How is Covid impacting core consulting and leadership skills?
September marks a time of new beginnings. Autumn arrives, colours change, students return from holiday breaks, and for many new graduates they take their first step into graduate schemes. This September, much like the rest of the year, it’s not without its challenges. From university halls on lockdown to virtual inductions, institutions are having to […]
Communication – hidden in plain sight
Today more than ever, workforces have been obliged to change and no longer look like they used to. The current pandemic has only accelerated the changes brought about by globalisation and technological developments. Getting communication right means a happy, effective, productive workplace that positively contributes to the employee’s experience; while doing it wrong can leave […]
Forecasting in disruptive times – what’s the point?
You wouldn’t plan a picnic without checking the weather forecast, you wouldn’t leave for the airport without checking what the traffic is likely to look like. We do this because by estimating the impact our environment is likely to have on our activities, we are able to create effective plans on that basis. When we […]
Have offices become an inadvertent breeding ground for low productivity?
Since lockdown was formally introduced on 24th March, and IT departments across the globe came into their own in mobilising entire operations in the space of a few days to work from home, there has been cross sector evidence that working from home has increased productivity. There’s been lots written on both sides of the […]
Can our social environments influence our approach at work?
It goes without saying that life has changed for all of us in recent months. Dining rooms have transformed into ‘the office’ during the day and the location for catch-ups and weekly quizzes in the evening. Where there have previously been physical barriers between our work and home life, these lines have become blurred and […]
Predicting Performance
Easter holidays traditionally bring the start of the revision period for GSCE and A level students across the country but this year things are different. Pupils are going to be assigned grades based on their teacher’s best estimations of what they would have achieved, had they taken the exams as normal. There are two interesting […]
Planning for the Unpredictable
Expectations are a fundamental factor in spending and investment decisions and, as we have seen, absence of expectations can be even more damaging to economic activity than negative ones. Events that are totally unprecedented, as we are seeing today, have massive effects on a global scale. Although rare, it is on this occasion that businesses […]
Choose smartly – quality over quantity
Some may think recruitment is just about skimming hundreds of CVs, an interrogative interview and sweaty handshakes, but in reality it is much more than that. It’s not just about the immediate objective of filling the job vacancy, but more about the long term effects it will have on the business, both on colleagues and […]
A Circular Economy: Are you prepared for the step change in waste management?
‘Sustainability’, ‘Climate Strike’ and ‘Single Use’ – sound familiar? The latter two were respectively defined as the 2018/2019 Collins Oxford English Dictionary words of the year. Climate Strike is defined as “a form of protest in which people absent themselves from education or work in order to join demonstrations demanding action to counter climate change” […]
Are you spending enough time actively managing?
Through studies in a number of companies we have found that frontline supervisors in the UK are spending an average of three hours, every working day, doing ‘stuff’ which adds little value to the business objectives. We have seen that roughly one hour and 26 minutes are spent on emails and admin, while almost two […]
