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HR Software & Payroll Software

How to beat the employee engagement paradox: Bay Jordan, Zealise (December 2011)

As an HR professional, you are facing greater pressure than ever before to do more with less. Even if you have done a great job thus far, you are probably all too aware that warnings of a double-dip recession may mean you are not out of the woods yet. In these circumstances, you may – at best – consider demands to focus more on employee engagement as naïve. The very actions businesses need to take to survive – cost-cutting, headcount reductions, reducing pension contributions, etc – are all more likely to undermine employee engagement than build it. So how can you worry about employee engagement right now? If I were you, the questions I would now be asking myself are: “Why is employee engagement such a pervasive and pressing priority?” and “What am I missing from the debate?”

Total reward: how HR can survive the recession: R Bergemann, Globalite (Nov 11)

The current global economic situation presents a very specific challenge to employers and their HR teams: how do you retain and reward employees within an extremely tight budget and how do you do this using a consistent, global strategy? The challenge of motivating employees is, of course, not a new one. However, what is making this more challenging right now is that far more organisations are recognising the need to introduce global reward strategies that are applied regionally, rather than regional strategies that conform to the overall company philosophy. In addition, employees find themselves in situations where the cash value of their reward packages are seen as far more important than any potential benefit provision, as people face increasing costs of living and ongoing economic uncertainty. In response, a ‘total reward’ approach is seen as a possible solution. But what is total reward and how could it work for your company?

HR in the cloud: Wayne Carstensen, Capgemini (October 2011)

HR faces a new set of priorities compared to those addressed 10 years ago. The challenge is no longer which system or organisation structure you should deploy, or how many people should be in the HR department to perform all the admin tasks for managers. The challenge now facing HR executives is more concerned with which cloud or Software as a Service (SaaS) solution you should be migrating to, in order to support your organisation’s ambitions for transforming HR into a highly effective self-service model. HR is responsible for deploying the right skilled HR ‘gurus’ (business partners, subject matter specialists, etc) at the right time to the right managers – to ensure talent is optimised across the organisation in the most effective manner, and that compensations and benefit matters are well understood. Effective constructs should be in place to retain and attract talent.

Scheduling your way forward: Alan Erskine, Adventis Consulting (September 2011)

In an increasingly service oriented global economy, more and more organisations have large numbers of employees working in front-line roles on a 24/7 basis. For those businesses, the workforce accounts for a large proportion of costs, and the way it is managed and deployed is a critical success factor and fundamental to profitability and growth. Talk to operational managers in these companies and they will tell you that one of their biggest headaches is getting the right people working at the right time to meet customer needs. Even when people are contracted to work shifts, it can be difficult to cover certain times, such as weekends and school holidays. This problem certainly affects public services. For example, a recent UK government report highlighted that despite the demands of the job, there are more police officers on duty on a Monday morning than on a Friday night!

Are you ready for 1 October?: Lisa Keeble, Contractor Umbrella (August 2011)

New legislation known as The Agency Worker Regulations 2010 (AWR) will come into force on 1 October 2011. The law will apply to anyone working through a recruitment agency who is under the direct supervision and control of the hirer (or end-user company). This includes individuals who are working through their own one-man limited company or, as they are referred to by HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), personal service companies. It is widely believed that the new legislation strengthens HMRC’s position on IR35, as the same criteria which are used to establish employment status under IR35 will also be used to establish whether or not a worker falls under the scope of AWR. IR35 was introduced as legislation to draw a distinction between people who are genuinely in business on their own account and people who are really disguised employees.

New rules of attraction: Nina Stone, Berkshire Consultancy (July 2011)

The iGeneration are now entering the workforce as graduates and are likely to have high expectations of organisations, wanting their employer to be flexible and adaptable to their needs. Yet the way they use technology, their communication style and job expectations differ to previous generations. HR professionals and line managers will need to respond appropriately in order to recruit, develop and retain the top talent in this generation for their organisations. Managing different generations as they enter the workforce is not a new challenge for HR people. Each generation is partly defined by the technology they have grown up with and there is much debate regarding the classification of each generation. They have been broadly defined by sociologists and the media as the Baby Boomers, Generation X, Generation Y and the iGeneration who are now beginning to join the workforce.

Employee engagement: Ben Thornton & Katherine Howell, Atos Consulting (June 11)

Have you ever been so absorbed in your work that time ceased to exist? What felt like mid morning is actually mid afternoon, and you have experienced levels of productivity and creativity that have yielded real fruit? Many of us may recognise this experience – but how many of us experience it at work? And regularly? Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has characterised this experience as ‘flow ’ (Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, 1991) and has researched the criteria that enable it. What is surprising is his conclusions about how simple this appears to be: the goals, and associated standards, are clear; you know moment by moment how well you are doing; and the challenge of the activity is matched by your ability.

HR in a changing world: Philip Sadler, Tomorrow’s Company (May 2011)

The first decade of the 21st century brought with it a whole new series of challenges for organisations and their leaders. These challenges have important implications for the role of HR. The main issues to be faced include: the impact on all kinds of organisations of the near collapse of the global banking system; a loss of morale and the erosion of traditional loyalties in the workforce, resulting from a combination of a substantial number of plant closures, redundancies and the closure of final salary pension schemes – all in the context of rapidly inflating top management reward packages and ‘golden parachute’ payoffs; growing public concern about the social and environmental impact of the actions and policies of organisations, particularly large global enterprises; and considerable performance and morale problems in the UK public sector and in the fields of health, education and crime prevention in particular.

Do UK leaders lack leadership?: Cris Beswick, Let’s Think Beyond (April 2011)

UK businesses rank 17th out of 21 countries for managerial effectiveness according to a recent wide-ranging survey. The 2010 Kenexa Research Institute survey Exploring Leadership and Managerial Effectiveness evaluated contributions from over 29,000 employees and found the UK scored just 47% for leadership effectiveness, way behind India, for example, who scored 72% and even more disappointingly below the global average of 55%. Crucially, the report also highlighted the correlation between effective leadership and employee engagement. When leaders are rated ‘effective’ their business recorded ‘employee engagement index’ scores of 91% against 17% when leaders are viewed as ineffective. That’s an employee engagement level five times lower and it highlights the role that HR professionals can play in raising the employee engagement and effective leadership levels of their organisations.

Technology takes the lead: Mike Theaker, Mercer (March 2011)

In Mercer’s HR Transformation survey conducted across the summer of 2010, with over 400 participating organisations from across Europe and the Middle East, technology was rated by HR leadership as one of the top three most significant opportunity areas for enhancing the HR function’s future role – the other two being the skills/competencies of HR staff and business perception of the value which HR can bring. The last time that technology appeared as a significant opportunity for HR in this recurring research was in 2003 and this preceded much core HRM system selection and implementation activity as well as major investments in web-delivered HR services and solutions. As we move into 2011, how HR chooses to exploit the opportunity presented by technology will be different from the past, with a number of themes and areas of focus that could, and should, dominate activities.

The times they are a-changin': Cliff Mills, NCC Research (February 2011)

For as long as we can remember organisations have consolidated around large fixed facilities where functions and business processes could be co-located. This pattern of working is rapidly eroding with employees expecting to have a radically different working environment. And with the advent of improved technologies people can now work from a variety of locations so the need for large central facilities is diminishing. To reflect this new organisational structure and working patterns the HR department has had to evolve and this year’s Evaluation Centre survey underlines this fact. In the last two years 77% of HR departments have undergone a significant re-structuring, with 34% of these having occurred in the past year. Relatively few (11%) have kept the same structure for four or more years, 3% for three to four years and 9% for two to three years. The major driver for change is to enable the HR department to be more of a strategic contributor to the business and not merely an administrative operation, mentioned by over half the respondents (51%).

Survival of the fleetest: Gary Ashton & Simone Krell, ACE (January 2011)

Imagine an ocean yachting race: each skipper and crew have to plan their route and strategy based on external and internal information, such as weather conditions, competitors’ behaviour, potential damage to equipment, etc – rather like the ‘business-as-usual’ situation in real life. But they also need to be prepared for the ‘unexpected storm’ – if the crew do not react quickly, they risk losing ground, damage to the yacht, or ultimately sinking. Likewise, organisations today face rapidly changing and complex environments. They need to cope with a huge influx of daily information on which they base their decision making. The painful global market volatility experienced over the past few years has only added to the pressure that organisations face in achieving the almost impossible task of forecasting and planning in unpredictable environments. This is confirmed by a recent Allied Consultants Europe (ACE) survey of over 500 European executives – with the vast majority describing their operating environment as both complex (88%) and changing rapidly (70%).

Meet the Millennials: David Chan, City University London (October 2010)

Imagine what it was like for the Baby Boomers’ parents in the 1960s as they observed a generation of children growing up not knowing the austerities they had faced. The Boomers had no knowledge of rationing, national service or world wars. They grew up in an environment where the welfare state existed and with universal state-funded education. Rather than listening to stuffy broadcasts around the wireless, Boomer children had television, central heating, telephones, record players, prospects for world travel and mass ownership of cars. From this the Boomers created a revolution in social mobility, entertainment, the mass application of consumer technology, growing globalised economies and relative peace on a worldwide basis. Could their parents have predicted the world that we live in today? I doubt it.

Business is changing: are you?: Jason Averbook, Knowledge Infusion (Sep 2010)

As the economic recovery eventually gathers pace through the rest of 2010 and beyond, organisations are reviewing how they should respond. The key question is: after two years of recession and subsequent belt-tightening, where should you focus efforts in the next 12-24 months? While HR professionals have learned a lot – with some already implementing strategic solutions to address the current economic trends and challenges – they still have a lot to prove. Every HR organisation needs to show value and demonstrate it can act as a strategic business partner. This requires the ability to respond swiftly to business fluctuations and deliver HR services in the most efficient, effective way. There are five major evolving trends that business and HR leaders should focus on in order to succeed in the pivotal coming months.

What the future holds: Andrew Spence, Glass Bead Consulting (July 2010)

Effective people management is critical to the delivery of the UK’s new economic agenda. Businesses are now more focused on employee productivity, deploying the right skills at the right time, developing staff, speedy integration of mergers and acquisitions, and improving employee engagement. To support this, HR professionals need to ensure their HR organisation keeps pace with the changing demands. They therefore need to be aware of the key emerging trends that are shaping the development of HR operating models. Of course, predictions are difficult, especially about the future! But the benefits of spotting future HR trends include: ensuring your HR organisation has the capability to deliver future HR strategies; guiding long-term decision making over potential new structures; benefiting from the latest developments in technology and new HR services; and getting maximum return on your HR transformation or technology investment.

Talking 'bout the next generation: Sue Young, Berkshire Consulting (June 2010)

The new generation of high fliers has arrived, and organisations are being forced to adapt in order to attract, retain and develop the best young talent around. The key question is: how can employers best engage with this so-called ‘iGeneration’? One key issue is that the graduates emerging these days have greater expectations than those starting their careers 15-20 years ago. Previous generations of graduates were just as ambitious, but they were also prepared to meld more readily into the culture of an organisation. The iGeneration have been brought up with instant access to a wealth of information and as a result they are more worldly-wise. iGeneration graduates expect to be more informed and engaged in their organisation’s decision-making processes: they also anticipate a wider range of opportunities for career progression. To address this, the traditional style of top-down management needs to change. The iGeneration will challenge any suspicion of being fed a corporate line and they won’t hesitate to go elsewhere if they don’t believe the organisation will meet their needs.

Next-generation HR: Rebecca Clake, CIPD (April 2010)

Organisational life has been shaken by the impact of the recession. There is a crisis of trust: public confidence in politicians and institutions is being eroded and there is a growing mistrust in organisations. Along with this, Stefan Stern has described in a recent Financial Times article the “death of the three to five-year strategy” and a need for a “living strategy”. This was the backdrop to research by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) into ‘next-generation HR’. The research aimed to assess HR’s core purpose – building sustainable organisation performance. The CIPD set out to test this in the real world, and explore some of the ways in which HR functions are beginning to think and act which add value now and lay the foundations for long-term success. We wanted to stimulate debate in the HR community and beyond – so we set out to test some initial propositions with organisations noted for excellence in at least one area of their HR capability.

Getting fit for the future: Valerie Vartos & Chris Murray, PwC (March 2010)

The economic downturn continues to dominate the business agenda – and the resulting pressure on costs is leading many organisations to choose short-term, tactical HR systems solutions which are ill-fitted in the long run. But those organisations that take the time to reflect on both the health of their HR function and its role in driving business performance in the longer term, will be better placed to ensure their systems are fit for the future. To make effective investment decisions, you need to understand HR’s role in delivering the business strategy. That means ascertaining whether HR’s focus is predominantly on managing compliance, advising the business, or acting as a ‘change agent’ – at the centre of driving improvements to business performance. Once the strategy is clear, you need to assess whether the HR function is ‘leading or lagging’ in its effectiveness in areas such as service delivery efficiency and capability. This will provide the insight needed to make the right choices for enabling systems.

Right conversations for the right results: Malcolm Follos, Sensei UKE (Jan 2010)

In discussions about leadership, much is made of how vital superb ‘execution’ is. In my view, though, leadership is largely about how we relate to peers and stakeholders of all stripes. Such relationships in turn live or die on the quality, authenticity and, at times, courage evident in the conversations in which they are anchored. To execute and get the right results, we must have the right conversations – consistently and passionately. Of course, talk is not in short supply in most organisations – but the ratio of ‘transmissions’ to ‘discussions’ is a real cause for concern. In fact, I have coined a new directive, called ‘the first law of flip charts’. This states that if the word ‘Issues’ or ‘Challenges’ is written at the top of a flipchart, the word ‘Communication’ automatically appears somewhere on the page! We live in an age of communication but, as with many things in life, leaders seem to have mistaken quantity for quality.

What HR can learn from the downturn: Claire Arnold, Maxxim Consulting (Nov 09)

The economic downturn that began with the credit crunch of 2007 will surely be remembered as one of the more unusual phases of the economic cycle. In previous downturns, interest rates went up, but businesses could still borrow (though it was expensive to do so). However, in this credit crunch, interest rates have been at all-time lows, products have been cheaper, and deflation has been highlighted as a key threat to many developed economies. Yet there are some universal truths that apply in any economic downturn. Most businesses will not go too far wrong if they focus on the basics (and indeed, many of those that struggled during the recent downturn had lost sight of the basics). When things are not going well in the wider economy, a company cannot focus on its customers and its service too much. The closer you are to your customers, the more likely you are to survive the downturn in reasonable shape.

HR: the anti-change agent?: Joseph Ajuwon (October 2009)

More than a century ago, the role of HR was born out of necessity during the industrial revolution. Until then, trade and commerce stemmed from a master-mentor relationship, with skills and crafts being passed simply from one to the other. But this all began to change with the invention of the Jacquard loom by Joseph-Marie Jacquard in the early 1800s. His machine significantly altered the master-mentor dynamics because single operators could now weave complex patterns. This in turn opened the way to employing more people to work on this industrialised machinery, thereby increasing the production outputs of weaving companies. Similarly, many other industries using mass assembly lines sprung up all over the US and Europe. Over time, companies realised that employee relations were crucial to an increasing bottom line, and government regulation too progressed to protect these same employees from exploitation – and the role of the HR department was born.

Leadership – but not as we know it!: Maurice Duffy, blackswan (September 2009)

Ask yourself: in the history of your business, how much has been spent on leadership training? Almost certainly a significant amount. Yet I can confidently predict that you are no better led today after this investment than you were before. Is this because leadership cannot be taught, or leadership is being taught in the wrong way? Or are we heaping skills and knowledge onto people who are incapable of absorbing the information or implementing any actions that have sustainability? I often use the example that leadership training is like putting people into a car with no steering wheel but a lot of power, and then asking them to go really, really fast. The topic of leadership has constantly captivated the business world and the HR community at large. This has been intensified by the recent widespread and continuous failures of leadership in business, politics, education and other institutions of modern society.

Upside of the downturn: Rick Emslie, Emslie Analytics (July 2009)

I was recently in discussion with an HR director who was in that state that most of us find ourselves at one time or another – a mixture of anger and deep frustration. She told me that her executive colleagues had just chosen her carefully crafted and longnurtured leadership development programme as one of the casualties of a cost-cutting exercise to fend off the worst ravages of the current downturn. She was frustrated because so much time and emotional investment had gone into the programme, and angry because her colleagues just didn’t ‘get it’. Naturally, I wanted to be sympathetic, but unfortunately the well-intended route I took the conversation down didn’t help to make things better! I expressed amazement that her colleagues should torpedo her programme when she was obviously able to point out not only the ROI (return on investment) of the programme, but also the opportunity costs of shelving the project now.

Look out! GenY hits the workplace: Peter Boggis, nGenera (June 2009)

The first seismic HR event of this decade is about to hit our already turbulent environment: GenY – the only generation so far to have ‘grown up digital’ as Don Tapscott puts it – are about to hit the workplace. Like tectonic plates shifting and moving underground, expect transformational change to occur. To some, GenY are ill-disciplined, spend much too much time on social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, do not respect traditional authority and do not conform to our view of what constitutes the ‘right’ behaviours in our corporate world. For GenY themselves, these are old-fashioned, outdated ideas and expectations; creative and productive work is done in teams collaborating inside and outside the boundaries of the enterprise, ‘9.00 to 5.00’ is an anathema and career paths have been replaced by career ‘catwalks’ within and across industries and companies.

Righting the wrongs: Denis Barnard, HRmeansbusiness (May 2009)

HR information system (HRIS) projects continue to suffer from problems, many of which relate to the use and management of the technology. This was highlighted by a recent study from Talent Q, reported in HR Magazine, which found that 82% of HR staff do not measure the return on investment (ROI) on their practices. As a result, HR professionals struggle to be seen to provide value to their organisations (http://tinyurl.com/cynbk6). Certainly, the most common assumption in ROI papers drawn up by organisations to justify their HRIS spending is that having an absence module will automatically reduce absence. This assumption is then compounded by sums calculating percentage savings in terms of days/salaries. Unfortunately, this is not necessarily the case. You can have the most sophisticated absence recording software available and still not make a dent in absence rates.

HR, heal thyself: Andrew Spence, Glass Bead Consulting (April 2009)

In a recession, businesses need to react quickly by changing their strategy; in some cases this will mean implementing massive transformation programmes. HR’s priority should be to support these organisational moves. It therefore needs to provide leadership on the major related people challenges – such as workforce planning, talent management, succession management, mergers, acquisitions and improving employee and management performance. This is good news for those HR professionals who joined specifically to make a difference to the management and performance of people. The economic downturn is the perfect window of opportunity to show the real value that HR can add. The problem is that the day-to-day activities of managing a modern HR department have become more pressing, so that effort is diverted away from HR strategy. In addition, HR professionals are often involved in large projects such as change initiatives, redundancy programmes and major restructuring.

E-learning passes the test: Gary Weinstein, Cegos (March 2009)

Towards the end of the last decade, e-learning was seen as the ‘darling’ of the training market. Companies were drawn to its low costs and apparent flexibility. Unfortunately, e-learning didn’t live up to its initial hype. For many HR departments, e-learning didn’t lead to the cost saving and enhanced learning experience originally anticipated. Sometimes budgets for live training actually increased to compensate for the lack of quality in e-learning content. Too often, e-learning was positioned as a niche learning delivery method, technical in application and most commonly used for specialist business areas, such as compliance training and production orientation, rather than professional skills development such as leadership and management. So why this unfulfilled potential? The main reason was that the initial launch of e-learning focused almost exclusively on the technology. Too often, learner needs were forgotten, leading to a collection of diverse online modules cobbled together and lacking a framework reflecting where the learner was and where they wanted to go.

Committed to engagement: Bettina Pickering & Amy Finn, PA Consulting (Jan 2009)

Research over the past 10 years has shown a clear link between employee ‘engagement’ and employee performance. Some notable examples include: in 2001, Gallup carried out thousands of interviews to demonstrate the link between employee engagement and performance. As a result, it developed the Q12 survey based on 12 key expectations, that when addressed appropriately, improve employee performance (www.gallup.com); in 2003, Professor John Purcell and his team from Bath University created the Bath People and Performance model, developed by studying 12 high-performing organisations over three years. The model clearly shows the link between ‘people levers’ (a significant number of which are employee engagement-related) and discretionary effort (www.cipd.co.uk); and in 2004, Professor James Oakley on behalf of the Forum for People Performance Management and Measurement conducted a study of 100 companies in the US to highlight the direct links between employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction and profitability (www.performanceforum.org).

The new frontier: Martin Reddington, Martin Reddington Associates (Nov/Dec 2008)

The impact of Web 2.0 on HR strategy and practices has been the subject of much speculation – both positive and negative – in the HR professional and technology press. According to many experts, these social technology media have enormous potential to change the way people collaborate, work and give voice to their opinions, attitudes and expectations, especially when they are physically dispersed across time and space. Indeed, a new generation of employees have grown up with such technologies – the so-called ‘V’ or virtual generation. Because of its capabilities, the argument runs, Web 2.0 offers HR professionals an opportunity to transform the business model – introducing new ways of adding value to internal stakeholders and a more contemporary organisational architecture – thereby making a greater contribution to their organisations’ strategic and reputational aims. So what is the truth in this? Firstly, though, what is meant by Web 2.0?

Getting a hold on head office: Claire Arnold, Maxxim Consulting (October 2008)

Head office is the one place that businesses love to deride. In a typical large company, a ‘them and us’ mentality is almost always prevalent – with the ‘troops’ of the individual business units firmly convinced that without the constant interference of HQ they would be free to run their own affairs, get on with framing their own destiny and succeed untrammelled by bureaucracy. Similarly, HR is the function that most people can find fault with. Horror stories of HR-related cock-ups form part of the corporate myths at most of the companies we’ve worked with. HR is blamed for everything from allocating the wrong number of holiday days to botching a crucial senior appointment. So, is this role of the villain all they have in common? In reality, the interaction between HR and the corporate centre is a little more complex. The corporate centre is not just ‘head office’ – any more than HR is just ‘recruitment’. The corporate centre forms a company’s face to the outside world and the corporate ‘brain’ of the business, setting goals for the business and the rules by which commercial activity is undertaken.

In search of meaning: Stephen Overell, The Work Foundation (September 2008)

What is meaningful work? Lots of people would like to find an answer to this – although meaning, like happiness, may prove elusive if you go looking for it. One intriguing aspect of this question is that it simply could not have been asked before relatively recent times. Our forbears of a century ago would have been perplexed not only by the colossal hopes we invest in work, but also by the way work has become saturated with issues of ‘identity’ in the advanced democracies of the West. To go looking for meaning implies more than you enjoy work or that you are well-treated and well-managed while doing it. What is new is how work has become part of people’s inner lives, a means of expression – at least among the sorts of employees (70% according to one survey) who tell researchers they want ‘fulfilment’. In the past, the classic slogan of the industrial labourer – “a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay” – indicated that the worker’s needs from employment were strictly economic. For many, of course, work is still a struggle for daily bread, with choices and opportunities heavily influenced by class, race and gender.

Avoiding the agonies of appraisal: Mike Thackray, ER Consultants (August 2008)

Tom is the manager of a large retail outlet, soon to undergo his annual appraisal. He is frantically searching for last year’s document which he promised to ‘review’ on a regular basis. When he eventually unearths it, he discovers it is only half-completed. Tom is worried that his manager, Jane, will be angry at his ‘lack of interest’ in his own development. But she is too busy searching for her own copy to worry about what Tom is doing, and trying to locate some notes she made about an issue with Tom’s performance a few months ago. It really needs addressing, but without specific details she is worried that she may come across as ill-prepared and inaccurate. Welcome to ‘appraisal time’. You may recognise elements of this scenario as being applicable to you or your organisation – yet appraisals are absolutely essential to the performance of individuals and the organisation. You can’t run a business, department or operation without clear targets, against which you are monitored, scored, ranked and rated…can you?

To train or not to train?: Shelley Fishel, The Training Surgery (June 2008)

Organisations large and small are looking for ways to reduce their operating costs in the current financial climate; the number of staff is being pared down and budgets are being slashed. Training – and IT training in particular – often falls into this category of an overhead to cut. The thinking is, ‘We can’t afford to spend X on training, we need to use that money for infrastructure’ or ‘If we spend the money on training we may have to lose a member of the team’. But this may be short-sighted, particularly if organisations fail to consider the newer forms of training that are available to help them reduce costs while maintaining or improving skill levels. As an example, consider the skill area of management report writing. In this day and age, more senior people are being asked to create their own documents. Gone are the days where a middle manager had their personal secretary by right. Nowadays with the advanced software capabilities we all have, there is no need for a secretary.

Who needs people?: Bay Jordan, Zealise (May 2008)

One of the great ironies of early 21st century business is that at the very time management is recognising the value of people and their contribution to organisational success – and so becoming increasingly focused on policies to win ‘hearts and minds’ and engender greater employee loyalty – the more disengaged people appear to be. The recently published Towers Perrin 2007 Global Workforce study, based on a survey of 90,000 workers in 18 countries and input from a database of more than 2 million people across 40 countries, reveals that only 21% of the global workforce are ‘engaged’ in their work, where engagement means ‘freely giving their time, energy, creativity and knowledge to their work’. The survey shows that of the rest, 41% are ‘enrolled’ (something that in one organisation used to be referred to jokingly as ‘on the payroll but not at work’); 30% are ‘disenchanted’ and 8% ‘disengaged’. Turn this around and it tells you that 79% (86% in the UK) of an organisation’s greatest asset and primary source of competitive advantage are not pulling their weight. Worse, 38% are not only failing to pull their weight, they are actually counter-productive; so negative that they actually, consciously or unconsciously, undermine the efforts of others.

Getting engaged: Peter Flade, Gallup (April 2008)

‘People are our most important asset’ is one of the oldest aphorisms in business. But if you were to ask any CEO what distinguishes their workforce from the competition, they’d probably say that they’re just better. And if you were to ask about how worker psychology creates economic value, you’d probably get generic statements about loyalty, empowerment and motivation. What’s more, while many companies say their employees are their greatest asset, very few measure success through employee engagement. Most use metrics such as sales, profit or margins. But while sales figures are undoubtedly important, they are actually trailing indicators of success because they show what’s happened in the past and not what’s around the corner. A better measure of performance are leading indicators – in this instance, levels of employee engagement, which can give a quantifiable indication of future performance.

University of life?: Gary Weinstein, Akonia (March 2008)

When my wife qualified as a school teacher I bought her a fridge magnet bearing the Japanese proverb: “Better than a thousand days of diligent study is one day with a great teacher.” It stands as a reflection on the balance between teaching the national curriculum and inspiring pupils with a love of learning. Think back to your early school days and ask yourself the question: “How many days did I spend with a great teacher?” Now fast forward through your secondary and then tertiary education. Was it more than a handful? Consider your career thus far. How many courses have you attended where the teaching has really been relevant to what you do? The likelihood is that it is not that many. It’s the time you spend engaging with your colleagues, managers, partners, clients and business associates that has the greatest impact on developing your business knowledge and skills. Without even realising it, this implicit informal learning process constitutes the most significant part of your knowledge acquisition.

Tale of the talents: Jim Matthewman, Mercer (January 2008)

Most companies recognise the importance of key talents in driving their business success, particularly in this increasingly knowledge and service-based economy. Key people, because of their passion, their level of engagement and the excellence of their work, have become a fundamental source of value and competitive advantage for an organisation – often more so than its systems or products. And because individuals are unique and cannot simply be cloned by another organisation, key talents also serve to differentiate the organisation from its competitors. Many UK organisations have been actively engaged in a ‘war for talent’ over the past decade. But even those who have made winning the war a priority are now facing increased competition because of changes in the hiring landscape.

Building flexi-working: Mike Robinson, Dimension Data (December 2007)

Today’s digital communication technologies, such as mobile phones, email or the internet, are making a real difference in many different ways to everyday lives. One of the most significant of these changes is the engendering of new working patterns. The workplace can now be anywhere, and workers can interact with colleagues and clients wherever they are. Research by Dimension Data suggests that 73% of UK organisations offer this kind of flexiworking. The survey, which involved IT managers and IT users in 13 countries, also shows that, globally, organisations’ motivation for offering flexi-working centre on increasing employee productivity (41%), employee retention (13%), and compliance with existing or future work/home initiatives (12%).

Technology versus the trainers: Vaughan Waller, Moore Stephens LLP (November 07)

Stop most people in the street and ask them what they understand by the term ‘e-learning’ and all you will get is a blank look. The name is fairly self-explanatory, however, and many will guess that it is learning delivered by a computer. The slightly more enlightened will say that e-learning is when courses are delivered online and that when they did one recently they found it very boring and did not complete it. But this view is now an increasingly inaccurate representation of e-learning. So much so that, if the true capabilities of using technology to deliver learning were common knowledge to all training and development professionals, they might be worried. This article will look at the impact of the new technologies some have dubbed ‘Web 2.0’, as use of the internet enables a completely new approach to delivering learning.

Tackling the leadership crisis: Fiona Czerniawska, MCA (October 2007)

Demographic shifts, globalisation and the rise of India and China all mean that organisations will need to operate differently if they are to survive and thrive in the future – with huge implications for the way they manage talent. What types of skills will be important in the future? How do you manage talent effectively in a large, complex organisation? And how do you ensure you’re developing the best of all your people? In this context, it’s perhaps not surprising that a recent Management Consultancies Association (MCA) survey confirms that talent management is a high priority for the most senior people in today’s organisations: 63% of respondents say that talent management is a high priority for their chief executive; 70% recognise they need to do things differently if they are to compete effectively for the people they need in the future; and 61% of the organisations believe that talent management will be integral to their survival.

Transactors or transformers?: Gerry Gibbon, The HR Solution (September 2007)

Have you read either of the following recently? “Human resource management has come of age as reflected in the appointment of HR directors to the boards of many leading companies.” ”HRM remains under-valued and under-represented at the top of the organisational command structure.” These seemingly schizophrenic statements have appeared persistently throughout the past 15 years or so. From an insider’s viewpoint, the status of HR has remained obscure throughout this period and probably before that too. That confusion is also reflected in the recurring debate about whether the function is ‘personnel’ or ‘HR’ management. These contradictions appear to be driven by two principal factors: the degree to which an organisation is perceived as needing to change; and the fact that HR (or personnel) management operates, or at least can operate, comfortably at two levels.

Striking a balance: Steve Heidt, EDS (July/August 2007)

In business, it always comes down to people. As leaders, we have ravenous appetites for talent – continuously craving the best and brightest to serve business needs for today and the future. Technology alone can’t do it all. Someone has to integrate it. Having the right people with the right skills in the right place at the right time is a never-ending priority. Workforce management is one of three multi-dimensional global forces exerting tremendous pressure on any enterprise. It’s certainly among those nagging little voices that can keep you awake at night. As a result, HR professionals must spend considerable time determining how to best keep these forces in balance and how to satisfy our customers and be successful.

Who's responsible for innovation?: Tom Barry, BlessingWhite (June 2007)

In the 1950s Peter Drucker made a controversial observation: “Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two – and only two – basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs.” It would seem many leaders agree with him, at least about innovation. Just last year – in BlessingWhite’s survey on ‘Leading Technical Professionals’ – 69% of leaders surveyed agreed that encouraging risk-taking and innovation within their team was important – although, rather worryingly, only 42% rated themselves as effective at doing just that. It doesn’t take a mathematician to work out that this leaves 31% of leaders who apparently don’t think encouraging innovation is important. At a time when innovation has been seen as critical to competitiveness, this finding is surprising. Perhaps the leaders surveyed think innovation is someone else’s job? Or perhaps they interpret it as a responsibility for creating the ‘next big idea’ – not something that can be applied to their team’s daily activities?

Beyond the boomers: Alexa Fletcher & Chad Fry, BearingPoint (May 2007)

It’s hard to surf the internet these days, or even pick up a newspaper, without reading about the ageing workforce. Experts regularly remind us that baby boomers – those people born between 1946 and 1964 – make up approximately 50% of the current workforce and that as much as 40% of the overall workforce will be eligible for retirement in the next decade. The experts highlight the threat that this poses for employers and their lack of preparedness to manage this forecasted loss of intellectual capital. Based on recent survey results, as many as 70% of organisations lack the formal processes necessary to manage the impact of this generational shift. However, the magnitude of the challenge becomes even clearer when you consider that, for the past several years, most organisations have failed to focus sufficient time, money and executive attention on talent management – mainly due to the economic requirement to cut costs to meet short-term market expectations.

HR's new wave: Leopold Loop, Logica (April 2007)

The role of HR directors is evolving quickly as a result of increasingly volatile and competitive markets, the move to a knowledge economy, and the effects of globalisation. Often reporting directly to CEOs, modern HR directors must be equipped to shape people strategies which realise wider business goals at the very highest levels of an enterprise. They are often integrally involved in organisational design, change management and leadership development. Yet administrative tasks can distract them from this high-value strategic work – and increasingly HR directors are considering new methods of managing global workforces in a cost-effective, standardised and automated fashion.

Future's bright but not as we know it: Jon Beaumont, Aon Consulting (March 2007)

The world of work is changing and will continue to change dramatically over the next five years. Advances in information technology will revolutionise the ways in which people communicate and interact with each other at work, in turn creating enormous challenges for HR professionals. The first change to note is the relative cheapness of sophisticated technology compared to a decade ago. Because PCs and internet access are now so inexpensive, people are becoming very skilled in their use of PC-based communication media. The interesting thing is that they are doing this at home, rather than at work. Now hitting the job market are a generation of individuals who use blogs and chatrooms as an everyday leisure activity. Most of these new workers are going to be extremely frustrated at how out-of-date and limited their employers’ IT equipment is.

Living the dream?: Stephen Miller, SHRM (January 2007)

In recent years, the field of human resources has experienced a significant transformation and redefinition. In the past, HR was responsible for personnel and transactional activities and was heavily inundated. But in many organisations, HR has moved from a merely administrative role to that of a strategic partner and facilitator across a wide range of activities – budgeting, talent management, succession planning, trends analysis and forecasting, executive-level compensation, and corporate social responsibility programmes. For an organisation to be successful, it needs targeted strategic initiatives that are integrated throughout the entire organisation. Many successful companies are realising that their HR department is a resource that provides a competitive advantage. These organisations have recognised the value of addressing HR and business functions from a strategic perspective that can ultimately be linked with overall business strategy.

Getting the measure of human capital: Bernd Irmer, Infohrm (December 2006)

The increased importance of human capital has created a strategic imperative in many organisations for improved workforce measurement. However, while HR executives understand the business decisions that human capital metrics should support, they are less confident in their organisation’s ability to effectively achieve this. Advances in technology have greatly increased organisations’ capacity to accurately and efficiently record and report human capital data, but this improved access has not translated into greater insight and strategic impact. The predominant application of HR information systems remains administrative, with limited analytic applications. Over the last three years, the Infohrm Group has undertaken a research programme with over 50 organisations to understand how to realise the full strategic value of human capital measurement. Overall, we have found that – regardless of size, location, or industry – organisations share the same goals and face similar challenges in their human capital measurement efforts.

Making a market in talent: L Bryan/C Joyce/L Weiss, McKinsey (October 2006)

Savvy companies understand the competitive value of talented people and spend considerable time identifying and recruiting high-calibre individuals wherever they can be found. The trouble is that too many companies pay too little attention to allocating their internal talent resources effectively. Few companies use talented people in a competitively advantageous way – by maximising their visibility and mobility, and creating work experiences that help them feed and develop their expertise. Many a frustrated manager has searched in vain for the right person for a particular job, knowing that they work somewhere in the company. And many talented people have had the experience of getting stuck in a dead-end corner of a company, never finding the right experiences and challenges to grow, and, finally, bailing out.

Facing up to new demands: Cliff Mills, PMP Research (September 2006)

Most organisations live or die by the quality of their staff and the ability to maximise employee productivity. And with intense competition in the market for high-calibre staff, the human resources department has a key role to play in developing high-quality processes for the recruitment, development and retention of staff. In addition, maximising the efficiency and deployment of employees often requires the adoption of effective project management tools. To find out how successful organisations are in these areas, PMP Research recently interviewed a cross-section of leading companies for their views. The results show that the primary investment areas for the HR department are in employee performance management (mentioned by 28% of the respondents), recruitment (24%) and learning management (20%). Also high on the list are the internet-enabling of HR activities and processes (26%) and replacing existing HR administration systems (20%).

Raising high potentials: Chris Watkin, Hay Group (August 2006)

Talk to chairmen, CEOs and business leaders and many will tell you that along with deciding on the right mission and strategy, choosing the right leaders is what keeps them awake at night. So why is talent management an essential, rather than a ‘nice-to-have’, for successful organisations? The answer is clear when you look at exactly what talent management is all about. It is fundamental to the ongoing life force of an organisation – the mechanism that helps it win today and renew itself for the challenges of tomorrow. At a practical level, it is the process by which a company puts the right mechanisms in place to deliver competitive advantage through effective management of its people assets – in other words, ensuring the right people are in the right roles at the right time to deliver on strategy now and in the future.

HR's hottest seat: Richard Reeves and John Knell, Penna (July 2006)

Public services are bathed in the political and media spotlight, as the Prime Minister attempts to bludgeon them into creating his legacy, the Chancellor (and next PM) prepares to turn off the funding tap, and customers – their expectations raised by political rhetoric – clamour for better, faster, nicer, more convenient services. The next election looks set to be fought on the basis of whether voters are willing to pay for the new ‘enabling state’ (Brown) or reluctant to pour good money after bad down the throat of unreformed public services (Cameron). Public services are, in management jargon, ‘people businesses’. Payroll is the biggest cost. The skills, performance and engagement of staff – nurses, librarians, police, civil servants, New Deal advisers, teachers – are the lifeblood of the public sector. This is the sector where taxpayers’ money is directly targeted to meeting social need and creating social opportunity. This means that the ‘people people’ – especially those charged with responsibility for human resources in public sector organisations – are in the hottest of hot seats.

Talent contest: Rebecca Clarke and Victoria Winkler, CIPD (June 2006)

Since management consultancy McKinsey first coined the expression ‘the war for talent’, the phrase ‘talent management’ has become increasingly common in the world of HR. But is talent management something new and is it something more than the latest HR fad? What does talent management mean and what is being done in organisations to manage talent? The drivers for interest in talent management seem reasonably clear, even if its specific meaning is less obvious. We continue to have a tight labour market in the UK and Ireland, with persistent skills shortages and changing demographics in the workforce. The expectations of the workplace are also changing, with more staff placing value on concepts such as work–life balance.

Should it stay or should it go?: Mike Gibbs, EquaTerra (May 2006)

This article looks at what companies should be evaluating when assessing whether to outsource their HR functions. It examines the likely benefits of outsourcing, and how to assess outcomes against best internal practice. While companies make the decision to outsource for a variety of reasons, cost reduction tends to be the primary driver. However, companies miss out when cost reduction is the sole driver. Instead, HR executives should consider the entire range of benefits - from maximising resources and making service improvements to greater capacity and scale, new capabilities and ultimately business transformation as organisations free-up resource to focus on core business.

A tale of two universes: Ian Seath, Ad Esse Consulting (April 2006)

A few years ago, if you went into HR departments and asked them to describe their approach to process management, you’d probably have been met with blank looks or be told that “We don’t have processes, or at least none that can be managed”. This would quickly be followed by the assertion that “We’re a people department, it’s not about processes”. If you’d then followed up your visit to HR with some discussions with their internal customers – senior managers, line managers and staff – you’d have heard a different story.

Sum mistake: Denis Barnard, HRmeansbusiness Ltd (March 2006)

Over the recent years I have specialised in working more in the field of HR (and payroll) systems - with clients who want to buy their first HR system, replace an existing one, or see if they can get more out of what they already have. It is striking how often that, somewhere along the way, these organisations have chosen (or are proposing) to burden themselves with software that would require an army to actually keep it running at full capacity, and costs an inordinately large sum of money to purchase. The mere fact that there is provision in a system for recording O and A Level attainments does not mean that these fields have to be populated! There are a plethora of fields that are just not used and have no relevance to the needs of the organisation - but then providers are not usually forthcoming at ‘switching off’ unwanted features.

HR service delivery: Towers Perrin (February 2006)

The deployment of technology remains at the forefront of the HR effectiveness agenda, given its impact on the bottom line and management’s expectations that it will help streamline the organisation and its HR processes. Increased technological efficiencies and options in recent years mean HR professionals now have an opportunity to make greater gains, and realise better results, than they have in the past. But it takes more than good technology to optimise HR service delivery as a strategic management tool, as opposed to simply a basic HR function. Other requirements include effective long and short-term planning, the right processes and a focus on the larger workforce needs of the organisation. There are several factors driving the recent growth of innovative service delivery options, including new technologies and new business priorities that are creating both challenges and opportunities for service delivery professionals.

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