Tag Archives: team

Appointments, Pensions, Recruitment News

Quantum Advisory announces latest appointment

Quantum Advisory, the leading pensions and employee benefits consultancy for small and medium sized schemes and employers, today announced the appointment of Anne-Marie Gillon as Principal Investment Consultant within its Fiduciary Management Oversight team.

 

The team is dedicated to delivering clear, independent insight into the fiduciary management market to asset owners and trustees.

 

Amanda Burdge, Partner and Head of Investment at Quantum Advisory, commented:

“Fiduciary Management can be a complex landscape for trustees to navigate – with often subtle, but important, differences in definitions, scope, service offerings and, crucially, value and outcomes.  With trustees already managing a broad range of responsibilities we’ve seen growing demand for our Fiduciary Management services from those seeking support across all aspects of selection, review and oversight. In response, we continue to expand our team with expert professionals. Anne-Marie will provide valuable insight into, and oversight of, fiduciary management providers.

 

“Anne-Marie’s passion and expertise make her an excellent addition for our clients, our team and the wider firm.  We’re excited to work with her as we continue to grow this important area of our practice.”

 

Paul Francis, Principal Investment Consultant and Head of Fiduciary Management Oversight, commented: “Anne-Marie’s knowledge of the Fiduciary Management market stands for itself. I have no doubt that the positive impacts our team has made through delivering value-add advice to our clients, powered by technological innovation, will be accelerated further by having Anne-Marie on board.”

 

Anne-Marie Gillon, Principal Investment Consultant at Quantum Advisory, added:

“Quantum is renowned within the industry as a trusted partner, dedicated to delivering exceptional service to trustees and employers. It was important for me to join a firm with both the vision and capability to make an impact across the sector, Quantum is doing exactly that with fiduciary management selection and oversight. I’m excited to work with such a strong team to further develop and enhance this offering.”

 

Anne-Marie has over 30 years’ experience in the investment industry within asset management and as a consultant advising trustees on fiduciary management and governance matters. Anne-Marie is also an accredited pension trustee.

Data, News

New Research Shows IT Leaders Need to Upskill Teams to Extract Value from Data

  • Nearly two thirds (65%) of IT leaders globally think they need to invest in data capability skills within their teams to extract value from data.
  • Over three quarters (78%) of IT leaders in North American businesses recognise a need to increase employee data competency, compared with 63% of Latin American businesses, 55% of European businesses and 48% of Asian businesses.

Dublin, 27 April, 2022 – New research from Digital Realty (NYSE: DLR) the largest global provider of cloud- and carrier-neutral data centers, colocation and interconnection solutions, today reveals that 65% of IT leaders from some of the world’s biggest businesses say they need to increase the data competency of their teams to remain competitive and extract value from data [1]. This increases to 78% when focusing on North American businesses, compared to 63% for Latin American businesses, 55% for European businesses and 48% for Asian businesses.

The importance of upskilling teams as a business-critical move out-performed AI investment (59%) and was the second most popular response amongst those surveyed when asked what the most important factor was for their companies in the next two years to enable more data-driven insights. Additionally, over one in five (21%) IT leaders globally highlighted that the lack of internal talent to analyse data, and the lack of talent to build technical capacity (21%), are among the greatest obstacles their organisations are facing when drawing insights from their data.

A wider issue

Crucially, IT leaders’ teams need to have the skills to unlock value from data and make data-driven strategies a priority if they want to stay competitive in an increasingly data centric world. Digital Realty’s research revealed that three quarters (75%) of >$1B companies do now have a formal data strategy in the planning, adoption or execution stage. This compares to 63% of global companies, suggesting that larger companies are operating slightly ahead of the curve from a data perspective, something which is likely to give them an advantage over smaller competitors as the amount of data grows and Data Gravity becomes a bigger challenge.

“As the volume of data grows exponentially across the world, the Data Gravity effect is inevitably going to intensify, particularly if employees do not have the skills to effectively process the data,” explains Séamus Dunne, Managing Director, at Interxion, a Digital Realty company. “This phenomenon sees large volumes of data continually attracting more data, making it impossible to move, manipulate or extract value from it. This creates barriers for businesses and rather than data being an enabler, it can have the opposite effect.

“Digital Realty understands the growing challenges business leaders face, which is why we’ve built PlatformDIGITAL®, our first of its kind global data center platform, to meet the ever-changing data, control and networking demands of global enterprises and help them realise new, data-first strategies.”

Looking ahead

The research shows that 17% of IT leaders expect data-driven insights to help them attract more talent in the future, suggesting that people will be drawn to organisations using data efficiently. This is likely to lead to a cumulative effect, with the more data savvy enterprises attracting more employees with data skills and building their competitive advantage.

[1] The Digital Realty research surveyed over 7,200 IT leaders from $100m – $1B+ revenue businesses across every sector and across 23 countries to understand the priorities of those leading digital strategy and transformation at the world’s largest companies.

News

Your Business and the Magic of March

By Sid Madge, Meee

Birthdays are good for business: everyone has one, everyone likes to feel special, and celebrating the birthdays of colleagues should be on every list of maintaining morale activities. Regardless of the drawbacks of virtual cake, even if your team works from home, it really is worth taking the time to bring everyone together to share small, smile inducing moments like this.

This got me and my team thinking about all the special occasions and celebrations that there are around the world, and the opportunities they give us to bring us a little bit of joy and magic. Here are a few occasions in March could be a great excuse for more joy and magic?

8th March: International Women’s Day

There are so many great women past and present, but (apart from my mum) one I am particularly in awe of is Marie Curie. Curie is recognised for her ground-breaking Nobel Prize-winning discoveries and helping to break gender barriers during her lifetime. Curie was the first person in the world, male or female, to win two Nobel Prizes. Her family won four! And she managed it all without a fancy lab. During WW1, Marie Curie developed mobile radiology units which were used at the front hospitals in Furnes, Hoogstade, Adinkerke, De Panne, Beveren and Roesbrugge. Training 150 women to operate the “Little Curie” it is estimated that the total number of wounded soldiers receiving X-ray exams during the war exceeded one million.

Take a moment to think of all the amazing women in your life that bring magic to your world. Make a point of expressing your appreciation – you don’t need to limit yourself to doing this on March 8th. A little more appreciation for all the people we are grateful for is a wonderful way to spread more magic and boost morale.

20th March: UN International Day of Happiness

Although happiness can mean different things to different people, one element is common to us all. And that’s the messages sent by a genuine smile. This is possibly the only truly international recognisable and understandable symbol of happiness in the world. In a study conducted in the UK, British researchers found that one smile can provide the same level of brain stimulation as up to 2,000 chocolate bars.

Psychologists have also found that even if we have to force a smile, the very act of turning your lips upward can trick our brain into releasing certain feel-good hormones, including dopamine and serotonin. As a result, our stress levels lower, our immune system gets a little boost, and our overall mood improves. Researchers have even discovered that a smile can lower our heart rate when we’re feeling anxious.

It’s also worth remembering that happiness is not a permanent state. Often, it’s fleeting as we go about our daily activities but when we pay attention to the little moments that make us happy and revel in them, we can draw out our sense of wellbeing. Is your morning coffee just amazing or did you enjoy chatting to a client or customer? Often, it’s the simplest of things like singing Happy Birthday to a colleague that sprinkles our lives with magic. We don’t need the grand gestures or the amazing holiday – we just need to pay attention to some of the little things that bring us joy and wallow in them for a little longer.

Take a moment to smile at someone. Just notice the world around you and smile. Like a smile, smiling is contagious.

26th March: Make Up Your Own Holiday Day

I’m particularly excited about this one! Make Up Your Own Holiday Day was the holiday created to encourage people to do more of what they love. Now there are a tonne of interesting, intriguing and imaginative holidays already out there, like World Stationery Day (April the 22nd), National Spaghetti Day (4th of January), National Hugging Day (21st January) and National Zipper Day (April the 29th). What’s fascinating is the imagination and creativity to name, create and participate in such great activities.

Take a moment to consider what your ‘make up your own holiday’ will be. Perhaps you could introduce something that will be fun for your team: Wear a Hat To Work Day; Donut Day; Lunchtime Quiz Day.

Whatever March brings to you and your team, enjoy the little wins, go searching for them if you have to and spread the magic around.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sid Madge is a transformation and change specialist and founder of Meee. Meee draws on the best creativity and thinking from the worlds of branding, psychology, neuroscience, education and sociology, to help people embrace change and achieve extraordinary lives.

From pupils to CEOs, Meee has helped thousands find their magic to transform themselves, their communities and their organisations. From leaders of PLCs and SMEs to parents, teachers, students, carers, the unemployed and prison inmates Meee helps people excel.

Sid Madge is also author of the ‘Meee in Minute’ series of books which each offer 60 ways to change your life, work-, or family-life in 60 seconds.

Web: www.meee.global

Web: www.meeebooks.com

Twitter twitter.com/Meee_HQ
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/MeeeHQ/
Instagram www.instagram.com/meeehq
YouTube https://youtu.be/fISupZWZMQc
TEDx https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR3Cyjs62c8

 

HR, News

The Great Resignation; Why an inclusive and collaborative employee engagement strategy can ensure you’re not another casualty

Written by Louise Raeside, Engagement Lead at DRIVE Engagement

The past twelve months have seen a tidal wave of resignations across the workforce – both in the UK and around the world. Not only have we witnessed employees leaving their roles, but we have also seen them pursuing entirely new career paths in droves. And it seems that this mass departure is happening across all levels within the workplace and pan sector too, albeit especially evident in the service and retail sectors.

To see the true extent of ‘The Great Resignation’ as it’s been coined, let’s look at some of the data: 

Quite clearly, there is a major issue at stake here. But why has it all come to a head as we start (albeit slowly) to come out of the pandemic?

I think we are seeing this churn as a result of three key reasons:

  1. Renewed confidence: There has always been churn in the market; people move roles all the time after all. However, over the last two years many people who may have wanted to move jobs have actually put these plans on hold for fear of an unstable job market. Many have favoured simply staying put. However, as we start to see some light at the end of the tunnel, many people are starting to feel more confident, and as a result are starting to actively seek new employment.
  2. Shifting priorities: For many, the pandemic has also triggered quite a shift in personal priorities too. For instance, it may have encouraged them to pursue a ‘dream job’; transition to being a stay-at-home parent; or perhaps join a purpose-led organisation committed to making changes for the better. It’s fair to say that people did a great deal of reflection and soul searching during the darkest days of the pandemic and as a result, many made a commitment to themselves to make changes and do something which really matters to them. And as time is telling, this is translating into a switch in career or employer.
  3. Negative perceptions and treatment: Unfortunately for some, the decision to leave their job has come as a direct result of the way their employer has treated them during the pandemic. Whether that be because their employer wasn’t understanding or flexible when it came to juggling childcare; how they dealt with the work from home environment; how safe and secure their employer made them feel during all the uncertainty; or even how the company treated its customers over this period. Subsequently many employees have developed negative perceptions and come to the realisation that enough is enough – they simply want out.

So, what can organisations do about this? And how can they retain, develop and also attract new talent whilst meeting the shifting – and very individual – needs of employees today?

In short, I believe this all comes down to an organisation getting their employee engagement strategy right. It needs to be an inclusive and collaborative programme of engagement, not a top-down directive from management.

Let me explain a little more, because there is often some misunderstanding here about what employee engagement really means. Let’s start with what it is not; employee engagement is not about short-term employee ‘happiness’ gains through receiving material benefits, like extra pay, bonuses, free fruit, reduced gym memberships, pizza Fridays and other similar perks. Rather it refers to the emotional commitment and connection an employee feels towards their employer organisation, specifically to its vision, its purpose and its goals. What I am talking about here is a sense of belonging, where employees feel they are seen, where they want to contribute and feel their contribution counts and where they are acknowledged. They want to know they are making a difference.

There is a lot to be said about belonging and feeling part of the greater whole. Nurturing the emotional connections between an employee and their workplace will motivate them to remain committed to the company in the long term and, of course, bring tangible benefits for everyone.

But the key to creating this sense of belonging is to focus on strategies that will give all employees a voice, an opportunity to contribute and make a difference (beyond understanding their job purpose) and to ensure that their voice is heard and recognised. Enabling and trusting employees at all levels in the workplace to make improvements, through facilitated structured opportunities will ensure employees are a driving force. So rather than feeling like the company is pulling them along with instructions from the top, employees will feel wholly connected and contribute directly toward its purpose and its goals.

A holistic engagement and retention strategy that incorporates personal development, teamwork, contribution, empowerment and recognition (through acknowledgement, not ‘reward’ in a financial sense) can provide purpose, a sense of belonging and upskill team members so that they feel valued, trusted and appreciated. Organisations are already having to re-evaluate their wellbeing strategies quite dramatically in light of the challenges COVID has presented, but I would suggest that leaders would also do well to invest in personal development opportunities for their teams too. These development opportunities will help build and enable more resilient teams that feel empowered to want ‘go above and beyond’ to improve and contribute in making a difference that benefits personally, collectively and the wider business.

Here are two easy ‘start as you mean to go on’ New Year pledges to re-energise your teams and stimulate an environment where everyone feels willing and enabled to contribute:

  1. Acknowledge: Really ‘see’ your team(s) by making time for them each day within their working environment – to chat, to observe and to listen. Not only will this give you the opportunity to get to know your team(s) better, it’s also great for leaders to ‘be seen’ too. When people acknowledge us, we feel a connection with them. We feel valued – and this is so important to personal well-being, motivation and for fostering a healthy work culture. However, it’s not always possible to physically ‘see’ everyone, so alternatively a quick, but personal acknowledgement email or call can be a great way to show genuine interest, for example: ‘Sorry I missed you today but just wanted say thanks as I understand you worked through your lunch yesterday. This is much appreciated’. In my opinion, it’s these unexpected and seemingly little human acknowledgements that can really make a difference to how motivated we feel toward work and who we work for.
  2. Problem-solve together: When faced with a new challenge, trust in the knowledge and experience of your teams (as they know their jobs best!) and openly discuss the steps needed to solve and improve the issue together. Equip your teams with the problem-solving tools to establish root-cause, why and how the problem(s) occurred and put in place countermeasures to ensure that the business can avoid the issue happening again – it’s about empowering and trusting your teams to work together to resolve it for themselves. Not only will this ensure problem-solving becomes a learning process and mindset, but it will also demonstrate respect, trust and allow your teams to feel supported, listened to and able to make a valued contribution.

The start of 2022 is the time for leadership teams to champion and instigate a stronger engagement mindset – one that is both inclusive and collaborative. By ensuring opportunities for employees to develop and contribute, to be heard, to be seen, and by nurturing their sense of belonging, organisations can ensure they don’t become another casualty to ‘The Great Resignation’ – and perhaps unearth and retain some untapped talent from within too…

 

Employee Engagement, News, News for HRDs

Why your employee engagement strategy should be inclusive and a collaborative effort in 2021

Julie Cameron, MD and founder of DRIVE Engagement, talks about engagement strategies and how to re-engage your team

For years, businesses of all sizes have pumped time and thought into their employee engagement strategies – and rightly so. After all, data proves just how costly it can be to run a ship with a disconnected and unengaged crew. According to Gallup, disengaged employees can result in 37% higher absenteeism, 18% lower productivity and 15% lower profitability within the workplace.

Despite these statistics providing a very clear narrative on why employee engagement is so integral to business success, the reality is that businesses often misjudge how to address it properly. More often than not companies address engagement from a top-down perspective. Doing so means that these strategies fail to address the real issues at hand and do not reflect the wants and needs of the most critical part of the business; the employees themselves.

In this article we will talk about the difference between a hierarchical and an employee led engagement strategy and explain how a firm can reap all the by-products when they really get their teams motivated and engaged in what they do. With companies tightening their purse strings as a result of the pandemic, hopefully we can demonstrate that employee engagement no longer needs to be pushed down the ‘to do’ list in 2021.

2020 and the fractured workforce

And if employee engagement wasn’t seen as important enough, in March 2020, the coronavirus pandemic gave many businesses even more of a reason to focus on it. As so many businesses closed their doors and moved to a remote (and somewhat fractured way of working), they witnessed employees feeling cut off from their peers and line managers. Not only this, but employees also needed to adapt to new ways of working and deal with differing motivations in their personal lives; leaving employees feeling anxious and uncertain. This sudden shift forced HR and leadership teams alike to question how to keep their employees engaged through such an unusual and challenging time, and specifically, how to do this at a time when the purse strings were very tight.

Businesses across the UK took to the internet in a bid to find answers to their questions. In fact, in December 2020, search volume for the term “employee wellbeing” reached its highest ever level; 300% higher than the same month in the previous year. Plus, in May, the question “How to engage employees” was searched more than it had been since 2008.

Whilst the internet does, of course, provide a wealth of information, what many businesses often fail to recognise is that the answer to creating a fruitful employee engagement strategy can often be found much closer to home and within their teams themselves.

Management led vs direct employee feedback

In order to determine the most effective employee engagement strategy, the one that will dramatically increase engagement in an organisation, the first step is to acknowledge that a problem exists in the first place. To do this, it is important to recognise the characteristics of an ineffective strategy.
Many firms often make the mistake of treating employee engagement as a human resource (HR) issue. Often, someone from HR convinces the CEO to commit some budget to an employee survey. Once the survey is complete, the data is then kept locked-away, senior leaders brainstorm ideas and then implement changes that they believe will engage employees. This is where we see those extrinsic initiatives such as free fruit, early finish Fridays, lunch and learns and perhaps a monthly Zoom quiz. Sound familiar?

There are two important issues which arise from this example. Firstly, a misunderstanding of what “employee engagement” is and the weight of influence it has on how successful a company is.

I should stress that employee engagement is not about the satisfaction often felt from receiving material benefits, rather it refers to the emotional commitment an employee has to their organisation, specifically its vision, its purpose and its goals. What we’re talking about here is the difference between extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation.

A top-down approach to the implementation of an employee engagement strategy means front-line leaders are acting as the regulators of employee engagement. A strategy that has been developed through the lens of one or a few senior individuals has the potential to result in something which is dangerously disconnected and unrepresentative of the employees themselves. After all, leaders should never assume they have all the answers.

Sense of belonging

Instead, I would contend that it’s important to consider the drastic evolution of the demands and desires of the employees themselves. The emphasis on what is important (and what motivates us) has shifted somewhat over this past year, and although financial security is still a key focus, there is a deeper sense of personal drivers and motivators when it comes to measuring employee engagement.

There is so much to be said about belonging and feeling part of the greater whole. Nurturing the emotional connections between employees and their workplace will motivate them to remain committed to the company in the long term and bring tangible benefits for everyone.

The key to creating this feeling of belonging is to focus on techniques that give all employees a real voice. For instance, where solutions to problems that the company faces are found by the team themselves collaboratively and are not dictated by those at the top. It all starts with collaborative problem solving and giving each team member greater autonomy to be part of the solution. It’s important to gain employee buy-in to corporate efforts to re-engage by empowering and enabling. Without doing this, you may face a sea of shrugged shoulders and find your engagement programme fails to make significant progress.

Facilitating structured opportunities and giving a voice to people at all levels in the workplace will help ensure employees feel like they are a driving force in a company, wholly connected to its vision and goals, rather than feeling like the company is pulling them along with instructions from the top.
And, in these difficult times where people are more displaced than ever, it is essential to focus on longer term rational strategies. Not only does it make good business sense, but it makes good employee sense as well. Ultimately, it’s this kind of tangible engagement that is win-win, because it continues to pay back year after year, therefore making it entirely free and extremely cost effective to implement.

Bolstering employee engagement and helping employees to feel connected during the pandemic has been and will continue to be one of businesses’ biggest challenges. But now is the time for businesses to intensify their commitment to health, wellbeing, diversity, employee experience and engagement, because those firms who focus on techniques that give their employees a real voice, enabling them to maintain connections and to continue to build relationships with one another, will reap the benefits longer term.

News

Top Tips for Startups that are Building a Team

Nargis Jafferali from https://www.byblazon.com/ shares team building tips

When you’re launching a startup, it doesn’t matter whether it’s your very first venture, or your fiftieth…it’s hard work and a challenging process. Fact. Most founders start that journey either completely alone or alongside a trusted co-founder, however it’s a long way to go until you have a team to support your business.

So, what are some of the most important considerations to make when you’re thinking about your team and how to build it up? We break down some of our top tips to think about:

Hard in the initial stages

The vast majority of founders will embark on launching their startup business completely solo from the beginning. It’s an early idea, a mere concept at this stage, and you may not even have done your market research to test out whether it’s commercially viable at all. So, it’s unadvisable nor is it realistic to have team members at this stage.

Sure, it doesn’t make the early stages any easier for you, with the pressure of establishing a business framework resting entirely on your shoulders, and an early founder having to take on each and every role of the business themselves. No easy feat. But then startup land is not for the faint-hearted either, is it?!

Be prepared to put in those long hours, to make those tough decisions alone, to wear more hats than you ever thought could possibly fit on your head. The early solo journey is hard and rocky, but it’s massively crucial too. These early learnings about your market space, your customers’ feedback and your own self will set the precedent for your business to come, and it’s the rite of passage that needs to be done. No question.

Timing is everything

So, when you have the confidence that your startup has legs – perhaps you’ve already got your first paying customers, or enough valuable user feedback to determine the need for your business – then you need to consider when is the right time to make that all-important first hire for your new team. And this decision is one that stumps many a founder.

If you hire your first ‘employee’ (the terms of their contract with you are irrelevant, as the considerations remain similar whether you’re dealing with interns, freelancers, part-timers, full-timers etc) too early on, there could be unnecessary pressures placed on your delicate finances. If you’re yet to sign up a paying customer, or only have a handful, then chances are you’re still bootstrapping the business anyway – paying a wage too early on adds more risk to your circumstances.

There’s also the pressure of unrealistic workload expectations for your new hire. You’ve hired them and said they’ll be managing X, Y and Z, but perhaps your predicted clients don’t sign up, or you lose customers – then what does your new team member do? Without the security of an established business at this stage, it’s tough to predict too far ahead, and that places an element of risk upon your new hire.

On the other hand, founders should not leave it too late before bringing in someone to help them. If you’ve been managing so many things for a long time yourself, chances are you’re already stretched quite thin, and under significant pressure. The risk attached with letting standards slip don’t seem worth it – what’s the point of risking losing all your hard work, by simply not realising you’re drowning in pressure and need help?

Timing is crucial when building a new team, and it’s important to weigh up the pros and cons carefully to make the best decision for your individual startup.

Long term vision

Having temporary help for your business may be great support in the short-term, particularly when you’re still trying to establish yourself and finding your feet, but a really successful startup will benefit from having people on board that are ready to grow with you.

Finding individuals with the right skillset and experience is essential of course but finding people that share your vision and prepared to embark on a journey with you, are worth their weight in gold. These types of characters become so much more than ‘hired help’, they’ll be adding some serious extra value to your processes, perhaps offering important feedback, creative suggestions and supportive encouragement.

Team members that are looking to grow with your startup can often be far more productive too. Being hired for a job at your company that enables more accountability and getting more involved in the decisions can add tons to the overall appeal and job satisfaction – all great for general employee satisfaction.

Onboarding Process

So, when you’re finally ready to make that next hire, how do you go about it and what things should you keep in mind? Recruitment should be an honest, transparent process, bearing in mind to always be realistic about the job role and the situation of the company with the candidate where appropriate. Whilst it’s good to be flexible and accommodating as an employer, it’s also important to stay true to the objectives of your startups too – whether it’s wages, hours, responsibilities or something else that comes up during the hiring process, a founder must be vigilant not to deviate too far away from what they’re able to offer. Desperation is a killer, but stay true to your goals, and the right person will come your way, eventually.

In the early stages, a founder will have done everything themselves, so naturally the handover process will be a tough step to undertake. Think about making that process as simple as possible, perhaps thinking about organising processes and systems in a clear format that’s easy for someone else to understand and pick up quickly. Over time, the handover process will become more routine and far easier, but the majority of founders find those first stages challenging and often frustrating. So, hang in there, you’re not alone, and remember, your new hire is supposed to be there to make your life easier!

The number one piece of advice to all founders has to be about learning from mistakes. Not every startup is the same, not every founder is the same and not every journey is the same. And throw in a bunch of circumstances and roadblocks that are beyond your control – and it’s one hot mess! But, if you’re able to remain fluid in your approach, constantly adapting yourself, constantly challenging the status quo, and always trying to improve the process, then you’ve a greater chance of success.

Building a team is a necessary and thoroughly exciting part of building your startup – do it right, and at the right time, and you’re laughing!