Tag Archives: HR

The World’s most expensive training course?

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Like many football fans, I watched events at Old Trafford yesterday – where the match was abandoned before kick-off after a “suspect device” was found in the stadium – with initial concern, followed by relief that the incident appeared to be a false alarm, and finally a degree of amusement when it was revealed that the mysterious package was in fact a dummy bomb left over from an exercise to train sniffer dogs in the ground several days previously. Several comments on social media at the end of the day expressed the view that they hoped the individual(s) responsible to be fired this morning.

But if your staff were responsible for such an incident, would you be considering dismissing them today? After all, we all like someone to blame, and there’s no doubt that the incident caused massive inconvenience to a lot of people. Indeed, local politicians seem to have jumped on the scapegoating bandwagon

But consider it this way. That error gave the emergency services the best way of testing their disaster plans in the event of a suspected bomb. They successfully evacuated 75000 people from the ground, put in place public transport plans to get them away from the area, and ensured that everything was done without panic or problem. But I’m also sure that they will be reviewing today what worked less well and making changes to resolve problems.

No matter how well planned your training, people will always behave differently when they think the event is actually happening (compare what happens during a planned fire drill and how people behave when they think there is real fire). So rather than blame, we should consider yesterday as a very high profile learning experience. The individuals concerned with leaving the dummy bomb behind will never again forget to carry out basic checks, while the emergency services will probably never have a better opportunity to safely test their procedures in a real life situation.

So blame, or thanks? Which would your company go for?

 

Is “Evidence Based HR” the latest HR fad?

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Lots of people criticise HR.

Actually I could just stop there, but the point of this post is that lots of people criticise HR for jumping on the latest workplace fad without any evidence that it works. “Netflix have dropped performance reviews – we should too” “Employee engagement is a big issue – we need to do something about it” Too often we adopt some new initiative more because it creates the impression that we are doing something about something, regardless of whether it will actually solve the problem.

So the increasing trend for evidence-based HR is something that generally I welcome – the concept that we should be able to prove, using properly constructed evidence, that doing A leads to B. And I particularly enjoy academic Rob Briner’s frequent challenges to the profession to consider the evidence for our various HR sacred cows.

But (and you sensed there was a but coming…) there are four reasons why I think we should be as cautious about evidence-based HR as we should be about anything else in the profession.

  1. Organisations are dynamic and different. A might lead to B (our preferred outcome) in one organisations but it might lead to C or D in others. Taking an overly academic approach would lead us to say that there’s no evidence that A works, because its results can’t be replicated outside  one organisation.
  2. There’s a danger of paralysis. “Should we drop or change our performance reviews?” “Well there’s no evidence that that would work” “Ok, better not do it then” – If someone doesn’t sometimes back a hunch, without evidence to support it, then we’ll always be stuck where we are.
  3. In the business world, we don’t always need to know the middle step of why A leads to B. It can just be enough to know that it happens. It’s a little like the fact that scientists know (from observation) that if you split a magnet in half, the two resulting magnets will have a north and south pole. They don’t know why (currently) but they know what will happen and can then plan accordingly.
  4. We might just end up with one size fits all “Best Practice” under a different name. If doing A leads to B, and we have evidence that this is the case, then if we want to achieve B then we must always do A. A may not fit with our own organisation, its culture and business context, but the evidence says this is what we should do.

The danger is that Evidence Based HR might fall victim to the very thing it seeks to challenge – becoming the latest bandwagon and seeing HR practitioners uncritically misapplying it. After all, we’ve already seen Dave Ulrich’s model feted then condemned, people with only a modicum of knowledge parading neuroscience as the future, and a nonsensical obsession with millennials, as flavours of the month in the last few years.

Weather man says fine today

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Radio 4’s ever interesting Thinking Allowed programme recently featured a report of a study into weather forecasters- and specifically what it referred to a “science rooted in unpredictability”. The research was based on a long-term study and its key findings were:

  • The core of the profession was based on evidence and data – whether this was an analysis of historic trends, mapping variable data in to the future, or using latest research to inform and update their modelling and prediction techniques
  • At the same time results needed to be interpreted and presented in a meaningful way to the recipient. While it might be scientifically accurate to say that there is a 65% chance of rain, what the end user wants to know is “do I need to take my umbrella out with me?”. So a key skill is clear and effective communication
  • Personal experience and “intuition” are still a vital part of managing the unpredictability – the research revealed that forecasters might spend significant time observing the sky and sharing stories and anecdotes as well as poring over computer models and satellite images. Being able on occasions to use this accumulated knowledge is essential to develop appropriate solutions. In fact the report gave an excellent example of this. The computer model predicted that Kansas City would not receive its first snowfall of the winter one night. Experienced forecasters believed it would. The decision was to go with the computer model, and the result was chaos as the city ground to a halt, unprepared for heavy snow.

Very interesting you may be thinking, but why are you writing an HR blog about it? It seems to me that this research also describes HR management pretty well. We’re dealing with unpredictable elements all the time (we call them “human resources”, though I prefer “people”). We should be using evidence and data wherever possible to support our activities (sadly, we don’t on too many occasions) but we also need to rely on our own experience to inform the judgments and decisions we make. And we need to communicate our advice and decisions in a way that is understandable and useful to managers and employees.

You can listen to the full Thinking Allowed report here

 

 

5 great ways to manage people better

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Today is #SmallBizSaturday – a worldwide day for celebrating and supporting small businesses. Here at Ariadne Associates we support small businesses throughout the year, of course, but today seems a good day to remind small business owners and managers of some of the simple things they can do to get the best from their staff.

  1. Say Thank You (and please). Basic good manners don’t disappear once you start work. If someone does something you have asked them to, say thanks. And particularly acknowledge if they’ve done it well – a great piece of customer service, solving a problem, or identifying a new way to increase sales.
  2. Remember you are dealing with people. You don’t have to be best friends with your staff (in fact you probably shouldn’t) but you should appreciate that they aren’t just automatons. Be aware, and take an interest in, the fact that Betty in accounts is worrying about her son’s A Levels; that Rajesh likes to travel to away matches so doesn’t like doing overtime at the weekend; that Paulina who works behind the counter is doing night classes because she really wants to be an engineer.
  3. Be professional. No-one wants to work for an employer who is slipshod about their pay, doesn’t bother to issue them with a contract or who ignores basic employment law. Pay the same attention to this as you do to sales, marketing, accounts etc. And get specialist advice if you’re not an expert.
  4. Be fair and consistent. This doesn’t necessarily mean do the same thing on every occasion, but it does mean that you should consider everything before making a decision. Don’t allow Phil to take extra holidays just because he’s your star salesperson and then not allow Deidre, who may have an equally good reason, but who isn’t doing so well.
  5. Don’t forget that if someone doesn’t appear to fit into your business, you were the one who recruited them. Learn from what went wrong in a bad hire before you start recruiting again.

Small businesses often can’t beat their bigger rivals in the pay and benefits they can offer. So you have to compete in other ways to attract and retain good people. Making your business a good place to work is a great (and low-cost) way to start. And if you’d like to know more about how you can do this, why not read this next?

God Loves A Trier

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Much as I like Twitter and find it to be very useful as an source of up to date HR and Employment Law debate and information, there is one really irritating thing about it as a business tool – the urge of some people to tweet “inspirational” or “motivational” quotes which are normally no more than platitudes. One that particularly annoys me, and which bizarrely seems extremely popular among HR people, comes from Yoda in Star Wars

yoda-approves-meme-generator-do-or-do-not-there-is-no-try-32cff4

(As an aside, it does bemuse me that people find inspiration from a swamp-dwelling homunculus with the voice of Fozzie Bear and a lack of knowledge of English sentence structure).

Let’s just examine that. Firstly – Do or Do Not. Well if those are my options, I think I’ll do not, thanks. After all, doing seems like a bit of effort.

And then “There is no try”. Nonsense (unless Yoda is referring to the video ref in a rugby match). We try all the time, and encourage others to do the same. What is the standard response when a child won’t eat a new food? “Just give it a try”.

Trying new things is an essential part of being human. It combines the excitement of doing something new, with the risk that it might not be successful. But even if it’s not successful, we learn something from it – even if it’s our own limitations. Look at a programme like Strictly Come Dancing. People who are famous for other things try to learn to dance. Some of them become extremely accomplished. Others find it a real effort and plod around the dancefloor. Occasionally one or two are so hopeless that it becomes difficult to watch without embarrassment. But the key thing is that they all try. And indeed some of the plodders become extremely popular with the viewers because they are seen to be making the effort, even if they don’t succeed.

No try means no learning, no development, no change, no possibilities, no growth. Trying is understanding that “failure” is sometimes the right outcome – and that if you do nothing unless you’re certain of the outcome then nothing is what you’ll do.