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 […]
Quote-To-Cash – is it really working for you?
In business we often look at the teams in the front line as the ones that have greatest impact on productivity and effectiveness. They are also often the first place looked at when profits are not what the company expects. However, the back office is also the place where much time and many deals can […]
Body Language – a foreign language we all need to learn
Vincent Nichols an English Clergyman said, “We’re losing social skills, the human interaction skill, how to read a person’s mood, to read their body language, how to be patient until the moment is right to make or press a point. Too much exclusive use of electronic information dehumanises what is a very, very important part […]
It’s good to talk
As the late, great Bob Hoskins reiterated in the nineties as part of the BT ‘friends and family’ campaign, it’s good to talk. It’s been over twenty years since the advert was first shown and environments have changed, but the meaning couldn’t be more appropriate. In the ever changing business environment, in which we all […]
Time and task management – Making the most of your day
The daily struggle for almost all employees across any industry, is time management. As the list of tasks ‘to do’ grows, time ticks faster. So much so, that it’s become the norm to work outside of ‘normal’ hours, just to get the job done. Some people are able to balance their time well, whilst others […]
