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Presents a strategy to improve employee engagement in an organization.

Describes how the strategy was implemented at Kia Motors (UK).

Reveals that the strategy helped to reduce employee turnover from 31 percent in 2006 to below 2 percent in 2009. Also highlights improvements in line‐manager performance, internal communications, performance appraisal, management development and employee training.

Reveals that the engagement strategy is now being introduced across Kia's European operations and shared with the global HR team in Seoul, Korea.

Highlights substantial evidence linking employee engagement and business results.

Describes a number of practical tools that HR specialists can use to build employee engagement in their organizations.

This paper aims to examine the key drivers for employee engagement within an organization. It seeks to answer the question: what are the keys to improving the level of employee engagement?

A case study illustrates a strategy for employee engagement that was based on research on the key drivers of engagement.

The paper presents practical case study material from Kia Motors – the South Korean automotive manufacturer. It shows how Human Resources (HR) worked to develop a strategy to address very poor levels of employee engagement. A clear set of engagement measures was developed to assess the impact of the engagement strategy.

This paper ascertains some of the key drivers of employee engagement as illustrated by the case study. It demonstrates a number of practical tools HR professionals can utilize to build employee engagement within their organizations.

Although support exists for the effectiveness of treatment for personality disordered offenders there is limited knowledge about the processes underlying the therapeutic change. The purpose of this paper is to explore the treatment experiences of six male psychopathic offenders who attended a social skills treatment component implemented within a high-secure personality disorder treatment service.

Interview transcripts were analysed by the lead researcher (first author) using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) who compared and contrasted findings to develop superordinate themes across the group. External auditing analysis was conducted by the second author.

Several themes were identified that may indicate the unique ways this client group experienced treatment. These related to the importance of “group cohesion” with treatment progression and shared learning experiences, the significance of “therapeutic alliance” with treatment providers and perceived effectiveness of treatment, and the conflict participants experienced when acquiring and applying skills from their engagement in treatment. Participants identified aspects of the treatment component that facilitated the effectiveness of treatment and were effective in meeting their needs and some that would benefit from improvement.

Positive group dynamics are important. Operational staff inclusion within the facilitation team is beneficial. Attentiveness to participants’ specific responsivity needs is required. Supporting skill application post-treatment is important.

These findings add to the evidence base in relation to factors that support personality disordered offenders’ engagement within treatment. Areas that validate treatment delivery are highlighted, as are suggestions for change to maximise treatment gain for psychopathic and personality disordered offenders.

This study explores practitioners’ perspectives on the perceived gap between university and practice beyond the hard and soft skill paradigm. Utilising Tomlinson’s graduate capital model of employability (2017), we explored human, social, cultural, and psychological capitals to enrich the understanding of this issue and employability. It provided a new perspective, useful for implementing curriculum renewal.

This study utilised a two-stage mixed methods design. Using Tomlinson’s (2017) Graduate capital model as a framework, the first stage involved distributing an online survey to qualified architects in hiring positions practising in Australia. This served as the foundation for generating qualitative and quantitative data. The second stage involved a two-hour practitioner workshop where the survey results were discussed and expanded upon.

Our results found that the practitioner’s perspective on the perceived skills gap is more complex than the hard/soft skill paradigm commonly discussed. Practitioners expressed a need for students/graduates to possess identity and cultural capital to contextualise industry norms and expectations. This knowledge lets students know where and how hard/soft skills are used. Our results also suggest practitioners are concerned with the prevailing individualistic approach to the higher education system and traditional architectural teaching methods, instead suggesting a more industry-aligned collaborative disposition.

By expanding the employability discourse beyond hard/soft skills, the results of this research provide an opportunity for architectural curriculum renewal in line with industry expectations.

The background to this paper is the increasing interest in the relationship between housing and municipal services and HIV/AIDS. The purpose of this paper is to clarify what, precisely, one has in mind when thinking that housing and municipal services might prevent HIV infection and associated opportunistic infections. The focus is not on the socioeconomic dimensions but on the modes of transmission associated with specific opportunistic infections. That is, the paper first disputes the relevance of housing and services to HIV prevention, but then demonstrates that housing and municipal services are important for (a) the prevention of certain opportunistic infections to which people affected by HIV/AIDS are particularly vulnerable, and (b) for the provision of home-based care.

In addition to the medical focus of the paper, there is attention to the empirical backdrop on the relation between housing, municipal services and HIV/AIDS, analysing survey findings regarding among whom and where HIV prevalence is highest, and projections regarding the extent of HIV infections and AIDS based on the World Health Organization clinical staging system. Using Johannesburg as a case study, it is demonstrated that the number of persons having AIDS is smaller than one might expect and also that the number is already declining, which has implications for the provision of home-based care. However, it is also shown that the number of households that lost one or several members is increasing rapidly. In this context, labour force surveys are employed to identify the impacts on specific categories of households. At this stage, a defining unknown is the scale, nature and location of these reconstituted households and what this means for housing policy.

Finally, a feature of the research was the extent to which medical practitioners viewed housing as a quixotic sideline within the broader struggle for HIV prevention and the provision of treatment. In sum, the paper provides an argument for incorporating housing and municipal services into both HIV and AIDS prevention and treatment programmes.

Summarises the research into an approach to selecting teachers for fast tracking into headship. There is an initial consideration of the political context in which the research was conducted. The research process is fully described and an analysis of the evidence is presented, together with the conclusions. This process required the selection of highly effective primary school headteachers to benchmark a diagnostic instrument, the selection of teachers judged to have high potential for headship but who would not meet the criteria for starting the National Professional Qualification for Headship, and the use of the diagnostic instrument to measure their potential for headship. This qualification will become mandatory for all headteachers being appointed to their first headship in England and Wales. The explanation of the results and the model complete the analysis. The appendices present evidence and models as a basis for future research.