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States that career development programmes need to become more customer‐conscious, not only focusing on the needs of external customers, but also allowing for participation by internal customers or clients. Discusses service orientation versus production orientation in career development. Describes career development at the National and Provincial Building Society. Concludes that using “customer‐conscious” procedures results in more satisfied and committed clients.

The Prison Service Core Competence Framework (CCF) is increasingly being used for the purposes of enhancing recruitment, selection, training and staff development. The framework may well have applications across the forensic field.

Evidence suggests that the notion of diversity in employment has failed to meet expectations of increased inclusion and organizational competitiveness in an ever‐changing and globalizing economic context. This paper aims to consider the use of language of diversity in an organizational context.

Using discourse analysis, the paper examines data obtained from semi‐structured interviews conducted with human resources managers and personnel managers. Participants' descriptions of diversity in relation to one particular group of (potential) employees, namely older jobseekers, are analysed for their function and effects in relation to organizational knowledge and practices.

Diversity in employment provides organizational managers with a resource that can more usefully be viewed as linguistic than as knowledge based. Its use offers organizations a means of accounting for existing practices and should not be taken to signal commitment to organizational change.

Work that has treated discourse of diversity as evidence of efforts to promote inclusion and competitiveness has failed to consider fully the effects of language use. A focus on language as action in its own right shows how diversity in employment as used accomplished outcomes that are totally divergent from the usually assumed benefits of diversity.

Wonders whether companies actually have employees best interests at heart across physical, mental and spiritual spheres. Posits that most organizations ignore their workforce – not even, in many cases, describing workers as assets! Describes many studies to back up this claim in theis work based on the 2002 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference, in Cardiff, Wales.

Presents 35 abstracts from the 2001 Employment Research Unit Annual conference held at Cardiff Business School in September 2001. Attempts to explore the theme of changing politics of employment relations beyond and within the nation state, against a background of concern in the developed economies at the erosion of relatively advanced conditions of work and social welfare through increasing competition and international agitation for more effective global labour standards. Divides this concept into two areas, addressing the erosion of employment standards through processes of restructuring and examining attempts by governments, trade unions and agencies to re‐create effective systems of regulation. Gives case examples from areas such as India, Wales, London, Ireland, South Africa, Europe and Japan. Covers subjects such as the Disability Discrimination Act, minimum wage, training, contract workers and managing change.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce an integrated three‐phase methodology for forecasting future competency requirements more effectively than existing methods.

The methodology is demonstrated with reference to empirical research conducted by the authors. The methodology consists of three phases: phase 1 – preliminary interviews, phase 2 – questionnaire, and phase 3 – critical incident technique interviews. Outputs from phases 1 and 2 are used to generate a framework through which to elicit future competency requirements during phase 3.

The empirical findings, although included, are incidental to the current paper; they serve solely to illustrate the methodology. As such, the development and demonstration of this methodology are the main “findings” of the paper.

Methodologies for forecasting future competency requirements should adopt structured integrated approaches to improve predictive accuracy.

The methodology is described in sufficient detail so as to enable its practical application by HR professionals and academic researchers alike. Both groups will find this methodology extremely useful.

The paper seeks to improve upon existing methods for forecasting future competency requirements. By addressing the limitations of existing methods, and also by merging previously independent approaches, it provides an innovative integrated methodology of significant value.