How to get your employees to be their own performance coach
With an ever-widening skills gap on the horizon, it’s imperative for businesses today to nurture a culture in which employees are motivated and committed to learning. Here are three steps to help you help your people be self-directed learners. Each and every one of us owns our own performance through the conscious choices we make […]
Four ways philanthropy helps develop great teams
Businesses today understand the value of corporate philanthropy. They know that if implemented effectively, social responsibility programmes play a vital role in building a positive reputation, increasing awareness, and improving sales. That means companies across the world are becoming more involved in philanthropy, sometimes to plug gaps in government resourcing and to support community groups […]
Workplace happiness in seven steps
Keeping your employees happy requires you to consider (and perhaps rethink) the way your business treats, manages and nurtures its people. Here are seven things you can do to put smiles on faces. When we think of happiness, joy and laughter the workplace does not perhaps spring easily to mind. Yet workplace happiness is high on […]
Learning technology: why aren’t young workers engaged by online learning?
Employers assumed that millennials would be the first to embrace online learning, but this isn’t always the case. Here’s why they’re getting it wrong… It’s often assumed that young people will gravitate towards online learning. However, a study from the CIPD, which examines the challenges of developing 16-24-year-olds in the workplace, reveals that online training […]
4 Keys to a Trained and Productive Workplace
When you’re interested in getting all that you need out of your company, you need to make training a fundamental and ongoing part of the process. Too many companies simply set it and forget it with training, treating it like a formality and failing to continuously give employees the information that they need to grow […]
Free training: why time, not money is the currency training providers should trade in
Challenging market conditions for training providers have prompted many to consider offering free places on courses or discounts as an incentive, but this is usually a big mistake. Here’s why… Training providers are having a tough time in today’s unpredictable economic climate. Corporations cut training the moment the downturn began in 2008, and the market is […]
Training Employees for Involving and Retention
With globalization, organizations around the world have changed the way they interact and do business on a global scale. Globalisation has indeed made the world a better place, bringing people together to share technology for mutual benefits. As such, employee training in this respect is something very crucial but is often overlooked by the corporate […]
The creative approach to the labour crunch
Today’s business leaders are faced with a landscape that’s unlike any they’ve likely encountered in their lifetimes. No matter where you look, labour markets are tighter than they’ve ever been, driving a fierce competition for skilled job candidates in almost every industry. At the same time, the pace of technological change and rapidly aging populations […]
Making classroom training fun
I need some advice please! I need a few new ideas to make classroom (IT) teaching a bit more fun. I teach 17 + 18 year olds and want them to be a bit more interested in the topics. Any ideas? Thanks I need some advice please! I need a few new ideas to make […]
5 Tips For Training Your Creative Team
In any sort of environment, the creative center are the ones that have to be at the cutting edge of their field of work. Things change so rapidly in creative fields that what applied to a particular sector today will be old new by the time tomorrow rolls around. Shift notes that as many as […]
Employee engagement: ‘motivation’ is dead, it’s time to find new ways to empower your team
‘Motivation’ used to be all the rage when it came to employee engagement, but today’s workforce needs a more subtle approach that takes their own needs and priorities into account. Remember when motivation was all the rage? We had the motivational posters and the motivational speakers and the motivation theories differentiating between intrinsic and extrinsic […]
Learner engagement: how to ensure your learning and development programmes are not a gamble
Some organisations view learning and development programmes as an expensive gamble. To remove the element of chance, we first need to lay foundations for employees to actively engage with learning. What do you remember from your last business training session? If you’re drawing a blank (or can only recall the delicious chocolate biscuits that were […]
‘Unretired’: developing learning strategies for older employees
There is an increasing trend for older employees to return to work after retiring – or simply not to retire at all. This offers new opportunities for employers to make use of the skills of ‘unretired’ workers – and write them into their learning and development strategies. Traditionally, learning and development is viewed as something […]
How to design and deliver an inclusive workplace learning strategy
In order to create an inclusive learning environment, organisations must first look at their existing business culture to see where changes can be made. On average, one in ten employees don’t receive personal development at work, and this rises to 25% of employees in small businesses. This presents a serious challenge, which needs to be […]
SME staff are most stressed. How recognition helps
New research released this month has uncovered that employees working for Britain’s small and medium-sized businesses are twice as stressed compared to staff at larger firms. The research was carried out by payroll company Moorepay and found that 12% of employees working at businesses with fewer than 50 staff said they suffered from stress on […]
Learner engagement: why any corporate learning has to have the learner at its centre
For too long, our business learning culture hasn’t really been working, but times are changing. Today’s always-on working environment requires a system with users at its heart. The speed of technological disruption is accelerating and in our rapidly changing job market, with new job roles constantly emerging, we need to up-skill to survive, so training […]
Employee engagement: why happiness at work matters and how to encourage it
In today’s challenging economic environment, measuring whether employees are happy may not seem like a top priority, but ignoring employee engagement can hit businesses where it really hurts – on the bottom line. It’s a widely known fact that happy people are better workers. Those who are engaged with their jobs and colleagues work […]
Boris, a Thai Cave Rescue and Common Goals
Last week (before England’s victories over Colombia and then Sweden) I wrote about the great team that Gareth Southgate had put together. I made the point then that success is less about individual performance than it is about effective teamwork. Successful teams share common values and, more importantly perhaps, a common goal. They believe in, and […]
Tuesday Insight: Superstars and Superteams!
For those of us who enjoy the World Cup, it’s been a particularly interesting tournament, in which teams with the most celebrated ‘star players’ haven’t been winning many games. Indeed, at the weekend two of the favourites, Portugal (with Ronaldo) and Argentina (with Messi) were both knocked out, in results that will have surprised many, […]
8 ways to stay motivated when working from home
When the boss is away (and, if you work from home, this is pretty much all the time) the temptation to slack off can be almost impossible to resist. Plenty of people dream of remote work, but the lack of structure requires a considerable amount of self-discipline. Here are some ways you can maximise your […]
