When I joined HR two years ago, the first question I asked my boss was, “What do I do here?”

Her answer was simple, but one that I remember to this day, “The experience is what you make of it.”

The role I was appointed to was ‘People Strategy’ and as the link between operations and HR, it was an opportunity to understand the relationship between manpower planning and business targets.

I was also advised that it could potentially be a brief stint for me to get a grasp of how HR works. Or, it could be the first step before going deeper into a specific HR discipline. The flexibility was there.

While both are interesting propositions, I’ll decided on the latter. After some soul searching, I decided to pursue a career in Learning & Development. I even made it the subject of my doctoral research.

Joining HR has enabled me to broaden my perspective on the dynamics of an organisation and even if I’d decided to move to another role outside HR next, I would still highly recommend at least a short spell if the opportunity arises. Here's why…

Immediate Impact

My prior knowledge of HR was limited to processes that I go through as a staff e.g. hiring, remuneration, mobility. Being in HR has exposed me to a wider range of roles including organisation design, employee relations, and capability development. It has been an eye-opening experience.

With the workforce as its main stakeholder, being at the policy design end has enabled me to witness first-hand the immediate impact of our work. Simulating the scenarios can be challenging, but it's fulfilling to observe how the policies that you help design are brought to life.

New Perspectives

In my previous functions, the considerations that I had in assessing business decisions were limited to the basics e.g. financials, operations, governance. Coming from HR has given me the breadth needed to appreciate people-related factors such as manpower requirement, workforce productivity, and labour laws.

Being in HR has exposed me to a wider range of roles including organisation design, employee relations, and capability development. It has been an eye-opening experience.

The way I frame my thinking has also changed - or at least that’s how I see it. In allocating resources, for example, I find myself more aware of the optimal sizing of teams to ensure that roles are distributed accordingly and job satisfaction is sustained. It’s a trait that I hope could help me in the long run as I grow in the organisation. 

Helping Hand

I've always wondered how my HR colleagues managed the unending flow of questions that come their way - especially the account managers. From leave application to car allowance, I've heard HR being asked about almost everything under the sun.

When I joined, I was also at the receiving end of the questions but as much as I can, I would try to get answers for them. If the subject wasn't under my purview, I would reach out to others within the unit. The will to help out seems to come naturally, somehow. 

I would go as far as saying that it’s my favourite part of being in HR -- the ability to help others. I might not have the answer to everything. But I will surely do my best to find out!

We encourage admitted students to meet their offer conditions as soon as possible. For those who require a visa to study in the UK, it ensures a smooth and speedy visa application process, and for those who don't it ensures you are able to complete your online enrolment and gain full access to the Business School's resources as soon as possible. We have put together some useful information to help make the process as easy as possible.

What is the deadline to meet the conditions of my offer?

We encourage you to satisfy any offer conditions as soon as possible and in good time for the early September start date of your programme, but you should aim to meet your conditions by our 8 August 2022 deadline at the latest, especially if you require a visa to study with us. 

We are here to support you during the admissions process so if you have any concerns about meeting your offer conditions by 8 August 2022, please contact the Admissions team and we will be more than happy to discuss the options available to you.

How can I satisfy my academic condition?

You will need to verify your degree via the Qualification Check service. You must access Qualification Check via the link listed in your offer conditions, this ensures you do not have to pay to use the service. You will need to register for an account and follow the instructions as indicated. Once you have uploaded your documents and they have been verified by your institution the condition will be updated on Imperial Gateway.

Alternatively, if your university has a secure e-transcript sharing service, you can also use this and share your transcript with us registering it to the appropriate email address. For MSc programmes this is business.admissions@imperial.ac.uk and for MBA programmes this is mba@imperial.ac.uk.

Please do not post your documents to the College as the team may be working remotely so there may not be anyone available to receive your documents.

How can I meet my English Language condition?

We accept many different English language tests, so you may already hold a qualification that meets our requirements – if you haven’t already, please visit our English language requirements page for full details on the English language qualifications and scores we accept. If you have already completed one of the accepted English language qualifications please upload a scanned copy to your Imperial Gateway account or send a copy to our Central Admissions Team and they will be able to verify your results and mark the condition as complete.

English language testing centres can get booked up early, so we encourage you to book your English language test as soon as possible. Remember, you need to give yourself enough time to receive the results and have our Central Admissions team verify them. It's advisable to also have a contingency plan in place in case you need to resit your English language test.

My programme requires a GMAT or GRE test – how can I meet this offer conditon?

If you are a Full-time MBA or MSc International Management admitted student, you may have a GRE or GMAT condition attached to your offer. Your scores can be submitted by sending the test report form to the relevant admissions email addresses for verification MSc Programmes, MBA Programmes.

GMAT and GRE are now also offering alternative online testing options to candidates:

• GMAT Online provides an interim testing option whilst GMAT test centres are closed. Tests are available for booking, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Scores are available to you within 7 business days and if requested can be sent to an institution within 24 hours of the test. The online exam is available in most locations, but there are exceptions due to regulatory and local data privacy rules (Mainland China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Sudan).
• GRE General Test at Home – This online test is identical in content, format and on-screen experience to the GRE General Test taken at a test centre and accepted us as a complete equivalent to the in-person test. Individuals in Mainland China planning to take the test at home must visit takethegre.cn for specific information, policies and procedures related to registration and test day.

What other conditions should I expect to meet?

We also want to make you aware of some non-academic conditions that may be attached to your offer:

• Deposit – This is 10% of the total fee for full-time programmes and 10% of the first-year fee for part-time programmes. Once you have accepted your offer you will be issued with an invoice and you will have 30 days to make the deposit payment.
• References – There may be a reference condition in your offer if we have not received a suitable academic reference in support of your application. If you have a reference condition attached to your offer, your chosen referee can email their reference directly to the Admissions team from their official university email address.

We hope this has answered some of your questions around satisfying your offer conditions. You can find some further information on our admitted students pages. We look forward to you joining the Business School in the near future!

You feel frustrated because important projects are progressing too slowly. Your manager says you need to be more strategic but you barely have time for lunch, let alone strategy.

If this predicament sounds familiar, you may need more staff. Or your job description may be impossibly broad.

Or, though you may not like to admit it, you could be spending too much time on tasks that could be done by others.

How you can get better at delegation

Difficulty delegating is a common issue raised by managers on our leadership programmes. The good news is that you can get better at delegation.

1. Recognise the problem

First, you need to recognise that you have a problem with delegation.  Perhaps you find that you are working late on a consistent basis, or you miss deadlines or are much busier than your direct reports.  Your colleagues may have dropped hints – you may have been told that you ‘take on a lot’, for example. 

2. Identify what is preventing effective delegation

The next step to delegating well is understanding how your actions and feelings may be hindering effective delegation.

Protecting your reports: You shield your staff from work that is boring or repetitive and instead do it yourself. This may be because you want to be liked by your staff and are worried about how they will react to being given boring or repetitive work.

Perfectionism: You may choose not to delegate as you are convinced you will do the best job. This may well be true, but certain tasks may not be a good use of your time. Or perhaps you had a bad experience in the past so think it is safer not to engage others.

Wanting to be the expert: You may feel that your knowledge adds a lot of value to your organisation and you want to demonstrate your knowledge at every opportunity. However, this can mean you fail to engage and develop others. This can be particularly common in managers who have been promoted from positions as functional experts into roles requiring team leadership.

Anxiety: You may be hoarding tasks because you are anxious or insecure. Perhaps you are uncertain about your own priorities so you do a bit of everything in the hope that something will please your manager. Or perhaps you feel the need to justify your senior position by appearing busier than others.  

3. Develop techniques to help you delegate

There are practical techniques to help you delegate. We dedicate a whole session to delegation on our leadership development programme for executives and focus on encouraging our participants to tailor solutions to their own strengths and weaknesses.

A good starting point is to define an effective structure for ‘delegation conversations’. Delegation conversations are the times at work when you attempt to delegate work to someone else.  I hope this structure provides you with a useful starting point:

Understand your audience – who is being assigned the task?

Consider the skills, confidence and experience of the staff member who is being given a piece of work. How much information and support will they need? Is what is being asked of them achievable?

Frame the request

Clearly express to the staff member why this piece of work is necessary and why they are being asked to do it. What is the background to the piece of work? Why is it important? How does it fit into the bigger picture? Why are they the person who is best placed to do this task?

Define success

Clearly define what outcomes you are looking for and make sure the person you are delegating to has a clear idea of practicalities like deadlines and approvals required.

Arrange follow-up

How often would you like updates on the piece of work and in what form?

This structure is simple, but it is surprising how often important issues are left unsaid or ill-defined in delegation conversations, causing frustration and inefficiency. 

Even seasoned managers can struggle to delegate effectively. Coaching can help you to improve your delegation skills and free up time to focus on the things that matter. 

Professor Nelson Phillips is Abu Dhabi Chamber Chair in Innovation and Strategy at Imperial College Business School. He is also programme co-director for Leadership in a Technology Driven World.

Cyber security can seem technical and obscure, but in many cases it is about dealing with the risks that arise from common human behaviours.

Using and re-using simple passwords, replying to emails without checking the identity of the sender and cutting corners close to project delivery deadlines may seem like common slip-ups but can often constitute cyber breaches.

It is important to realise that these types of scenarios play out across organisational boundaries and at all levels of seniority, including the C-suite. As a result, the chance of a cyber security breach occurring within an organisation is heightened when people believe that dealing with cyber security is “someone else’s problem”.

To avoid this, organisations need to cultivate a widespread and adaptive security culture that is driven by leaders and decision-makers who continuously learn and update their knowledge and skills.

A Government survey of large UK businesses – the FTSE 350 Cyber Governance Health Check 2018 – showed that company boards are increasingly recognising the importance of cyber security. Alarmingly though, this recognition is rarely followed up by the actions needed to develop and establish sound security practices.

One insight into this is that whilst 72 per cent of responding businesses recognised themselves as having high exposure to cybersecurity risk, only 54 per cent rated their board’s understanding of their data assets as comprehensive.

Furthermore, only 16 per cent of respondents reported that their boards had a firm grasp of the wider impacts and losses associated with a cyber security incident.

Taken together, these points suggest that executives often lack the necessary depth of knowledge and understanding needed to make a proper determination on whether or not to take action.

According to the Research Institute in Trustworthy Industrial Control Systems – a multi-university research programme led by the Institute for Security Science and Technology at Imperial College London -  this shortfall in knowledge can be attributed to the inaccessible technical language that is often used when discussing cybersecurity.

This language barrier can play a significant role in impeding the timely escalation, examination and mitigation of risks within a company.

In a recent speech, Baroness Dido Harding - CEO of TalkTalk when it suffered a major cyber breach in 2015 - argued that in spite of recent high-profile cyber security incidents, boards and senior staff are potentially not asking the right questions about cybersecurity risk within their organisations.

The problem of risk communication is also reflected in the FTSE 350 survey, where only 33 per cent of businesses reported that they had a written board position on cyber security risk that had been widely disseminated across their organisation.

Faced with a lack of clear information, employees will often use their own judgements on cyber security best practice, which can lead to negative security consequences for the business.

In addition to clearly communicating risks to employees, investment is also needed when striving to achieve organisational resilience.

The FTSE 350 survey suggests that this is not happening at a healthy level across businesses, revealing that only 46 per cent of organisations with a cyber security strategy (and nearly all respondents claimed to have one) could point to a dedicated budget for it.

This, at least in part, may be due to the fact that cyber security is still seen by many as a purely technical issue rather than a broader organisational challenge, meaning that provision for dealing with it is assumed to be taken care of within IT budgets.

Of the businesses surveyed, 29 per cent said that their cyber security strategy was largely focussed on technology improvements and implementation. Whilst technology is clearly a vital component of any cyber security solution, it is crucial that businesses do not enclave their efforts solely within specialist teams, as this only promotes the issues of compartmentalisation and poor communication discussed above.

Furthermore, business leaders must keep abreast of what new technologies mean for cyber security. Leaders without a base level of technical competence in cyber security will struggle to ask good questions of technical specialists and contribute effectively when identifying and prioritising security risks, enacting appropriate measures to minimise exposure, dealing with crisis events and generally driving the continuous development of the security culture within their organisations.

Only around 20 per cent of the boards in the 2018 FTSE survey reported that they had undertaken crisis simulation exercises on cybersecurity in the last 12 months and data from the previous year’s survey shows that only 28 per cent of businesses reported that their boards had received training on how to deal with a cybersecurity incident in the previous 12 months.

A separate Government survey of UK businesses, the Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2019, undertaken by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport highlights similar issues beyond the board with only 27 per cent of businesses reporting that staff had attended internal or external training on cyber security in the previous 12 months. Of the businesses who did provide cyber security training, only 29 per cent of the trained staff were not cyber security or IT specialists.

The overall picture that emerges is that companies and organisations striving to improve their cyber security capabilities need to develop a culture where leaders are kept knowledgeable, risk communication and collaboration across teams is effective and investments in mitigations span solutions that are broader than technology. Achieving this means that decision makers must be engaged in continuous learning so that they can understand, adapt and react to emerging cyber security threats effectively. Picking the right blend of solutions for an organisation will be an enduring challenge – there is plenty of snake oil out there.