually been achieved through […]
I want to be alone – but it’s not good for business!
UK businesses risk scuppering productivity and profits by failing to support effective team working. Almost half of the 2,030 UK employees surveyed by talent development firm Cedar felt their organisation did not help develop team working practices. Meanwhile, 37% of respondents said they preferred working alone, suggesting that businesses needed to do more to […]
Book Review: The leadership challenge – How to make extraordinary things happen in organisations
This is the fifth edition of a 25-year old book, which has sold more than two million copies in over 20 languages to become a globally trusted source of leadership material – some have even called it the ‘leadership bible’. The authors, Jim Kouzes, executive fellow of leadership at Santa Clara University and chairman and […]
