Tag Archives: HR

HR and “Fake News”

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Last Friday (15 Sept) the tweet below appeared regularly in my timeline.

Screenshot (5)
Given that unpaid internships – along with zero-hour contracts and ‘disguised’ employment (Uber/Deliveroo etc) – are the big ethical no-nos in HR currently, it will not surprise you that the response to the tweet was much collective tutting on behalf of those in the profession (including me initially)
But something nagged at me. Whether it was the fact that the original tweet was not from one of the usual HR sources; or the fact that there was no link to the offending advert, merely a picture; or that I’m currently studying the “Calling Bullshit” online module; or as an HR person I’m used to carrying out disciplinary and grievance investigations and digging beneath the surface of issues. But mostly it was the fact that the story seemed too good to be true.
So, in my lunchbreak I did a little research. And in around 10 minutes – significantly less time than this post has taken to write – I discovered the following:
1. There is no such charity as “Fight Against Slavery”. No organisation of that name is currently registered or has been registered in the recent past with the Charity Commission (an essential requirement to describe yourself as a charity in the UK). Nor is any such organisation listed on the publicly available Police list of Anti-Slavery organisations.
2. There was a Crowdfunding page set up around a year ago with the aim of starting a charity under this name. It seems to have raised precisely no money at all.
3. The Daily Mail appears to have run a story on this in January this year. Given that newspaper’s reputation for playing fast and loose with facts, and its ability to twist any story to one of its political narratives (in this case “The HYPOCRISY of LEFTIES who tell US what to do while THEY do the opposite”), it’s possibly not a reliable source.
4. A quick bit of fact-checking on the Mail story reveals that the advert was allegedly placed on the Gumtree website, a general classified ads site that does include job adverts. At this distance of time there is no way of checking whether the advert was ever posted there.
5. The alleged spokesperson for the charity is one Chiara Chiavaroli. The only person listed on LinkedIn with this name is a Bologna University student, and while there are around 10 women with this name on Facebook, all also appear to live in Italy (Disclaimer – I didn’t check individual profiles). The crowdfunding page above lists a different organiser.
So, was this a prank to fool the Daily Mail, or an invented story to raise an issue of concern? Or is there some other explanation? What it certainly isn’t is a charity abusing its role or an example of an organisation exploiting people (since real charities can and do operate with volunteers, a situation which is both legally and ethically accepted). And it shows that even HR is not immune to the concept of fake news, something that we should all be aware of when commenting or retweeting stories related to the profession.

I know what I want & I know how to get it?

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A common cry among HR people is that they are ignored or dismissed within their business. It’s something that in my 30 years in HR has never gone away, and forms a staple of many an HR conference. The “how do we get a seat at the table” discussion has outlasted almost every topic or fad that the profession has debated.

For me, one of the problems is that, while HR people moan to each other about not being taken ‘seriously’, we rarely ask our colleagues, who are after all our customers, what it is they want. But, after 18 years, working with a wide variety of organisations in widely diverging industries and sectors, I’ve come to the conclusion that what most want from HR is

·         To keep them legal – that means having a good knowledge of Employment Law and related regulation.

·         An understanding the business and its objectives, and the ability to devise solutions to problems that achieve this.

·         Good professional skills that no-one else in the business can provide – whether this is recruitment, employee development, handling a complex union negotiation, or an individual issue.

·         Someone who will remind them that they are dealing with other people. It’s very easy for managers to become focused on the task and forget that other human beings are involved. Pointing out the human consequences of a business decision isn’t being a “bleeding heart” – it allows better long-term decision making and planning.

·         Looking at ways things can be done, not reasons why they can’t

·         Someone who brings in expertise and knowledge from outside that can ‘add value’ to the business they are working for.

Now, I’ve never conducted a formal survey among the 125+ organisations I’ve worked with, and this view is purely based on my perceptions. So I’d welcome comments from businesses – and other HR people. Perhaps if we better understood what business wants, we might finally know how to earn the mythical seat at the table.

A quiet week

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I was sitting at my desk, thinking that this week had been comparatively quiet, but then I started to list a few of the things I’ve done:

·         Advised a client on a recruitment issue, including how to develop what they want and where they might source candidates

·         Worked with a small public sector organisation to review its restructure and recommend some improvements to it

·         Drafted a staff handbook for a growing professional practice

·         Helped a new start-up understand their ‘basic’ HR responsibilities

·         Assisted a client in a hi-tech field to deal with a performance management issue

·         Acting as the adviser for a charity client in a disciplinary issue

·         Dealing with a query about the Apprenticeship levy

·         Writing the script for, and recording a CIPD Level 7 training webinar (not entirely convinced that voiceover artist is a likely career move for me)

·         Finalising the edits for my book (of which more here)

It made me realise that even in the ‘quieter’ periods,  the variety of ‘people’ issues that crop up  in organisations are what makes my work so interesting. So, if your business or organisation needs some HR help, why not get in touch?

 

Frames of Reference (Part 2)

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About 10 days ago, I posted a blog post which consisted of a series of images and the simple question: What do you see?

The reactions it gained, both in the comments and on social media, were interesting and varied – as I’d suspected, everyone saw the images in a slightly different way – some saw them individually, some saw them thematically, and the same picture could elicit different reactions.

The differences occur because we all perceive things based on our own knowledge, experiences and values – everyone has a different frame of reference. And these frames of reference transfer into the workplace as much as any other aspect of life.

Sociologist Alan Fox broke these workplace frames of reference down into 3 broad categories:

·         Unitarist – everyone in the organisation shares similar values and culture and they are all working to the same end

·         Pluralist  –  people have different aims and objectives, which may depend on where they are in the organisation and as a result organisations become a coalition of interests –  and these interests can and do sometimes conflict

·         Radical (or Marxist) – the groups in a workforce (which can crudely be split into ‘managers’ and ‘workers’) are inherently in conflict – if one gains the other loses.

For the last 30 years, the dominant viewpoint in HR and business has been the Unitarist one – whether it’s Tom Peters and his “excellent” companies, or HR concepts like ‘best practice’ and ‘employee engagement’. But is it time to reconsider the idea that “we’re all in it together”? The increasing numbers of industrial disputes – which I highlighted here – suggest that increasingly groups of employees are considering that their interests are better served by opposing the wishes of their managers. While the so-called Uber model of employment distances people from their organisation even further.

After all if we interpret 5 photographs differently, why on earth should we all interpret something as complex as a business in a unified and agreed way?