For those of you not already familiar with it, The HR Certification Institute recently released an interesting and inspiring book titled ‘The Rise of HR: Wisdom from 73 Thought Leaders.’ The book is an anthology of perspectives which highlight the key themes confronting business and HR professionals in enabling the growing trend of people as the primary driver of organisational success. The book is an essential read for HR professionals and business leaders who want to help shape the future of the workplace as it transitions through one of the most transformative moments in the history of HR.

As the financial year draws to a close in Australia, it’s a good time to pause and reflect on the first 6 months of 2015, and look ahead for the second half of the year and beyond. In Deloitte’s Global Human Capital Trends 2015 report, they highlight several HR trends in addition to the ones we mentioned in our Blog posts earlier in the year. Looking beyond the specifics of HR automation, L&D and small to medium business HR trends, the information in Deloitte’s report points to a more global HR shift across a few key areas. The report highlights ten trends which are ‘reshaping the nature of work and the ways HR Professionals, and the organisations they work for, approach talent management’.

The life of an HR Professional is full to overflowing with procedures, processes and tasks that take up a massive amount of time and energy to complete. This leads to multiple friction points in the lifecycle of managing employees and ensuring the efficient and effective management of day to day operations. However, it doesn't need to be this way. e-Recruitment and e-HR Software has the power to automate and thus alleviate the majority of the points of friction in your HR processes. This week's infographic illustrates how HR software can change your life for the better!!

When researching her new book on gender in the workplace, Avril Henry discovered a few crucial keys to creating equality in the workplace. The most significant of these, is the role that white men can play in promoting both gender (and racial) diversity and equality.

Being adept at sourcing top tier talent requires very specific knowledge, a lot of experience and accomplished sourcing skills - which is often different than what would be required for a more traditional, or straight up 'recruiting.'

Hot on the heels of last week's Blog on The Gender Equation, this week we're going to look at some examples of organisations where both men and women in senior leadership positions have taken a definitive stand in supporting the promotion and equality of women in the workplace.

An article in Huffington Post earlier this year about Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff's commitment to equal pay for equal work, is illustrative of the type of positive impact men can have when they participate in bridging the gender gap.

At the end of 2014, the Workplace Gender Equality Agency of Australia produced a thorough and comprehensive set of reports that map gender equality in the Australian workforce. Australia’s gender equality scorecard provides two things: an illustration of how far we've come, as well as a stark reminder of haw far, even in the year 2015, we still have to go in closing the gender gap.

Let's talk Performance Management. Agile Performance Management that is. As technology enables the transformation of business, Performance Management is an aspect of HR and company process that needs to undergo a significant evolution. In the context of Performance Management, combining the best elements of the traditional approach with newer methods like crowdsourcing and social feedback create a much more agile and fully rounded process, enabling better results and higher levels of productivity. In the Agile context, the two most important features are a development focus and regular check-ins. It’s critical to realise that these two important features are part of a wider group of improvements in the area of Performance Management. This shift from the older, more traditional style of Performance Management recognises that:

1. A more skilled and capable workforce can perform at a higher level.
2. Just like on an elite sporting team, regular feedback, communication and coaching is needed to create high levels of performance.