Category: Other
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What Makes a Great Manager? The Manager’s Balancing Act
Ask anyone about the best manager they ever had and they’ll answer instantly. Ask them what made that manager great, and the answers are strikingly consistent: they listened, they backed me, they helped me grow. In our recent skills booster, The Manager’s Balancing Act, Productivity Ninja Hayley Watts unpacked why management feels so relentless right now.…
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Microsoft Copilot Training: The AI Assistant Your People Don’t Know They Have
The AI Assistant Nobody Knew They Had There’s an AI assistant sitting inside your organisation’s Microsoft 365 licence right now, and a decent share of your people have no idea it exists. If you’ve been asked to look into Microsoft Copilot training, that fact is the best place to start, because it changes what kind…
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The Real Cost of Disengaged Employees: £14,280 a Year
A disengaged employee doesn’t just coast. They cost you £14,280 a year. During our recent Energised Teams, Real Results skills booster, Productivity Ninja Grace Marshall and Leadership Expert David Papa got straight to the point: when energy drops, performance follows. Not eventually. Immediately. It’s an uncomfortable truth for anyone managing people right now. Gallup’s latest…
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3 practical ways to stay focused at work in a distracted world
If work feels more distracting than ever lately, you’re not imagining it. During our recent Focus in a Distracted World skills booster, attendees shared a familiar experience: too many notifications, constant context-switching, overflowing inboxes, and days that feel busy without feeling productive. The interesting part wasn’t just the problem. It was the practical ideas people…
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Only 1 in 5 Employees Feel Engaged at Work. Here’s the Bigger Problem.
Global employee engagement has now fallen for two consecutive years. The latest 2026 State of the Global Workplace report puts engagement at just 20%, with declining manager engagement identified as a major driver. That statistic should concern every organisation. Because engagement is rarely lost in one dramatic moment. More often, it fades gradually under the…
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Why prioritisation alone doesn’t fix overwhelm at work
Some days, the work itself isn’t the hardest part. The hardest part is deciding what deserves your attention first. You’re busy all day, constantly responding, switching, and reacting, yet nothing meaningful seems to move forward. The list gets longer, not shorter, and the sense of control slips away. This is exactly the tension explored in…
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Why feedback feels so hard (and what to do about it)
Feedback is one of those things everyone agrees is important. And yet it’s often the thing that gets avoided. Not because managers don’t care, but because it feels uncomfortable, risky, or easy to get wrong. So instead: And over time, that creates confusion, frustration, and underperformance. 3 simple ways to make feedback easier In our…
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Inbox Zero, Headspace Restored
Email isn’t going anywhere. For most knowledge workers, it’s the control tower of the day… requests, updates, approvals, decisions. And yet, many people feel trapped in: The result? Workdays spent reacting instead of focusing. That’s exactly why we ran our ‘Inbox Zero, Headspace Restored’ Skills Booster webinar with Productivity Ninja Lee. If you joined us…
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Love Your Microsoft Teams Meetings (Yes, Really)
Microsoft Teams isn’t going anywhere. For most organisations, it’s now the backbone of how work happens… meetings, updates, collaboration, decisions. And yet, many teams still feel stuck in: That’s exactly why we ran our ‘Love Your Microsoft Teams Meetings‘ Skills Booster webinar. If you joined us live, thank you.If you couldn’t make it or want…
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The real reason stress keeps coming back at work
Stress doesn’t usually announce itself. It shows up as back‑to‑back meetings. A constantly full inbox. That feeling of being busy all day but unsure what actually moved. And for many people, it feels normal. Until it doesn’t. When pressure becomes the default In our recent Stop the Stress Cycle skills booster, we shared one pattern…
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Why email still gets in the way of good work
A practical way to get back in control of your inbox Email was designed to help us communicate. For many people managers and people professionals, it now creates more pressure than clarity. Messages arrive faster than they can be processed, and inboxes become crowded with tasks, questions, updates and CCs. The result is a workday…
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How to Stop Umming and Erring When Presenting
You know that moment. You’re standing in front of an audience, your mind races ahead, and suddenly every second word seems to be “um” or “er”. It’s normal. But when it happens too often, it can distract your audience and quietly chip away at your confidence. In our recent skills booster, How to Stop Umming…
