Search results

The purpose of this paper is to consider how talent management can be a strategic lever to enable the development of a customer-centric culture in the hospitality sector.

In-depth interviews with HR practitioners within the hospitality industry have been used to explore different approaches to talent management.

Changing customer requirements necessitate increased emphasis on customer experience demanding a more skilled workforce, especially stronger in interpersonal skills. Companies are adjusting their attraction, retention and development strategies to deliver a revised understanding of talent. They are focusing on building that capability rather than buying it in. Leadership selection and development is also being adjusted.

This approach has implications for the skill demands placed on the workforce, for the sort of staff who are hired (chosen on attitude more than technical skills) and how they are trained, assessed and rewarded. Leaders (at all levels) must adjust their style to suit and work in partnership with HR.

The paper offers the chance for hospitality sector leaders to reflect on how they manage talent, giving them ways to link people management with the drivers of business success. It shows how organisations can meet the challenges of the “experience economy” through attracting and developing the right staff and how talent management policy and practice can be used as a vehicle for culture change and development.

The aim of this article is to argue that human resources (HR) should adjust the role it performs depending on its local environment – what is desirable and achievable.

The paper discusses the arguments for and against the arrival of a universal culture and whether there exists a best approach to HR management.

The paper suggests that HR should approach the drive to uniformity of HR policy and practice with caution, rather it should proceed on a case by case basis judging the costs and benefits of harmonization in the light of the particular policy and circumstances.

The paper makes suggestions as to how HR can adapt that can be applied in practice.

The paper expresses a desire for a more flexible, autonomous HR function.

The aim of this paper is to ask why western organisations appear to be moving towards a single global HR model that minimises cultural differences compared with Asian organisations that seem to allow more variation in HR policies and practices. Moreover, we try to identify the problems western organisations face in taking this route and how they seek to overcome them.

The paper is based on a case survey approach whereby the author (and colleague) researched the global HR practices of some 70 organisations, interviewing a good proportion of the senior HR managers in these organisations. The focus was on global employment brands, culture and diversity, as well as talent management and HR service delivery model.

Western organisations seem to be moving towards a single global HR model that minimises cultural differences, whereas “polycentric” organisational forms are common in Asian companies. This may be to do with ownership structure and business model, but is also through Western organisations fashioning a “one company” philosophy and reducing costs through centralisation. This approach risks the creation of an ethnocentric world view based on a home country perspective that might damage diversity and lead to the cloning of the business leadership. The paper offers some risk mitigation strategies based around having common people principles but allowing distinctive local practice.

The research is case study-based. There is no quantitative element to the results. Thus, the research has the benefit of in-depth understanding of organisational practice and its context, and the author (and colleague) do not have the benefit of testing the findings across a larger number of organisations. In particular, the East versus West distinction the author (and colleague) made needs further refinement. And, the author would want to look in more depth at the business structures of Western firms to see how much effect they have on organisational culture.

Organisations can take the findings, including solutions to the problems of ethnocentricity, and apply them to their own situations. In particular, it should encourage a more thoughtful review of the development of organisational culture and especially reflection on the dangers of standardisation and consolidation of HR services.

This paper is based on original case study research and uses these insights to consider some of the academic debates about organisational culture and HR services, specifically within the context of global operations. The advice to organisations will be new to practitioners, although it builds on previous work.

This paper aims to explore the obstacles to human resources (HR) making a strategic contribution and to share ways of overcoming those obstacles.

The paper uses case studies to demonstrate how organizations are successfully integrating people and business strategies.

This author argues that HR has found it difficult to effectively make a strategic contribution to the organizations it supports because it has not defined what form a strategic input should take, a lack of capability within the function and an absence of management support.

The paper explains how organizations can overcome these obstacles and gives examples of how two very different types have integrated business and people strategies, and measured functional impact.

This paper seeks to explore the reasons why many organisations do not evaluate the effectiveness of their reward policies and practices, examines the approaches used by those organizations which do evaluate, and develops a model of evidence‐based reward management which describes how evaluation can take place.

The paper draws on a study of why organisations do or do not evaluate reward and an examination of what organizations taking evaluation seriously were doing about it. The study was based on a survey of 173 reward and HR practitioners and 13 case studies.

The survey found that only 46 per cent of respondents carried out a full evaluation. Other surveys have established that an even lower proportion evaluated. Those organisations which evaluate reward do so because they recognise that it is necessary to obtain value for money from their considerable expenditure on pay. Those who do not evaluate offer a number of reasons, but the most important was lack of resources or time. It was established that while an evidence‐based approach was desirable there was no set pattern of conducting an evaluation.

Information about the evaluation practices of the case study organisations and the concept of evidence‐based reward management as an approach to evaluation provide guidance to practitioners on how they can measure the effectiveness of their reward policies and practices.

The paper extends the pioneering research of Corby et al. to develop new insights into the process of reward evaluation.

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the accuracy and effectiveness of screening tools and subsequent interventions in the detection and treatment of intimate partner violence (IPV) in non-high-risk settings (defined here as those in which routine IPV screening does not take place in the UK, such as in general practice).

Rapid review as defined by Grant and Booth – it is used under time or financial constraint to assess what is known using systematic review methods. Medline, PsycINFO, Embase and Cochrane Library databases to May 2019 were searched for “intimate partner violence” and synonyms plus terms related to screening and interventions. A Medline update was performed in August 2020. Data were extracted with the help of a predesigned tool and were synthesised to answer the two study aims. Data were mixed quantitative and qualitative.

The search yielded 10 relevant papers on screening (6 on accuracy and 4 on effectiveness) and 13 on intervention. These showed evidence of the effectiveness of simple screening tools and of subsequent interventions. However, the evidence was insufficient to support a change in UK guidelines which currently do not recommend their use outside of current high-risk environments.

Clinicians outside of high-risk areas should consider the use of some IPV screening tools and interventions but only within research protocols to gather further evidence.

WE all scan the advertisements for librarians in The Times Literary Supplement and other journals every week, and we might be forgiven for inferring from them that there is a dearth of those who, by a curious inversion, are asked for as “A.L.A's or F.L.A's.” In contradiction, it would appear that about 1,500 youngsters are trying to enter the profession by way of the Entrance Examination every year. Youngsters beginning life, especially girls, do usually prefer or are constrained by their parents, the cost of living, and the scarcity of lodgings, to start in their home towns and still to live at home.. Higher in the scale the whole position is tangled in various ways. Many of the entrants fall by the way; commercial pay exceeds municipal and other library pay; more find the work uncongenial, as library work certainly is except to those who are book‐lovers, have a strong social sense, and, in the best cases, a flair for publicity and business administration. Others marry and leave, although some stay on with the ring on the third finger of their left hand. Thus, when maturity is reached, only a relatively few, even amongst the mature, have become chartered librarians and, fewer still, Fellows—as is natural seeing that the fellowship is a much more severe test nowadays and only much love and industry can achieve it. This position is even worse in some other branches of the municipal service; our salaries do not draw the best of the young folk permanently and many a Treasurer's office, to take one branch only, is complaining of want of good recruits. Those of our good ones who do remain do so because of the work and not the pay. Authority has always known this, from the day when Gladstone opined that working in the British Museum was so delightful that it was incredible that the workers wanted any pay at all. Chief librarians today have been most unfairly neglected by the salary negotiating bodies who have dealt generously with several other kinds of chief officers in the local services.