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John McDonough, Managing Director of Recro Consulting writes for HR Zone, published on 29 April, the original post can be found here. How to use intrinsic and extrinsic motivation for workforce planning Only a third of UK workers say they are happy in their jobs. HR leaders need to better understand employees' motivators in order to help solve the retention issue. One of many sayings the motivational speaker and best-selling [...]

John McDonough, Managing Director of Recro Consulting writes for the Northern Agenda for Manchester Evening News, published on 16 March, the original post can be found here. How can we get jobseekers off carousel of poor-quality training and into work? There is a lot of talk about levelling up - and nowhere is it more talked about than in the North/South debate - but no one seems to know quite [...]

John McDonough, Managing Director of Recro Consulting writes for People Management, published on 15 February, the original post can be found here. We need to address wholesale systemic failure in employment and skills. The unemployment system needs levelling up in order to best serve those who need it most, argues John McDonough. At the CIPD conference in Manchester last November, David Lammy MP made the point that 50 per cent [...]

John McDonough, Managing Director of Recro Consulting writes for The HR Director, published on 11 February, the original post can be found here. The System's Broken BREXIT AND THE PANDEMIC ARE JUST THE MORE RECENT ‘EXCUSES’ FOR THE ATTRACTION AND RETENTION ISSUES THAT HAVE BEEN FACING EMPLOYERS FOR YEARS. AND, FRANKLY, IMMIGRATION HAS BEEN THE FIG LEAF THAT HAS COVERED THE INADEQUACY OF THE EMPLOYABILITY, SKILLS AND EDUCATION SYSTEM. That system [...]

What does the Chancellor Rishi Sunak, think he’s getting for his money? Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor of Exchequer, today announced the £500m extension of government action and said that the government was “literally throwing the kitchen sink” at helping people to find work. But is it true and what does he think he’s getting for his money? Or does he just want to spend some money? Who could tell him [...]

Is driving people to a state of poverty and desperation the most effective way to get them into work? Last week, the Prime Minister received a letter coordinated by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, bearing an unprecedented 100 signatures from British organisations, all urging him to rethink the £20 cut in Universal Credit and Working Tax Credit. While there has been some coverage of this in the press, there is one [...]

8 year old Courtney and her family live off £5 a day - they rely on a food bank to eat and wear coats to bed when there's no money for heating. This is Britain today, where more than 4 million children are growing up in poverty. pic.twitter.com/faYNbL4ZD5 — Channel 4 Dispatches (@C4Dispatches) November 30, 2019

It’s July 2010 and I’m sat in a community centre in Tottenham surrounded by some of their most hard to reach long term unemployed people, participants on the Families into Work Programme. We’ve been asked to delay the start as someone is running late. You can cut the atmosphere with a knife. There is an air about these people that is a combination of angst, anger, resentment, desperation, futility and [...]