Category Archives: HR Thoughts

Comments or posts about contemporary HR discussion topics – probably of more interest to HR professionals

The Value of Values

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Originally posted December 2013

My daughter’s primary school had its OFSTED inspection a few months ago and came out of it very well. What was particularly heartening from my perspective was not only that it was hitting good academic standards but that it achieved “outstanding” comments for issues such as pupil behaviour, cooperation and respect for others. There’s nothing particularly special about the school – it’s in what could be described as “working class” district of Liverpool and draws a significant number of pupils from socially deprived inner city areas.

But what is interesting, reading the OFSTED report, is the way it’s run.

  • Its whole ethos is based on a set of values (faith based ones in this particular case, but the important point is that it has values)
  • The school is led by a headteacher who ensures that targets and objectives are based in the context of those values
  • Teachers work within the values, set stretching but achievable targets and lead by example
  • Consequently pupils enjoy school, are interested in what’s going on and promote the culture themselves
  • And finally, as a relatively small school, communication is easier and there is less chance of individuals being “missed” or isolated.

So let’s try a bit of substitution. Change the words headteacher, teachers and pupils to Managing Director (or business owner), managers and employees. Sounds to me that it’s a successful recipe for building a sustainable and profitable business, with engaged and motivated employees. And it seems that smaller businesses may be more able to do this than larger ones – something which is also the subject of my contribution to the recent book of HR blogs “Humane, Resourced”.

If you want your business to be successful, then the question isn’t “why should we bother with values” – it’s “why don’t we have – and act on them – already?”

 

Edit: You might also enjoy this blog from HR blogger Helen Tracey on the same theme:

Are Values Valuable?

While You’re Capturing The Zeitgeist, They’re Widening the Motorway

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Originally posted November 2013

What do these business issues have in common?

A poor recruitment process leads to the appointment of a bank chairman who knows the price of cocaine better than the assets of his bank.

The government announces that hospitals must publish staffing ratios and recruit more if needed to ensure safe levels.

There is widespread condemnation at Executive pay-offs in the BBC.

The organisational “culture” is blamed for the ways in which newspapers behaved in adopting illegal practices to get stories,

Industrial relations “brinkmanship” leads to the threat of a major industry being closed.

A report talks about how businesses waste the skills and knowledge of older workers.

The simple answer is that they all reflect HR issues within a company. Not Finance. Not Marketing. Not Quality Control. Not Business Processes. But HR.

Despite the odd article prophesying the death of HR, the CIPD have recognised this sea-change within business and its Chief Executive Peter Cheese recently told its annual conference that “we can help shape the business agenda of the next decade and beyond”

But the real challenge is what is the HR profession going to do about it?  Are we simply going to luxuriate in the knowledge that we were right all along? Personally, I don’t want to look back in 5 years’ time at a business world where nothing much has changed, where the bean counters rule and HR people spend their time moaning that no-one takes them seriously. So what are we going to do to seize the moment?

Machiavelli and Macho Management

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Originally posted October 2013

As a young HR professional, I cut my teeth on what were known in those days as “industrial relations”, and spent many a happy hour (well, many an hour anyway) locked in negotiations with trade unions. Big industrial disputes (like big hair and shoulder pads) went out of fashion by the end of the 1980s, so it was with a mixture of professional interest and nostalgia that I watched how the Grangemouth dispute last week played out.  (If you missed the story, the background is here).

Depending on your viewpoint, it was a classic case of old-fashioned politically motivated trade unions attempting to resist change by an employer, or bully-boy tactics by a company using a pretext to drive down workers terms and conditions. Either way – and there seems to have been elements of both extremes at work – the dispute reached a head when Ineos announced that the plant would close with the loss of 800 jobs; the next day the union accepted the company proposals; and the following day the company said the plant would in fact stay open and that £300m would be invested in it.

A resounding defeat for the unions and a victory for macho management? I don’t think so. A wise old manager once told me “even if you’ve won your point, always give the union something to take back to their members. Trying to humiliate them will just lead  to resentment and they’ll look for an opportunity to gain revenge at some later date”. In fact that view goes all the way back to Machiavelli, who – although he advised Princes to kill or banish their opponents, since being merciful and magnanimous in victory would lead to a constant fear of plots and rivalry –  also counselled against trying to rule people (which in this case means the employees) by fear to the point of hatred.

So I’m going to indulge in a bit of crystal-ball gazing.

Grangemouth will reopen with the staff on worse terms and different work patterns, and Ineos will begin its investment. But as staff begin to resent the things they conceded “at gunpoint” the plant will be characterised for the next few years by “low level” industrial disputes, not necessarily formal action or even make the news but those which take up a lot of managerial time and effort. At some point, when the union feels on much stronger ground (probably after the investment is completed, or the economy is stronger), there’ll be another big dispute. Ineos will then be faced with a choice: play the “nuclear” card of threatening to shut the plant again (and risk looking like the boy who cried wolf); back down to the union demands; or decide to cut their losses and sell a troublesome plant to a competitor.  Whichever they chose, their significant investment won’t yield much of a return, and I wouldn’t fancy being one of their shareholders over the next few years.*

 

(*Note – this blog is not intended as financial advice. Shares in Ineos may go up, down, loop the loop or defy the ground. Past performance is not a guide to the future, as any football fan will tell you).

 

You Got an ‘Ology

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Originally posted October 2013

A few months ago I was asked to speak to Psychology students at Liverpool John Moores University about HR as a career option. An understanding of Psychology is often seen as one of the key knowledge areas for HR since it gives us a good insight into individual behaviour and personality. But after a debate last week on Twitter it seems that to be an effective HR professional you also need a good knowledge of

  • Law – the legal framework surrounding the employment relationship, whatever country you live in, is essential for setting down the basic ground rules.
  • Sociology – as we focus on individuals and their behaviour, we often forget we also need an understanding of wider power relationships and organisational structures. And then of course sociology’s close cousin
  • Social Anthropology – to help us understand the importance of culture, ritual and narratives (for example, why it is often harder to change tea breaks than undertake a major redundancy exercise)
  • Economics – an understanding of how labour markets work, skill shortages and wage rates, helping us to plan recruitment. While Behavioural Economics helps to explain why a performance bonus may often have the opposite effect to that intended.
  • Statistics – if 10% of employees return a staff survey, how confident can we be that the answers reflect the workforce as a whole? And when we talk about “average” wages what do we really mean?
  • History – if we’re embarking on change, do we understand why things are the way they currently are? And are the factors that created that still around?

Of course, I’m talking a good basic understanding, not degree level knowledge of each subject. But two questions spring to mind – is there any other business area that requires such a breadth of knowledge? And are there any other areas that HR professionals need to understand?

Quantum Physics and Refuse Collection

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Originally posted July 2013

At the moment I’m reading and enjoying Daniel Pink’s “Drive”, and have just reached the point where he describes companies who have introduced a system called ROWE (Results Only Work Environment) – where so long as the objectives are achieved, there is no monitoring of whether an employee is in work, or if they are  actually working at a particular time.

It sounds innovative and radical, but it reminded me of my days working as an Industrial Relations Officer for a local council in the late 1980s. There, the refuse collection department was seen as a hotbed of labour disputes. One of the particular problems from a management perspective was a working practice called “Stint and Finish”, where once the days bins were collected, the bin men could finish work. So although contracted to work between 730 and 430, with an hour for lunch, the men (and they were all men in those days) would – by agreement between themselves – cut short their break and aimed to finish as early as possible – usually by 230 and earlier on a Friday.

At the time, the government were introducing “Compulsory Competitive Tendering”, whereby Councils had to tender their direct services and where – provided minimal quality standards were met – price was the only determining factor. “If the staff can finish that early every day, then they must not have enough to do – and maybe we need fewer staff” ran the logic. “If we can cut costs, the in-house service has more chance of winning the tender”.

So off were dispatched the Council’s Work Study team (or as they grandly titled themselves “Industrial Engineers”) with their stop watches and clipboards, along with the Safety Officer to make sure that the staff were following proper procedures. And what did they find…? Without any apparent dawdling or shirking, each daily round was completed exactly as specified and the vehicles arrived back promptly at 430. It was almost as if, like sub-atomic particles, the very act of observation had changed the behaviour of the employees.  And on the days the study was being carried out, residents’ complaints about late collection of the bins rose.

What we had was the classic trade-off between efficiency (keep costs to an absolute minimum and work staff as hard as they can be) and effectiveness (provide a service residents are happy with, give staff the freedom to organise the work as they see fit within a defined cost base). Where does your organisation lie?

(Oh, and if you’re interested, the in-house team won the competitive tendering bid)