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..