The presence of COVID-19 is continuing to challenge us all. Whilst we have been deepening our thoughts regarding Succession Planning over the year, the ability of industry and government to manage organisations and people has never come under such immediate and polarising pressure. There seems to be no end in sight for these levels of uncertainty and unpredictability.…

Whether you have been effectively BAU since lockdown started, whether you and your colleagues have started a phased re-entry to your workplaces or whether you are going to be working from home for the foreseeable, it is more important than ever to be getting meaningful, insightful and useful feedback about how you're doing. We've written before about the way that 360 can be used within teams. Traditionally very much an individual experience, we feel that 360 has many applications and more value it can add.  Helping teams to understand how well communication is working within the group, how effectively people are supporting each other, identifying potential peer-matches for coaching and knowledge sharing are just some ways in which the power of 360 can be leveraged on a collective basis. Whatever happens over the next year, we can be in no doubt that we will continue to work in a more dispersed manner than we ever did before Covid19.  Even if you are a team who are frontline and less impacted by the shift in working practices, you will have fewer face to face interactions with some colleagues, partner teams, customer groups or corporate functions who have had to work from home.  A sense of team cohesion, identity and belonging, collaboration, communication and inclusion are more important than ever. In this piece we consider how 360 can help us be more effective in these disrupted times.…

In March, I was horrified to hear about a friend of a friend who - when she asked her manager if she could work from home just before lockdown fully kicked in - was effectively sent to Coventry for two weeks, with her boss refusing to speak to her.  OK, so this is an extreme example, but others we’ve spoken to have reported feeling “judged” in some way for what they are and are not able to do whilst working from home.…

“Getting to know you, getting to know all about you”; even Julie Andrews and Deborah Kerr didn’t find this easy, as they struggled with culture shock and personality clashes in The King and I. What has perhaps become more apparent, over the last three months, is that many managers – and HR - know very little about the people in their teams.…

So on to our next “keeper”. Clap for Carers may have run its course and it may not have been universally accepted as a great thing, but for many it did provide a form of recognition that has been somewhat missing in our society. People have told us about putting hand-made ‘thank you’ stickers on their bins for the refuse collectors, of people offering postal workers refreshments and use of their toilets, of people making more effort to thank delivery drivers and writing hand-made cards and gifts for care assistants.…