Barrow and Parker HR Consultancy

I'd like to wish everyone a Happy New Year from all of us at Barrow and Parker HR Consultancy. Thank you to all of our lovely clients, colleagues, collaborators and friends for all of your 2024 support. And Happy New Year from Merlin below. No apologies for posting a fur baby picture here - we are lucky enough to support over 50 different animal welfare organisations as well as our paying clients at Barrow, many focussing on dogs and cats - and this is a cat friendly house in which I work. (Yes, the cats are in charge and I am the staff...) So a special Happy New Year to all of my animal welfare colleagues and friends on here who have worked tirelessly to save and support those without a human voice of their own over Christmas and during all of 2024. Hats off to you all for the amazing work that you do, thank you And a huge THANK YOU to my merry Barrow team, without whom, we would achieve nothing - you are all awesome. Thank you #happynewyear

New Year and time to invest in yourselves fellow L&OD Practitioners? We spend such a long time sorting out training for everyone else, but we can sometimes find ourselves lost in the mele? I have just the thing - take a peek at our Strategic L&OD Practitioner course - accredited by The Institute of Leadership. Virtual, bite sized, no pesky assignments - just rich and deep learning with those of us who have walked the talk And a cheeky Early Bird discount if you get in touch with me in the next 7 days! #professionaldevelopment #learninganddevelopment

It's almost 2025! Calling all of my HR and L&OD colleagues out there in the Linked In wilderness before the new year who might fancy a bit of personal investment. Have you lost your way a little bit in terms of Organisational Design and Development? These are some of the biggest core skill sets that we will need into 2025 and beyond. We (unhelpfully) shorthand this to OD&D - but are we even clear as to what it really means? I have spoken to some slightly baffled managerial teams who would struggle to explain the difference between the two elements I might have just the thing for you! Have a look at out The Institute of Leadership certificated OD&D programme - virtual, bite sized, economical and designed for people with busy lives - yet still rich and meaningful learning. I'm sure that you spent last year sorting out everyone else's development - how about investing in yours for once? #newyearnewyou #organisationaldesign #organisationaldevelopment

Morning HR colleagues! Did you have a wonderful Christmas break? Are you - the horrors! - BACK AT WORK this morning? Or still at home in your PJ's, eating a chocolate (it IS after 10am after all...) and thinking about your development in 2025.....? There are a lot of tricky employment law changes coming up in the new year so it might be wise to think about getting updated regarding what is planned to arrive in the new legal landscape. We have worked hard at Barrow and Parker HR Consultancy to create training that delegates are fighting to get IN TO rather than OUT OF.......as we know that Employment Law training can be a little dry if not delivered with a wicked sense of humour and a large dose of pragmatism. Take a peek at our The Institute of Leadership certificated course - no pesky assignments, just rich and deep learning about what you need for the forthcoming year - and drop me a line to find out more! #employmentlaw #professionaldevelopment #humanresources #hrbusinesspartner

When I started my own business, I imagined that I would do a lot of 'HR stuff' for people. But I had also informally been a coach and mentor for some years....perhaps I ought to try and commercialise that skill set now? I thought that if I was going to charge for my coaching services, I ought to get a certification of some kind? I proceeded to do that - but I hated my course. It was overly academic, hard core curriculum led and I emerged at the end of it with a piece of paper and some more letters after my name, but little in terms of my coaching toolkit. It felt arrogant to critique someone else's course without seeing if I could do better myself so we created this at Barrow and Parker HR Consultancy. We have been running this The Institute of Leadership certificated programme for some years now and I have trained well over 200 new coaches. Equally arrogant to tell you that 'this is the one to choose' in an array of possible coaching and mentoring certifications - so please do read the words of our course delegates instead of mine - all on my profile and below. If you're having a bit of a 'new year, new me, new career' chat with yourself over your Boxing day lunch, drop me a message and let's chat in the new year. I have been told that this course is "transformational" for people. And I truly hope that it would be for you. Perhaps time to invest in yourself for once rather than everyone else? #coaching #mentoring #coachingtraining #mentoringtraining

We are being joined by the brilliant Caroline Carr who heads up everything to do with Leadership and Talent at AO for Friday's HR Rebel session and I can't wait! Caroline is leading our discussion about Line Management upskilling - what should we be encouraging our People Managers to do into 2025 and beyond? Please drop me a line if you have a little bit of rebellion in your soul and fancy coming along for this conversation - we already have over 120 HR and L&OD leaders as part of our virtual community. #networking #benchmarking #hrdirector

I'm delighted to announce that Stuart Cavanagh is joining Barrow and Parker HR Consultancy as a Senior HRD Consultant Stuart brings Board level multi sector experience to us and is an expert in organisational design and development, change and transformation and agile HR. He is already working on strategic HR projects with our lovely clients and will support us in our own endeavours to utilise data and business intelligence in all that we do. A big Barrow Welcome to Stuart! #dreamteam #welcometotheteam

Why invest in resilience for the leadership team? Isn’t the fat salary the blood money that buys that level of energy? Isn’t that their job? Hmmm…but think about the ROI wellbeing input with your leadership team would pay back. I’m delivering a session in an off-site SLT Away Day today, and we’re answering just that. When we’re stressed, we have the blinkers on, we can’t prioritise properly and we’re in survival mode. This is not the realm of creativity and lateral thinking. It’s bad for business when you can’t scan the horizon, predict, ruminate, innovate and diversify. Behaviours can dip when we’re depleted, and we might not be our best selves in conversation - when you’re under the scrutiny of leadership, that’s not good for anyone. Today we’re getting a sense of how we build that bounce-back-ability using a flavour of Insights, so everyone walks away from the session with some practical professional commitments and personal investment. It’s all got a commercial edge – no fluffiness here – it’s how we serve the organisation optimally. If that sounds like could be a shot in the arm for your leadership team, reach out to Beth Evans or me at Barrow and Parker HR Consultancy to find out more.

I've been running Session 3 of our The Institute of Leadership accredited Coaching & Mentoring programme today with the fabulous Cohort 9 and we have been discussing Person Centred Coaching from Rogers et al. Coaching is clearly not counselling....but you do take yourself to work with you, don't you? So - even in work based coaching - there is a requirement to discuss personal issues and demonstrate both empathy and vulnerability as a Coach. We chatted about key questions such as - can you coach sometime whom you do not personally like? What about someone who has a different core trade than yours? But Snoopy captures this module best for me - a Coach is often seen in humanistic terms as your best cheerleader. Someone who goes down the road of life with you hand in hand. And, in that shared humanity, enhances the journey and eases the burden. And who better to demonstrate this for us than Snoopy! #coachingandmentoring #coachingcourse #professionaldevelopment

According to CNN, in Corporate America the trend of appointing middle aged white men in CEO roles is on the rise. With record CEO turnover in 2024 many companies are falling back on old habits and women and people of colour are being left behind. Only 52 Fortune 500 companies are led by women and there are just eight Black CEOs. Recent leadership changes at CVS, Starbucks and Under Armour are a perfect example of this shift. However, the benefits of diverse leadership have been well documented. Research shows companies with diverse leadership teams perform better financially, have higher employee satisfaction and lower turnover. Yet as some companies backslide on DEI commitments there is concern about the opportunities being missed for more inclusive and impactful leadership. At the end of the day, at Barrow and Parker HR Consultancy, we believe leadership success isn’t about age, gender or background but about vision and talent. This is the ethos we live by when we design our training programmes – for leaders from all walks of life to build the skills to make a difference. Get in touch to find out more about our open courses or how we can bring them in-house to your organisation. Find the CNN article here: https://lnkd.in/d5-hkyRK  #Leadership #DEI #CorporateLeadership #TalentDevelopment