Katie Jacobs

Top tips for aspiring HR directors

2020-12-14T10:50:00Z

HR leadership can be a lonely place. You are the confidant to the organisation and coach to the exec, but often no one plays that role for you. Focusing on your own development and building a supportive network are key. To help address these challeng...(read more)

Leading through crisis: Avoiding top team burnout

2020-11-17T10:54:00Z

The last nine months have been tough on everyone, with our experiences of the pandemic and lockdowns being highly personal. Those on the frontline, whether in healthcare or other essential roles, have been putting themselves at risk, day in, day out,...(read more)

Today’s HRDs are working far beyond the people agenda

2020-10-09T11:22:00Z

The way we work has changed almost beyond all recognition in the last six months. But even before the pandemic profound societal, economic and technological shifts were impacting the world of work. Any change to the world of work is by its very natur...(read more)

Making sure 'hybrid' working is inclusive

2020-09-07T09:44:00Z

Coronavirus has brought on history’s largest ever remote working experiment. At the peak of lockdown, some 20 million people were working from home in the UK (pre-COVID only about 1.7 million UK workers classed themselves as home workers). As p...(read more)

Crisis as catalyst: a Covid-19 leadership conversation with Rupert McNeil and Peter Cheese

2020-05-20T15:34:00Z

‘Never let a good crisis go to waste’ is a phrase we are hearing with increasing regularity in discussions around the longer-term impact of the coronavirus crisis. This may make it a slightly hackneyed, but it doesn&...(read more)

HRD priorities during Covid-19: Part two

2020-05-01T11:22:00Z

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a blog on HR director priorities during the coronavirus pandemic, based on my conversations with CHROs one-on-one and in small groups. Things are moving so fast currently that two weeks could as well be two months. Whe...(read more)

HRD priorities during Covid-19

2020-04-16T09:17:00Z

In all those prediction pieces published in December 2019, not one predicted this. Our world has been turned upside down by the coronavirus pandemic. Organisations and leaders have been forced to shift gear and priorities rapidly and radically. In th...(read more)

Moving from HRD to NED: Top tips

2020-01-17T09:45:00Z

If you’re in a senior HR executive position, you may be considering taking on a non-executive directorship (NED), either to help strengthen your skills in your day job, add variety, or because you have a long-term plan of moving into a portfoli...(read more)

Five hopes for people leaders in 2020

2020-01-06T21:54:00Z

If the last few years in politics has taught me anything, it’s that there is absolutely no point predicting anything. So throw those 2020 predictions pieces out the window. Here are some things I hope – not predict – will happen in...(read more)

Organisation design in the future of work: Keeping it human

2019-11-25T09:19:00Z

In thinking about the impact of technology on the future workplace, it’s a standard response to express concern about a potential lack of humanity and a dystopian, machine-driven future. But at a recent HRD breakfast discussion looking at organ...(read more)

Putting people and culture at the heart of corporate governance

2019-10-31T16:40:00Z

When I returned to the world of HR after two years in the non-HR wilderness, many of my former contacts asked me what had changed about the profession in my time away. My answer: materially not that much, but what had shifted hugely was the context. ...(read more)

How to network

2019-10-25T07:53:00Z

First things first: very few people actively like networking. Even those of us who are naturally good at it don’t joyfully bounce into a room full of strangers, thinking ‘great, these are friends/colleagues/clients I haven’t met yet...(read more)

Developing skills for the 21st century workplace

2019-10-08T13:48:00Z

There’s no shortage of data telling a story around a skills mismatch between employers and the labour force. The last annual (2018) CBI/Pearson report on skills and education found that two-thirds of employers fear there will be a lack of suffi...(read more)

Corporate governance and culture: Moving beyond box ticking

2019-09-19T16:38:00Z

Cliches become cliches for a reason, and ‘culture eats strategy for breakfast’ is one such example. As experts within the people profession, you will know culture is multifaceted; that it is hard to define, harder to measure – but ...(read more)

Executive pay can’t exist in a vacuum: RemCos need broader people expertise

2019-08-21T00:01:00Z

Few would argue HR doesn’t have a leading role to play in setting reward strategy for an organisation’s broader workforce. But at executive levels it can be a different story, with decisions over top pay led by remuneration comm...(read more)