ABSTRACT
In recent years, the way in which people are managed and developed at work has come to be recognized as one of the primary keys to improved organizational performance. This is reflected by popular idioms such as ‘people are our most important asset’ or ‘people make the difference’. Indeed, such axioms now appear in the media and on corporate public relations documents with such regularity, that the accuracy and integrity of such assertions has begun to be questioned (see references 1 and 2). This chapter draws on some of the research undertaken by the European Centre for Business Excellence (ECforBE), the research and education division of Oakland Consulting, which focused on world class, successful and, in many cases, award-winning organizations. It describes the main people management activities that are currently being used in these leading edge organizations.
