The Effectiveness of Employer Brand in the War for Talent

Posted in: HR Updates on 05/10/2018 It is widely accepted that a company’s workforce represents one of its most significant competitive advantages. Attracting and retaining the right kind of talent is absolutely critical to a business’s ability to compete, grow and be successful. Joanne McAuley looks at the role a powerful employer b...

Use of Psychometrics in Talent Acquisition and Development

Posted in: HR Updates on 28/09/2018 A recurring theme when we speak to Human Resource (HR) and Organisation Development (OD) professionals is the ongoing puzzle of the recruitment and development of top talent within their organisations. How can they minimise the inherent risk in any talent acquisition process and maximise the chance...

The Value of Workplace Mentoring

Posted in: HR Updates on 11/09/2018 A recent American Society for Training and Development study found that 71% of Fortune 500 companies have some type of corporate mentorship programme and that 75% of their executives credit their mentors with helping them reach their current position. The rise of such schemes in today’s hyper-compe...

Madness, Mindfulness and Me

Posted in: HR Updates on 04/09/2018 As summer recently drew to a close I began to panic, as I do every year, at the prospect of the inevitable return to the back to school madness. My worry revolves around how on earth I am going to be able to cram everything in after nine blissful weeks free from homework and school lunches. I am no...

Managers Versus Leaders

Posted in: HR Updates on 10/08/2018 How often do we appoint staff into management positions without taking account of their leadership capability? Frequently managers are promoted based on technical ability but not necessarily their ability to lead, inspire or motivate people; in other words, the mark of a good leader. The terms mana...

The Pros and Cons of Gardening Leave – What is it & when to use it?

Posted in: HR Updates on 03/08/2018 Gardening leave has for many years been used by companies as a protectionist measure within senior executive employment contracts, ensuring any departure of key individuals has minimal impact on the reputation and ongoing success of the organisation in question. It does not come without ...

The Impact of Heatwaves on Productivity

Posted in: HR Updates on 09/07/2018 With temperatures across the UK soaring up to 30 degrees and above of late, I struggle to remember a period of such sustained sunshine that go beyond rose-tinted childhood memories of long, hot summers. I don't know about you but I always think that the sunshine puts everyone in a good mood but is ...

Boardroom talk: Age diversity the new gender diversity?

Posted in: HR Updates on 04/07/2018 Much has been made of gender diversity in recent times but rarely does the issue of age in boardrooms come in for such intense scrutiny. And if the argument for board gender diversity is that females offer different viewpoints, then surely the same can be said for a variety of age groups. Clarendon...

Interim Management: Does it Stack Up?

Posted in: HR Updates on 06/06/2018 The interim management market is buoyant in the UK, with a plethora of well- qualified suitable candidates, however the picture couldn’t be more different when looking at Northern Ireland in isolation. Below, Joanne McAuley from Clarendon Executive considers the scenarios in which an interim manage...

How to Engage the Disengaged

Posted in: HR Updates on 14/05/2018 I wrote an article in October 2016 called 'Performance Improvement Plans: Do they work?' In it I examined whether so-called PIPs actually result in improved performance and determined that very often they have the opposite effect with the process either ending in the employee departing from the org...