News & Press

It was either a coincidence or careful planning that the monthly labour market statistics came out on the day of the Budget. It enabled the Chancellor to underline the dramatic improvement in the labour market in recent years, with record levels of employment and overall unemployment down to almost pre-recession levels. However, not all is rosy in the labour market garden.

I have been writing and talking about HR business partners a lot recently and this has reminded me of the importance of terminology.

Dilys Robinson outlines why this unsung hero deserves more recognition for his influence on modern-day health and safety.

At IES we study organisational effectiveness. We wade through literature, talk to senior managers and lots of focus groups, consult academics and examine metrics. We ruminate on the alignment between business and individual performance, culture, engagement - all that stuff. And yet… I've spent a lot of my working life visiting organisations and am amused, intrigued and sometimes appalled at what a visitor experiences.

Now that it's September, coming back to work after summer distractions and in particular visiting the Edinburgh book festival, I started thinking about what have I (re)learned? One thing I've been thinking over is how do you understand the past?

Conflict in the workplace is a fact of working life at some point for most people. Dealing with conflict and in particular stopping it from escalating, ultimately to an employment tribunal, is a difficult task and yet an essential one, as conflict can cause a significant amount of disruption and upheaval for both those involved and their colleagues.

It seems that every week brings another bad news story to damage the reputation of many of our best-loved institutions. The NHS is still reeling from the body-blow of the shocking findings of the Francis Report on the failings in Mid-Staffordshire. The Co-operative Bank has been found lacking, and its chair is in disgrace. There have been high-profile care home scandals, our MPs are still not forgiven for dodgy expenses claims - and we even have horsemeat in our beef-burgers.

‘...but if you try some time, you just might find, that if you're a woman in work then you probably still won't get the pay or the grade you deserve.'