Reflecting on conversations I’ve had over the past two years with friends, colleagues, managers and other professionals in the HR and leadership space, the reality of working from home has (unsurprisingly) been a very hot topic. From the personal reflections on why they love a 42-second commute each morning or miss having their team around…
Many courses that teach theory of one kind or another, do so in a very academic way. This involves learning a body of theories, which in practice is often a series of theorists. In University departments this serves the purpose of defining (and protecting) disciplinary boundaries. But it can be also be obscure, constraining and…
Many years ago, I had the dubious pleasure of regular run-ins with a senior academic colleague. We’ll call him Professor X. The rows we engaged in were generally good-natured – they became a kind of game – but were also very serious: they concerned the nature and function of ‘assessment’. Each semester we’d go through…
One morning, back in early 2020, you woke up and walked a few steps to start work. For some, working from home was already part of their routine but for many of us it was new and different. As with any change, many of us hoped it would be temporary, and everything would go back…
Roffey Park Institute, established 75 years ago at the end of the Second World War, to re-equip the skillsets and mindsets of the post-war workforce, is now reshaping to re-equip the skillsets and mindsets of the post-pandemic world of work. Based in a beautiful campus on the outskirts of Horsham in West Sussex for the…
“The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” Nelson Mandela Since March 2020 I’ve felt like I’ve been in a boxing ring and my resilience has really been tested with plenty of punches. I know I’m not the only one and we have all been challenged…
As an OD Practitioner or Consultant have you ever wondered about what musical instrument might represent you best? I suspect not. But I would encourage you to take a couple of minutes and think about it. Maybe you’d choose to be a harp. A harp may symbolise the traditional, melodic, quiet, and uncommon (let’s face…
In 1954, Dr. Brock Chisholm, the first Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), stated that “without mental health there can be no true physical health“ Around 264 million people globally, suffer from depression and from anxiety, and 450 million people experience mental or neurological disorders. A study in Korea found that 75 percent of…
Why does employee engagement matter? In the workplace, studies consistently show that motivated employees outperform their counterparts. If your employees aren’t passionate about their jobs, and keen to make a difference, it’s a serious issue. Productivity will go down, and customer service and staff retention will suffer. But how do you motivate your team? Motivation…
Conflict exists everywhere and the workplace is no different. We all bring our moods, perspectives, needs and personalities to work – and they can lead to differences with our colleagues. Left unresolved, collaboration gets lost and productivity falls. Conflict makes most of us uncomfortable. Our emotions and hormones rise, we can blame others and then…
Roffey Park Institute offers an MSc in People and Organisational Development, awarded through the University of Sussex. Taking a Masters qualification might feel like a big step up from other programmes, so we thought we’d answer some of those bigger questions that you might not feel ready to ask out loud. Embarking on an MSc…
Here at Roffey Park Institute we think about resilience a lot. Long before the pandemic struck it was a core research interest from which we derived resilience diagnostics, white papers, masterclasses and learning programmes. With the onset of Covid-19 and the transformation of all our working lives, resilience has become a core interest for many…
