Improving work‐life balance is often used as a euphemism for keeping all contact with the office to a minimum, but a company that is regularly ranked among the best to work in the UK is finding quite the opposite. Sports and social activities are thriving at building, transportation and...

It is hard to picture the scene – a manager in a major manufacturing company with a background in chemical engineering, standing on stage in a tuxedo reading Nelson Mandela’s inaugural speech. But 29‐year‐old John Petre, process and packaging‐development manager for soup, with...

Museums are not only about exhibits, but also about the people who work with them and interpret them for the public. A 360‐degree feedback system has helped London’s Victoria and Albert to develop the skills of its people and cement its reputation as one of the world’s leading museums of...

A new learning strategy is helping to improve the status, confidence and career opportunities of employees of a UK company that finds productive work for around 6,000 people with a wide range of mental, emotional and physical disabilities. Remploy, which has existed for more than 50 years, is a...

If you are possibly the best‐known broadcaster of TV and radio programs in the world, and your output is both phenomenal in number and hugely wide‐ranging in content, it goes without saying that lots of those programs are bound to involve issues of race, diversity, equal opportunity and...

As the reality dawns on more and more organizations that their cutting‐edge competitiveness is inextricably linked to the talents, knowledge, energy and enterprise of the people they employ, how many of them are doing enough to make sure they do not run short of that vital raw material? Too...

Whenever groups of workers are made the subject of research, it should not come as any surprise when they start saying things like “We like to feel appreciated”, “We want management to listen to our views”, or “If we’re doing a good job we want someone to tell us so”. But...

Ask anyone for their view of partnership agreements in UK industry and their response will be dictated to a great extent by the side of the fence on which they are sitting. This is not to say that their response will automatically be a knee‐jerk one of the “them and us” variety....

A common assertion made about people who appear to be busy but who achieve very little, is that they are mistaking movement for action. Conservatism is a natural enough human impulse. Employees are inclined to be believe that organizational change is being forced on them for its own sake and...

Change and the information‐technology (IT) industry are now almost synonymous. From Moore’s law, which predicts that computing power doubles every 18 months, to mega mergers such as the coming together of Compaq and HP, the IT industry is always on the move. Hewlett Packard’s evolution...