When HR becomes International HR?

How does a UK HR generalist become an international HR expert ?

Alan Marshall gives some key pointers. Here is a precis and you will find the full article in Management Matters where Alan is a Guest Management Expert.

A job specification for a typical HR Manager will cover things such as Employee Relations, Manpower Planning, Organisation Design, Recruitment, Welfare, Discipline and Grievance, Administration and Record Keeping, Policy maintenance and ownership, Training and Development and so on.

As businesses go more “International” the traditional HR Manager roles takes on a new dimension .

Expatriate assignments can cost as much as 4 times greater than the base salary. To protect that sort of investment the HR Manager needs to become an International HR Manager very quickly and is highly likely to turn to experts via outsourcing or consulting in order to ensure compliance and effective management of this very expensive asset.

Alan Marshall of Global HR Consultants Ltd gives some helpful guidelines as a Guest Management Expert in our “Management Matters” section of the website under downloads. Alan sets out a summary of the areas to consider, noting that selecting the right candidate for an expatriate position is essential because the costs of a failed assignment are so high.

To find out more about managing international employees and avoiding the pitfalls read Alan’s full article at http://www.proofsouth.co.uk/Files.htm

Great Grant funding news for Merseyside SME Business : at 40 – 60%

Every Managing Director Owner of an SME in Merseyside (UK) and Business Consultant should know how good the grant support is right now to help grow and develop their business. I raise the subject in all my meetings now to make sure the MD knows what is available.

Grant support for Training at 60% and Consultancy at 40% is typically available now and through most of 2007 for qualifying clients and projects. There is even more generous grant funding for Start-Ups and Micro Businesses.

This is great continuing support for businesses in the region where we still qualify for EU Objective 1 support.

With grant support like this the Managing Director Owner just needs the catalyst we provide to capture the business benefit - We help the MD to work “on” their business rather than “in” it.

Here at Proofsouth I am delighted when we can help local businesses to realise their potential and grow or develop on a sound commercial basis. This is part of our own mission within the Institute for Independent Business to offer “practical advice that works” ( http://www.iib.ws/index.html ).

No business review with a Managing Director Owner on Merseyside is complete without explaining the way these grants can accelerate, help & support their company. Proofsouth draws upon our Accredited Consultant status to offer this support under Government & EU Objective 1 initiatives.

Typically we draw up a proposal with the MD and then introduce the prospective client to the Funding Agency to qualify both client and project. Our role tends to break down into:
Developing Client plans into a viable proposal
Shaping the proposal into one or more projects with clear deliverables
Qualifying Client & Project with grant funding agencies
Drawing together the skills & competencies to deliver the requirements
Project managing the execution of the work within a Business Support Programme
Ensuring we achieve results on time and to budget
Working our way through the paperwork
Providing a lasting Business Friend relationship

I will expand on this issue further in the form of an article on the Proofsouth website. So if you want to read more then please go to our “Management Matters” section. http://www.proofsouth.co.uk/Files.htm .

Good News in the knowledge economy

I have come across a few items of good news to share recently. All three below relate to obtaining useful information and putting it to work in our knowledge based economy.

This week I will be exploring the subject further in a website article at http://www.proofsouth.co.uk/Files.htm

Keeping up to date in the knowledge economy is my number one issue. You may think you know the answer, but then the question changes!.

How to keep my own skills & those of my business at the cutting edge without losing customer contact time or core working time?. For me this particularly applies to areas such as:
Oracle E-Business Suite
Microsoft Windows
PRINCE2 Project Management
Internet Marketing
ERP systems generally

This is a common problem and an ongoing issue for many small business I think.

So, I was delighted to come across the modestly named ACM – the Association for Computing Machinery – with a brilliant range of on line courses and other resources “that advance computing as a science and a profession”. I promptly took out a subscription! A reasonable annual fee gives access to a great range of leading-edge publications, conferences, and business /career resources across the computing range. You can find it at http://www.acm.org/ and look up their courses at http://pd.acm.org/netg_listing.cfm.
So now I am working my way through various of the Oracle update courses in those midnight hours.

Secondly I have subscribed via feedblitz – this time at no cost - to “hallam” a great site to keep me up to date with Internet marketing http://www.shcl.co.uk/. I attended a great seminar led by Susan Hallam and am now a regular website visitor. Do you know about latest legal obligations on information to be shown on your company website?. Have a look at their blog-post “Company website statutory requirements”.

Finally, there is some great PRINCE2 information I would like to recommend. PRINCE2 is the UK de-facto standard in project management methodology. For the Practitioner there is great material to be found at the ILX Group site http://www.prince2.com/downloads.html
Also look at Project Smart http://www.projectsmart.co.uk/index.html. which is the internet based project management resource that helps managers at all levels to improve their performance.

Good news or what ?.

A distinctive contribution to business management

Tony Wilson will be editing the Proofsouth Blog. He is the managing associate and is a Chartered Management Accountant, PRINCE2 Practitioner and is an accredited associate of the Institute for Independent Business.

He hopes to provide readers with a stimulating & lively input to business and project management. Proofsouth has a particular expertise in the application of computer based business management systems in achieving best practice.

Tony hopes to bring to bear his experience which spans both line financial management at board level and running his own business.

Right now, Proofsouth works with various software packages to achieve successful business outcomes. The Oracle E-Business suite has been Proofsouth's software of choice in recent times to deliver world class performance. With SME clients Proofsouth can also scale their approach to work with software progressively from Quickbooks & Sage.

RSS feed is simple, useful & this is how you do it

Its like getting your newspaper delivered!. I have chosen Newsgator as my web newspaper & it is ready to read whenever...with the latest news I want to look at.

I recommend it to you. I hope this will include the Proofsouth blog of course.

This is what you do...for free...taking 5 mins:
1. "Create Account" in Newsgator from the link I have provided http://www.newsgator.com/Home.aspx
2. Select the general news feeds you want eg/. BBC News & complete the set up.
3. Click on "Add Feeds" in the top left of your screen.
4.Click on"Smart Feeds"
5. Type in "proofsouth" as your key word.
6.Click on "Web Reader" in the top left of your screen
7. Magic - you now have the Proofsouth blog to click on the left side of your screen " Newsgator: Keyword search for Proofsouth" - click on this
8.You now see the Proofsouth blog pages - ENJOY - We will add items regularly
9. Now add whatever interests you have for your newspaper under "Find Feeds"
10 Enjoy....& pass on.......anyone who is interested can do the same

Business & Management solutions from Proofsouth

Welcome to the new Business & Management solutions blog from Proofsouth edited by Tony Wilson. We hope this will make a good read, keep you up to date with what we are doing & provide a useful insight into various business management issues - should you wish to wish to subscribe. A "blog" may be a new medium to you - its an online journal that can be received by email and / or through a simple downloadable web based tool which collects new articles from us & alerts you to them. For example - download Newsgator online from this link: http://www.newsgator.com/Home.aspx.