Bob books a holiday - there has to be a better way!

It's Saturday of the May bank holiday weekend and Bob has decided to plan his summer holiday. He and his wife Helen think about dates and start to look on the Internet. They find a package holiday that sound like a good deal and set about agreeing a date. There's two weeks availability starting 6 August, the kids are on holiday and they all get excited. They read the reviews, look at the videos and dream about relaxing in the sun. The only problem is that Bob has to check to see if any of his colleagues are off and then get his holiday forms signed. They can't do anything until Tuesday and even then Bob's not sure if Simon, who manages holiday booking will be in. Helen gets angry and an argument kicks off.

On Tuesday Bob bumps into Simon at the coffee machine. They talk about their weekends and Simon promises to look at the holiday spreadsheet after he gets out of his next meeting. The day goes by and both get involved in their work. It's only that evening that Bob realises Simon didn't get back to him. Helen has another go at Bob - why is organising a holiday always so stressful!

On Wednesday Bob makes a special effort to remember. Simon is at his desk, checks the spreadsheet and no one else has booked that time yet. However he's not too sure if Bob has enough days left to take the two weeks. What a frustrating waste of time! Bob heads back to his desk to find his holiday form which will prove it. After about 5 minutes of searching he finds it and he is right - he has 10 days left. Completing the form, he heads off to see his manager who needs to sign the form. Jane is busy but tells him to leave the form on her desk. She gets it back to him right at the end of the day - quicker than normal. Eventually Bob goes back to Simon on Thursday, form in hand. Simon takes one look at it and snaps that he will need to reconcile the form back to the spreadsheet so he'll get back to Bob - probably early next week!! Bob heads home expecting another ear bashing from Helen.

Aghhhhhh .... There must be a better way! There is .....

Saturday morning blog post.

It's Saturday morning, the sun is shining and I've just got back from one of my most creative daily events - the dog walk.

The three most common subjects for my dog walking time:

1. People issues
2. How to add even more value for our customers
3. Nothing - just trying to be aware (probably the most valuable)

Today's subject?  Being present in the sunshine and watching spring arrive.  The great thing about times like this is that ideas tend to just arrive.  Which brings me back to why I am writing a blog post - I had an idea about how to change the code behind the blog that would display it better in a Google search.  I've made the change so now it's time to wait for Google to do it's bit - could be hours, days or weeks so I'll just have to be patient!

5 factors underpinning employee engagement

I recently had lunch with Gary Miles from the Roffey Park Institute (www.roffeypark.com) discussing their work around employee engagemant.  Much of this was carried out with very large organisations but I am convinced that it is just as relevant to much smaller companies.  Just because a company is small it doesnt mean it's HR issues are any less complex.

Roffey Park carried out a research project last year to explore how key drivers affect employees in their day to day work and what the ultimate outcome is for organisations.  The drivers being considered were leadership, management, communications and culture (drivers of engagement) and the more tangible outputs of employee engagement such as discretionary effort, energy, well-being and productivity.

The findings highlight that at the heart of employee engagement is a two-way relationship between the employee and the organisation. Key factors identified were:

• The sense employees have that their relationships with their employers are fair and equitable, including the extent to which employees feel supported in their work.
• How employees relate to their job roles, including the pride they take in their work, their sense of delivering a valuable service and how stimulating their work is.
• Whether employees feel that they are respected and trusted and that their contribution is valued.
• Whether they believe they are communicated to well and trust their leaders.
• The quality of interpersonal relationships between colleagues, in how enjoyable and productive they are.  

If thsi is a subject close to your heart then I recommend that you take a look at their study - The Human Voice of Employee Engagement

Time to get an HR system that works for you ....

Institute of Directors article  '...... In January, a report by consultancy Mercer found that while 65 per cent of HR professionals across Europe, the Middle East and Africa perceived themselves as strategic partners to the business, just 15 per cent of the activities they carried out related directly to strategy. Despite claiming otherwise, HR professionals were spending most of their time on compliance and auditing, HR services and record-keeping-tasks just about as far from the centre of the organisation as it's possible to imagine. ....'

Read more - Does HR add strategic value?

By 2012, 20 percent of businesses will own no IT assets

In Jan 2010 Gartner predicted that '...by 2012, 20 percent of businesses will own no IT assets..' http://www.gartner.com/.  By this they mean that businesses will adopt cloud computing but they didn't state business size.

One year in - are we are we getting there?  Our experience with breatheHR suggeests that many more SMEs see the advantages of joining the cloud revolution with maybe 1 in 5 prospects telling us that they intend to have no office based servers.  A long way off 20% of all businesses but a good step in the right direction..

Brilliant at the basics of business 100:

Just had the IoD magazine hit my desk and out fell a neat little pocket book by Nicholas Bate (http://www.strategicedge.co.uk/) - 'Brilliant At The Basics of Business 100:'  I can't find a reference to it on his website but it's worth asking for a copy.  100 little pearls of wisdom to flick through as you wait on hold while making sales calls!

We have a 'DOH' list here at Centurion - things that are so obvious they can easily be forgotten.  I'm convinced that it never hurts to revisit the obvious.

Sending targeted email messages

If you do any level of email marketing you will understand the power of sending a targeted message. By knowing your customers, their characteristics and preferences, you can segment them to receive focussed messages.
Many companies can achieve this but in such a disjointed way that it is near impossible. Not only will a joined up approach make your marketing better it will save you time and money.
To achieve this you need five things;

1. an understanding of your customers and their preferences to work out the segments;
2. a way of recording and filtering by each segment;
3. an easy way to create a focussed email message for each segment;
4. a joined up way of merging the message and segmented contacts to send the email;
5. tracking to monitor activity and responses to your message.

Great examples of joined up systems are ACT! 2011 and Swiftpage or Sage CRM & Swiftpage. Use ACT! 2011 or Sage CRM to manage the segments & groups, then get Swiftpage to design, sent and track activity. Finally, Swiftpage records all activity back in ACT! or Sage CRM!