Discover our insights and the latest thinking in HR
As unpopular as it might be with leaders who often crave certainty, great HR is just ‘messy’. The HR leaders who are having the most impact, who are creating the conditions where people and organisations can thrive in our disrupted world are those who have the courage to avoid the neat solutions and instead offer messy solutions to the challenges we face. In this blog we explore what 'messy' HR looks like in practice.
In the second part of this blog we share the ways in which organisations are taking fresh approaches to D&I.
Diversity and inclusion is an area of HR that has long needed refreshing. This blog looks at why our typical approaches aren't working and the new trends that are really helping organisations become more diverse and inclusive.
The third and final blog in our series on how to create an amazing employee experience. This blog offers a step by step guide to get you there.
It's easy to get confused with so many HR tech products out there. Here's our pick for 2019!
Part 2 in our blog series on creating an amazing employee experience explores the different elements you might want to include.
Despite all the hype, moving to an employee experience focus is genuine game changer for HR. This blog is the first in a series on how you go about creating an amazing employee experience in your organisation.
It should be the most interesting report in the Board pack, so why is it usually last on the agenda and met with indifference? In this blog we look at how to make the People Report into something they actually enjoy reading and look at the two questions every Board should want to know about our people.
Most of HR's energy gets spent on either the top or the bottom 10% of our employees. This blog suggests that there are serious downsides to this approach and that it's time to stop obsessing about our "stars and rogues".
If we are going to help leaders and managers move with our desire to change approach and to deliver HR that is more relevant for today’s disrupted world, then we need strategies that make it easier and more appealing than our usual HR initiatives. This blog provides some different ways of helping leaders to embrace new techniques.
A (tongue-in-cheek) look at the jargon we use in HR.
In HR we have prided ourselves on becoming great service providers. In this blog we explore how this service mindset may have done us no favours and how moving to HR products might give us greater impact.
“We started out with real agility and entrepreneurialism. Then, as we grew, we started to bring in lots of policies and process. Now we feel slow and less creative. We never wanted to end up being this type of company.” If this sounds like your organisation then this blog is for you. We've got some tips to help rediscover what made you great in the beginning and to avoid the accepted wisdom of what it means to be a grown up company.
A need for collaboration between teams is something many HR teams are wrestling with. Unfortunately, our traditional approaches and processes do nothing to help foster better working relationships and, in some cases, actively work against them. So how can HR help to create greater collaboration in their organisations? Here we look at four of the approaches that companies are taking to ensure their people focus on beating the competition and not the team next door.
Whilst the 'no more ratings' argument seems to be winning, many of us are still wrestling with the dilemma of how to pay out bonuses if we don't have a number assigned to individuals each year. In this blog we look at the options you've got to make this happen.
Worrying about our credibility can be a bit of an HR obsession. We worry that we still haven’t got that seat on the Board. We worry that we aren’t taken seriously as Finance. In this blog we look at credibility boosters that work (and those that don't!)
HR Transformations don't transform HR. Eight out of ten large companies are currently running one to reduce HR costs but less than 20% actually deliver. In this blog we look at why that is and what the alternatives might be.
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. Why not have a look at some of the great app alternatives?
Whilst it's often easier and cheaper to implement one-size-fits-all processes, they rarely deliver results. If we are going to genuinely change behaviour, we need to become the human not process experts. In this blog we explain how.
Welcome to Part Two of the Top 10 books that helped to disrupt my approach to HR
There’s a few reading lists doing the rounds so I thought I’d jump on the bandwagon and give you my personal favourites.
If you’ve been in HR a while, you’ll have your own collection of cringe worthy moments. Those memories of when you launched a new process that achieved absolutely nothing. Instead of trying to make our broken processes easier to use, this blog explores how we can have a genuine impact.
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. In this blog we share how you can create not just one employee experience, but a customised one.
The leadership competency model is based upon a myth of the perfect leader. If we can attain all the competencies, we'll be perfect! Of course, this doesn't exist. So, how can we determine what we need from leaders in this disrupted world? In this blog we look at fresh alternatives.
Anyone who loves to shop gets what a great customer experience looks and feels like. In this blog we look at what we can learn from retail as we think about creating a memorable 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!
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. In this blog we look at how two experts have done in their companies.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?”
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.
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.
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.
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.
We can really over-engineer things in HR and Internal Comms can’t we? The jargon, the models of engagement, the diagnostics ….
It’s that time again. That time of year that we all dread. Appraisal season.
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