Carillion collapse; what happens to the employees?

We’re certainly not starting “Blue Monday” off in the best way; with breaking news revealing that the UK’s second largest construction company Carillion has been placed into liquidation. This will be the biggest liquidation of a company seen in the UK in recent years.

A compulsory liquidation is when a particular creditor insists upon this process when they have not been paid for a period of time, this is likely to be one of their four large lenders. As the news develops on this, it’ll certainly leave a lot of questions about the financial mismanagement of the business on the shoulders of the Directors.

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It’s time to make recruitment more human

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We hear the term “making the workplace more human” so when we are putting this into practice, why do we insist on using the same old recruitment processes?

After Thursday’s thought provoking HR Hour on Twitter, I thought it would be appropriate to highlight the HR world’s thoughts on how we can improve the process and really make it relevant to the changing world of work.

Every manager dreads asking competency based interview questions “Tell me about a time when…” these questions are rigid, artificial and if candidates googled the ideal answers to these standard questions, they’ll be able to get well-structured answers to put them in the best light and the hiring manager will be none the wiser, thinking that they’d found the ideal candidate.

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Back to work blues? Blame the bosses…

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 “A bad boss can take a great workforce and destroy it, causing the best employees to flee and the remainder to lose all motivation”

After all the festivities, it’s time to head back to the office and it’s no surprise that January is notoriously known for being the most depressing month of the year (yikes, tough crowd you’ve got here January!).

However, despite the dark days, dark nights and miserable weather, January is a month of opportunity and a perfect time for organisations to review their working practices to make improvements for the future.

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2018… Bring it on!

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Happy new year to you all!

As the Prosecco starts to wear off and the parties end; the New Year is the perfect time to realign our focus onto what is important.

Reflecting on 2017, we saw plenty of employment changes in the workplace. A responsive Human Resources department should be able to fulfil the needs of their organisations. In the past year alone, we have seen the introduction of the Apprenticeship Levy, the removal of Employment Tribunal fees, experienced the impact of impending Brexit, and we are now preparing our clients for the challenges that come with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in May 2018.

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Business experts share their lessons from the last year: Feature with Gazprom Energy

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Early last month, I was approached by a Marketing Executive from Gazprom Energy to provide them with the thoughts of HR as we reflect upon 2017 and prepare for the business year in 2018. I was delighted to represent our profession and feature in their thought provoking piece.

The article features a review of business practices over the past 12 months, and explores the anticipated challenges faced by businesses as we lead into 2018. The article features the following topics:

  • Promote a happy workforce
  • Understand the importance of digital marketing
  • Don’t be afraid of change
  • Focus on your customers
  • Don’t forget your brand
  • The value of human resources
  • Ensure your team are on the same page

The feature has been published on Gazprom’s website, and I am proud to represent the value of HR within businesses. There are lots of other business experts that are included, so I hope you enjoy the article which can be found here.