The biggest impact on your people’s mental health? It’s you…
By Katie Jacobs We’ve all heard the adage ‘people don’t leave organisations; they leave managers’. It’s a bit of a cliche, but it’s nonetheless true. Individual leaders and managers have a huge impact on people’s wellbeing. In fact, according to a recent study of workers across 10 countries by The Workforce Institute at UKG, managers […]
Protecting wellbeing in the public sector and blue light services
By Katie Jacobs Those who choose to work in the public sector are often driven by a strong sense of purpose and a desire to help others. But while having purpose and meaning is linked to wellbeing and positive emotions, those who spend their lives looking after others can sometimes neglect to show themselves the […]
Banking in the age of uncertainty: how can human leadership make a difference?
By Richard Nicholson In the ever-changing world of banking, leaders have a crucial role to play. By prioritising their teams and fostering a people-first culture, they can drive productivity and help navigate uncertainty. But can it really be that easy? We all know the challenges faced by leaders are plentiful: reducing costs, preparing for long-term […]
Five ways to balance performance and wellbeing
By Katie Jacobs It would be hard to find an organisation today that doesn’t at least ‘talk the talk’ on the importance of wellbeing. After all, there’s no shortage of evidence that wellbeing IS a business issue. Take research from Deloitte, for instance, that found for every £1 employers invest in supporting their people’s mental […]
Creating the conditions for inclusive conversations
By Katie Jacobs What do leaders need to focus on to succeed in today’s challenging work environment? According to 90% of HR leaders surveyed by Gartner, it’s not finances, strategy or operational excellence – although we aren’t for a moment suggesting you completely forget about these. It’s the more human aspects of leadership that make […]
Keep your ‘human’ switched on throughout the employee life cycle
By Emily Murton I’m sure most of you have heard of the ‘employee life cycle’, otherwise known as the ELC. Every interaction, every touch point, and every stage of this cycle contributes to an employee’s perception of the organisation, and as leaders, we must consider how to humanise each stage to ensure continued motivation, performance […]
The future of leadership? It’s human
Are human skills becoming obsolete? With the increasing pace of technological advancement through AI tools such as ChatGPT, it’s not an outlandish question to ask. AI can now write essays on almost any topic, unpack complex ideas, solve tricky maths problems… and even construct jokes (admittedly, not very good ones). Despite these innovations, many of […]
Finding team flow: It’s all about positive human connection
How much time do you spend online? If you’re the average ‘global internet user’, then it’s almost seven hours per day, according to 2022 research. And for people who spend the majority of their working days looking at a screen, that might even seem like a conservative estimate. While technology is undoubtedly a force for […]
The three conditions that create TeamFlow
“If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.” That quote from American businessman Henry Ford might be almost 100 years old, but it remains as relevant today, if not even more so. With many of us having settled into a hybrid way of working – according to Accenture’s 2021 Future of […]
The secret to high-performing teams: it’s flow
Here’s a little nudge to shake up how you think about developing and investing in some very important people: your team. Traditional team building and development approaches tend to be based on a deficit model (focusing on what’s lacking), strictly hierarchical and with a belief that creating high-performing individuals is what will add up to […]
Ten micro-actions to boost your wellbeing in 2023
At the start of a new year, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by messages around creating a ‘new you’. While aiming to make positive changes to our lives is not in itself a negative, the fact is that many of us set unrealistic goals, setting ourselves up to fail. We try to achieve too much, […]
A guide to inclusive cultures
By Renay Lloyd Integrating strengths-based processes into talent management systems can help companies manage biases and drive innovation and inclusion. At Bailey & French, we’re seeing more of our clients across the public and private sectors wanting to allocate more time, resources, and budget, to building inclusive cultures – and rightly so! Diverse and inclusive […]
Why now is the time to priortise your own wellbeing
How are you? It’s a question so many of us brush off with a simple ‘fine’. But with the year fast coming to a close, a period where many of us can feel burned out, let’s take the time to consider how we really are, by creating the space to focus on our own wellbeing. […]
Building purpose-led leaders and organisations
Organisations are not islands in society. The decisions leaders make and the behaviours people display can have profound impacts. Picture a stone being dropped into a calm pool, causing a ripple effect that grows ever larger: this is the effect a company can have within its community. Responsible businesses and leaders recognise this and strive […]
Creating cultures of inclusive leadership
When it comes to creating inclusive organisations, leadership really matters. According to 2020 research published in the Harvard Business Review, what leaders say and do makes up to a 70% difference as to whether someone reports feeling included at work. And individuals that feel included are more engaged, motivated and productive – enabling people to […]
The real cost of not engaging with your people
By Oriana Knopf The great thing about the topic of employee disengagement gaining traction again – most recently rebranded as ‘quiet quitting’ – is that it puts the focus back on the support that employees and leaders really want – and need. In 2013, Gallup estimated that employees who are actively disengaged cost the US […]
Finding flow in a hybrid world
Work is a thing you do, not a place you go. That phrase has become more meaningful to many of us over the past couple of years, as those with location-agnostic roles (jobs that can be done from anywhere with a decent wifi connection) have moved from office-based working to home-working… and back again. Most […]
The power of being yourself at work
Do you feel like you can be yourself at work? Considering that over the course of our lifetime, the average person spends 84,365 hours working, it’s an important question to ponder. If you’re unable to show up as your authentic self, that’s 9.6 years you spend pretending to be someone you’re not. Not only is […]
How to face the future with confidence
If there’s one thing many of us have been in short supply of over the last couple of years, it’s confidence. The world we live in has been so volatile and so uncertain – a pandemic, a war on European soil, an unstable British government and now a probable looming recession – that looking to […]
Should I stay or should I go now?
By Anthony Fitton So, the great resignation continues… and with it the great regret – with many returning to old roles and others moving on too quickly. Then there are those who remain but are feeling a bit stuck. Either way, there’s a big cost to businesses: recruitment and onboarding, loss of productivity and of […]
How a focus on human strengths can boost productivity
In the UK we work hard… very hard. According to a study by the TUC, we work the longest hours in Europe: 42 hours per week compared to Germany’s 40 hours, France’s 39 and Denmark’s 37.7. That all adds up to two extra weeks of work a year. But despite logging that additional time, we […]
What does human leadership really look like?
By Holly Holm-Powell “The shift from survive to thrive depends on an organisation becoming, and remaining, distinctly human at its core. This isn’t just a different way of thinking and acting. It’s a different way of being.”Deloitte, 2021 Over the past couple of years, our leaders and managers have really had to step up and […]
Why you can’t have performance without wellbeing
For the last two years, we have been living through a health crisis. The coronavirus pandemic has brought home to many of us just how fragile and precious our physical health – and the health of our loved ones – is. It has also taken its toll on our mental health, whether through anxiety about […]
