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One Smart Cookie! That’s what your performance management system has gotta be to deliver on it’s promise. Organisations are complex. Culture even more so. Individuals are motivated differently. Customers and clients needs vary by business. No economic engine works the same. Your Performance Management System has to be one helluva smart cookie to be able deliver […]

More and more we are seeing the emergence of Good Business.  Businesses who want to do things differently to the norm and make a difference to society  It is heartening.  But what constitutes being a Good Business? Here are a few points to consider: That Good Business Feel Most HR professionals get that certain ‘feeling’ […]

The Net Promoter Score is a measure used in marketing. It is a way to measure customer satisfaction based on an answer to one simple question “How likely is it that you would recommend this company or product to a friend or colleague?”

Will it be Workday, Success Factors, Peoplesoft, MHR or the new kid on the block, Traversal? It’s crucial to choose carefully. Technology is after all just a tool and will not deliver the strategic people agenda by itself.

Before you plan a transformation, you may need to provide some practical support and expertise to your HR Team to ensure they achieve the success that you require. Our 5 step framework of proven methodology gives the team something to hang their hat on.

A recent study conducted by the Kellogg School of Management found that in a typical meeting consisting of between 6 to 8 people, three people do 70% of the talking. When you run a team, who have a combination of hub, field, remote and office-based workers, it’s even more important to address this.

If you want to build a strategy for your company read on. Rather than stuffy strategy sessions held in beige hotel rooms, we facilitate highly interactive and creative sessions such as beginning with a walk in our client’s shoes. That certainly sets the client-centric theme.

The Smart Working Revolution, a business that is intent on helping to solve the problem, is planning a UK wide tour of seminars aimed at CEO’s and HRDs of organisations who want to attract the best candidates by offering what they are calling Smart Working Options.

Sometimes you need to pinpoint potential within. Seeking out those within your current workforce who display ‘purpose’ rather than skill? When I say ‘purpose’, I mean that they have the wherewithal to ‘Learn Fast’, embrace change and influence senior management with their new, brainy, creative ideas.

You see yourself as a Commercial Leader, but you are also a Caring Leader. You recognise that when an employee, walks into your office at the start of a working, they don’t suddenly take leave of their families, their responsibilities, their passions and hobbies.

When implementing a flexible and remote working strategy, the question is often raised about how the performance of remote workers can be effectively managed. The cream of the crop adopts a management by objectives approach as opposed to over observation so that they maintain trust.

We know that successful flexible and remote workers have heightened levels of self-discipline and self-motivation. They are masters of online communication, task orientated and results driven. Their customer service skills are second to none whatever the level of role and their values match yours.

In my experience compassion indeed, wins trust and loyalty. There is a motivational component to compassion, wanting to help people who are in a bit of a pickle – whether that is employees, customers, suppliers or communities.

These days, Onboarding Programmes begin before the start date. The way that learning is delivered to the new employees is tailored to meet the needs of the learners so a critical step in the process of the pre-start date should be to identify the starters preferred learning style ahead of the game.

It’s clear that companies looking to implement flexible and remote working onshore need to build a culture that is compatible with their business strategy. At the heart of this culture will be a relationship built on trust.

Workers commuting for only 30 minutes each way spend a massive five days of their life each year getting to and from the office but losing the commute saves more than just time.

According to research by our friends at Powwownow, 70% of workers say that offering flexible working makes a job more attractive to them. In fact, 40% of people would choose flexible working over a pay rise!

A study with a pilot group of remote workers and a control group of office workers over a ten month period was conducted. The remote workers were 13% more productive than the office-based workers.

Simple as that.

Home working Pioneers are creating a competitive advantage in their markets, and the gap between these bold forerunners and those businesses that are lagging is set to grow wider over the next couple of years.

Research has shown that many workers value flexible working over a pay rise! The number of CEO’s who are taking the opportunity to reflect on this and to include flexible working options into roles wherever possible is gaining ground.

Support Remote Working by encouraging your team to work from home or a hub. There are so many benefits of home working we are championing this as an organisation and can help you to adopt this productive way of working too.

Line managers are often the ones who object to home working, and this is because they don’t know how to adjust their style to that of managing homeworkers. We can help coach your team leaders and managers in the effective art of managing remote workers

Apparently, 43% of adults spend less than ten minutes a day walking. That’s nearly half of the UK who have a 60% higher risk of premature death compared with those who exercise regularly

CEO’s and HR Directors see the magnificent benefits that can be achieved from remote working such as a more effective candidate attraction net, an increase in productivity and reduction in overheads.

I read recently that if your Learning Framework links to your company strategy and targets specific needs and skills of employees, you are ten times more likely to be a high-performance learning organisation. So, they say!

Here is how I project managed the renovation of an old tin miners cottage. I found that just like all the other transformation projects I have worked on, it was all about people. Here’s what I learned in the Summer of 2016.

Back in 2011, Microsoft surveyed more than 4,000 workers in financial services, manufacturing, professional services and retail/hospitality industries who supported social collaboration technologies and remote working options. Employees were asking for this new way of working, but not that many UK businesses were providing it at that time.

To be successful every organisation needs engaged, dedicated employees who are committed to the purpose of the business and aspire to providing the best service to customers. Engagement, they say, leads to better business performance.

A few months ago, we visited Palm Island – one of the most gorgeous places on this earth. Each morning I had the pleasure of watching a kite surfer set off with his backpack to surf the seas in font of our rustic cottage. It fascinated me. Apparently, it is one of the fastest growing hobbies […]

Laughter creates a connection between people. It’s a simple truth that when someone finds you funny, or you find them funny, it bolsters the relationship. It’s just one way that we can get people connecting at work, and in the run up to Children in Need, I give you Sir Terry Wogan as my example. 

If you are still plodding along with annual appraisals, wasting time discussing things that happened 12 months ago, it’s time to consider how can you get real time performance data direct to your individual employees so that they can take accountability for their own performance.

I work with companies to help them establish ways of improving performance and invariably HR comes under the spotlight too.  Ulrich introduced us to the concept of the business partner some years back as part of his wider HR model. He acknowledges that things have moved on yet many businesses religiously continue to use it […]

The most important lessons that I have learned in life and business have come from facing really tough challenges or making mistakes. Mistakes are a lesson in wisdom, part of life’s rich pageant – so long as we learn from them. As Albert Einstein once said, Anyone who has never made a mistake has never […]

Planning to redesign your business operating model to align to a new strategy? Maybe it’s a digital strategy that will change how customers will do business with you and therefore how your workforce needs to be organised. Whatever type of change you are planning, you’ll need to feel confident that you get the new structure […]

“HR needs to be less plonky (take itself less seriously) and be more creative to engage more people” – Adam Ferrier. 

The organisational development and change management sector is strewn with different models and each has their own strengths and weaknesses – but here at The Change Directors we know that one size does not fit all. Not long ago, I had a conversation with a wonderful HRD who asked me if I had a preferred […]

Culture is important when you are implementing a new strategy. Before you begin implementing your new plans it pays to review your current culture and how it needs to change to create a high performance culture that ensures your new strategy works well. A simple culture questionnaire that identifies the current culture is a starting […]

Last week we started the debate about EQ, Click here to read Part 1 if you missed this. The EQ aspirin Time is often wasted on unresolved conflict with negative emotional responses serving little or no purpose in terms of the core outcomes of your business or goals. However, high-EQ thinkers resolve conflict quickly and […]

It should be one of the hottest topics in 2016! The key to successful interactions with people – relationships, if you like – can be simply described with the following metaphor.

I’ve been reading a book recently by Marty Newman called Emotional Capitalists. It’s a good read and in it he suggests that Optimism is perhaps the number one quality that will help you develop greater success as a leader. I like that philosophy.

When I first started work, the tea trolley delivered hot tea and snacks right to your desk, twice a day.  Its arrival around 10.15am was preceded by a cry from its driver, Ethel, ‘I’ve mashed’.  Mashing is an East Midlands term hijacked from the brewing industry to describe the alchemy of ‘properly’ made English Tea. […]

I have been working recently on pulling together a brilliant new people strategy for a really exciting company. I worked with a wonderfully talented HR professional and she very kindly posted a LinkedIn recommendation about little old me.

Amazon announced last week that it will take on 2,500 new permanent staff in the UK this year, bringing its total number of UK employees to 14,000. Proof that Omni Channel done well creates jobs.

It takes a confident long term digital strategy and some well thought through risks, investment in business technology architecture and an obsessive focus on customer needs to make omni-channel work for your business. You will also want to focus on putting ‘Digital’ at the cultural heart of the business.

Digitisation is transforming our world. Retail, Telecoms and Utilities are way ahead of the game, whereas some industries have started 2016 playing catch up. Did you miss the boat? Let’s hope not, because it is crucial to your future success.

The status quo is not an option in today’s digital world, and given that you and your business are facing significant change, The Change Directors have devised this 5 step process that you can follow in all types of business transformation including digital change.

Omni channel gives the customer a choice of how it wants to do business with your company and might jump from one channel to another during one transaction, opting for a different type of service at different times. Traditional multi channel operations, technology, employee skills and behaviours cannot provide this different type of service.

Businesses embarking on a digital agenda are finding it devilishly difficult to recruit talent who have successfully completed Omni-channel transformation. While the online retail, distribution and utilities giants have enabled the development of a few digital guru’s finding them is like finding gold dust and the experienced ones are expensive to hire.

There used to be endless arguments about centralised and decentralised HR, but in the digital age I am not sure the traditional models work. High specialisation, rigid departments, chains of command and narrow spans of control will not foster the collaborative, commercial customer-focused approach that digital business demands. HR teams still have to provide basic services such as recruitment, L&D, administration, reward, employee engagement and change management, but are there better ways to do this?

I am a serial interim. I like the mixed bag of variety, autonomy and flexibility and the chance to meet new people, learn about new products and cultures and share some of the lesson I have learned in business. So I was delighted to hear recently that I am a part of the new ‘gig economy!’

There’s a buzz phrase I am hearing everywhere at the moment – it’s ‘Design Thinking’. Design thinking starts with the customer and asks you to empathise with their needs. It helps focus all aspects of the business on understanding and articulating what the future customer experience needs to look like and is being used for everything from product design to technology solutions that enable the customer journey.

It’s that time of the year when sickness absence tends to rise for a variety of reasons. Coughs, colds, flu, general demotivation, SAD – it’s an expensive time for your business.

What is omni-channel, and what does it mean for your workforce? Let’s cut through the jargon.

Andy Dickinson is a producer, director, writer and business coach. He uses the techniques learned by actors to help business leaders to give effective and inspiring talks and speeches.

It’s no longer the case that people are your most important asset. It is, however, the case that the RIGHT people are! So how do you attract the best in in-class in the digital age?

Businesses that have been set up by Entrepreneurs are often a target for Acquisition. By design, they have an embedded culture that is strong and linked to the Entrepreneurs personality and preferences. It’s a sort of unique DNA. A lot of acquisitions fail because not enough attention is paid to how that DNA will integrate into the culture of the acquiring company.

On my digital transformation travels I keep hearing the term VUCA. We live in a ‘VUCA’ world apparently. So what is VUCA?

A very sensible person once said, “The role of a strategist is to see the business not as it is – but as it can be”. Whatever your vision, I’ll bet it involves some ‘people’ matters.

If you are still plodding along with annual appraisals, wasting time discussing things that happened 12 months ago, do yourself a favour and ditch it.

Gone are the days of HR playing catch up once a business strategy has been agreed. The business Leaders of today demand an HR Leader who gives them advice in advance of them starting to build business strategies for growth or improvement.

The world of work is changing radically as the digital age continues its creep through society. Data is everywhere we look. Technology is ever improving. Digitally empowered customer service is the norm. The focus is on personal engagement. It is changing the way we run our businesses and our society.

If you are implementing and embedding change into your organisation then you need your Human Resources Team to be equipped with the skills to support the transformation. This may mean that before you begin transforming the business you will need to transform the HR team.

Take a look at your staff survey questions. Do you ask employees what they want from the company to help them do a better job? Here are our top four factors to consider.

Cate Connolly, Universal McCann London said “The digital revolution has not just arrived, it has well and truly settled in”. She’s right of course. It has been settling in for the last 70 years or so…

I came across a new type of book for kids the other day that got me thinking about how some of the digital advances that we see in publishing, education and entertainment will be reflected in business.

I read a good article by Josh Bersin from Delloitte the other day. It’s worth 20 minutes of your time as it charts why he believes there is a shift from talent management to people management.

I frequently leave companies. Don’t be shocked. I am an interim consultant and my job is to transform businesses and teams, so the Leaving Process is all par for the course.

Background The company was in a period of transformation, acquired by a global technology business as an opportunity for growth. The parent company invested in the organisation and a new reward structure to help drive performance and transformation was clearly required. Ruth Gawthorpe and her team designed, implemented and improved the Benefits Strategy to meet the organisational […]

I was explaining to a prospective client how we had transformed a failing operation into a brilliant one within 5 months. “You achieved a lot in a very short space of time”, she said. “How did you manage that”?

It’s frustrating –  the amount of complaints I hear about the annual appraisal round.  People protest its uselessness at all levels in business….but don’t make changes. Let’s face it; it’s time to axe the Appraisal. It irritates your managers and demotivates your people, it’s time consuming and costly and don’t get me going on that bell […]

Omni-channel transformation, the Internet of Things, Big Data and Digitisation are the buzzwords flying around at the moment. Digital attacks traditional ways of doing business and some people find that difficult to get their heads around. A quick heads up for HR.  Digital is on the attack.  Will you lead it or surrender to it? […]

It was Jack Welch who said, “Change before you have to.” Yet for many businesses it takes a demand from the client, downturn in profit, the loss of a major customer or some sort of crisis to force them to make changes. Well, now they will have to change because digitisation is attacking every industry………on […]

Granny Gawthorpe’s musings on Grandparental leave There’s been a lot of talk about Grandparental leave recently and it remains to be seen whether the government will allow grandparents to share up to 18 weeks unpaid parental leave. It got me thinking though….given the UK’s ageing workforce maybe we should do something for grandparents, and wouldn’t […]

If you are planning transformation or growth in your organisation, your changes will invariably impact the business culture. Today, I will share with you a few important things about culture that you should consider when planning the change programme: If you don’t drive your culture it will develop itself anyway and you and your Leadership […]

When talking about keynote speaking, Itay Talgam, the revered conductor, said “But I would recommend the opposite. I would recommend keynote listening instead of keynote speaking.” These words stopped me in my tracks. If you are a Leader they should stop you in your tracks too. The best leaders that I have worked with have […]

If you can’t explain it simply – you don’t understand it well enough.  So said Albert Einstein, and certainly his wise words hold true for me when leading change.  Today, I share a couple of my musings on the subject. Firstly, ensure that you and your senior team thoroughly understand the rationale behind your proposed change […]

CEO’s face it! Your HR team is just a reflection of your leadership style. If your HR team isn’t performing well, take a look at your own strengths and weaknesses and how they drive the way that your HR Team works. You have the power to change and improve both. The relationship between the HRD […]

The economy is recovering, businesses are planning growth and, naturally, the recruitment market is hotting up. It follows that your company’s Employer Brand and its unique attraction proposition (UAP) is becoming a more important factor in appealing to and retaining the best talent. It is time to get magnetic! Consider what the unique characteristics are […]

Businesses don’t improve by chance – they improve through change. That is why I love working with companies who want to transform their business, get better results, delight their clients and ensure their employees enjoy their jobs. What’s not to like?

If you are going through a period of growth in your company then it’s time to consider building an attractive benefits package to retain/recruit suitable employees, reward high performance and enable the organisation’s growth plans.

The other day, I read a piece of research posted by the Wall Street Journal and the iOpener Institute, and it really got me thinking. They shared some hard data.

In a nutshell, HR outsourcing is buying an HR Service (that you currently do yourself) from a third party. A huge range of tasks can be outsourced these days, including business process outsourcing, public sector services, contact centres, customer support and IT functions. HR is the new kid on the block. There are 4 good reasons to outsource HR Administration. Done […]

It’s a bit of a dry subject, but we really do need Root Cause Analysis when things go wrong so my advice is to train your people proactively. When the ‘proverbial’ hits we need to be ready to work out what went wrong, why it went wrong and how we can stop the problem happening […]

Brave HR Teams are adept at getting the best value from employees. They know just how to win hearts and minds and they have a knack of combining this with the ability to have a strategic influence over other business leaders. It’s a great approach, and using intelligent data is just one way that they […]

As the economy picks up, more and more frequently, clients are asking us to help them to develop an HR Team and service that can support business change to a high performance culture and growth. They talk about wanting a new Target Operating Model (TOM) for the HR Team. ‘What’s that then?’, I hear you […]

I work with companies helping them to reorganise, improve and grow.  Every time I go into a new organisation I have to quickly check out what makes the organisation tick, what is their DNA, what’s their entrenched culture. Just as we individuals are all wired differently so too are organisations, and mostly the cultural scene […]

I work with businesses that are going through change. When I first roll up my sleeves and begin working with the team, there are a couple of issues that I dive straight into. One is to check labour turnover levels as it’s the best indicator of staff satisfaction, and the other is to get involved […]

I’m going to keep this really simple. Assessment Centres are a really useful way of recruiting a large number of similar vacancies. I’ve been running them for years and I have penned my 15 top tips for organising them: Design your Assessment Centre so that you hire people who will deliver your business goals. You’d […]

When a business is going through change, (and let’s face it, when is a business not going through change) it’s crucial to pull together a staff engagement plan. Now, one of my favourite bosses really despised that term so I began to express it as Staff Satisfaction and he seemed a lot more on board […]

The Change Directors and Oliver Thompson Training get together to raise money to launch a Youth Cricket Team in Nottingham Oli Thompson and Ruth Gawthorpe run their own businesses, but they are also passionate about getting kids to enjoy sport.  Recently, Ruth’s local Cricket Club told her that they want to set up a Youth […]

Reducing Attrition in One Direction “It’s not that I’ve turned my back on them or anything, it’s just that I just can’t do that anymore because it’s not the real me.” Zayn, One Direction. Call it what you will. Attrition, Labour Turnover, Leavers! It hurts. When it is a small business with big profits, like […]

We in the HR fraternity don’t do ourselves many favours with all of the jargon that we introduce to describe activities that CEO’s view simply as a case of good people management. A case in point is that term -Talent Management (TM). Plainly put it’s a business plan about the people that an organisation needs […]

It’s been a strange old week for Cricket. The sad news that we have lost the “marvellous” cricketing legend Richie Benaud, Kevin Petersen still threatening to return to the England side and Barney Gibson, aged 19, cancelling his contract with Yorkshire and becoming the youngest first class cricketer to retire. Then, in the 152nd annual […]

I have worked with a few leaders in my time, and so today I thought I would jot down a couple of shared attributes that I have seen in the best….. and the worst! Building Relationships My favourite CEO (he knows who he is) had the knack of building great relationships; relationships that authorised his […]

Red Bull, the drinks firm, have apparently got a slide in their London office!  In August 2013, Nasa engineers reported having fun coaxing a rendition of ‘Happy Birthday To You’ out of the lonely, 2,000lb Curiosity Rover which had landed a year previously. In a previous role, I was responsible for running the annual raft […]

It’s a fact of life that no Business, Product or Process will perform forever without modification, redesign or change and it’s also true that if you are implementing and embedding change into your organisation then you need your Human Resources Team to be equipped with the skills to support the transformation. This may mean that […]

Brave HR moves that shimmy and shake up change management plans! In a recent article, I highlighted the 4 areas that I think make the difference between leading effective and ineffective change. It received some really great feedback and I was asked by an HRD to choreograph a planning workshop as her Team is about […]

  Here at the Change Directors we are passionate about Cricket.  We just love it! We follow it all over the world and we often have Sky Sports on in the background while we work so we can keep an eye on the beloved game.  Our passion extends to sponsoring the local Cricket Team, Beeston […]

Today I am taking a candid look at Performance Management (PM) and how you use it to inspire and lead your people. Performance Management takes a lot of stick and some of it is founded. However, I am amazed by the number of Senior Managers who critisise their systems but don’t make changes and it’s […]

  Performance Management and Appraisals have been taking a lot of stick recently yet I haven’t come across a really sensible replacement. Although the future for the traditional appraisal hardly looks that rosy, I wouldn’t advise throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Not just yet anyway! Instead, think about what’s worth keeping and change […]

Masterminding change, improving organisational efficiency and supporting successful growth through your people requires Brave HR. Here’s what Brave HR professionals do to help you achieve business goals: Help you drive achievement of the business goals, revenue and sales growth through people and a robust HR plan Recognise that Recruitment and Retention are still strategic heavyweights. […]

HR has always had critics but over the past year or so there have been some rather interesting “pops” at the HR profession. First we had Ram Charan who appeared to be making a career out of saying that the HR department should go – be split in to two – Admin and HR-LO!   […]

A new benefits strategy can revolutionise the way that your employees are managed, encouraged and incentivised. Yet many companies fail to recognise that if you get your Reward System right then Employees become much more focused on their own performance.  If staff know what they need to do to achieve business goals and, crucially, how […]

Sickness absence can have a devastating effect on organisations at this time of year. It’s not just the pain of paying out large amount of sickness pay, it’s also the possibility of missing targets and service levels, having to fork out on overtime. Then there is all the work sickness causes in return to work […]

In 2011 the Department for Work and Pensions asked Dame Carol Black and David Frost CBE to take a critical look at sickness absence in Great Britain. It was hardly a surprise when they identified that there are major gains to be made for employers from better management of sick pay. From April this year […]

If you have customer facing teams, then you will know that the Team Leader role is pivotal.  Lots of businesses realise this fact yet only a few make any real in-roads into ensuring that Leaders have skills that will get the best from individuals on their team and stimulate productivity – especially in the digital age! Some organisations […]

Do you want the way your Executive Team works together to improve? Do they have a growth mindset? Have they engaged the hearts and minds of their people behind the growth plan? This Festive Season instead of organising a boring Christmas Bash for your Exec Team in a mediocre restaurant, why not try one of […]

3 Questions the Savvy CEO will ask I firmly believe that when a business is planning growth, the CEO should ask a few questions of the Senior Executive Team. My experience has taught me that some Executive Teams need to find a way to work together more effectively and have a different business outlook if they […]

As an Organisational Development Expert, I help to build high performance cultures and often work with entrepreneurial companies who have plans to grow substantially.  The concern that the CEO often has in this situation is how to bottle and maintain the small company feel; the unique DNA that has helped to achieve success so far. […]

Leading Change The Change Directors have been involved in many Change Management Programmes and supported all different types of Leaders, some better at fronting change than others. A new client asked me which factors would result in a successful transformation programme. While not wanting to over simplify what can be a very complex and challenging process for […]

Clients are always fascinated that I have supported successful transitions of back office process work to offshore locations, in particular, India.  It’s as though the process is clouded in a little bit of mystique and I guess, because of the difference in culture between the UK and India, they are probably right. The rule to remember […]

Let’s face it; Recruitment is still a strategic heavyweight in any business because every Leader knows that a company’s growth is limited to its ability to attract enough smart people.  For every CEO, getting Recruitment right is crucial.  New starters must have the ability to do the job, fit the company culture and be potential [...]

Protection of employment rights during a transfer – known as TUPE – can be a minefield. Get it wrong and it can make your acquisition completely unprofitable, but with a little bravery you can seize the opportunity to vary employee terms and conditions for the benefit of everyone. TUPE expert Ruth Gawthorpe offers some useful […]

  Speak to my colleagues and they will tell you that I am always banging on about building High Performance Cultures (HPC). I am so passionate about HPC because the organisations that I work with that are really going places have High Performance Cultures in place already. The result is that they are delighting their […]

I’ve been fortunate enough to be involved in some really successful Change Programmes in my time but have also learned from my mistakes and successes along the way.​ We’re passionate about sharing lessons learned from those experiences. A few simple changes can help embed good transformation methods into your everyday management practices. Change should be […]

Organisational Development (OD) should be a constant, evolving process of change to match an ever-changing marketplace. If your business is a loss making you may need a one off big bang programme to set it back on track, but generally, it ought to be an everyday management task – not something that a team of […]

​​“I don’t know what they’re doin’ but they laugh a lot behind the……….” The lyrics from the 1956 Jim Lowe song, covered by Frankie Vaughan in 1957 and the delightful Shakin Stevens in 1981, describe the allure of a mysterious private club with a Green Door, behind which “a happy crowd” play piano and “laugh […]

There is a new phenomenon sweeping through the UK called “Glassdoor” that is set to profoundly change the way that businesses manage employee satisfaction if they want to retain the competitive edge in the jobs market. It’s a company reputation site where employees give feedback on the company; it’s culture, benefits and senior leadership.  Even […]

Building a high performance culture that’s people powered requires a concerted effort from today’s HR professionals. How can we approach it?  Measure what Matters HR measures used to consist of labour turnover, sickness days and number of vacancies filled or unfilled. While those measures are still valid at an operational level, if you want to […]

My husband, the lovely Mr Gawthorpe, and his team hiked the South Downs Way earlier this year. We walk a National Trail each year for charity and this year we raised money for our local cricket team. The trail stretched 101 miles, from Winchester to Eastbourne, and each day the team started at a pub […]

  Loss making The business was a loss making organisation that was acquired by the parent as an opportunity for growth. The parent invested in the organisation but in the difficult economy of 2008 – 2012, the company continued to make a loss and understandably the parent required that the financial situation had to be addressed and […]

Background The company was in a period of transformation, acquired by a global technology business as an opportunity for growth. The parent company invested in the organisation and a new reward structure to help drive performance and transformation was clearly required. Ruth Gawthorpe and her team designed, implemented and improved the Benefits Strategy to meet the organisational […]

The recruitment and Employment Federations Chief Executive, Kevin Green says: “Employers are going to have to work harder to attract candidates as the labour market booms and competition for talent hots up” Ruth and the team are experts in providing high volume recruitment solutions to companies in growth. High volume hiring requires a totally different skill set to […]

I was watching the Rugby last weekend. Coach, Joe Schmidt led Ireland to just their second Six Nations title in 29 years with a heart-stopping victory in France. The head coach’s wisdom and insight has proved a characteristic of his first Six Nations, and his intelligence this time led Ireland to force space around the tackle peripheries […]

It’s getting to that time of year again.  Once again, from the local parks to the magnificent Pride Park, home of Derby County, we will hear the cries of “Referee….Referee!” as the person in black struggles to keep order on the football pitch. The Referees Association have an excellent and in-depth Training Programme.  Did you […]

One in two UK companies use Assessment Centres to select the right person for the job because it is the best way of discovering what a potential employee can do as opposed to what they say they can do. How are the other 50% of businesses recruiting candidates who match the job and company culture? Perhaps a […]

Three generations of women will lead a 102 mile walk starting on Saturday, along the Cotswolds Way in support of Asthma UK’s Annual Fundraising Week. Lucy and Colleen Gawthorpe and Amelie Marples (aged 2) will don their walking boots and begin a trek with other members of the family and the local cricket team…. all the […]

Here at The Change Directors HQ we love watching TV Cookery Shows and we have become more than fascinated by the term – “deconstructing dishes”. It’s apparently a take on a saying coined by the French Philosopher, Jaques Derrida, and means taking food apart that are normally combined together in a dish and then plating […]

Here at the Change Directors HQ, we love watching TV Cookery Shows  and we have become fascinated by the term  –  “deconstructing a dish”.  It’s apparently a take on a saying coined by the French Philosopher Jaques Derrida and means taking apart foods that are normally combined in a dish and then plating them together […]

Here at the Change Directors HQ, we love watching TV Cookery Shows and we’ve become more than fascinated by the term heard so often  – that of “deconstructing a dish”.  It’s apparently a take on a saying coined by the French Philosopher, Jacques Derrida and means taking apart the foods that are normally combined in the […]

Here at the Change Directors HQ, we love watching TV Cookery Shows of all shapes and sizes and we have become more than fascinated by the term heard so often these days – that of “deconstructing a dish”. It is apparently a take on the term coined by the French Philosopher, Jacques Derrida and means taking […]