Insights
Articles, perspectives and practical insight on the people and culture challenges that matter most. Written by practitioners, researchers and the people doing the work.
61 articles
Mid-career lawyers and accountants do the work firms can least afford to lose, just as the market values them most. What the research says about progression, work quality and career stall.
Manufacturers are disciplined about improving production, less so about supporting the people doing the work. What the research says about employee involvement and supervisor capacity, and how to check ideas are acted upon.
Rising labour costs and lean staffing put more weight on store, depot and warehouse managers. What the research says about their impact, and how to check they have the preparation, authority and support to perform.
Five lessons on trust from the Make Work Better Conference 2026: why trust lives in your systems as well as your leaders, why it has to be built before a crisis, and why agreement is not the same as a healthy culture.
How to build lived trust at work through leadership transparency, manager behaviour, fair HR systems, employee voice and continuous improvement.
As HR becomes more digital, automated and data-led, trust must be designed into policies, decisions and work structures so employees experience fairness, clarity and autonomy.
When leaders conceal mistakes, openness and accountability lose credibility. How visible leadership behaviour builds workplace trust, psychological safety and lived values.
Investors in People research shows many employees avoid speaking openly at work. Why employee voice is central to trust, performance and continuous improvement.
Employees experience trust most directly through their line manager. Why inconsistent management behaviour creates trust risk, and how organisations can build stronger manager capability.
Investors in People research shows a gap between confidence in trust at work and employee behaviour. Why covering behaviours matter and how leaders can build trust in practice.
But positive intention isn’t the same as demonstrating impact so the problem isn’t intention, it’s evidence.
Not sure whether The Investors in People Awards are right for your organisation?
Stress Awareness Month will bring a familiar wave of advice about looking after ourselves at work.
Great workplaces don’t happen by accident and deserve recognition.
Start your apprenticeship accreditation journey with We Invest in Apprentices
Start your apprenticeship accreditation journey with We Invest in Apprentices
Start your apprenticeship accreditation journey with We Invest in Apprentices
Continuous improvement has long been the hallmark of high-performing organisations.
In 2026 the defining leadership challenge will not be managing change but sustaining it.
Empathy is emerging as the missing ingredient in performance management because the brain interprets fairness as a core performance signal.
The UK’s productivity story remains stubbornly flat.
Resilience has long been a corporate mantra.
Middle managers remain one of the most overlooked levers of organisational performance.
No one becomes a great leader overnight.
There is no job quite like people management.
It’s one of the most damaging myths in the modern workplace: that great managers simply emerge through experience or technical expertise.
When leadership goes wrong we tend to blame the individual.
We often talk about leadership as if it’s a job title.
The Investors in People Awards 2025 are now open, and whether you’re a small business, a third sector community, or a global organisation, entering could be one of the most valuable decisions you make this year.
As technological change accelerates, the need for continuous upskilling has become essential for organisations looking to retain top talent, drive performance and strengthen resilience.
Change is now a constant in the workplace.
In November last year (2024) UK prime minister Sir Keir Starmer pledged that his would be the Government that “delivers the innovation and reform our country needs”.1 His message reflects what many business leaders already recognise: fostering a culture of innovation is essential to resilience, competitiveness and sustainable growth.
The UK’s Employment Rights Bill, heralded as the most significant overhaul of workers’ rights in decades, presents new challenges for businesses.
Burnout has become a defining challenge for modern workplaces.
The UK’s productivity challenge is no secret but 2025 brings fresh pressures that threaten to deepen the strain on businesses.
As automation and artificial intelligence (AI) continue to revolutionise the workplace, the big question is how companies can harness these technologies equitably.
Generation Z, born between 1997 and 2012, will soon form a significant portion of the workforce, comprising around 27% by 2025.
As the UK faces a deepening budget deficit and global uncertainties going into 2025, creating a climate where transparent communication from leadership is more critical than ever for employee trust and retention.
As 2024 comes to an end, it seems health and wellbeing is on employers’ agendas like never before.
HR leaders are uniquely positioned to champion the critical link between employee wellbeing and organisational success.
‘You can’t put a clean fish back in a dirty tank.’ An odd expression it may seem, particularly in relation to workplace wellbeing.
The Make Work Better Conference 2024 was a testament to the growing importance of embedding a culture of wellbeing in the workplace.
The Make Work Better conference was a testament to the growing importance of embedding a culture of wellbeing in the workplace.
The Make Work Better Conference 2024 was a testament to the growing importance of embedding a culture of wellbeing in the workplace.
Securing funding for employee wellbeing has never been easy but in today’s challenging economic environment it is more difficult than ever.
It’s National Apprenticeship Week and we thought what better way to demonstrate the benefit of having an apprentice than by showing you how we’ve done it here: who our apprentices are, what they do and how they feel we’ve performed as their apprenticeship provider.
Now in its seventeenth year, National Apprenticeship Week has long been seen as a fantastic way of raising awareness of apprenticeships.
There are certain HR topics which make people’s eyes glaze over and, like it or not, values is one of them.
How does an organisation create a strong, high-performing team when they aren’t in a position to recruit the Alphas in the working world?
Perceptions of apprenticeships are changing.
How family friendly is your workplace?
The name Steven Bartlett will be familiar to anyone keen to succeed in business.
Investors in People invest in their people, their community, and the thousands of employees within this collective group.
A decade ago the term “employee experience” didn’t exist.
AI has been getting a lot of press recently and, rightly or wrongly, the prospect of a future dominated by such technology scares many.
If there’s one thing everyone can agree on when it comes to the future of work, it’s that recent history proves how quickly things can change.
It’s Sunday night.
Developing a successful apprenticeship programme is a bit like an apprenticeship – you’re on a learning journey.
Apprenticeships are a popular way to develop skills of all kinds within a business.
Hiring an apprentice is an investment in the future of your organisation, but if your scheme is in its infancy the chances are that not everyone will understand how much potential it has.
Quiet quitting – the act of coming to work to do just what is expected of you and nothing more – is a buzzword in HR and Leadership circles at the moment.
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