The Guide from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development is designed to help equip line managers with the skills and confidence to intervene at an early stage to prevent disputes from escalating to the point where the formal disciplinary or grievance procedures has to be used or an employment tribunal application lodged. It is based on joint research by the CIPD and the HSE involving interviews with managers and employees in the healthcare, finance, education, and local and central government sectors. It highlights the management behaviours that were identified by the research as being most important to help line managers to prevent and manage conflict in the workplace.
By Sir John Bourn
Drawing on 20 years experience as Comptroller and Auditor General, and head of the UK National Audit Office, Sir John Bourn gives his own account of the role and influence value for money auditing has in holding governments to account and in helping public bodies improve the ways in which they deliver services.
Ronald E. Riggio, Ira Chaleff and Jean Lipman-Blumen, Editors.
The book draws upon various disciplines, from philosophy, to psychology and management, to education, to define and redefine followership and its variety of meanings. It looks at the practice and research that promotes positive followership and examines when and how followers fail to rise to the challenge of active constituency.
This report from the Audit Commission presents a summary of findings about how well councils understand, engage with and focus on their communities. It also identifies what progress councils are making to address issues of equality and diversity. The general survey covers Corporate Health, Environment and Waste, Transport and Cultural and Recreational Services.
Read more on FOCUSING ON CITIZENS, USERS AND DIVERSE COMMUNITIES…
By Ram Charan
This book explores how to deepen an organisation’s talent pool to solve the succession crisis. The author addresses the pressing problem of a shortfall of leaders prepared to face the complexity of today’s challenges. When so many organisations struggle to find successors for their top jobs, and when so many leaders rise to the top but fail shortly thereafter, it’s clear there’s something wrong with succession and leadership development practices.
Local charters or contracts have the potential to give local people a much greater say in the running of local services. Pilots have shown that local people are often best placed to spot problems and come up with ideas to solve them, whether the issue is anti-social behaviour, litter, better services for young people or improvements to the local park.
The Beacon Scheme, introduced in 1999 for councils and in 2003 extended to other bodies including police and fire authorities, is designed to improve performance. The scheme aims to share good practice on improvement across local Government and provides for awards to authorities that demonstrate excellence or innovation in specified service themes.
By Amy Kates and Jay R. Galbraith
The book is a hands-on guide that provides managers with a set of practical tools to use when making organization design decisions. Based on Jay Galbraith’s widely used Star Model, the book covers the fundamentals of organisation design and offers frameworks and tools to help leaders execute their strategy. The authors address specific design challenges that confront most of today’s organisations including designing around the customer, organising across borders, solving the centralisation-and decentralisation dilemma and organising for innovation.
Good governance is essential for social enterprises to thrive and be sustainable, according to research from the Governance Hub and the Social Enterprise Coalition. The research, undertaken by the Open University into the governance needs of social enterprises, shows that a priority for the sector is to strengthen links with governance advisers and consultants working at local and regional levels and provide them with appropriate training and support.
Read more on FOR LOVE AND MONEY – GOVERNANCE AND SOCIAL ENTERPRISE…
The report from the Social Exclusion Task Force sets out a vision for a local system that improves the life chances of some 140,000 UK families at risk and helps to break the cycle of disadvantage. It outlines the key characteristics of a system that ‘thinks family’ at all levels, from governance to the frontline, where staff will be empowered to innovate and cooperate in response to whole family situations.
Read more on THINK FAMILY: IMPROVING THE LIFE CHANCES OF FAMILIES AT RISK…