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This strategic commentary aims to examine the benefits and drawbacks of rigid frameworks versus flexible approaches to measuring employee engagement, arguing for a hybrid model that incorporates the best of both to better correspond with organisational subtleties and strategic goals.

This study compares the standardised, benchmarking capabilities of inflexible frameworks such as Gallup’s Q12 to the adaptability and customisation potential of flexible approaches. It emphasises the creation and implementation of a hybrid methodology that preserves the integrity of engagement measurement while also incorporating organisational-specific insights.

Despite their different benefits, rigid frameworks may neglect distinct organisational cultures, whereas completely flexible techniques may suffer with measuring consistency. A hybrid model, which combines core standardised questions and unique items, provides a balanced solution for improving the relevance, actionability and reliability of engagement data across dynamic organisational landscapes.

The discussion culminates with the proposal of a hybrid measurement strategy as a strategic innovation in human resource management. By combining scientific rigour and contextual sensitivity, this model provides a nuanced roadmap for organisations looking to thoroughly understand and effectively negotiate the complexity of employee engagement in an evolving work environment.

This monograph reports on the strategic and operational roles of learning and development (L&D) professionals in Irish, UK European and US organisations including multinational corporations, small to medium enterprises, the public sector and not for profit organisations. This paper aims to investigate the contextual factors influencing L&D roles in organisations, the strategic and operational roles that L&D professionals play in organisations, the competencies and career trajectories of L&D professionals, the perceptions of multiple internal stakeholders of the effectiveness of L&D roles and the relationships between context, L&D roles, competencies/expertise and perceived organisational effectiveness.

The study findings are based on the use of multiple methods. The authors gathered data from executives, senior managers, line managers, employee and L&D professionals using multiple methods: a survey (n = 440), Delphi study (n = 125) and semi-structured interviews (n = 30).

The analysis revealed that L&D professionals increasingly respond to a multiplicity of external and internal contextual influences and internal stakeholders perceived the effectiveness of L&D professionals differently with significant gaps in perceptions of what L&D contributes to organisational effectiveness. L&D professionals perform both strategic and operational roles in organisations and they progress through four career levels. Each L&D role and career level requires a distinct and unique set of foundational competencies and L&D expertise. The authors found that different contextual predictors were important in explaining the perceived effectiveness of L&D roles and the importance attached to different foundational competencies and areas of L&D expertise.

This is one of the few studies to have investigated the L&D professional role in organisations from the perspective of multiple stakeholders using multiple research methods.

Efficient delivery of integrated healthcare requires solid alliances and collaboration with stakeholders on a regular basis. Due to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), it has become necessary to explore new ways of delivering integrated healthcare, and virtual clinics have offered one solution and are likely to continue due to the uncertainty with COVID-19. This study aims to explore clinicians’ experiences of how efficient virtual elective knee clinics (VEKC) are in an orthopaedic setting in comparison to traditional face-to-face clinics.

The study utilised a mixed-methods study to obtain qualitative and quantitative data. This involved an anonymous online survey in addition to in-depth qualitative interviews conducted with a purposive sample of multidisciplinary colleagues who work with the VEKC in an acute hospital.

Three overarching themes and nine sub-themes emerged in the qualitative analysis. Overall, clinicians in both the quantitative and qualitative aspects of the study highlighted several ways that virtual clinics are efficient from both the patient and health service perspective. However, participants also highlighted barriers in relation to virtual clinics not being suitable for certain cohorts of patients and pathologies.

This is the first study in Ireland to provide valuable insights into the experiences of multidisciplinary clinicians using VEKC and their efficiency compared to traditional face-to-face clinics.

Despite the use in companies of policy and control mechanisms to tackle cyberloafing, these practices are still popular among employees. The purpose of this paper is to suggest that control systems alone are unable to deter cyberloafing because they are eventually perceived as a sort of “ineffectual dog that may bark a lot, but ultimately does not bite.” Instead, control systems are only expected to deter cyberloafing if employees view them as leading to punitive consequences.

First, given the easy visibility of cyberloafing activities, the paper proposes a design for control systems that not only includes perceptions of organizational control (monitoring), but also perceptions of the supervisor's physical proximity (proximity). Data are collected from university administration and services personnel, whose main working tool is the computer. They all have internet access and individual e‐mail, a stable physical location at work, and a supervisor. Multiple hierarchical regressions are used to test whether in reality proximity and monitoring are unable to decrease cyberloafing unless they interact together with employees' fear of formal punishment (punishment).

Only by interacting together and with punishment are proximity and monitoring able to deter cyber loafers from engaging in cyberloafing.

The study could suffer from mono‐method/source bias, and the university that supplied the sample has certain job conditions similar to those of the public sector, thus raising concerns about the generalizability of the results.

The results suggest that organizational managers should not only ensure that control systems are able to discover incidents and identify the perpetrators, but they should also follow them up with punitive consequences. Only if control systems are implemented together with punishment are they effective in eliciting perceived certainty among cyber loafers of being caught and sanctioned, and hence in “bringing them back on the right track.”

Despite the extensive use of control systems to deter cyberloafing, there are no previous empirical studies that have examined and supported the negative interacting effects of proximity, monitoring, and punishment on cyberloafing.