Human resource management (HR) or personnel management as it used to be termed, is the name given to the business function charged with maximizing the productivity and profitability of an organization by optimizing the effectiveness of its employees. Formal systems are used for the management of a company’s human resources or people. This business function…

Roles and responsibilities No two days are likely to be the same in Human Resources, as tasks are many and varied, and although staff are largely pro-active, they will often have to be reactive if problems occur. An HR manager will be expected to;- develop and implement policies on all HR related matters including pay…

What is the business case for employee engagement? If people enjoy their work , and are happy in the work environment, they interface better with customers, perform better, stay with the company, take less time off sick, make suggestions for improvements, and are more productive and profitable. They are more motivated, and committed to their…

What makes an employee feel engaged? It is very difficult to generalise, but factors that are likely to make staff feel engaged are a sense of “family”, of belonging to a team or company, of social fulfilment. This is often strengthened by policies that demonstrate the company takes care of their employees, such as good…

What can Management do to help? What is clear is that the attitude, behaviour and mind-set of Senior Managers is crucial in developing staff engagement. So the first task for Senior Leaders must be to ensure all line managers are fully engaged themselves, and know how to engage their staff, and create the required culture.…

What determines leadership style? To some extent management style is an expression of personality, and a reflection of experiences and lessons learnt. It describes the principles that underline the way the manager makes decisions and relates to their staff. Like most things, if you study and understand the theory behind it, then you can make…

There are very many ways of classifying and describing common management styles, although of course everyone’s style is unique, in as much as it is coloured by their personality. The Democratic Manager or Participative Manager will allow their staff quite a wide degree of flexibility by delegating to them and allowing them to achieve results…

This quiz is designed to test your knowledge of these modules of the “Managing People” lessons in the Management Skills Courses, specifically;- Human resource management Human resource management 2 Employee Engagement Part 1 Employee Engagement Part 2 Employee Engagement Part 3 Management style Management styles There are ten questions some of which are “tick all…

Let’s have a look at a few areas of Organisation and Management that perhaps need a little explanation, or at least definition. Organisational Psychology, Organisational Development, and Organisational Politics are phrases that crop up often in my postbag, with people asking for explanations. I have taken these definitions from the workplace psychology website, (Link below)…

Organisational development is a people focused discipline, a systematic approach to building and improving organisational performance and effectiveness. It aligns strategy, people and processes organisation wide to develop a concerted, sustained, effort to streamline and optimise performance using behavioural science theories. Organisational Development is sometimes confused with Change Management, which in my opinion is about…