COA Solutions – Business Accounting Software

From electronic data interchange (EDI) to customer relationship management (CRM), IT directors were keen to talk up the importance of their latest three-letter acronym-based project. Top of these initiatives came enterprise resource planning (ERP), an all-encompassing approach to resource management.

Yesterday I read the MacLeod review on employee engagement, ‘Engaging for Success’ . It bought to mind my experience as a Sunday footballer. Much of the time I played in teams who were at the bottom or close to the bottom of the league. Getting out of bed on a Sunday morning was miserable. The pitches were always too wet or too hard. The knocks always hurt. And what has this got to do with David MacLeod and Nita Clarke’s report? Well, it reminded me that when I played in a team that did very well, funnily enough getting out of bed was easy, the pitches were great and it was easy to shrug off bumps and bruises. Under all the criteria of engagement I would say that I was much more engaged when we were winning.

Its been a big week for the COA Solutions HCM team this week. Firstly, they brought together all HCM customers for the first time at one venue for the COA Solutions HCM User Group.

On loan from HR Zone, guest blogger Derek Irving discusses employee engagement levels at work on the lead up to our “How To Prosper In a Downturn – The New Reality of HR” event on the 20th May 2009 in London

How’s your level of engagement at work? Is the economy getting you down? Are you just trying to hang on? Or are you actually more focused on your work and enjoying it? If it is the latter, you’re not alone. Several studies are reporting increased levels of engagement.

Guest Blogger, Richard Donkin (author of Blood Sweat and Tears, The Evolution of Work and Financial Times columnist on work and careers) returns to the COA Solutions blog for a third time to discuss how to manage in the current downturn.

Just as some employees are safer than others in a downturn, the same rule applies to corporate departments. Sales staff are usually secure, since without sales the whole company will fall.

COA Solutions Guest Blogger Richard Donkin is the author of Blood Sweat and Tears, The Evolution of Work and Financial Times columnist on work and careers. Based in Woking in the UK he works as a commentator and writer on management and employment issues. His book, Blood Sweat and Tears, was warmly received and extensively reviewed in the US and UK (Times Literary Supplement, Washington Post, New York Times, Time, The Economist). His FT column has been appearing since 1994.

If you could increase staff productivity and save thousands, even millions of pounds in overhead, depending on your company size, you would, wouldn’t you?

Apparently not, according to recent research carried out on behalf of BT Business and Nortel. It found that nine out of 10 managers did not trust their staff to work from home.

COA Solutions is exhibiting its full range of human resource (HR), payroll, time and attendance and HR analytics systems on stand H122 at the HR Software Show (18 – 19 June at Olympia Conference Centre, London).