In the rush to galvanise the world of human resources, are HR professionals asking the wrong questions, asks Neville Aitchison. His thoughts turn to philosophy and small, dusty-brown, unwrinkled elephants as he seeks an answer.

Leaders driving change too often focus on tasks and limit their tackling of people issues to overly broad communication. They’d greatly increase their changes of successful change if they acknowledged and engaged people’s instinctive and emotional response to change, says Terry Williams.

Findlater Sawmilling in rural Southland may be small on staff numbers, but when it comes to developing its people the family-run firm is big on ideas, as Jackie Brown-Haysom discovered on a recent visit.

Forget the awkward role-play with a colleague, scenario-based learning is a growing international trend in e-learning and not only are New Zealand companies using it, Kiwi developed software is leading the way, as Fiona Summerfield explains.

Change has become the norm in today’s workplaces, but that doesn’t make it any easier for some who will meet it with resistance. Marcus Morrison and Gerard Mackle provide some pointers on how to help staff successfully adapt to change, and how to ensure your change initiatives don’t fail.

You send your staff on training courses, but do they get the chance to apply what they’ve learned? Helen McPhun explores the purpose of workplace training and the mechanisms needed to transfer learning to improve performance.

To get the best outcomes, you need to develop your best resource, your people, says Adam Sands. He explains how OfficeMax worked with the Retail Institute to introduce a formal qualification for employees in its distribution centres.

The formula for raising engagement levels is simple and it works, says John Laurent. Develop leaders who value finding out from employees what is wrong, and help leaders to help employees fix what is wrong.

A small in-house HR team may have trouble keeping up with the ever-changing demands of the function. Outsourcing, says Michelle Marsden, offers access to experts across the entire HR spectrum.

Big Brother is watching you, and not just in Orwell’s dystopian world. Rosemary Childs takes a look at recent and proposed legislative changes that are likely to create even greater powers for Big Brother in New Zealand.

The test for a justified dismissal changed last year. As Bridget Smith explains, the Employment Court has now provided guidance on the change from “would” to “could”, and what this means in practice.

Every organisation has an onboarding programme, but are they doing it right? Rory Walker investigates the state of onboarding, based on nearly 200 survey responses from human resources professionals.

Many Kiwi companies are going through a process of change. Rowan Tonkin discusses what happened when one of New Zealand’s largest businesses recently embarked on substantial organisational change.

Who should be responsible for your social media policy? And what do you need to know about using social media as a recruitment tool? Karen Boyte enlists the help of Simon Oldham to provide the answers.

The majority of organisations do not evaluate the return on investment of their reward programmes, says Trevor Warden. But when pay is seen as an investment, the view of reward is much broader and more long term, he says.

When teacher aides at a secondary school challenged the reasons given for a fixed term arrangement, their claims were dismissed. Paul Robertson explains.