At first glance, you might not think that how you manage performance, or your performance appraisal process have anything to do with employee wellness. Yet enabling your employees to achieve a reasonable level of work-life balance as well as giving them the skills and tools needed to succeed at work, is an essential ingredient in creating great a workplace culture in which your employees thrive. Often, work-life balance issues have their roots in the level of expectations that management and leadership set for employees, and the subsequent way that employee performance in relation to those expectations is then managed.

A report from the CSIRO entitled 'Tomorrow's Digitally Enabled Workforce' outlined the workforce trends and workplaces of tomorrow. With Australia's shift away from the mining and resources sectors, the focus is now firmly set on generating an ideas boom through science and innovation. Jobs of the future are likely to be more flexible, agile, networked and connected, often remotely. Shared office spaces will double in number and the traditional office will become a thing of the past as workers become more mobile and independent. Companies may opt for staffing models which include a smaller number of core staff, with many other roles provided by the freelancer. In fact freelancing has already become a large (and growing) employment model in other countries, with Australia set to follow this growing trend. What do businesses need to consider when planning for the future of work?

Let's face it - having enough energy to get through the day is often an issue for many people. Most of us can't get the day started without a strong coffee (or two). A quick glance at the current diabetes epidemic also makes it obvious that a significant number of people are using sugar as their go to for an energy upswing during the day to keep going. At the other end of the daily equation, it's not unusual for many people to need a glass of wine to unwind before going to sleep. This cocktail of ups and downs wreaks havoc on your nervous system, as well as negatively impacting your immune system. However, there is another way to improve your energy and stamina levels, whilst at the same time reducing your stress levels.

Human beings are creatures of habit. Even when we know something doesn't really make a positive contribution to our lives, its hard to make a change. Ultimately, the only person you can change is yourself, and the best way to make positive changes is by implementing one small change at a time. Slowly but surely these small changes of habit will gather momentum and lead to an overall transformation that have the potential to completely rewrite your life. To that end, this year we're focusing on creating simple, one page 'Wellness Habit Sheets' that you can download and implement at work (and at home if you feel like it). We're inspired to help you create more wellness for yourself and your employees by offering these simple, yet powerful suggestions. Every month, a new Wellness Habit will be posted in the resources section of our site for you to download for free. Go ahead, make the change, feel better, be better, live better!

It's that time of year, when we peer into the crystal ball of the future of work, and assess what the experts believe will be the key HR trends and disruptions in the coming year. As technology continues to transform the way we do business at warp speed, HR Professionals are being called upon to keep up with an increasingly challenging rate of change. The saving grace of this seemingly exponential rate of change is that HR software providers are becoming more adept at creating intuitive, easy to implement solutions and upgrades, that make it simpler than ever for end users to reap the rewards.

It has been said that problems can not be solved from the same level of awareness or mindset from which they were created. One doesn't have to look very far to realise that humanity currently faces a lot of problems. Whilst this may have always been the case, and whilst it is also true that humans have become adept at solving some very complex problems, it is also fair to say that we are potentially facing one of the biggest 'problems' in modern history. What these problems require of us, is a new approach to leadership and a new level of awareness about how we can transform current issues into future possible solutions to navigate the future of work.

The employment gap for people with disabilities continues to widen in Australia. This is a puzzling situation, given that employers often struggle to find the talent they need. Yet there is a huge, untapped resource available. Nearly 500,000 people receive disability pensions in Australia. The United Nations reports much higher employment rates for people with disabilities in a number of other countries, some of which are much less prosperous than Australia. (e.g. Malawi at 92% and China at 85%). Many of you may not be aware that the Australian Government passed legislation last year to facilitate those with disabilities to join the workforce.

Gone are the days when e-Recruitment and Core-HR Software systems were just clumps of code that only store static data. Over the past 8 years, Human Resources systems have undergone a significant evolution - with the architecture of many of today's solutions virtually unrecognisable in comparison to their early noughties counterparts. Even the Payroll space has been radically transformed, despite the fact that many people thought it would take a lot longer for Payroll and Finance to go on-line and be cloud based in a mainstream manner. At the foundation of all these changes is the purpose of connecting both people and different systems together to create increased efficiencies and greater degrees of freedom. This level of innovation and automation has created inspiring levels of progress and change for many businesses, but what is in store during the next 5 to 10 years?