Head Light Communications Newsletter

Spring Newsletter 2010

In this issue

Now that spring has sprung, we see some seasonal return to optimism and a sense of new beginnings. According to the Recruitment and Employment Confederation, the labour market is regaining some its buoyancy signalling that employee engagement will once again return to the fore in many HR departments.

A recent HRM survey by the King's College HRM Board states that 6 out of the top 8 employee engagement strategies being pursued by UK PLC are in fact key Talent Management practices.

With Talent Management and Employee Engagement success so heavily reliant on effective Competence Frameworks, we lead with an article designed to challenge the value of many of them. Helpfully we also provide an overview of the tools you might use to create, evaluate, improve and implement them.

Continuing this theme, we have for you our third Good Practice guide. It covers the 10 important lessons learnt from developing and implementing Competence Frameworks.

In Other News, we announce our new customers in Suffolk Constabulary, Durham Constabulary and Hammonds LLP.

After months of work, we also announce the next and major release of our Talent Management software suite. This suite includes Employee Appraisals, 360 degree reviews, Career Planning, Learning & Development Tools and much more.

To accompany this new release we are also launching our new Webex on-line Pay-as-You Go training programme. This will cover basic training, interactive support and Master classes.

Finally, we would like to thank all of our loyal customers that have supported and worked with us over the past year. We are pleased to report that we have grown by over 80% in one of the toughest trading conditions ever. I guess we must be doing something right!

We hope you enjoy this newsletter and if you would like to discuss any items within it, please contact us on 0845 054 2364 or just 'reply' and we will contact you.

Is your competence framework a foundation for success?

With so much of what we all do depending on getting the competence framework right, find out what techniques you might use to create a competence framework that is up to the job.

Whether you choose to rely on an off-the-shelf framework or want the benefits of a bespoke model, we also show you how you could have the best of both worlds, without the pitfalls of either.

Read our article here.

Good Practice Guide: Competence Frameworks - 10 lessons learnt

Now that we have outlined some techniques you might choose to use, we offer you ten lessons as tips for your own work in this area.

It is based on our extensive work and research with public and private sector organisations, large and small.

Read our Good Practice Guide and its 10 lessons here.

In our next newsletter, we'll have another Good Practice Guide for you.

Retention & Engagement

According to a study published by the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) earlier this month, the UK job market is returning to health and continues to improve.

However, with the recovery still fragile, increasing pay to retain people is not a sustainable option. Engaging employees in your organisation around vision, mission and values has now become a basic prerequisite, but is it enough?

With research suggesting that a perceived lack of career opportunities is the 2nd most common reason for employees to leave their organisations, its time to focus on the 'selfish gene' as part of the engagement and retention strategy. Delivering on the 'What's in it for me here', is a sure-fire winner and their career in your organisation is most definitely common ground. If you were to ask a sample of employees from across the business, how many do you believe would be able to articulate any sort of career future? And does your HR team have the bandwidth to engage with each one to help them?

Talent Navigator is the perfect solution for those in graduate entry, middle management and technical roles to find ways to progress onwards in your organisation. Fully customisable with your role definitions, suggested paths and development options to address each 'gap', Talent Navigator enables your employees to explore and develop potential career paths for themselves. At appraisal time or at key points during their development programme, these career paths can be reviewed, revised and plans initiated to bring them about.

This is where career development and succession planning can come together. Find out more about Talent Navigator here or contact us via our Information Request page here to arrange an on-line demonstration of this uniquely powerful tool.

Other news:

Hammonds LLP - 360 degree reviews for Selection

Leading commercial law firm Hammonds LLP have selected Talent 360 from Head Light Communications.

Working in partnership with Inside Out, Head Light Communications has incorporated the Hammonds Competency Framework and behaviourally anchored rating scale to provide on-line 360 degree assessment of senior associates entering the promotions process. Inside Out are providing on-going coaching as part of this assessment and development programme.

Talent 360® - fast-becoming the 360-degree tool of choice...

Talent 360 is proving to be the 360 degree review tool of choice for the police. Both Suffolk and Durham Constabularies have recently signed up for Talent 360 in the past few months.

Thames Valley Police, having selected Talent 360 last summer, are enjoying some very positive feedback themselves. According to Alison Sercombe, their Leadership & Career Development Business Partner:

'Thames Valley Police is now using the Talent 360 product within its development menu. It has proved to be a much sought after tool with many officers and staff seeking to use the process as soon as they can.

We have completed a pilot group, some candidates on our Talent Management Scheme and an entire group of team leaders within one department. Our candidates on the national High Potential Development Scheme (HPDS) for police officers are about to start. So far it has proven to be a very useful investment.'

Talent® Release V4.0

We are pleased to announce the new release of our Talent® application suite. Now at version 4.0, this represents a major step forward in the capabilities of Talent Management software applications.

Talent® is fully customisable, instantly available as a true software-as-a-service platform and now with the ability to integrate with Learning Management, Content Management and Training Administration systems, your Talent Management challenges just became easier, quicker and less expensive to solve. Do ask our customers for yourself.

Rob Williams - New team member

We welcome Rob Williams to our consulting team. He is a Chartered Psychologist with 13 years’ experience working with a wide range of commercial and public sector organisations. He has extensive assessment delivery and design expertise, and, having worked at some of the UK’s leading test publishers, he also brings specialist experience in the design and validation of psychometric assessments.

Talent FQ - a benchmark in providing constructive feedback

The take up of Talent FQ has surpassed our expectations over the past few months and it is now a permanent and unique feature of our 360-degree feedback programme.

As part of the pre-course assignments, delegates assess themselves on-line using Talent FQ. During the workshops themselves, the scores and responses are explored and compared with industry norms, creating an unparalleled learning and benchmarking experience.

For those that volunteered their input outside of the course itself, we are now planning to come back to each and every one of you individually with your own score set and profile, as measured against our now extensive norm group.

Resources & Articles

The following resources and past articles are available as pdfs on our web site:

The Hawthorne Effect -- how to create sustained performance improvement.

Good Practice Guide - Writing better Assessments - a guide to create assessments that provide the most accurate picture of an individuals' strengths and weaknesses.

Getting Performance Appraisal right from the start - use these tools to take a fresh look at the issues and fix them from the start

Good Practice Guide - Selecting Reviewers - a guide for participants of a 360 degree review on selecting those to receive feedback from.

What your HR processes reveal about your culture - are you undermining your own best efforts to improve your culture?

The Importance of Personal Resilience & Mental Toughness - nature, nurture and assessment.

The Impact of Feedback - make the most of feedback and avoid the pitfalls.

Review Rating Scales Tool - select the scale that's right for your assessment.

Talent & Employee Engagement - you can't ignore the connection!

Are your Talent Management processes fair? - advocates and saboteurs!

Choosing your assessment strategy - which assessment instrument?

Keys & Eyes - designing 360 questionnaires that will really tell you something.

Positioning 360 - creating 'pull' from the business for a 360 feedback programme

Introducing a 360° Review - Keys to success

If this newsletter is the first you have seen, past issues can be found on our web site in Media Activity.