management style | Ariadne Associates

Originally published in September 2011, this post is recycled regularly whenever there is a major sporting or public occasion!

Over the last few weeks I’ve noticed a raft of “Olympics” policies and briefings issued by various organisations. Now I know it’s good marketing advice to tie in your public comments with a current event or issue, but an Olympics policy? When we are trying to encourage business to be flexible and both managers and staff to behave responsibly, do we need to tie them down with yet another set of rules? And how, precisely, do these Olympics policies differ from the World Cup policies being touted last year, or the Royal Wedding advice that was available in the spring?
I used to work for a bus company that operated hundreds of buses, involving thousands of drivers, in Merseyside and North London. When Liverpool played Arsenal in the Cup Final one year, did I write out an FA Cup Final policy for our garage managers to follow? No – in fact as HR Manager I left matters completely in the hands of frontline staff and managers, who with a mixture of shift swaps, overtime and knowledge that for every football fan there was a driver who wasn’t interested in football (or was an Everton or Spurs fan!), ensured that services were covered.
It’s really a question of “work-life” balance. If an individual has a particular interest in something happening outside work and you can accommodate a request for time off then there’s no problem. Equally if it’s an event that happens during working hours, is it really going to be that disruptive to let staff keep track of it while working? (after all, even with false starts, Usain Bolt can run 100m in less than 10 seconds). Forward planning, not rules and procedures, is what is needed.

Originally posted January 2011

Everyone has their own most disliked management phrase. Mine is probably the use of the word passion in the world of work. I don’t know whether it arose from an over-active marketing executive or is part of a general trend to use words conveying strong emotions in a way where their meaning becomes debased. But when I see a sentence in a recent blog like “we need more love, courage and passion in our workplaces” I cringe (and not only at the potential sexual harassment cases coming my way).

Setting aside its sexual and religious meanings, the most common definitions of passion are “a powerful or compelling emotion” and “a strong or extravagant desire”. Are either of these really the sort of behaviours we expect to see, let alone encourage, in the workplace? And do we want HR people to be “passionate” about our work, as I’ve read recently?

Let me give you an example using a different strong emotion. I’ve just redrafted a time off in lieu policy for a client, under which a small group of staff would be disadvantaged. In consultation, one affected member of staff told the Chief Executive that when she read the new policy she was “angry”. As a friend of mine commented “I get angry about children starving in Africa. I might get a bit annoyed if I didn’t like the way my company had changed one of its policies.”

So let’s be clear. I enjoy working in HR, I often find it fun or stimulating, and I can sometimes become very enthusiastic about aspects of it. But passionate about HR – no!

Ariadne Associates

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Passion is No Ordinary Word