Don’t let leaders pay the price for empty words
Is your organisation on a ‘transformation journey’? (Most of our clients seem to be.) And how does that phrase make you feel? If the answer is annoyed, or bored, you’re not alone. Chad Murphy and Jonathan Clark from two US universities studied how leaders share a workplace’s vision, values, or purpose with the people employed […]
How Language Training Impacts the Bottom Line
Globalisation has made acquiring language skills really important at all levels of the organisation and across business functions. Complex business challenges demand an international understanding and a level of cooperation never before seen. The ability to communicate with clients, potential customers, partners, and employees across multiple regions is critical. For this reason, language training shouldn’t […]
Refocusing the Leadership Development conversation
Pick up any professional journal and you’ll see that the subject of human capital metrics is on the organisational agenda. With leadership development programmes competing with other organisational projects for financial resources, a natural consequence is the need to demonstrate the return on investment from such talent development. It would be naïve to suggest that […]
What are the common characteristics that define High Performance Organisations?
In recent years we’ve been hearing a lot about High-Performance Organisations (HPOs) and what defines them. They outperform their peers. They deal with well with change. They are lean and know how to spread their resources. It turns out that no matter which list of HPO characteristics you look at, they all agree on some […]
Sales or engagement?
Once upon a time, in the not so distant past either, sales was a numbers game. Selling X number of product A and Y number of product B in a given period equalled happiness. Then came the idea of targets and weightings. Woe betide anyone who sold the wrong mix of products; it was no […]
Book Review: ‘The People Formula: 12 steps to productive, profitable, performing business’ by Jane Sunley
In The People Formula, Jane Sunley aims to ‘dramatically improve the performance and profitability of your business’ through the application of 12 steps which address many important business challenges. These steps address issues such as how to get buy-in from the top, driving employee engagement and delivering practical learning and development. The book is not […]
4 effective applications of HR analytics for the L&D manager
The new HRM gold is called HR analytics. However, basing decisions on valuable insights from ‘big data’ has already been growing in mostly larger organizations for years. For HR and more specifically Learning and Development, lots of opportunities still exist, though. How can a L&D manager derive a strategic advantage from HR analytics? After a […]
We all need to feel included – and recognition can help
Human beings are social creatures. To survive and thrive we need other people. Feeling connected matters. Being left out hurts. That’s as true in the workplace as it is in our personal lives. It’s a need that’s inbuilt into our physiology and relates to the way the neurotransmitter dopamine works in our brains. The simple […]
Keeping Talented Millennials Happy in the Workplace
Ask a millennial for his/her thoughts on an ideal company workplace. The first three places are likely to be Facebook, Yahoo, and Google. Why? Because those companies keep their employees happy. Baby Boomers and some Gen X’ers probably scorn the idea of keeping employees “happy.” In this economy especially, people ought to be happy to […]
Is your business global-ready?
A ‘global-ready’ business arms itself with employees that possess language skills enabling them to communicate with colleagues and customers from different countries and relate to different cultures. This is a healthy position for a business operating internationally, as well as one planning an international future. The benefits are many and can directly impact the bottom […]
Maintain company culture when you’re oceans apart
As a South African ex-pat running a business in London for the past 8 years, it was almost inevitable that we’d open a Cape Town office at some point. It made sense both personally and professionally, so in the latter half of last year we went ahead and took the plunge. Certain logistics were tricky […]
How to Get Smart about the Apprenticeship Levy
Earlier this month the Government released long-awaited further proposals for the Apprenticeship Levy, and confirmed that it will be implemented in April 2017. Whilst this has provided some useful further insight for business leaders, many are anxious to see what impact the Apprenticeship Levy will have on them. Employers with a paybill of £3 million […]
Training budgets for employees
Hi all, I am currently developing a training budget protocol. We want to provide every employee from a certain level a individual training budget. I am not sure how this is working in other companies, but I am curious to know a few things: 1. What would be the requirements for an employee to get […]
The importance of a financial education
As a financial wellbeing company, we regularly see young people applying for our financial products. In fact, 40% of our customers are under 30 years old. Clearly, this age group needs better access to knowledge than they have at the moment, which will help them to understand and improve their financial situation. But a financial […]
Three Signs Your Training Strategy Isn’t Supporting Modern Learners
Organizational training is probably as old as organizations. It’s not hard to imagine a merchant in ancient Mesopotamia assembling two or three apprentices to teach them how to successfully trade cloth. But just as today’s organizations have evolved a long way from the cloth merchants of 2000 BC, so too has training evolved – and […]
How well do you know Equal Opportunities Legislation?
This blog isn’t really my own work. Instead, I’ve created a four-question quiz, based on the Trainers’ Library game, A Level Playing Field, which we developed with the help of my good friend and colleague, Clare Forrest. With apologies to our many overseas customers, these questions relate to UK law as it currently stands in July […]
Talent does not exist
With the European Football Championship going on in France right now, we can see the most talented players Europe has to offer on the pitch. Just like football clubs, companies are also looking for exceptional talent to join their team. But is there actually such a thing as talent? Not according to Anders Ericsson. This […]
Why you should never call a high potential a high potential
You rarely see them: job advertisements looking for incapable consultants or salespeople. Most companies are looking for talent, which makes sense. There is a downside to this focus however, as was shown by Californian psychologist Carol Dweck. After the Enron-scandal in 2001, Dweck was wondering how successful companies discern themselves from others. After lots of […]
Five strategies to make compliance training more engaging
Many employees see compliance training as a necessary evil—something that they would willingly avoid at all costs except for the fact that their workplace success often depends on such trainings. To combat this workplace reality, a wealth of new tools and strategies have emerged to take content that is typically considered dry and uninteresting into […]
Don’t control email – knock it on the head
In your organisation has email communication and overload ever been raised as an issue: – in a staff engagement survey?– in a management meeting?– at an away day focused on smarter working? Often the problem of email raises its head and plans are made to tackle it once and for all. But then other higher […]
