Equality – A Wake Up Call
I have a particular interest in Equal Opportunities and Diversity. Over the years, I’ve written several course modules on this topic, including Breaking Out of Our Boxes, and The Witches of Glum, which was endorsed by Show Racism the Red Card and is used in schools around the UK. (It’s available as free sample on Trainers’ […]
Getting There in Mental Health Awareness Week
With my best friend, who has enabled me to realise a whole series of dreams over the last 20 years, I recently launched Pen48, a supportive space where amateur writers can share their creativity and where readers can discover new talent. The idea for Pen48 came from a realisation that a lot of us hide […]
You Might Not Be As Powerless as You Think
With recent guesses in the news about the impact Covid-19 is going to have on the economy, at least in the short term, you might feel like running away and hiding in a cupboard until it’s all over. I don’t blame you if you do; I’ve had days like that too! Most of us have […]
Delivering Training Remotely 2 (Method)
Last week, I wrote the first of two blogs around Remote Delivery. In that blog, I suggested that Remote Delivery is here to stay and that, for those who haven’t previously used this method of delivering training, it will become another string in your professional bow. I went on to look at the first requirement […]
Delivering Training Remotely 1
The current crisis has led to an upsurge in trainers considering whether they can deliver effective training remotely. Well, having spent a lot of time on this over the last couple of weeks, the good news is that I believe you can, provided you have the right systems to deliver your training, and you get […]
Ripples of Hope or Ripples of Hate?
Until Coronavirus stole the spotlight, there was a lot in the news recently about the effect trolling has on individuals’ mental health, particularly following the tragic suicide of Caroline Flack. The Cambridge Dictionary defines trolling specifically as the act of leaving an insulting message on the internet in order to annoy someone. That’s quite a narrow […]
Can Soft Skills Make Businesses More Profitable?
Many international studies on the impact of soft skills in the workplace have found without question that they are skills that employers require across all aspects of business. A good example of this is Deloitte’s Global Human Capital Trends 2018 research, which surveyed more than 11,000 business leaders and found that future employees most sought-after […]
What do you make of Hungarians?
The other week, en route to Alston, I was in the famous Betty’s Tea Rooms picking up some Fat Rascal scones for the team. (If you’ve never tried one, my co-director Craig would argue it’s worth taking a trip to Harrogate to do so – even if you live in Australia. But then, his love […]
Learning to Let Go – Why Delegation Matters
Last week, I spent a really enjoyable week with the team in Alston, Cumbria, handing over tasks that I really didn’t need to be doing myself and welcoming back the lovely Dawn, who is returning after a nine-year stint elsewhere to support our customers. (Some of you who have been with us a long time […]
How a Marathon Became a Team Event
You’ll have seen in the news that Kenyan, Eliud Kipchoge, achieved a remarkable thing – he ran the distance of a marathon in under two hours, shaving nearly two minutes off his own marathon world record of 2 hours, 1 minute and 39 seconds. To put this achievement into context, it meant running an average […]
How you can shift attitudes to workplace burnout
Jane doesn’t feel the same about work anymore. Something’s changed. She can’t put her finger on when it changed – it didn’t happen overnight – more like a gradual slow burn. She use to approach work with commitment and drive, happily doing extra hours, taking on more work, juggling more balls as she believed in […]
2050 – Living in the algorithm era…
2050 is not that far away from us. Barely three decades… (Still remember the 90’s, right?) Of course, it is impossible today to precisely depict what our future will look like 30 years from now. But there are at least 2 facts that we can now take for granted: #1- First, the world population will […]
Does Boris have the skills to be a great leader?
Two of the major political parties in the UK have gained new leaders this week. On Monday, we learnt that Jo Swinson will take over from Vince Cable as leader of the Liberal Democrats. And yesterday, in a result that was even less surprising, we were told that Boris Johnson has been chosen to lead […]
Mobile Learning Trends for 2019
As the Mobile Learning solution becomes a “must have” from a “good to have” solution, the focus shifts to what measures you should adopt to maximize its impact. Look no further—our Infographic on Mobile Learning Trends for 2019 provides precisely the pointers that you can use to enhance your online training delivery. With this adoption, […]
Resilience in Uncertain Times
Among the interesting sessions at last week’s fantastic Discovery Day was one from Ann Pemberton on the topic of resilience, which gave us a brief overview of this fascinating topic from the perspective of nine specific areas, including Determination, Vision, Time, Mind and Body. At the end of her session, Ann gave us a questionnaire, […]
The Lady in the Boat
My partner and I recently spent two amazing weeks on holiday in North Germany and Denmark, where we got married. During our trip we met so many wonderful people, but one in particular had a lasting impact. We’d started our holiday with a short cruise to Hamburg from Southampton. We were lucky enough to be […]
Could chatbots become the future of training?
The applications of artificial intelligence in the human resources field aren’t exactly big news. For several years now, organisations have relied on innovative AI-powered tools for essential HR processes such as recruitment, employee engagement, and performance review, and the results have been encouraging. According to a recent study, 96% of recruiters believe that AI can […]
Stories, Leadership and Trust
Amongst the brilliant sessions at our first Discovery Day in London was one from Andrew Kitton about creating compelling stories. My action point from the session was to use the approach to write this week’s blog. So, here goes. The point I wanted to make is that leadership is about letting go and trusting others. […]
Tuesday Insight: The Leadership Shuffle
We’ve been talking a lot about leadership in the office recently, in part because we’ve been reviewing and updating the great module, Leadership Identikit, which examines the difference between leadership and management. I was thinking about those conversations again at the weekend when, for the first time in my life, I joined a protest march, […]
Flexible Working – What’s in it for US?
A recent report from the CIPD suggest that a significant proportion of the UK workforce have no opportunity to work flexibly and suggests there’s an uneven distribution of flexible working across the economy. I think this means that many organisations might be missing out on an opportunity to capitalise on the talent they have, and […]
