Blog

Measuring Employees to Improve Performance

Improving performance is a very popular topic in today’s work environment. Measuring employee contribution to organisational performance is an essential activity however 50% employees claim that performance appraisals are unfair, inaccurate or ineffective; and managers see the performance appraisals as an unpleasant administrative burden of questionable usefulness.

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A Chat is More Effective than the Stick!

Encouraging regular dialogue is significantly more effective than threatening people with the stick to drive performance. Many organisations continue to use antiquated, performance management approaches with their people, particularly the threat of sanctions and dismissal to drive performance improvement. But if the stick was effective, it would have solved our lack of performance issues a long time ago.

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The high performance environment

Creating a high performance organisational environment is more than implementing well developed corporate strategy. It is not a single process. It is a system of multiple processes which work in harmony to create an environment in which engaged employees deliver excellence in human performance which drives exceptional organisational performance.

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It’s all about mastery

In measuring human performance, we have fixated on quantification. Everything must be measurable in numbers. However there are many ways to measure behaviours, numerically is only one way.

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Making it better – performance appraisals that work

It really is a pity that a tool, the performance appraisal, that should be central in the talent development of any organisation is despised and considered an administrative task; waste of time. Organisations need to take this essential talent management process more seriously and to improve the system they use.

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What is wrong with performance appraisals?

Unfortunately, the human resources profession [I am a member so I can be critical] have been too focused on the process and the system than the outcomes. We have created beautiful human performance measurement systems but people hate them.

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Attracting, motivating & retaining talent on a tight budget

The standard HR approaches to retaining talent are not working. Employees are leaving organisations at shorter intervals than previously. Companies are experiencing shrinking numbers and quality of applications for vacancies. We need sustainable strategies for talent attraction and retention.

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Strategies to reduce pressure on cash salaries

According to a Robert Walters survey, 82% of Singapore workers have received a pay increase this year. A staggering statistic from that survey was 42% of Singapore workers received salary increases greater than 6%. Are these incredible salary increase economically sustainable and more worrying is the expectation of continued salary growth these raises place in the minds of employees.

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What do employees want?

How much time do organisations invest into discovering what their employees really want? Unfortunately, typically very little. In doing so they may be paying more in cash than needed!

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If corporate silos were too much for you, what about HR silos?

Most corporate executives have experienced corporate silos. Organisations in which departments or sections of the company behave as if they are a separate company. The elements don’t communicate or cooperate; they may as well be on different planets. More disturbing than corporate silos is when the human resources (HR) service behaves as if each of its service elements were silos.

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Human resource administration – Where does it go wrong?

A well organised and fully developed human resource (HR) service in a contemporary organisation covers strategic, developmental, advisory, supportive, and compliance elements. All service elements are important and may not be avoided or underplayed if the HR service is to be complete. Where the HR service can go very wrong is the service providers determining that one or more element of the HR service is more important than the others.

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Human resource policies – Dead or alive?

In this connected, tech-savvy environment are human resource (HR) policies still relevant? When there are so many HR management systems available to automate the management of human capital, are HR policies still required?

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Leadership as a responsibility

True responsible leaders are not administrators, commanders or abdicators. They are passionate, empathic, strategic, solution finders; are you?

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Leadership & followership

When you ask people about what it is like being part of a great team, what is most striking is the meaningfulness of the experience. People talk about being part of something larger than themselves, of being connected, of being generative. It becomes quite clear that, for many, their experiences as part of truly great teams stand out as singular periods of life lived to the fullest. Some spend the rest of their lives looking for ways to recapture that spirit. (Senge, 1990)

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Leadership obligations

In a changing organisational, economic, and social world, the only constant is change itself. The demands and expectations upon leaders also continues to change. To remain relevant and effective, leaders must be aware of these pressures and implement leadership skills and style adjustments.

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Growing leaders

The global lack of adequately prepared leaders should be sufficient encouragement to organisations to change their approach to this essential topic and address it more holistically and strategically. More alarming is the admission of 50% of companies in the Asia Pacific region that the lack of leadership capability is a primary business challenge.

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Measuring the success of corporate cultures

The development of a healthy and productive corporate culture is an important human resources function that needs constant attention. Corporate culture is influenced by corporate events and activities; local, regional and global incidents and by employee personal experiences. Consequently, regular measurement, maintenance and communication are required to ensure the upkeep of a productive corporate culture.

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Developing high performance workplace culture

In organisations when we intend to implement anything new that involves the employees, there is a simple rule to ensure the success of the implementation, tell them what is going to happen, invite their participation, encourage their critique – positive and negative, implement with their involvement, and after the implementation ask them how we did.

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Implementing positive corporate cultures

When people consider working for a different employer, what are the attributes that encourage them to choose one employer over another? What are the defining factors that persuade talented people to stay with their current employer than to move? These are some of the questions that keep employers awake at night; the worry that key talented employees will choose another place to work and take important skills and knowledge with them. But employers can take steps that will encourage key talent to join their organisation, to stay and prosper.

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Incredible workplaces

But what is it about a workplace that makes it an incredible place to work? It may be that one or more of your incredible workplaces are only a section of a larger organisation. People in the same organisation in different workplaces can have utterly different experiences that left them energized or depressed. With such a variance of experiences and experiences being personal and subjective, is it possible to define an incredible workplace?

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Human capital – helping everyone make their highest and most productive contribution

Frederick Herzberg (1968) Two Factor Theory of Motivation indicates that incentives, particularly monetary incentives have little motivational value. Even from our personal experiences, people indicate many reasons why they work; and they record many factors that motivate them regarding their work.

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Human capital management – measuring the success of the HR Department

Firstly, the HR Department must lose the stereotype of the bureaucratic, documentation worshipping, code of conduct enforcers. This is a harsh image however far too many HR people do not get beyond sweating the small stuff and fail to enter the world of corporate strategy and human capital development.

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Human capital

There is real danger in organisations assuming human capital is a resource like any other physical or financial resource and taking a purely economic view of its deployment, use and return.

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Employment brand image

Gathering talent in a tight employment marketplace is difficult, however having a presence in that marketplace through employment brand image makes it easier.

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Gaining and retaining

Gaining top talent is not just a matter of building consistent brand images that are reflective of the working reality within the organisation. Successfully attracting and employing top talent is highly correlated to the candidates experiences within the first 90 days after their commencement.

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What do you value?

What happens in businesses when strategy statements are framed and hung in public spaces speaks volumes about the commitment and engagement of the workforce.

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Building cooperation in the workplace

Building partnerships in the workplace is essential to business success. Unfortunately, many of the problems in workplaces come from the employees and/or the employer being more concerned about their rights than the success of their partnership.

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