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Articles by Garin Rouch
Contracting: From accidental adversaries to progressive partnerships
Organisations depend on internal relationships to operate effectively. Yet, our organisations are a glorious mix of people thrust together with different motivations, goals, professional backgrounds, levels of self-awareness, communication styles, frustration thresholds, ethical compasses, work appetites and belief systems. In this big melting pot, managers are expected to cheerfully collaborate together even though they may have competing objectives.
From creation to curation: The changing role of L&D in the hybrid workplace
In recent years, L&D has probably seen its biggest shift in the way it delivers its services than at any other time. I’m talking (of course) about the move away from face-to-face training to virtual, and a full embracing of the technology available to us. This change is only the start of the transition we (as a profession) need to make, however. We need to let go, to stop being precious about our material, to stop aiming for perfection and accept that ‘good enough’ is usually good enough.
Helping your bosses build their six-pack
For many athletes, six-pack abs are a coveted goal. They train and diet for it and put in the effort it takes to attain this badge of honour. But what you may not know is that a six-pack can do far more than just give you a fit appearance. A six-pack, a strong core, can improve performance, protect your body, and prevent injury. All critical so that an athlete can be resilient and perform at their best. These concepts of performance and protection are also important for bosses.
The red flags of a toxic culture: Lessons from the Post Office and other scandals
When there are significant transparency problems in the workplace, the truth is invariably known to someone. The recent Post Office scandal in the UK serves as a poignant illustration, as numerous high-ranking individuals were aware of the unfolding situation yet opted to collude, leading to the unjust prosecution of over 900 sub-postmasters on charges of theft, false accounting, and fraud.
Catastrophe looms: Skyrocketing employee stress levels paint a terrifying picture of the workplace tomorrow
As we settle into 2024, it feels like as a nation, we are recovering from some kind of collective trauma. The significant impact of the pandemic may be behind us and the tail end of the cost-of-living crisis is ever near, but the toll this has taken on the workplace should not be underestimated. Since 2020, the number of days lost to sickness absence has been steadily rising. The average employee now takes almost 8 days off on sick leave every year.
Back to basics: Do your learning experiences make an impact?
In the previous article of this back-to-basics series, we considered how to create learning experiences that live on in the workplace. In the final part of the series (for now!) we’ll examine how we move from learning transfer to learning impact. First of all, let’s remind ourselves of the seminal model that is Kirkpatrick’s levels of evaluation.
Performance management, without the tick boxes
Two words, six syllables – of sheer bureaucracy. The stolid and unwieldy phrase ‘performance management’ reveals the opportunity that many companies and non-profits have to help their people do better work. Our complex world and evolving employee needs require HR teams and managers to move beyond tick boxes and abandon the obsession with task and process.
Learning how to give candid feedback
Despite having served in the British Army for 10 years, I’m deeply uncomfortable with conflict. My drive to maintain harmony in all aspects of life is so strong that I’ll readily make personal sacrifices in the interest of avoiding any form of conflict. It’s easy to put a positive spin on our shortcomings, whether that be as a leader, team member, partner or parent. I consider myself to be pretty self-aware, but we all have blind spots and truths that we don’t want to accept.
Five steps to help multi-generations work brilliantly together
“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace. They’re like, ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10:30 am.’” This quote from Jodie Foster’s interview in The Guardian got a lot of media attention, perhaps because it chimed with the unspoken feelings of older generations and their belief that young people today are in some way ‘work-shy’.
AI in learning: Where are we now and where should we be going?
Fosway’s digital learning realities research shows 30% of L&D functions are already feeling the impact of AI. But how are we leveraging this technology, what influence is it having and where are we missing out? TrainingZone’s Managing Editor, Becky Norman, recently spoke to David Perring, Chief Insights Officer of Fosway, to find out. What impact is AI having on those within L&D already deploying it?
Leadership development: Moving from good to great
Leadership development is big business. Over $60 billion is spent every year on programs globally. Thumb through the many glossy training brochures and you’ll be met with a delicious menu of skill dishes to choose: from coaching skills and feedback to influencing upwards.
A beginner’s guide to delivering practical and effective online learning
It is widely said that the world is becoming more and more digital, but this can only really be quantified by looking at some concrete statistics.
Training | TrainingZone
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Five ways to revolutionise your group training in 2024
I’m sure at some point you have found yourself ensnared in an unending group training session, where yawns echo and PowerPoint slides induce a state of lethargy. In 2024 we need to say farewell to “death by PowerPoint” and instead evolve into facilitators of captivating learning adventures, who develop people for long-term success.
Is Sir Alan Sugar right about working from home?
In his recent interview on BBC Breakfast to launch the latest series of The Apprentice, Sir Alan Sugar was clear that his team would be adhering to a strict “nobody who wants to work from home” recruitment policy. “I understand why [remote working] happened during Covid, but I’m totally against it, quite frankly,” he explained. “I think it is bad for morale, bad for learning.
Why skills-based learning is key to solving your talent shortage
Talent shortages are nothing new in business but they are getting more severe. From labor shortages in the construction industry to the green skills shortage which is holding back the renewable transition, businesses across the globe are struggling to hire the right talent for their open roles. One recent survey found that a staggering 75% of employers in 41 countries can’t find the skilled employees they need. To close the talent gap in hiring, you need to re-frame your learning strategy.
Employee magnetism: Three ways to futureproof employee experience
A well-defined employee experience (EX) is widely accepted as a staple requirement in HR’s toolkit. However, post-pandemic, there’s a growing sense that the employer/employee power dynamic has dramatically shifted in favour of the individual. So, coupled with ongoing societal change, organisations need to consciously design a truly magnetic EX if they want to attract and retain the best talent.
L&D data comes of age
Last week, I was privileged to chair the World of Learning Summit at Olympia. It was – as ever – an event in which people shared their challenges, experiences and insights with their peers. There was a positive atmosphere of L&D folks coming together to learn not just from assembled experts on the stage but from each other. With such a collegiate and collaborative environment, any attempt to provide a blow-by-blow summary is bound to disappoint.
The retention race: Why it’s harder than ever to retain employees
Retaining employees was never simple, but it’s certainly not getting any easier. In fact, a recent survey revealed that 72% of HR teams are finding it difficult to retain top employees, with 22% admitting that it’s very difficult. Furthermore, for 60% of organisations, retention rates have decreased over the past three years. And in the past 12 months alone, 64% have noticed an increase in employee turnover.
Post Office Horizon scandal: How to ensure your organisation isn’t in the next ITV drama series
The recent ITV drama ‘Mr. Bates vs the Post Office’ has thrust the Post Office Horizon scandal back into the spotlight, underscoring the catastrophic consequences of corporate misconduct. One would have hoped that corporate leaders would have learned by now that ‘ethical lapses’ end up not only damaging their brands (and share prices) but also eclipse any achievements or advances they might make.
Do apprenticeships deliver ‘skills for life’ or are they just good government PR?
As we embark on National Apprenticeship Week 2024, it feels odd to me that many organisations, especially those who are subject to large annual apprenticeship levy payments, are still yet to be convinced of the apprenticeship model. This years’ theme is ‘Skills for Life’, with the emphasis once again on young people starting their career in what looks like smart imagery of corporate organisations and STEM (science, tech, engineering, maths) subjects.
How to know if your culture needs work
When organisations decide to prioritise their culture, it is often triggered by one of two alarm bells: External: eg, customer feedback and retention, a serious complaint, a new competitor, a regulator review Internal: eg, low engagement scores, staff attrition, a serious grievance or whistle-blowing incident The problem with prioritising culture in response to a crisis is that by the time these measures start to show ‘red’, the culture is already in problem territory and poor behaviours are...
Edelman Trust Barometer 2024: Innovation in peril
As HR leaders, trust matters to us. People don’t arrive at work neutral each day. They have lives which impact how they feel, what matters to them on any particular day, how tolerant they are of others and how receptive they are to change and uncertainty. But it isn’t just what’s going on in their individual lives which impacts how they behave. It’s global trends and the culture they experience that influence their opinions, their expectations and, of course, their level of trust in leaders.
Rethinking Management Development: Broadening our approach for 2024
As 2024 dawns, our attention naturally turns to this year’s management development initiatives. Organisations that do management well perform significantly better on high-level metrics such as productivity, profitability, growth, and longevity. And these differences persist over time Competent management is not easy to replicate and should be treated as a crucial complement to strategy.
The importance of long-term support
With NHS services under so much strain, it is easy to understand why employers are keen to offer services such as virtual GPs and EAPs to their employees. Whilst these types of typically short-term support services can give people access to help very quickly, they don’t normally cater for those who need longer-term support such as those suffering from conditions such as cancer, diabetes, stroke, cardiovascular disease or complex mental health issues.
Are ‘love’ and ‘mate’ appropriate in the workplace?
This may seem extreme, but words of affirmation have seen businesses end up in tribunals. So, failure to address this could have serious consequences. HR advice and consultancy director, Kate Palmer, addresses this issue. With the average UK worker spending 19% of their year at work, it’s only natural that friendships are formed amongst colleagues.
Three principles for organisational learning in 2024
It is always hard to move from your narrow focus on meeting a specific need or fulfilling a handed-down objective to reflecting on a much bigger question: what do you believe and how do those beliefs shape your work? We all get stuck in the weeds with very little time to reflect on what we are doing or consider our overall role and purpose. I have always grappled with that dilemma and focused on doing rather than reflecting.
Fearful leaders are causing a £2.2 billion drop in UK productivity
The UK is experiencing a productivity crisis. While we saw a slight spike in the latest ONS productivity figures, the long-term trend is dire. This is the single most important thing to know about the economy, because low productivity is corrosive to society – it grows inequality and organisations that matter (schools, hospitals and public services) don’t get the resources they need to serve communities.
Management, coaching and self-fulfilling prophecies
Of all the classic management theories, I’ve always found that Douglas McGregor’s ground-breaking work on Theory X and Theory Y provides perhaps the best insight into contrasting views on employee behaviour. In this article, I want to dive deeper into the characteristics and implications of both theories and consider how they shape managerial approaches and influence organizational culture.
Three ways OD can help HR get the edge in 2024
With the International Monetary Fund reporting subdued growth and persistent inflation in 2024, organisations may be tempted to seek refuge in efficiency seeking. But efficiency does not inherently equate to effectiveness. With the help of organisational development (OD), HR and people teams have an opportunity to demonstrate this, and to instead maximise organisational effectiveness. But how, exactly? And what steps can you take to cultivate these skills within your team? 1.
Two sides of the same coin? The complex links between meaningful work and stress
An increasing number of people are seeking greater meaning in what they do, and how they do it. For many, the existential shock caused by the Covid-19 pandemic acted as a wake-up call, prompting them to think about what was meaningful – and meaningless – in their personal lives and careers. For others, experiencing meaning in their work was important long before 2020.
Top ten New Year’s resolutions for managers
As we wave goodbye to 2023 and reflect upon what we could have done better, perhaps we need to take a moment (with a bit of tongue in cheek) to look at where managers, leaders and organisations at large need to do better if they want this year to be a success. 1.
Assess candidates on potential impact, not personality
Hiring the right candidates and nurturing them effectively remains a perennial challenge. According to Manpower Group, 75% of employers report difficulty in filling roles. This figure is corroborated by the 2023 Gartner CEO and Senior Business Executive Survey, which revealed that CEOs and CFOs are aligned on three key priorities: growth, technology and talent.
10 managerial blunders to avoid in 2024
1. Demonstrating poor modelling Leaders need to embody the attitudes and behaviours that you expect to see within your team so if you want to raise the energy in the room and improve company culture, head up the conga line by embodying respect, purpose, inclusion and empathy. 2. Excessive Controlling It’s simple…trust your team. Delegation frees up your time and allows you to focus better on your work instead of monitoring theirs. Think of it as putting your feet up a little. Sound appealing?
Three ways to overcome unconscious leadership fears
Although the most recent ONS figures showed a minor uptick in UK productivity, the overall trajectory remains disheartening. Diminished productivity has a detrimental impact on society, fuelling inequality and depriving crucial institutions such as schools, hospitals and public services the essential resources required to cater to communities. Business leaders can, in theory, influence productivity through mechanisms of investment, innovation and competition. Yet poor productivity persists.
L&D in a crisis: Why we need to work on ‘self-talk’ to improve performance
One of the very first books that I was told to read when I joined the L&D sector was What to say when you talk to yourself by Dr Shad Helmstetter. The book discusses the internal dialogue that we generally have on a daily basis, and breaks that dialogue down into five distinct levels, before helping the reader flip hindering self-talk to helpful self-talk. This was my catalyst for learning more about self-talk.
12 HR and work predictions for 2024
Another new year, another attempt to predict how work and HR will evolve as we journey through it. As is now HRZone tradition, we asked our top-ranking writers of 2023 to polish up their crystal balls and give us a glimpse of what’s to come. Some have gone bold, others have played it safe – and we welcome both. A healthy mix of optimism, scepticism and pragmatism is wise as you prospect the year ahead. So, without further ado, here’s our 12 predictions for HR and work in 2024.
Nine expert predictions for learning and development in 2024
2024 came around rather quickly. Where has the time flown? And what does this new year have in store for us busy learning and development bees? With a little sprinkle of expert advice and a crystal ball (most likely a repurposed snow globe), we endeavour to take a sneaky peak into the future. We have asked our most popular writers of 2023 to give us their key predictions for 2024 on what lies ahead.
New year, new HR policies: A guide to updating your people framework
The threshold of a new year signifies more than just a calendar shift. It represents an opportunity for recalibration, innovation and advancement within the HR sphere. In this era of ever-evolving work dynamics, a fresh start demands a reevaluation and refurbishment of HR frameworks to steer companies toward success in the upcoming year – it’s an essential strategic move. Embracing change within HR practices ushers in an era of adaptation and sustained success.
Back to L&D basics: How to create learning experiences that live on in the workplace
Most of us are familiar with the 70:20:10 model that describes the different arenas in which workplace learning takes place. Even where the ratios don’t play out in our organisations, it’s still worth considering that the majority of our learning at work takes place on the job. This links back to Kolb’s learning cycle and the suggestion that we should go through four processes (and not necessarily in the order listed) so that we can truly embed learning.
Nine qualities of cultural intelligence
Cultural intelligence or quotient (CQ) is a business-critical skill, especially for those working in dispersed teams and global organisations. Those with high CQ are brilliant collaborators, communicators and conflict managers, no matter who they are working with. When recruiting new talent into your organisation, you’ll want your hiring managers to easily identify who possesses this skill among your candidates. Luckily, it’s not that difficult to spot them.
HR lessons from McDonald’s bullying and harassment scandal
With the recent news of McDonald’s bullying and harassment culture, it’s a worthwhile exercise for HR leaders and people professionals to consider how they would confront the problem. So, let’s imagine landing that dream HR job within a large organisation, only to find that all is not as it seems. The public image of the company is that it is successful: top of its league in earnings, product recognition and reputation. Except, the latter is an illusion.
How to leverage the paradox of AI making HR more human
Out of the pandemic has arisen a new breed of employee, one that is accustomed to a more liberating way of working, one that seeks value and wants to be seen as a person rather than just human capital. Yet, even though you might assume that HR would be the most personable department in any business, it appears this is often not the case.
Humour: A must-have quality in the new era of work?
The average person spends over 3,500 days at work during their lifetime. What role does a sense of humour play during these hours? A sense of humour is your most valuable defence against the trials and tribulations the world throws at you. Your ability to bounce back from setbacks is thanks to your innate ability to see failure as an opportunity to look back on the hard times and reflect on what you’ve learned. Good humour creates resilience. Humour is very much like a seed.
Burning out of control: Are line managers in crisis?
Each New Year offers a chance to reflect on the one gone by, and 2023 has certainly been a chaotic and uncertain one. Although there are positive signs for the year ahead, we aren’t out of the woods just yet – especially for employees in the UK. In fact, the British Chamber of Commerce recently described the UK’s economic outlook for 2024 as ‘fragile’, suggesting that organisations will have to navigate more uncertainty and unpredictability.
Thinking less, sensing more
This diagram is a helpful representation of our direct perceptual experience of the world via our senses (the left-hand) and our conceptual experience of that world – the way we label every experience as good or bad, right or wrong, like or dislike and then think about it, judge, analyse and compare it.
HRZone’s 15 most popular articles of 2023
It’s my favourite time of the year…when we get to review all the articles we published across 2023 and see what captured the attention of our readers. In previous years, we’ve narrowed down the selection to a top 10, but there were some close contenders with equally high-quality content so we couldn’t resist expanding the list to 15 for 2023.
How to avoid the seven deadly sins of talent management
Managing talent is a complex task. Organisations can often stumble or get it completely wrong, but it is essential to business success. So, as I am often asked, what are some of the major mistakes in talent management, and how can organisations steer clear of them? Let’s start by breaking talent management down into seven key areas that, if done right, will help move the entire organisation forward. However, if done wrong, they can become deadly sins which are hard to recover from.
Making a modern-day Christmas story more inclusive
Did you know that from 20 November through to 24 January there are around 14 different religious holidays celebrated worldwide? And of course, many people in our culturally diverse organisations are non-religious or hold secular views making Christmas completely irrelevant to them. That said, Christmas for those who do celebrate can be a difficult time. The current financial downturn is obviously going to have an impact this year.
HR as a sustainability activist: Good governance should not be the forgotten element of ESG
Governance. A word which doesn’t always conjure up positive connotations. A word often associated with state Governments; notions of control or lack of control. Where governance goes wrong, it can literally rot the core of a governing body or organisation. Perhaps for some of us, ‘governance’ suggests opportunity. Opportunity for improvement, enlightened by examples of ‘good governance’ surrounding us.
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