The Devil is in the detail and he can have Demon mates
I am not fan of Halloween, but I couldn’t help the connection with this blog and the time of the year. However, the recent Woolworths underpayment story has highlighted how important it is to ensure that a company of any size is complying with its obligations under relevant Industrial Awards and Enterprise Agreements. I am by no means going to lay blame at any Woolworths employee responsible for the error, as I am sure there are numerous reasons the underpayments occurred. I also sympath...
October 31, 2019Keep it Simple, Listen and Converse
Over my career, I have been told a few times that I can be a little bit cynical about my own function - Human Resources. This is because I like to keep things simple, use plain English and avoid the trendy words and terms, which can become quite a funny form of Bingo!! For me, the HR or People and Culture function is all about driving a company’s competitive advantage through people. To some extent it also assists a company to comply with the myriad of regulatory frameworks. ...
October 15, 2019'Don't throw the Baby out with the bath water'
“Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water”. This saying is one of my favourite internal dialogues when listening to justifications of structural changes and reporting line changes in businesses. Don’t get me wrong, there is an important driver, often strategic, which provides the initiative to make changes in a workplace. How common is it to hear comments to the effect “we had this structure years ago and we changed it and now we are revisiting it again?” Of course, things ...
October 4, 2019Culture and Leadership
How often do we hear "...it’s a cultural thing"; "...the culture needs to improve"; "...they have brought the culture down", etc etc? How often do we see little action from those making these statements to actively rectify their throw away statements, about the perceived culture and leadership? In fact, it can often be one of those subjective statements we all understand, but lack the courage to really explore and actively try and change for the greater good. This is because ...
August 2, 2019Breaking habits and overcoming self-limiting beliefs.
Over the last few weeks I have been attending an extremely interesting Personal Development workshop series, about the breaking of habits and overcoming self-limiting beliefs that lead to procrastination. It has a strong focus on facing fears that are holding people back in their personal and professional lives and making braver decisions. The workshops have been delivered by DoctorZed and hosted by Regional Development Australia. DoctorZed (real name Dr Scott Zarcinas;&n...
July 22, 2019Why "Valere"?
As an introduction, I thought for our first Blog, I should explain in a little more about the meaning of our business name. Valere is the Latin word for “be strong”; the basis of the word valour and of course a synonym for courage and bravery. Throughout my journey in the People and Culture world, I have found the biggest obstacle for employees at all hierarchical levels is the tackling those uncomfortable people issues that affect company performance. It takes courage to p...
June 26, 2019 Posts 1-6 of 6 | Page