Over the past year the issue of performance management has been much debated, largely owing to several high-profile organisations publically abolishing their annual appraisals in favour of more regular systems of feedback. In this episode we’ll be looking at some of the latest trends in performance management from appraisals and smart objectives to performance ratings and employee involvement. We’ll be talking to Jonny Gifford from CIPD, about what the evidence has shown in the field of performance management, James Brook from Strengths Partnership about a strengths-based approach, and Ali Mohammed from Great Ormond Street Hospital about the practicalities of embedding good performance management practice across an organisation.

Businesses today are experiencing growing levels of distrust and disillusionment both internally and externally. Fuelled by high-profile stories of fraud and unethical behaviour from Volkwagen and Amazon to BHS and SportsDirect, customers, employees and investors are demanding greater transparency and stronger moral leadership from the organisations with which they do business. But is ethical behaviour a personal choice or a business imperative? New research from CIPD suggests that leaders who display strong moral character are likely to inspire greater motivation, productivity and commitment. In this episode we talk to three HR and business leaders about the role HR plays in developing strong ethical leadership in themselves and their employees.

Over the past twelve months performance management practices have come under close scrutiny with some high-profile organisations including Deloitte and Accenture scrapping their annual performance reviews, instead implementing a more fluid system of ongoing, timely feedback. To transition to this type of new system successfully, however, organisations must ensure that their people are equipped to give and receive more regular feedback and, crucially, that their culture is one in which coaching, mentoring and other forms of continuous feedback can thrive. In this episode we talk to Chris Britton and Nebel Crowhurst from River Island and Rhonda Howarth Nestle about why coaching is an integral part of performance management in their organisations. They offer practical advice on developing coaching capabilities and embedding them into the business. We also explore the psychology of coaching wit ex England cricketer and founder of Sporting Edge, Jeremy Snape.

In April this year the new Apprenticeship Levy came into effect, which means for the first time business with pay bills of over 3 million have to contribute to apprenticeships. It is expected that the Levy will encourage more employers to introduce apprenticeships or expand their existing programmes. In this episode we talk to employers, apprentices and apprenticeship providers to explore what the new world of apprenticeships could look like. What implications will the levy have for businesses and what opportunities could it provide potential candidates? With an increasing number of organisations offering apprenticeships, how can businesses stand out from the crowd? And could apprenticeship extend beyond the traditional 16-25 demographic? Also in this month's podcast, cast your minds back to Ksenia Zheltoukhova and her partner Ryan McKelvey, who were among the mere 7,500 who in the past year decided to take advantage of shared parental leave, a legislation introduced in April 2015 allowing both parents to share a block of fifty two weeks leave after the birth of a child. This month, in their final conversation with us, Ryan and Ksenia sum up the experience after a year full of surprises...

In his best-selling book, The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge outlines the concept of the ‘learning organisation’. These organisations would be agile, innovative and highly competitive. They would emphasise continual learning and work from a shared vision for all employees. Senge was certainly ahead of his time and 27 years after publication, organisations are still seeking (and often struggling) to embody these ideas. In this episode we discuss new research from Towards Maturity into the New Learning Organisation, and we chat to learning professionals from Virgin Media, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and British Heart Foundation to find what becoming a learning organisation has meant for them and what steps they’ve taken to put learning at the heart of their business.

The world of work is changing fast and technology is changing even faster. Research suggests that in the next 20 years at least 35% of the current jobs in the UK are at risk of computerisation or automation. As organisations communicate, collaborate and innovate is evolving, new skills and roles are gaining prominence. But are organisations and individuals prepared for this pace of change? And in this new technological landscape, can the future of work be human? In this episode we chat with Dr Nicola Millard, BT Global Services, David Woodward, SDWorx and CIPD’s own David D’Souza about the ways in which technology is affecting work and working lives. From flexible working and automation to analytic reporting and office environments, this episode will explore how technology is changing the way organisations operate, the effect this is having on its employees and the challenges (and opportunities) that HR and L&D can face.

This April new legislation comes into effect that requires organisations of more than 250 employees to gather data and report publically on their gender pay gap. These regulations come five years after the Government’s Think, Act, Report initiative aimed at encouraging voluntary transparency around equal pay in organisations. Today, however, despite such efforts, women working in the UK are paid on average 18% less than men and there is still a widely recognised under-representation of women in senior leadership positions. The new gender pay gap reporting legislation aims to drive change by highlighting these issues and encouraging organisations to both understand their own pay gap and to work to improve it. In this episode we talk to Sheila Wild, Equal Pay Portal, and Ben Willmott, Head of Policy at CIPD, about what the legislation is demanding of employers and the impact it could have on organisations and employees, as well as the practical considerations for HR professionals.

Increasingly organisations are seeing learning not in terms of isolated interventions, but rather as the ongoing transfer of knowledge that comes through the everyday connections made between colleagues and within teams. This type of social learning is typically informal and self-directed, occurring as and when the need arises, often through the use of social media or similar collaborative technology. And it already takes place in almost every workplace, so how can organisations harness the potential of this behaviour in their own learning and development strategies? In this episode we chat with three social learning experts – Dr Clair Doloriert, University of Bangor, Perry Timms, People and Transformational HR and Julian Stodd, Seasalt Learning – about what social learning might look like for organisations, the challenges and opportunities of encouraging social learning in the workplace, and what it means for the L&D professional (as well as the employee) as organisations move away from controlled, classroom-based learning environments towards self-directed learning.

Interest in behavioural science has risen significantly over the past decade with industries as diverse as finance, energy and media, using its insights to improve resilience, innovation and leadership development. Take up in HR, however, has been slower, with many professionals unsure where to begin or how to apply behavioural science insights in their own organisations. In this episode we chat with Hilary Scarlett, Samantha Rockey and Jonny Gifford about how behavioural science can benefit organisations, teams and individual employees. We’ll take a closer look at how the insights from behavioural science can be applied in today’s businesses and explore how HR can use these insights to develop themselves and their organisation’s leaders.

2016 has been a year of change and upheaval socially, politically and economically. From the National Living Wage and the Apprenticeship Levy to Brexit and the US election, events over the past year are set to have a significant impact on work and working lives. In this episode we talk to Margaret Heffernan, Laura Overton and Laura Harrison about the effect these changes are having – and will have – on businesses and their employees and what HR and L&D professionals can be doing to help prepare themselves and their organisations for the year ahead.