Like many HR Directors, I used to believe that things would really start to change once we had completed our HR Transformation. Our faith in these long, exhausting programmes appears to be undiminished. 

Topics: HR Transformation

It’s January 2018 and some of you out there will be entering another year of your major “HR Transformation”. You’ll probably be over-budget and behind schedule 

Topics: Performance management, HR apps, induction, learning, reward

One of my least comfortable memories as an HR Director was presenting a new pay and grading system to my senior leadership team. My team had worked for months on it – and in my view, it was a thing of beauty. 

Topics: Bonuses, Innovation, How to manage talent in a disrupted world, Agility, Performance management

Welcome to Part Two of the Top 10 books that helped to disrupt my approach to HR 

Topics: books for hr

If you’ve been in HR a while, you’ll have your own collection of cringeworthy moments. Those memories of when you launched a new process that achieved absolutely nothing. 

Topics: HR, Creativity, Agility, Performance management, Employee experience

HR surveys tell us the creation of a great employee experience ranks as a major trend again this year. They also acknowledge that only a minority of companies have found a way of doing it well. 

Topics: Employee experience

If you were a Brownie Guide in the 70’s and 80’s, you might be interested to know how the badges have changed. No more “Hostess”, “House Orderly” or “Needleworker”. 

Topics: Leadership competency model

Anyone who loves to shop gets what a great customer experience looks and feels like. With the impact of digital resulting in declining numbers visiting high street stores, retailers have had to work even harder to compete for the illusive and spoilt-for-choice shopper. 

Topics: Employee experience

Picture this leader. She has lots of people wanting to leave her team, she recently lost a couple of good people to a competitor and she neglects her high-potentials. Meet the new great leader of talent!

Topics: Talent management

Whatever your sector, we’re all tech companies now. The need to attract and build a digital capability is one of the key challenges for all leaders and HR professionals.

Topics: Digital talent

The most recent global survey into the issue of trust has some challenging implications for HR. So much of our current approach stems is based around our leaders being the font of all truth, wisdom and credibility.

Topics: Trust

My business partner loves uncertainty. She deliberately won’t book a hotel till the last minute so she has the excitement of not knowing where she’ll be staying that night. She starts her shopping on Christmas eve. She actually enjoys hot desking. She is not the norm.

Topics: Agility

My first job on leaving university was as a teacher in a college. Being a rookie, I would put heart and soul into coming up with well-structured lesson plans filled with interesting ways of delivering the content.

Topics: Succession Planning

 We often get asked to work with clients who want to change their approach to performance management. Typically, this focuses on the sensible desire to remove the dreaded appraisal ratings. There's nothing wrong with this.

Topics: Bonuses, Performance management

Every organisation seems to crave greater levels of innovation to survive. They add "Innovative" to their corporate values. CEOs boast about in their annual statements.

Topics: Innovation, HR

Is there anyone out there who still thinks the annual engagement survey is a good use of time and money? Is there anyone left who still believes that the annual engagement survey improves engagement?

Topics: Annual Engagement Surveys

You know you’re in trouble when the thinking behind your latest initiative is that “if HR doesn’t manage it, THEY won’t do it properly”. The “THEY” in question is, of course, your managers; the people we trust enough to lead the business but not enough to lead our people.

Topics: HR

Whether you call it onboarding or induction, it means the same thing – it’s all about how we get new employees bedded in and working effectively as quickly as possible.

Topics: On-boarding

If you’re in HR, then I’m sure you experience those awful moments when you question whether the processes you and your team have worked so hard to create are actually delivering results.

Topics: EACH model

We often hear organisations say that their “employees are our greatest assets”. What a horrible phrase. Assets are things like buildings, computer equipment and furniture – not human beings.

Topics: EACH model

I am going to assume that anyone reading this already gets the need for better and different HR practices. I am not going to bang on about the demands of a “VUCA” world, the pace of change, the rise of the Millennials, or a more globalised, networked economy.

Topics: Adult to adult, Innovation, EACH model, Creativity, Agility

Over the last few weeks I’ve been looking at the traditional repertoire of talent management tools and techniques. I’ve been doing the easy bit - dissing the old favourites like the 9 Box Grid and Hi-Po Programmes but not putting forward what might work instead.

Topics: How to manage talent in a disrupted world

I always found it interesting that despite having to make quite deep cuts in my budgets over the years, my CEO’s would be reluctant to see the removal of one of the bigger ticket items in the HR portfolio – the High Potentials Programme. 

Topics: Talent:Disrupted

As the pressure to secure the best talent mounts, HR is rightly questioning the real value of one of our most favoured talent tools – the 9 Box Grid. 

Topics: Talent:Disrupted

Despite our seeming obsession with what we call and how we structure ourselves, the latest HR makeover to Employee Experience can, I believe, present an opportunity for genuine change.

Topics: HR Design :Disrupted

Think of the best reward you were ever given at work. Actually, think of the best reward you were given anywhere. I was recently hosting a panel of seven business leaders and posed that question to them. 

Topics: Bonuses

I’ve never hidden my dislike of the annual appraisal, and we don’t exactly lack for articles discrediting them, yet they’re a resilient, persistent breed that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere any time soon.

Topics: Reward:Disrupted

As the dissatisfaction with the traditional "three legged stool" model for HR increases, many HR professionals are asking the question “What is the next generation HR structure?”

Topics: HR Design :Disrupted

When people find a mission in life, it’s usually something really awe-inspiring – like climbing Kilimanjaro or saving some rare species of whale. Mine is really lame.

Topics: Appraisals:Disrupted

A client recently called me to talk about improving their employment brand. I was very excited and had loads of ideas about how they might change their approach to some of the big HR ticket items such as talent, performance and succession.

Topics: Employment Rules:Disrupted

Every year the PR giant Edelman publishes a global survey on one issue - trust. It considers the levels of trust we have in our public institutions, technical experts, each other - and our business leaders.

Topics: Leadership: Disrupted

The fact that people believe that only one in five business leaders will tell the truth when the going gets tough would suggest that they are not managing their communications terribly well.

Topics: Internal Comms: Disrupted

We can really over-engineer things in HR and Internal Comms can’t we? The jargon, the models of engagement, the diagnostics ….

Topics: Engagement:Disrupted

It’s that time again. That time of year that we all dread. Appraisal season.

Topics: Appraisals:Disrupted