Leadership

Measuring employee engagement and happiness: Should you be building an app for that?

When talking about measuring employee engagement, happiness or satisfaction at work many people resort to quarterly, biannual or annual surveys. Don’t get me wrong. These type of surveys can be great and very insightful when done well. However, one of the key weaknesses many of them suffer from is that they lack follow up and fail to relate to staff what has been found out and what is going to be done with the results etc etc. This is not so different to what happens when many firms survey their customers. Other firms take a different approach, eschewing large surveys for something more akin to a ongoing ‘temperature’ check. Some efforts are low-tech like the tennis balls used by Nixon McInnes and some are more hi-tech and rely on the smart use of technology. One such smart use of technology comes from Indonesian-based digital agency XM Gravity, which I first heard about over on PSFK. The agency has recently launched an in-house mobile app that aims to gauge and improve their staff’s mood and, at the same time, strengthen their bond with the firm. Check out the short video below: What’s very smart about this app, I think, are the[…]

Apprentice 2013 Episode 3: A Box Of Frogs

The most startling moment of this episode – officially called, with blinding insight, Flat-Pack – happened a few minutes in, and I’ve been trying to have my retinas repaired ever since. Earlier in the series than usual, The Apprentice played the ‘everyone was relaxing at home on a day off, with a camera crew – as you do’ trope, and the remaining 14 contenders (I use the word loosely) suddenly found themselves with thirty minutes to reapply the bling. Girls scampered along luxury corridors, hectically searching for trowels so they could re-do their eye make-up. Meanwhile, not content with flashing his abs at us in a towel last week, Myles decided that the most appropriate way to behave on camera in a men’s dorm is to wiggle across our eye line in a thong. In a programme with no audience voting, I was left wondering which bottom line he was most eager to demonstrate familiarity with. His own, possibly? Fundamental mistake there, Myles. Oh well, maybe he was just showing us his best side … Thereafter, the jokes continued to phone themselves through. These week’s challenge – delivered, please note, without any fanfare about its central importance to the economy[…]

Parallel process

Farscape Weekend takes us to new heights!

We’re all for experiential learning so when, as a team, we had the opportunity to get away from urban life for two days in the higher reaches of North Wales to Snowdonia – we gathered our gear and jumped at the prospect. Location? A fantastic wooden cabin set in Trawsfynydd - a spacious living area from which to launch our trek. It’s always handy if one of your colleagues owns one of these! ( Thanks Neil!)  The property was roughly 30 minutes from our target for the weekend… the 900M Cadair Idris. 900M – ‘Seriously?!’ I hear you cry!  Well, this weekend had to have its challenges! We arrived on Friday, to be greeted with a hearty meal and a glass or two of the red stuff, the first of many opportunities throughout the weekend to discover what makes each of us tick. With Saturday upon us, we set off, our journey taking us through the vast mountainous area, the fresh, windy air in our faces. The stillness of the calm valleys was striking. With no traffic, the silence of the mountains was only occasionally broken by the sounds of sheep. Taking in a three hour trek to the summit, we passed beautiful lakes, rocky terrains and even a snow field towards the top – the views were stunning and even though we weren’t[…]

Can anything good come out of recession?

I heard a German banker warn that we could see recession-like conditions for the next decade before things turn around and we should not expect things to get better any […]

Guest Blog round up…and what next?

So there you have it, a selection of posts from John Burnet, Ian Brookes and Gemma Cuff.  If you haven’t read them already then have a look at:- John Burnet – It’s that horns and halo effect… Ian Brookes – How to manage mavericks… Mario Balotelli… Gemma Cuff – The Three R’s… I hope that this will not be a one off.  They have been successful in that people have read them and people have contributed comments.  I know that all three are writing more material as we speak and the combination of recruitment, leadership and life observation from all three seems to work. Whilst there is clearly a common recruitment/people based theme I feel the different perspectives you have heard have developed the conversation further and because of that I wanted to run something past you… How about you, me and the guest bloggers get together?  In the flesh. With a drink.  Somewhere you can all get to? I am thinking more poetry slam than formal book reading but with an element of blog reading, debate and good old fashioned networking.  So I added a poll on linkedin… tell me what you think… http://linkd.in/XDux3l The answer you are looking for, I[…]

Will you be blossoming this spring? 6 ways to help you blossom

“The first day of spring is one thing, and the first spring day is another. The difference between them is sometimes as great as a month” (Henry Van Dyke, Fisherman’s Luck) I am reminded of this, as the 21 March is ‘officially’ the first day of spring yet we have seen temperatures plummet, heavy snow fall and relentless wind. Like the weather, life can often be unpredictable and unexpected. Sometimes we need reminding that we have it within us to find the solutions to the challenges that we are facing. By harnessing our strengths, our inner resources and drawing on our past experiences we can get through such events. Have self belief. “O, wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?” (Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ode to the West Wind)    “In the depth of winter I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer” (Albert Camus) Whatever the dark depths of winter held for you, the shadows that lingered, the disappointments and despair, spring brings hope and light after darkness. The snow will melt, the buds will emerge, the grass will grow, the sun will bring warm sunshine. The bulbs which have laid dormant, endured the hard ground[…]

And then there were 11 ... the falling number of women leading Britain's top businesses ...

Marjorie Scardino left Pearson in 2012It hasn't felt like a great year for women at the very top of British business.There have been some outstanding commercial results - Louise Makin at BTG and Kate Swann at WH Smith stand out - but the number of women CEOs has fallen.Marjorie Scardino left Pearson in late 2012 and Cynthia Carroll Anglo-America in February. Kate Swann has announced she will leave WH Smith in June this year after almost 10 years in which she has transformed the company's fortunes.These departures reduce the number of FTSE 350 companies led by women to 11, just 3% of the total ...Louise Makin BTGAngela Ahrendts BurberryDido Harding Talk TalkCarolyn McCall Easy JetRuby McGregor-Smith MITIEHarriet Green Thomas CookDorothy Thompson DRAXCaroline Banszky Law DebentureAlison Cooper Imperial TobaccoLyn Fordham SVG CapitalKatherine Garrett-Cox Alliance TrustThere are certainly some very able women serving as executive directors and particularly CFOs of FTSE 350 companies but there numbers are increasing very slowly. The % of women executive directors has increased from just 5.5% to 5.8% since the publication of the Davies Report in 2011.  Only 8% of executive appointments over this period have been women.Unless we see significant growth in the number of women executive directors, it is very hard to see from where the next generation of women[…]

Focus is the new cool

It must be indisputable by now that the world of work we accepted as normal just a few years ago, has gone forever. The talk when the world’s economies began to dissolve in 2008 into the thin air of which they were largely made was that we’d ride out the bad times to a recovery. [...]