Downsizing is no longer seen as a last resort or a response to crisis. Instead it has become a vital tool for shaping an organization to meet new challenges and circumstances. By now, few organizations have not been through this process. The benefits are clear, but it can also bring problems....

In an ideal business world, employees would sing their way to work in the manner of Snow White’s dwarves. While the majority of organizations would concede that this is highly unlikely to happen, any company worth its salt will want its employees to be happy with their lot. Just think about...

In this age of management consultants, change and uncertainty – it is often the employee who feels left out. In the past few years, organizational restructuring has been widespread in UK local government. At the same time, staff are being increasingly consulted on their views and options...

If our hospital did not exist, how would we create it? This was the question asked by doctors and managers at Leicester Royal Infirmary, one of two English pilot sites to evaluate the use of business process re‐engineering (BPR) in a healthcare environment.

A company with employee turnover as low as 1 percent a year is in danger of suffering from too little experimentation and innovation. Framatome Cogema Fuels (FCF) is the business component of Framatome Technologies Group (FTG), which designs, manufactures and analyzes nuclear fuel and components...

Employee turnover at Alberto‐Culver North America, which was running at more than twice the industry average, has been halved over the past seven years and the company’s ability to attract top people from other firms has increased. Lavin Bernick describes how the turnaround has been achieved...

Managers at Marriott Hotels typically worked more than 50 hours a week. The prevailing idea was that the more hours one put in, the better. “See and be seen” were the watchwords. But by the mid‐1990s, the company was having increasing difficulty recruiting talented people. Some of its best...

A new training program for managers at UK retailer Safeway encourages participants to decide their personal direction without reference to the company’s interests, on the basis that the individual is more interested than anyone else in his or her own development. The Aspire! program, described...

When UK financial‐services provider Prudential decided to introduce extensive remote working as part of its drive to build stronger customer relationships, the company was keen to ensure that its employees not only had the technology, but also the skills, to maximize the individual and...

Harrods, the luxury‐store group, has used drama‐based learning to bring a new dimension to presentation‐skills training for its managers – focussing on the personal presence, energy and enthusiasm of the presenter – and to help its menswear department to deliver excellent service. With...