RPO and Talent Management Blog by Ochre House | Ochre Talk

Are they knowledge, skills, or abilities? Well in the context of positive psychology they are defined as “something that energises you, which leads to your personal growth and development and which results in peak performance” (Strengths Partnership). But what does this mean to you? Are ‘strengths’ different to competencies? Are they a fad that’ll come and go? Why spend time trying to persuade your managers that there is yet another thing to consider?
Read full post

Ninety percent of the organisations I work with have a leadership model. Despite this, nearly all continue to have the same issue – a deployment “gap” somewhere around Board-1 or Board-2 level, a kind of leadership version of “The Doldrums”. The symptoms manifest as problems translating strategic intent into functional objectives, difficulties with prioritisation and managing complexity, poor alignment and implementations which don’t fully deliver. Try as they might, it won’t go away. Does this ring any bells?
Read full post

Sure, job boards have their place, particularly when it comes to volume hiring or the sourcing of talent for relatively easily filled vacancies. But what happens when you’re faced with sourcing talent for specialist or niche roles where candidates aren’t exactly hanging around? Seemingly endless searches through CV databases are equivalent to the hunt for a needle in a haystack and desperately seeking referrals with the time ticking away looks, well, desperate. So do you have any alternative in such circumstances but to turn to the potentially expensive services of a recruitment agency?
Read full post

Over the past couple of months I have been speaking with a number of organisations who are grappling with Strategic Workforce Planning. What became apparent to me is that almost every organisation I have been in contact with is  transforming in some shape or form, but when it comes to the long term picture there seems to be a disconnect between the workforce plan and the overall business strategy.
Read full post

We’ve all seen it. When it comes to advising line managers on how to make the best hires, we can list off a whole ream of ‘best practice’ tips: be consistent, use competencies effectively, provide constructive feedback, be rigorous, use structured interviews…the list goes on. And yet, when it comes to making hires ourselves, into our own teams, we sometimes go back to what does not work: intuition and feeling.
Read full post

Last month we ran our first Ochre House think tank event in Hong Kong. With speakers and participants attending from many global organisations, the event generated a lot of stimulating debate around resourcing and talent management.
Read full post

We’ve been hearing a lot about succession planning lately and it’s something which our clients are really focusing on at the moment. In order to help better understand the current issues and queries on this subject, Ochre House held a recent webinar on the topic of ‘Succession Planning and your External Talent Pool’.
Read full post

Change is happening all around us, and whilst adapting to this shifting environment is becoming the norm for businesses worldwide, the pace of this change is perhaps happening quicker than we had expected. This presents a daunting challenge for HR; forecasting, attracting and retaining the talent needed for what is ultimately an uncertain future.
Read full post

In today’s fast moving world, how are approaches to leadership assessment changing? Here are some observations from our recent work with organisations in this space.
Read full post

In the last few months, Lord Davies’ report on businesses addressing gender issue bias in the boardroom has had a high media profile, in many different ways and with very many different commentaries! It has galvanised, quite rightly, a number of organisations into making a renewed commitment to aim for 20% – 25% female representation at board level by 2013.
Read full post