HR: The Invisible Men

Upon being told that President Calvin Coolidge had just died, Dorothy Parker (American poet, wit and satirist) responded, “How can they tell?”

Sadly, I fear that the same words could be applied to the HR Profession unless something changes pretty soon.

Over recent months, the pages of the national press have been filled with the debate and moral outrage over the excesses of the bonuses paid within the UK banking system. Yet the contribution from the HR community has been practically non-existent.

Comment on the situation from either individual HR Directors within the banking sector (and here’s a challenge: name one!) or the CIPD has been less than negligible. The profession seems to be increasingly populated by Invisible (and Inaudible) Men.

Call me old-fashioned, but I thought that reward and recognition was part of HR’s remit?

Or perhaps the HR function is simply aiming to outsource any activity beginning with the letter R. Recruitment: pass it to a third party; Redundancy: we’ll get an outplacement consultancy to manage that; Reward and Recognition: that’s something for the Remuneration Committee.

At this rate, HR will resemble the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland:

This time it vanished quite slowly, beginning with the end of the tail, and ending with the grin, which remained some time after the rest of it had gone.

“Well! I’ve often seen a cat without a grin,” thought Alice; “but a grin without a cat! It’s the most curious thing I ever saw in my life!” 

Dear HR colleagues: there one thing beginning with R that can’t be outsourced: Responsibility. It’s time to take it and make the profession’s views heard. Failure to do so is to risk allegations of irrelevance.

And we don’t want that, do we?

Anyone seen an HR Director around here?

Who is responsible for Employee Relations strategy in the UK’s major organisations?

You’d think that the answer would be pretty straightforward: surely it’s the organisation’s HR Director, isn’t it?

But you’d be excused for thinking otherwise if you looked in the national press this week.

To put this issue into context: Unions within National Rail have given the green light for the first national rail strike in 16 years; British Airways cabin crew are due to begin a second round of strikes over proposed changes to their pay and conditions. Both of these conflicts have been given a significant level of media attention.

Here’s the HR Case Studies challenge for today: can you tell me who the HR Director is in either of these organisations? Or (for a bonus point!) can you find a single reference to the HR function in any press coverage of the strike action?

The figures in the media spotlight in both of these cases are the Chief Executives of the organisations, together with the National Trade Union Officials who represent the striking workers. So far the HR Directors in both of these disputes seem not only to have been denied a speaking part, but also aren’t even in the theatre, never mind on the stage!

It will probably be stated that both National Rail and BA have made a decision to have a single point of contact with the media. Clearly with BA in particular that is the forceful character of Willie Walsh (who, incidentally, originally trained as an Aer Lingus pilot and was a union shop steward, before eventually moving into management). But for the HR function to remain silent on the issue can only lead to criticisms of its role and purpose.

If the UK’s HR profession is to answer those critics who question the reasons for its existence, it is surely at times like this where it needs to make its presence felt.

It’s lonely at the top

The recent recall of millions of their vehicles worldwide because of safety concerns has understandably led to not only a battering of Toyota’s reputation but also a drop in morale in the company’s workforce.

Recently, Toyota president Akio Toyoda exchanged his business suit for a worker's uniform to speak to the company's Japanese employees and hopefully get them (unlike their cars) firing on all cylinders.

In an unusual admission of vulnerability he admitted to the employees, dealers and suppliers who were present at the company headquarters for the address that the constant barrage of criticism had left him feeling lonely:

"I was feeling lonely as Toyota was being criticised repeatedly on TV and in the newspapers, and I was being chased by the media."

Not to worry though, he also revealed that he felt protected by those employees that he had met when in the USA when appearing before a US congressional hearing to answer questions on safety concerns.

"I had been thinking I was striving to protect those people, but I realised I was actually being protected by them. I was deeply moved and thought I was really lucky to be a member of Toyota."

• Is it a sign of strength or weakness for business leaders to admit to such feelings?

Brits: Your employer owes you over £5,000 for unpaid overtime

According to figures published by the TUC, if you're an average Brit putting in unpaid overtime you would only start being paid from today if you'd done all your unpaid work at the start of the year!

However, if you're one of those who clock up over 10 hours a week, you'll have to wait until April 26th before the money hits your bank account.

Last year more than five million workers did an average of seven hours 12 minutes of unpaid overtime every week, worth £27.4 billion, or £5,402 each, according to the TUC.

Press Association: Rise in workers' unpaid overtime

So how do we compare with our colleages across Europe? An exact comparison is difficult to make, as there are different rules and thresholds in place, but many countries have imposed maximum overtime limits and these are highlighted below. (Information derived from European Industrial Relations Observatory Online)

Austria
Maximum 5 hours per week

Belgium
No maximum

Denmark
Maximum 12 hours over 4 weeks

Finland
138 hours over a 4-month period

France
180 hours per year or set by collective agreement

Germany
Varies between sectoral agreements.

Greece
3 hours per day spread over 43 hours

Hungary
200 hours per year

Italy
250 hours per year (or lower by agreement)

Netherlands
None, but there are overall statutory daily, weekly and quarterly working time limits

Norway
200 hours per year

Poland
4 hours per day, 150 hours per year

Spain
80 hours per year

Sweden
None, but there are overall statutory weekly working time limits

UK
None, but there are overall statutory weekly working time limits (from which individuals may 'opt out')

As TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber has stated: "Staff are understandably doing all they can to help their company recover from the recession - and bosses should thank them for going that extra mile, but working time still needs to be properly managed. A long hours culture is bad for workers' health and family life - whether the hours are paid or not."

OK. Confession time for HR Case Studies readers: how much unpaid overtime are you putting in?

Shell shareholders are revolting!

Readers of HR Case Studies will already be aware that there have been a number of pay protests at company annual meetings in recent months, raising concerns over the level of executive remuneration including excessive bonuses.

Shareholders have made their feelings known at the annual general meetings of Royal Bank of Scotland, BP and Shell.

It will be interesting to see how Royal Bank of Scotland and BP respond to the example set by Royal Dutch Shell now that they have announced their decision to freeze the pay of  top management following a shareholder revolt last year. In May 2009, 60% of Shell's shareholders voted against its remuneration report at its annual meeting.

Consequently, today, Shell has the salaries for its chief executive and chief financial officer are being frozen until 2011. The company said it wanted to "demonstrate appropriate restraint in the current economic environment".

Shell will also award bonuses based on how well projects are delivered, rather than its previous measure of total shareholder return.

BBC: Shell freezes pay for top managers after revolt

Over to you RBS! Let's see if you follow suit!

Quick! Somebody get me a paramedic with sensible socks, shiny shoes and a tucked-in shirt (and clean religious headgear!)

I dare you not to laugh at this.

Avid followers of HR Case Studies will already be aware that senior management within North West Ambulance Service have decreed that socks with images of cartoon characters, or days of the week are "inappropriate" and "unprofessional", and therefore must not be work by front-line staff. Novelty sock lovers who work for the service could face disciplinary action if they continue to wear them on the job.

But the fashion police have now gone one stage further.

Staff must now also ensure their green shirt is tucked in at all times, footwear must be issued by the trust and be fully polished and religious headwear should be "clean and laundered."

BBC News: Ambulance crews face 'silly sock' discipline

Confession time: did you snigger when reading this?

Technorati feed confirmation ZWF632WUYY4Y

Fabio Capello, Pope Benedict, Football and Equality Legislation

I need help with this one!

I know that the Brits are a strange and inconsistent race at the best of times, but our attitude to football and religion is addling my brain.

First of all, last week the Pope urges Catholic bishops in England and Wales to fight the UK's Equality Bill with "missionary zeal", and gets well and truly slagged off (OK, by the usual suspects) for daring to suggest that those in ecclesiastical authority should be able to choose who they want in senior positions.

The Pope

Then, as a result of his off-field antics of dodgy morality, Fabio Capello strips John Terry of his England captaincy, stating "I have to take into account other considerations and what is best for all of the England squad." And, lo and behold, around 75% of the UK population say that they are in agreement with Capello's decision.

Fabio Capello

So the head of one Italian organisation is pilloried for advocating adherence to a strict code of morality, but another Italian bloke gets a round of applause?

Puzzled!

Let me through I'm a paramedic (wearing inappropriate footwear)

What a weird world we live in!

As readers of HR Case Studies already know, American HR Managers are kept awake at night by the thought of bare legs, but here in the United Kingdom the most significant business issue to be occupying the minds of management strategists isn’t Business Process Re-engineering, Return on Investment for Learning and Development Programmes or the challenges created by Generation Y, but something much, much more important: the wearing of novelty socks.

Uniformed staff within my local ambulance service have been barred from wearing socks with images of cartoon characters, jokes and garish patterns after bosses (i.e. those who clearly know about these matters) have declared them to be them "unprofessional". OK, the strict uniform policy issued by North West Ambulance Service, also extends to a ban on wrist watches, visible body piercing, excessive make-up and certain tattoos. But nevertheless, staff have been warned they could be disciplined and ultimately even sacked if they flout the dress code which forms part of their terms of employment.

As one would expect, the decision has polarised opinion:

On the one hand (or should that be foot?) a spokesman for the Association of Professional Ambulance Personnel, said: "I am a firm believer in having a dress code but this is stretching the rules too far. The majority of staff wear boots so their socks can't even be seen.”

But on the other hand/foot management insist the code is designed to ensure health and safety standards are met, and includes bans on clinical staff wearing wrist watches and some jewellery because they can carry germs or injure patients: "We expect our staff to wear uniforms provided and do not feel that novelty socks with slogans and images are appropriate for presenting a professional image to patients and members of the public.”

Personally, I’m not sure that when I’m being resuscitated by a paramedic after my rapidly-approaching heart attack I’m going to be too concerned by the Homer Simpson socks.

Ambulance chiefs threaten to sack paramedics who wear novelty socks

• Over to you, dear readers. Is this professionalism or have North West Ambulance Service put their foot in it?

Influential study of HR Managers establishes link between dandruff and outstanding performance

OK, not really!

But the HR world seems to be following the current fashion for reporting on surveys and studies covering just about every conceivable area.

To give you an idea of the spread of these pesky creatures, only one of the following items is NOT a study or survey that has been released over the last few days. Any idea which one?

1. Fish oil pills prevent schizophrenia
2. Boys from minority backgrounds are more likely to smoke when they feel they are being discriminated against
3. Apologies go down better through the right ear
4. There's a link between internet addiction and depression
5. There's not a link between internet addiction and depression
6. Physical exercice helps mice brains grow
7. Shoe design may have changed the way we run
8. Readers of HR Case Studies generally believe that they will keep their New Year's Resolutions
9. Bees can recognise human faces
10. 60% of workers inted to leave their current job when the recession ends
11. Eating porridge for breakfast can reduce the risk of asthma
12. Blonde women are more aggressive than brunettes
13. Left-handedness is an increasing trend among UK HR Directors
14. Female maths teachers can transmit anxiety about the subject to female students
15. Americans can tell whether a person is a Democrat or a Republican just from their picture
16. Spanish-speaking mothers are less likely to turn on the TV
17. Straight-A students are a higher risk of developing bipolar disorder
18. 70% of HR managers confess to having rejected candidates just because of their online profile
19. UK job satisfaction has decreased despite the recession ending
20. Cutting speed when driving increases your life expectancy

It depends what you mean by . . .

Professor C.E.M. Joad was a somewhat eccentric British philosopher and broadcaster who achieved a high level of popularity through his regular appearances on The Brains Trust - a 1940's antecedent of Any Questions. Most of his answer to questions were prefaced by the immortal words, "It all depends on what you mean by . . ."

Those words certainly need applying to the recent (OK, last month, but we've all been busy!) publication of the Management Today "Most Admired Company" Award. Guess who's top? BSkyB!

Admittedly, as Management Today (under pressure!) confess, "the awards aren't chosen by judges, at least in the traditional sense - it's all based on a peer review survey," but here are the scores on the doors:

1. BSkyB
2. Tesco
3. Johnson Matthey
4. Cadbury
5. GlaxoSmithKline
6. Rolls-Royce
7. BP
8. BG Group
9. Diageo
10. Cobham

Management Today: BSkyB is Britain's Most Admired Company 2009
 
Right. Time for a different view
 
Covalence are a Swiss-based organisation that track the ethical reputation of multinational companies, and produce a regularly updated ranking of such organisations.
 
The criteria that they use in determining ranking are largely based on the contribution of multinational enterprises to human development globally, with particular attention paid to the needs and realities of developing countries.
 
Here's how the Companies on the Management Today "most admired" list fare when a different set of measures are applied! Interesting that on that basis, BSkyB would be bottom of the list, not the top! The list shows where each company ranks in the list of 581 multi-national companies assessed by Covalence. 

1. BSkyB 323
2. Tesco 97
3. Johnson Matthey 299
4. Cadbury 26
5. GlaxoSmithKline 29
6. Rolls-Royce Not Listed
7. BP 130
8. BG Group 308
9. Diageo 39
10. Cobham Not Listed

Covalence Ethical Ranking 2009

• What do you, dear reader of HR Case Studies, think is worthy of admiration in a company?

I won't be in work today because my mother-in-law didn't die at the weekend as expected

Apparently today is National Sickie Day; the day of the year when most employees are likely to ring in and lie through their teeth about why they won't be in work.

Seems that 350,000 employees are expected to ring in and make their excuses today, and the likely cost to the economy could be in the region of £30 million.

According to the DailyTelegraph, part of the fault lies at the door of the weak and feeble managers who are too easily conned by employees who send in their pathetic excuses ("the road outside my house is too busy to cross") by e-mail and text. Seems in the good old days the super-sleuths of the UK could easily sort the malingers from the genuine moribund by talking to them on the phone.

Daily Telegraph: National Sickie Day: peak number of staff call in 'ill'

• Today's challenge: what the worst excuse for absence you've heard (or given!)

Performance Management Case Study

Here's a post that is mainly for those Business Studies and HR teachers who read HR Case Studies.

The attached case study describes a common situation where a newly appointed manager needs to be set performance management objectives by his line manager.

As is frequently the case, there are probably too many items to go into the suite of objectives for the year, so the manager will have to exercise some discretion over what goes in and what stays out.

Also there are probably a couple of items that just need to get sorted out rather than captured in a formal appraisal paperwork. Or is this not the right approach?

Surely not all of the objectives can have timescales attached? Or can they?

And let's face it: the idea that each of these issues can be written up as SMART objectives is daft. Or is it?

And is ten items too many to be included in a performance management review?

Good luck!

Performance Management Case Study

Ten things you can buy with about £220

  

1. A Citizen Men's Eco-Drive Titanium Perpetual Calendar Chronograph Watch
2. A 32K iPod Touch
3. A Dewalt DC925KA XRP Combi Drill
4. A TomTom GO 950 LIVE Satellite Navigation System
5. A pair of Oakley Juliet Sunglasses with Carbon Frame and Polarised Black Iridium Lens
6. A decent exercise bike
7. One bottle of Chateau Leoville Lascases 1955 2eme Grand Cru Classe St Julien
8. 25 Le Hoyo du Dauphin SLB cigars
9. A rather tasty Ibanez SA120EX Electric Guitar

OK that’s nine. What else might you want to spend your 220 quid on?

How about the total average provision for learning and development per UK employee in 2009?

Not much, is it? And if you’re unlucky enough to work in the public sector, that amount decreases to £127 per head.

That’s about the same as a lousy bottle of Chateau Leoville - Barton 1964 2eme Grand Cru Classe St Julien.

Cheers!

Two casualties of the recession: Bankers and Strippers

No man is an island, we are all connected. Sometimes the connections are surprising. As a small example, the dramatic changes in The City of London’s banking community have had an impact on café’s, restaurants, taxi drivers and strippers. Strippers? Yes, esteemed blog followers. The unseen world of the Gentleman’s Club appears to be caught up in the fallout from the disasters of the finance business.

My suspicion is that not many of the shy and retiring readers of HR Case Studies will be familiar with the life of a stripper, so allow your intrepid editor (accompanied by the glamourous Annie*) to enlighten you.

From an HR point of view the first point to note is that the women who work in these clubs are self-employed and not employees. They pay the club a fee ranging from £40 to £100 each night to work so everyone arrives needing to work. At £20 a dance the first dances count for nothing in Annie’s mind. As a motivator to work it’s fairly direct. Pay-to-work also applies to Hairdressers and Day Traders. It’s strange what connects people.

The returns on this investment can be considerable. Even though there are fewer bankers with less cash Annie’s take home pay can range from nothing to £200 on a bad night to as much as £1000 on a "lucky" night. She works two or three nights a week on a flexitime arrangement that would be the envy of many firms.

Wondering what sort of person takes their clothes off for the pleasure of others (oh, and not forgetting the receipt of a not insubstantial sum of money)?

Oh they're all sorts. Some really nice girls and some that I don't like at all. OK, they're prettier than average, but apart from that you have those who left school at 16 and some with university degrees. Some are single mums and some are married. Some are paying for their studies and some are just doing a job. There isn't really a typical dancer.

And how easy is it to make a success in the twilight world?

Let's just say the good girls make good money, and the bad girls don’t last. It can be tough for some if they have the wrong attitude. It also depends on why a girl is working. Some of them are the main earners in the house if their partner is unemployed; a fair number are single mums, and then there are those like me who have other jobs which help to make life a bit more predictable. Motivation is different from girl to girl.

And has there been a noticeable effect caused by the recession?

As the bankers and traders have had a bad time, we've had a bad time too. Not only do we have fewer big money evenings, but sometimes we can have a lot of guys in the club, but not many of them actually spending. They drink, get a bit cheeky and maybe have a dance but then clear off. But there are too many girls now chasing too few guys with too little in the wallet.

Is this your only source of income, or do you have other strings to your bow?

I work part time, three days a week as a PA to a senior manager in a large commercial organisation. The work is fine, regular and routine. It can be frustrating. I can do so much more, but I usually hide the fact that I've got a brain! I’m more than happy to explore, for example, the parallels between Shakespeare's Tempest and John Fowles' The Magus!

If, dear reader of HR Case Studies, you're wondering if you'd recognise Annie if you bumped into her at either the CIPD conference, or a convention on Post-Modernism in Contemporary English Literature; you probably wouldn't:

I don't deny what I do. Ask and I'll tell. But I don't wear a t-shirt at the weekend saying 'Hey, I'm a stripper'. It's what I do, some of the time; it’s not what I am.

* Of course it’s not her real name.

What happens when your employees are not engaged: They lick your chicken.

An unlicked chicken

Here’s a challenge for those of you involved in Employee Engagement: could you have succeeded with this guy who used to work in my local Asda store?

Film of supermarket worker Adeel Ayub who worked in the Asda store in Fulwood, Preston was posted on YouTube by one of his “friends” and accomplices.

The oh-so-hilarious prankster is shown letting off fire extinguishers, throwing eggs in a store room, ripping seats in the employee rest area, cutting his colleagues’ clothes, playing football in the aisles of the store, and urinating in a rubbish bin. His ever-so-funny encore for the appreciative audience is licking a raw chicken before putting it back on the shelf.

This week, he is starting a two-month jail term after he was sentenced at Preston Magistrates Court. For some unfathomable reason he was shocked at the sentence, and his solicitor does not believe that “the sentence is proportionate to the crime”

Lancashire Evening Post: Asda saboteur who denied licking raw chicken is jailed. (Warning! Contains link to video footage which some might find offensive)

• What might Asda wish to do to minimise the negative impact of this former employee's actions on current staff?

Radio Advert ruled as offensive to Germans

There seems to be a German theme emerging on HR Case Studies this week.

In what appears to be a crass error of judgement, Reed Recruitment recently launched a radio advertisement (for their own recruitment jobsite) implying, in the view of the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), that Germans are tyrants. The ASA has subsequently banned the advert, saying that it could cause serious offence to some listeners and was found to be offensive because it used a negative stereotype.

Whether the 13 individuals who complained to the ASA were German or not, we do not know.

The Advertising Standards Authority also judged that:

While the use of stereotypes was inevitable to establish a character in a short radio advert, this should not perpetuate damaging misconceptions. We noted the ad used a German speaker, rather than someone speaking English, to portray the boss as 'a bit of a tyrant' and the humour derived from a stereotype at the expense of German people. We considered that the portrayal suggested that German people were more likely to be unreasonable or aggressive to others. We concluded that, given the extreme reaction and aggressive tone of the German-speaking boss, the ad reinforced a negative and outdated cultural stereotype of German people as overpowering and tyrannical and therefore the ad had the potential to cause serious offence to some listeners.

Ultimately, the advert was judged by the ASA to have breached rules governing good taste and must not be broadcast again in its current form.

Fortunately for the esteemed readers of HR Case Studies, here's a link to the Reed Recruitment advert for you to judge for yourselves.

Guardian: Radio Ad ruled as offensive to Germans

• Offensive, or just good humour? What do you think?

Echte Leader schauen nicht in Führungsbücher, sondern in die Augen ihrer Mitarbeiter

Echte Leader schauen nicht in Führungsbücher, sondern in die Augen ihrer Mitarbeiter

The HR Case Studies editorial staff liked the quotation so much that they decided to write a blog about it!

In English this roughly translates as "A real leader doesn't look in leadership books, but into the eyes of his employees"

By well-timed coincidence this also reflects the view of a new report by the Work Foundation which suggests that the best way for leaders to achieve outstanding performance is by following a ‘highly people-centred approach’ and to focus on stretching and enabling their staff so they can excel.

Admittedly, Management Today (who have just reported on the Work Foundation's findings) are rather sceptical, but the study is still worth a glance. (Ocular pun number one!)

The Work Foundation’s latest report is based on a two-year qualitative study of about 260 people at six big UK companies, including Tesco and Unilever about what they thought of their leaders, and leadership more generally. The conclusion was that those considered ‘outstanding’ rather than merely ‘good’ leaders had certain things in common.

Rather than focusing on tasks, they look to understand people and their motives
They develop people through challenge and support, not training and advice
They’re self-confident without being arrogant.
They worry as much about the mood and behaviour of their people as their organisational objectives

Sadly, Management Today is not convinced that this study provides any objective evidence for a direct link between a people-centred approach and better corporate performance. "As far as we can see, it just proves that leaders who focus on people are more popular with their people" protests the eminent journal.

But the Germans certainly seem to agree!

Focus on people not targets, managers told

• What do you think?

Up to 124 million working hours lost due to adverse weather conditions.

The Editor of HR Case Studies makes his way into work last week

According to a YouGov poll reported by People Management journal, up to 124 million working hours were lost in a single week due to the adverse weather conditions.

The snow which covered most of the UK in the first full working week following the Christmas break affected three-quarters of all employees.

Here’s a list of the effects of the snow on UK businesses

• 45 per cent of British workers faced travel disruptions
• 71 per cent claimed that the lack of grit on major roads was the major hindrance
• 78 per cent of the sissy chaps from the south-east claimed that they were disrupted by the weather
• 54 per cent of the sturdy employees from the West Midlands (where there was more snow than in the south-east) suffered disruption to their working
• 50 per cent of the 2,000 people surveyed felt pressurised to get into work
• 10 per cent had to postpone or cancel business meetings
• 8 per cent of workers were forced to stay at home due to school closures
• 11 per cent of staff who were unable to travel to their workplace were able to work remotely from home
• 12 per cent of British workers were unable to work at all

The total cost of the adverse weather so far in 2010 could be as high as £450 million, according to estimates from the Forum of Private Businesses.

Snow disruption costs businesses over 100 million working hours

• Come on, admit it: how did you cope with the snow?

Race and colour are no longer a disadvantage in Britain, according to UK Communities Secretary

In a speech to be given later today to mark a decade of the Race Relations Amendment Act, Communities Secretary John Denham will say that the government has made significant progress in tackling racism, and that poverty and class are now more likely to be the causes of disadvantage rather than skin colour.

That does not mean that we should reduce our efforts to tackle racism and promote race equality, but we must avoid a one-dimensional debate that assumes all minority-ethnic people are disadvantaged.

Debating the issue with Lord Herman Ouseley, chair of Kick it Out, on the Radio 4 Today programme, Denham disagreed with the suggestion that it appears that you are more likely to be at a disadvantage if you are white and working class than if you are black, but reaffirmed the government’s commitment to deal with inequality regardless of where it comes from.

Displaying remarkable unity with the Communities Secretary, Lord Ouseley added that all forms of potential forms of inequality, including race, poverty, class and sexual identity, need to be addressed as a coherent whole, without singling out race as one discrete issue that affects poverty or inequality.

Denham concluded:

We need to make people feel that they don’t think that people are being singled out for special treatment just because of the race that they are from. If people get support and help it needs to be because of the needs they have. We’re committed to tackling inequality and disadvantage whoever you are and wherever you are.

BBC News: Ethnic minorities "no longer always disadvantaged"

BBC Have Your Say: Are ethnic minorities still disadvantaged?

• What tangible evidence can you provide demonstrating that progress has been made in tackling the issue of race discrimination in the workplace?
• Do you agree with the suggestion that it's wrong to single out individual minority groups for special treatment, and that inequality needs to be addressed as a coherent whole?

£9.6m is “going rate” for the job according to RBS chief executive

In defending his bank's pay structure to a committee of MPs the chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has admitted that even his parents think he earns too much.

He said that he was offered the "going rate" of £9.6m for his job but claimed that his own pay package was worth next to nothing as the share price of RBS is currently so low.

Shares in the bank have fallen for the past three years, declining 41% last year and 87% in 2008.

He holds shares worth up to £3.4m but will only be allowed to sell them in 2014, should the bank's share price rise above 70p.

BBC: RBS boss says even parents think he earns too much

• “My parents think I earn too much.” How effective a measure of the appropriateness of remuneration levels do you think this could be?