The employee referrals debate today Employee referrals programmes have been around throughout history. Research suggests that Julius Caesar created the first programme when he offered up to one-third of a soldier’s annual salary for referrals into the army. Employee referrals are a way of finding candidates for an open role by asking current employees for introductions…

The IKEA Effect in the workplace A research team Michael I. Norton of Harvard Business School, Daniel Mochon of Yale, and Dan Ariely of Duke, first named the IKEA effect in 2011. They described the IKEA effect as “labor alone can be sufficient to induce greater liking for the fruits of one’s labor: even constructing a…

People are slowly returning to work in different stages in various geographies. I have been very surprised to hear some of the experiences HR leaders are recounting around the implementation of pandemic safety protocols. This is not just an HR issue, but also a business and leadership issue. They are seeing a strong polarisation of…

Back to work challenges for HR post COVID19 are not just about high-level strategy creation. Leaders are realising that life and death can literally be around small behavioural changes. The global pandemic will have a massive impact on our workplaces with enormous back to work challenges for HR post COVID19 in the re-opening of business.…

Social distancing is going to change the way our organisations are structured and by default the career and job search landscape. In 2016, I identified an emerging trend which I call a “cluster career.”  This is a series of diversified revenue generating professional activities, operating sequentially or simultaneously. This not be confused with a career…

With large sections of the global population on lockdown or in different levels of confinement the idea of remote working and the impact on the future of work is preoccupying everyone. Although the circumstances around it are devastating, many people are high-fiving an unexpected upside. This opportunity provides the much-needed empirical ammunition to counter the…

Personal workplace relationship have always been a hot topic in any organisation and an equally hot potato for HR. I have been running workshops on sexism and harassment for organisations way before all of this became a hashtag thing and the question is always posed. Many professionals today work very long hours. They tell me…

Unskilled or low value work A skill set hierarchy based on economic demand has always been impacted by technology and innovation. Think the plough.This impacts the way we value different jobs which has shifted over time. But today the pace of change has accelerated. Jobs which historically carried a higher value in the skill set…

Technology conferences have a ton of buzzwords, but two stood out at this year’s Unleash in Paris last month. These were “journey” (digital, employee, candidate) and “experience” (people, talent, employee, HR, brand.) The conversations also focused on the constant shift in workplace relationships between employer and employee which have led to the creation of a…

Unleash is always something of a brain fry. There is so much to take in and much of it is overlapping, outwardly contradictory and nuanced. It would seem that in a digital self-service world within an organisation, HR is in danger of assuming the role of full-service digital process “nanny.” This carries the same message as…