Is digital disruption at the front of your mind?
Disruption introduces uncertainty, ambiguity and instability, an array of factors which are all reflective of our current economic climate. Disruption itself is also ambiguous, with its shifting and evolving nature. This uncertainty can be deemed negative with the ‘unknown’ impacting business confidence…however; it can have a positive impact too. Digital is a major player in […]
Coaching Vs Mentoring
The use of coaching and mentoring is being increasingly utilised within organisations to aid professional development of employees. Both practices have grown in popularity, which is unsurprising due to the array of benefits that have been proven as a result. It’s commonly accepted that coaching and mentoring provide benefits for organisations and individuals alike. Organisations […]
2020: Delivering an ‘impossible target’
As 2020 looms nearer, so the government’s target of smart meter installation in every home seems increasingly ambitious. Recent research by the Which? Group shows that even operating for 24 hours, 7 days a week, companies will collectively need to install meters at a rate of 24 per minute to hit the roll-out target. The […]
Telecommuting and Mobile Workforces – how to effectively manage a team remotely
Over the past few years, continuous developments in technology have led to an increase in the number of remotely managed workforces. Have you noticed? Has checking Skype for Business become an essential way of determining whether a colleague is working remotely or not? If so, this is an example of telecommuting, a form of communication […]
A snowball on the tip of an iceberg
How many pieces of information is your brain receiving right now? 100? 1,000? 10,000? Not even close. Psychologists believe that at any given time, our brains are receiving around 11 million pieces of information. Sounds exhausting, right? In fact, although we are constantly being inundated with information, the ‘conscious’ part of our brains can only […]
Redundancy vs Performance Management – Building a Performance Culture
When organisations face the question of what to do about poor financial performance, they often consider redundancy as the easiest option. Whilst redundancy is often seen as an efficient way of cutting costs through headcount reduction, the redundancy process has a number of pitfalls that make performance management a more successful long term strategy for […]
SLA and Productivity – Friends or Enemies?
The overwhelming majority of Service Providers will have their performance and responsiveness measured against Service Level Agreements (SLA’s) – contractual obligations with the customer defining certain quality standards. Most businesses rely on service providers to support their day-to-day operations. For many companies, this dependency means a fault occurring can have a significant impact on their […]
The dangers of just swinging the axe
When an organisation is faced with margin pressures, usually the decision is taken to significantly reduce operational expenditure through reducing headcount. Often initial measures might include a recruitment freeze and banning overtime, which typically means less work is completed in a given period and therefore a backlog starts to build up. As restructuring initiatives commence […]
The Productivity Crisis
Earlier this month the Office for National Statistics announced that UK labour productivity declined by 0.5% in the first three months of the year with productivity in the services sector shrinking by 0.6%. This means that workers, and their managers in the UK have produced less per hour than in the previous period. It has […]
Future Proofing Your Business in an Uncertain Future
With the recent snap election, Brexit and Donald Trump winning the US presidential election the economic future in the UK could be said to be uncertain. In order to prepare our businesses to survive whatever the future may throw at us, it is important to invest time and effort now to getting the business in […]
