Trainer’s Diary: Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing
Discussion, disagreements and trust – Byron Kalies talks team tactics. You walk into a new office and within a few minutes you get some idea of the team. If you walk into a room and there’s deathly silence for five minutes be afraid, be very afraid. Creative team rooms should sound like infant school classrooms […]
Parkin Space: The Definition of Training Needs Analysis
Everyone knows what a Training Needs Analysis is, right? Godfrey Parkin analyses the variety of meanings given to a TNA. I have yet to meet anyone in the learning business who will question the value of a Training Needs Analysis (TNA). Indeed, there are many who will insist that a TNA is carried out before […]
Feature: Team Building and Virtual Teams – a Contradiction in Terms?
Teleworking and the growth of global teams means that co-workers may not be in the same time zone let alone the same city, which has an obvious impact on building a sense of teamwork and trust. Peter Thomson, Director of Future Work Foundation at Henley Management College looks at how to build a successful team […]
The Way I See It… The True Impact of the DDA
Many organisations have focused their attentions on the Part II of the Disability Discrimination Act. Rick Williams CFCIPD, Director of Freeney Williams Ltd, maintains that this is but the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the true implications of the DDA on companies. Over the past years many large organisations have introduced policies […]
Trainer’s Tip: Prioritising Training Needs
Andrew Laycock offers an insight into how, as a training manager, he helped managers prioritise training needs.Assuming your managers have regular development discussions with their employees, a process that I have used successfully in the past was categorising needs in to short, medium and long term. Short term = needs the training to fulfil their […]
Parkin Space: The Retirement Brain Drain
With an ageing population, Godfrey Parkin wonders why so many companies have no formal process for passing on the knowledge of their most experienced workers at retirement. In most Western countries, the baby boomer bubble is causing concern for those planning pension and social security services. It should also be worrying employers. A quarter of […]
Feature: Management Development – What’s the Need?
Joe España Managing Director, Performance Equations Ltd, explains how to plan management development that aligns to the businesses strategic needs. HRD professionals generally agree that management and leadership development is crucial to the delivery of business strategy. However, the measurable impact of this development is at best tentatively linked to strategic organisational performance, and at […]
Parkin Space: E-Earning in the USA
Ever wondered how much your equivalent earns on the other side of the Atlantic? Read on. This week the E-learning Guild released the results of its annual e-learning salary survey. Data was gathered in the first quarter of this year from people who work in the e-learning field. It’s amazing that they were able to […]
Feature: Speaking their Language
Simon Court, Chief Executive of Value Partnership, looks at how a business, organisation and management review (BOMR) can be used to address the development needs of senior managers within an organisation. Senior managers are still not involved in implementing management development policies. In January, the Chartered Management Institute published a report showing that senior managers […]
Demand for Leadership Development Doubles
The importance placed on leadership development has doubled in the last year according to results from a new survey.More than a third – 38% – of respondents said that leadership was the hottest training topic for 2005 as opposed to only 19% of respondents who had it at the top of their training agenda this […]
CIPD Cites Challenges of Managing Diversity
Ignoring diversity can reduce productivity and performance, but badly managed efforts to introduce diversity run the risk of creating conflict and doing just as much to undermine business performance, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) has warned.The CIPD says that managers need to work to ensure diversity drives inclusiveness and cooperation, and is […]
Customers – Not Managers – Key to Motivation
A study into sources of employee energy shows that customers not managers are workers main motivators. The Impact of Customer Energy at Work, conducted by MBA students at the London Business School, suggests that interaction with a customer, whether external or internal, is the primary generator of an individual’s energy at work.Leadership teams, on the […]
The Way I See It… 360-Degree Profiling – Is it Still Effective?
Alan Rands, CEO of HRworkbench, looks at why 360-degree profiles don’t always deliver the results they promise. Around 16 years ago, I first experienced the power of 360-degree profiling in raising self-awareness of exhibited behaviour in the workplace. This was a quantum leap in thinking about performance. At last we dared to ask the people […]
The Big Idea: The Brainstorm
In the first of six articles looking at tools and techniques for innovation, Brian Campbell explains how to go about that most used method of finding new ideas – the brainstorm. This is the first of six articles which will look at innovation techniques. First I will look at “conventional” techniques and, in the months […]
Executive Education Under Pressure to Prove ROI
Most business schools are failing to evaluate the impact of their programmes beyond the level of the individual participant, according to a new study.But despite half the respondents being happy with their current evaluation approaches, the majority of human resources professionals (85%) believed that evaluation of executive education programmes would become more important in the […]
Feature: The Three Pillars of Strategic Leadership
Godfrey Owen, Deputy Chief Executive of Brathay, talks to Air Chief Marshal Sir Brian Burridge, Commander–in-Chief of Strike Command, about whether the skills and competencies required to be an inspirational leader in the boardroom are the same as those required on the battlefield. Throughout any individual’s career, the pressure of the job is ever present […]
The Way I See It… Bosses are to Blame for Soaring Absence
Gerry Baxter of management consultancy Baxter Neumann argues that organisations are as much to blame for sky-high absence as work shy employees. New efforts to tackle workplace absence has received much press over the last year particularly for organisations that have adopted new ways of managing the issue from staff incentives that woo workers back […]
Oxford Summer School Offer for Retail Managers
Retail managers can apply for an intensive “The Apprentice”-style summer school in Oxford aimed at developing potential leaders in the industry.Any manager earning up to £20,000 and working for a small or medium sized UK retailer can apply to attend the intensive residential course, which carries a bursary from Retail Trust and Skillsmart Retail.The six-day […]
Managers Recognised for ‘Outstanding’ CPD
Three managers have been recognised for their outstanding performance as part of their drive for continuing professional development. Selected from a pool of 7,000, the three will receive the Chartered Management Institute’s (CMI) ‘National Merit’ awards for outstanding performance in a management qualification.Ashley Burdock, Site Operations Manager for the Prosper de Mulder Group, has won […]
Study Offers Innovation Lessons for Leaders
A new report reveals that when it comes to creating new products and services, business, leaders play the most important role of all.Leadership for Innovation, published by the Advanced Institute of Management (AIM) and supported by the Chartered Management Institute, shows that the relationship between leadership and innovation is a complex but critical one.To be […]