We're experts on all things Management & HR
Building a resilient workforce
Written by John Berry on 18th December 2019. Revised 8th September 2025.
2 min read
Resilience has three elements: the ability to manage yourself and your learning, the ability to communicate and collaborate with others and the ability to successfully craft one’s own environment. As skills that are difficult to automate, those might be termed ‘skills for life’. No-one is going to make your firm resilient for you. It's your job as manager and the time to start is now.
Under the syndrome we call ‘stress’, a volunteer finds themselves exhibiting either psychological effects or physiological effects because of one or more stressors. Stress s exacerbated by poor management intervention in any of the management ‘standards'. To alleviate, the manager can talk about stress and the effectiveness of their management with their volunteers. Clearly this approach needs a very open manager who is prepared to listen, even if the story is critical of them.
The visionaries created the CSO to deliver to the beneficiaries. They hired or appointed trustees and managers. The visionaries direct the trustees and managers. Managers are the executive and make the strategy happen; trustees oversee the managers’ activities on behalf of the visionaries. To help in managing volunteer relations, we build an entity relationship diagram to describe all the relationships in a CSO - and add funders, employees and finally and most importantly, volunteers.
Keeping records on volunteers
Written by John Berry on 27th April 2024. Revised 17th June 2025.
6 min read
It’s logical that the manager of volunteers would want to keep records that describe the characteristics of each volunteer they are responsible for. All CSOs should recognise that their managers are going to hold this sort of data. We give guidance on how this should be done in this article. Importantly, correct management of personal data influences the psychological contract between CSO and volunteer. Misuse may result in loss of CSO reputation.
Employing peripatetic employees with complex work patterns
Written by John Berry on 23rd January 2019. Revised 26th April 2025.
5 min read
Sometimes, the scenarios that our clients ask us to work with are straightforward – a revised pay structure, a manpower plan or a restructure of existing activities. But occasionally they present something that takes a little more to understand, is more complex and takes more time to develop solutions for. Here’s an example of one such complexity involving complex work patters, pay and tax.
Determining Personality Using Mr Men
Written by John Berry on 1st May 2017. Revised 22nd April 2025.
5 min read
Timpson’s interviewers have one criterion in selection - they seek to determine which Mr Men character the candidate most closely resembles. The criterion is a proxy for personality. Using personality as a criterion is valid but the Timpson method is likely far from accurate. It likely results in a below-par predictive validity of around 0.4. Here's why and what managers can do to improve.
