Articles

The Northern Ireland jobs market remains exceptionally competitive, as borne out in the most recent official statistics.

With tight labour market conditions expected to continue, a dwindling pool of available labour is expected to be a significant barrier to economic growth across Ireland over the coming years.

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) describes performance management simply as “the attempt to maximise the value that employees create”, helping to maintain and improve the performance of staff to align with organisational objectives.

With the headline rate of CT in the UK now double that of our neighbours in the Republic, HMRC’s risk profiling is likely to result in increasing focus on NI businesses operating across the border and further afield.

Generation Z, colloquially known as zoomers, is the demographic cohort succeeding Millennials and preceding Generation Alpha. Researchers and popular media use the mid-to-late 1990s as the starting birth years and the early 2010s as ending birth years.

Unfortunately there has been no shortage of high-profile corporate collapses across the UK in recent years each of which had a multitude of ramifications on the economy, other businesses and consumers.

The main goal of successful workforce planning is having the right talent in the right roles at the right time. However, many organisations fail to pay enough attention to their talent pipelines and succession practices, which can lead to excessive turnover and loss of knowledge, affecting the performance and success of the organisation.

What will be hot in L&D going into the future? – This is the one obligatory question posed every year by Donald H. Taylor in the annual L&D Global Sentiment Survey. This year marks the 10th anniversary of the survey and it also appears to mark a transitional year for learning and development worldwide.

The UK Government have introduced new transfer pricing rules, coming in to effect for accounting periods commencing on or after 1 April 2023.

Northern Ireland has hosted some high profile visitors in recent weeks as it pauses to reflect on 25 years of the Good Friday Agreement. What struck me the most about the media of our US visitors was the distinct absence of Northern Irish politicians at the various events that took place.

In modern, fast-paced and hybrid workplace cultures, leadership is more important than ever before. We have all observed varying approaches towards leadership, and the different styles of various successful CEOs. It is clear that there is no roadmap to be a successful CEO, rather, it takes certain mind-sets that effectively drive organisational performance.

Economy watchers were reaching for the popcorn over the past week as estimates of 50% growth in our economic fortunes over the next decade were cited as the potential prize from the Windsor Framework. Understandably, such an upbeat prediction was given significant airtime, which sparked reaction and challenge by some in the academic community.

It seems we have been talking about Northern Ireland taking control of its own Corporation Tax regime for years - if not decades. The view is so often espoused that lowering the rate alone could represent the ‘golden ticket’ that would unlock the potential of this place as a destination for international investment.

The economy has rolled from punch to punch over the last number of years, prompting a necessarily reactionary approach. 2023 has started with a similarly uncertain outlook.

For many people in organisations the opening months of the year will coincide with objective setting – an opportunity to plan our development goals over the next 12-months and explore what support is available to us at work to help achieve them. As employees set out to complete this process, organisations will also consider their direction within what is still very much an uncertain operating environment.

As we approach the end of the 2022/23 tax year, employers and payroll software providers will be hoping for fewer changes from Government and some stability for 2023/24.