Welcome
Another busy month despite the holiday season being upon us. Maybe some of you have decided to stay in our phenomenal capital city that is London to watch some of the Olympics. We’ve been visiting clients, solving problems, writing HR policy for businesses up and down the country – but we’ve still found time to blog. This month we’re talking about Appraisals and Managing Performance. We’re also going to be blogging again in a couple of weeks so keep up with what we’re talking about right here. We welcome your views and experiences on any of our blog topics.
This month we meet Brenda Miles who joins the Team at DOHR as another HR expert, she brings with her a huge amount of frontline management experience with as well as other invaluable HR skills. We also talk about the Smartway Forward Conference where we will be speaking, that’s in September so not far away. Our HR news article this month focuses on making sure businesses are utilising the skills of their staff who are nearing retirement. Finally, please don’t forget to come and like our Facebook page where you can see our daily posts – we’d love some more comments, don’t be shy!
We’d be delighted to hear from you so feel free to email us at [email protected] or of course, you could let us know your views via Facebook or Twitter!
Donna
Meet Brenda Miles
DOHR is delighted to welcome Brenda to our growing team; Brenda joined us last month and brings to us her outstanding knowledge and HR expertise. Formerly part of the banking world, Brenda was responsible for overseeing large teams in operational and sales support functions with a truly “Hands-On” approach. Her experience lays in recruitment, training, managing redundancy and re-deployment.
We’re sure you will appreciate Brenda being on board, a real people person, with exceptional organisational skills, we’re excited for her to keep building on our strong client relationships.
Brenda tells us that one of the reasons she relishes her role in HR is that she particularly enjoys interacting with people and sorting out their problems. She likes to adopt a pro-active approach ensuring staff and employers are happy and understand what they need to do to perform.
Being in more difficult business times means that motivating staff is challenging. With her coaching skills, Brenda feels that one of the biggest motivators is keeping staff keen at work and making sure that they are enjoying the group of people they work with, after all, we ALL spend so much time at work this is paramount! As Brenda says, sometimes we have those daily work chores that are part of our working routine that may not always be interesting or challenging so having good relationships makes the days go quicker. Bonuses don’t often come along in times of recession so there is a need to focus on other aspects of what a business can offer staff which is not just in monetary terms. This could be in the form of communicating the benefits of training, learning “on the job” and gaining invaluable knowledge and experience, staff should understand that reward doesn’t just need to be financial.
Finally we asked Brenda what she finds challenging about HR. From time to time, Brenda says, the HR laws and regulations mean that staff and employers can feel that those in HR are not being flexible enough but these regulations need to be adhered to and it’s important to get across that HR is about doing the right thing by the company/and person while sticking to the law!
As you can see, we’re thrilled to welcome Brenda! You can call Brenda on 01923 504100 or email her brenda@dohr.co.uk
From Company Cars to Appraisal Skills
When we get asked what we do on a day to day basis, it’s hard to come up with a succinct answer because every day varies so much. Over this past month alone, we have completed a whole review on Company Car policy for one client and organised, attended and presented a two hour Appraisal Skills Training Course. These activities take time in planning and setting up, the car policy project is tailored to each businesses’ requirements so if this is something that you need, DOHR is able to set up your own policy in line with the regulations.
The Appraisal Skills course is aimed at Managers who want to understand exactly what is required for appraising their staff, how to do this in a fair way, dealing with poor performance and managing performance overall. It also teaches how to motivate and set goals for staff in an effective manner – the end result to increase employees’ input into your business.
Finally, we have completed a white paper on HR for SME’s which we hope will be available next month. The information is based on a survey which DOHR sent out at the beginning of the year. For further information on this, Company Car policy and Appraisal Training please contact DOHR on [email protected] or call 01923 504100
