Your decision is required!

Do you remember that sinking feeling you used to experience at secondary school when your clearly unprepared teacher (and it was usually either the English or the RE teacher) uttered the energy-draining words:

We’re going to have a debate.

You knew exactly what would happen. 30 minutes of uninformed discussion led by the clueless, with contributions from the self-opinionated, ending in a final vote which might as well have been taken at the beginning, so negligible was the movement of minds that the debate had achieved.

I experienced that sinking feeling yesterday when I stumbled across a blog asking the question:

“What place the Unions in 2011?”

I think that the comment of “are Trade Union leaders simply self serving, rewarding themselves handsomely from members subscriptions whilst embarking on a shameless quest of self promotion” gave readers a slight clue as to the opinions of the blog writer.

The few comments on the blog were divided between those that thought that Trade Unions were A Good Thing, and a similar number that regarded them as A Bad Thing.

So, time for a bit of mischief!

Do you remember those times when your school teacher was slightly more prepared, and suggested a balloon debate, where pre-selected individuals were allocated roles of various historical characters and they had to justify why they shouldn’t be thrown over the side of the slowly sinking balloon?

Well, the writer of the blog just happened to be a recruitment consultant (spit!)

So dear readers, in the balloon there’s just the three of you: you, a Trade Union leader (simply self serving, rewarding themselves handsomely whilst embarking on a shameless quest of self promotion) and a recruitment consultant (simply self serving, rewarding themselves handsomely whilst embarking on a shameless quest of self promotion)

The decision is yours. One of them has to go.

Who’s it going to be? Trade Union leader or Recruitment Consultant

Cast your vote at the top of the blog!

Why? Why? Why?

OK, dear readers. Examine the following three statements:

If you pay exceedingly generous bonuses to a select few individuals at the pinnacle of any management hierarchy, it will inevitably lead to those businesses being better managed, and consequently improving shareholder value.

If you remove the ability of employees to request the right to work flexibly, it will inevitably lead to increased productivity within the workforce.

If you remove the practice of collective pay bargaining in the NHS and education sector (presumably requiring each region to undertake such activities independently), this will also boost productivity.

All three of the above statements are ones which form the backdrop to much debate within the UK’s management community at the moment.

OK, the debate is never put in such stark terms, although the recent proposals put forward by the Institute of Directors for the drastic curbing of employee rights come pretty close to it.

'Axe' public sector union rights, say business leaders

Management, especially where it involves people, is never a precise science, and therefore the laws of cause and effect don’t exactly apply.

But for a generous bonus culture to lead to better financial performance or reduced rights for employees to lead to improved productivity there must in theory be an unbroken chain of causality that can be observed and investigated.

If the statements above are true, it doesn’t matter how many links there are in the chain, but there must be a connection between the cause and the effect.

Can someone help me out here: why do we believe that our generous bonus culture has led to increased financial performance? And why do we believe that reducing the rights of employees will similarly lead to increased productivity?

I’m not looking for an explanation of every link in the chain. Just the first one will do.

Confessions of an HR Snob

Let’s face it, when it comes to Jazz, I’m a snob. No point in denying it. I’m quite happy listening to Evan Parker wrenching tortured sounds out of his sax that resemble a seal cull. Or John Stevens choosing to ignore the concept of time signatures in his avant-garde drumming. But I can cope with these guys because I know that if they were asked to rattle off All The Things You Are, Autumn Leaves or Round Midnight, they could do so without any trouble. My basic rule is: Prove to me that you can do it properly before you show me you can do it differently.

I adopt the same stance when it comes to HR.

So when someone accused me of being an HR snob (on the issue of recruitment, to be accurate) last week, I saw that as a compliment rather than an insult.

The idea is becoming prevalent that most activities that are undertaken within the HR function can be chopped off and performed equally well elsewhere. This inevitably leads to the next step of concluding that there’s really nothing much to HR, and that basically any idiot could do it.

Oddly enough, I partly agree with this. Any idiot could do most things in HR. Badly. But to deliver the full range of HR services, particularly operating as an HR generalist, takes a special sort of person, of which there are (fortunately) a significant number in the profession.

Every organisation has its own distinct set of challenges, and I doubt if mine is all that unique, so let’s have a quick look at the activities that are on the centre of the radar screen at the moment.

• Planning engagement with the senior management team to determine what form of HR model is best suited to the organisation’s needs.
• Responding to employee feedback to ensure that HR delivers the level of HR service that the business demands.
• Reviewing the provision of occupational heath cover for employees undertaking assignments in over 50 countries from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, and including challenging locations such as Sudan and Haiti).
• Rolling out an internship programme allowing team members to gain experience within a Disaster Management Team. (If you fancy a relaxing summer holiday responding to the aftermath of the floods in Pakistan or helping out with Water, Sanitation and AIDS awareness in the Democratic Republic of Congo, give me a shout!)
• Exploring ways increase the representation of women in the senior management team of the organisation.
• Rolling out a Personal Conduct Policy to clarify the impact of individual employees’ behaviour on company reputation in a values driven organisation (Sky Sports: you may wish to get in touch!)
• Launching a suite of surveys to measure satisfaction of managers and candidates involved in recruitment activities.
• Continuing discussions and debate about the fitness for purpose of the current HR information system, and options for the future.
• Considering what mechanisms are available and appropriate to ensure the active engagement and support of the organisation’s extensive volunteering community.
• Throw a few other ingredients into the mix such as developing a Global Reward Strategy, the usual grind of job evaluation, ensuring compliance with the recent Equality Act and Default Retirement Age legislation, planning workshops on recruitment, grievance and discipline skills for line managers, making sure that the right people get paid (and the wrong ones don’t!) and, well, you’ve probably just started to scrape the surface of what’s on the agenda of a typical HR department in the UK.

So, before someone tells me that HR is a piece of cake, prove to me that you can do all the stuff above, and then I’ll listen.

Until then, I’ll stick to Keith Jarrett

Recruitment: None of HR's Business.

Ever participated in an online chat with a group of like minded professionals? (No, I don’t mean that sort of chat, thank you very much. None of that in these hallowed surroundings)

I mean one where a group of individuals get together to thrash out an issue together, generally for an agreed period of time, and with contributions from just about anyone with an opinion.

Let me tell you what happens when people get together (like last night) to discuss the issue of recruitment.

Normally the debate is chaired by someone with a vested interest in the issue being discussed. So you think you’re involved in an open debate, whereas in reality it’s a thinly disguised marketing activity on behalf of the person chairing the debate. (Sorry Bill . . .)

Next thing that you’ll notice is that the issue up for debate will be totally non-controversial. Something along the lines of “Has recruitment got anything at all to do with HR, or wouldn’t it really be better to hand it all over to us guys in the recruitment industry”.

Nothing at all contentious there then.

You will by this stage also have noticed that the assembled multitudes are predominantly from the recruitment profession, who hover like vultures around the (perceived, in their view) expiring body of the HR community. The reason for this is pretty simple. Recruiters use social media and, incidentally, think that anyone who doesn’t use it is sinful, wicked, out of touch, misguided, demented, and generally a bad sort. HR professionals on the other hand, generally are not such big fans of social media. So it's not so much a debate as a slagging off of HR without them being there to add their tuppenceworth.

The debate will normally commence with a few of the recruiters making carefully considered arguments about the relative merits of differing strategic HR models, citing various luminaries such as Ulrich, Legge, Tyson and Storey. Actually, I’m lying here, as most of the guys in the recruitment camp have never heard of any of these theorists, mainly as they have zero experience of working in HR, so they wouldn’t understand a well thought-out HR strategy if it bit them on the leg.

The contribution of the recruiters is more likely to be along the lines of, “I’m not sure what HR is all about, and as far as I’m concerned, they can do away with it.” They also seem to have the view that the main function of HR is to slow things down and provide tortuous advice on employment law. “Less input from HR is always good, as they only ever slow the process down” is the sort of comment that is thrown into the mix. Basically it’s the same sort of twaddle that you hear from The Man In The Pub on a Friday night.

Let’s throw in a question at this stage (HR Professionals only!) Have you even consciously slowed managers down in their endeavours to recruit?

If you’re lucky, you’ll get one of the big guns from the recruitment industry making a profound (i.e. HR Case Studies code for “utter nonsense!”) comment such as, “of course recruiting isn't an HR function, it a business delivery function.” This is the sort of statement that makes you wonder where you lost the plot in the world of HR, especially if you are an HR generalist who is seen by those who you work alongside as crucial to the provision of a comprehensive HR service including employee relations, learning and development, performance management and (Whoops! Nearly forgot! Recruitment)

The saddest thing about all this is that the guys who really matter are not even involved in the debate. I’m talking about the managers who are calling for a joined up recruitment service provided by someone who understands their business and can partner with them to acquire the necessary talent to make the business plan a reality.

If there are any of you managers out there, you’re views are more than welcome.

HR Professionals: Second Class Citizens

It's official: HR professionals are great. Of course, business partners are even better.

Those are not my words, but those of a full-page advert in the £60,000+ appointments section of the current edition of People Management for a number of roles with Tesco.

As People Management is an official publication of the CIPD, we can safely assume that the advert has been sanctioned by the CIPD as reflecting the image that it wishes to promote of the future of the HR function.

So, for those of you who don't see yourselves as Business Partners, it looks like you're condemned to a life in the wings, playing out your inferior role as an HR Professionals, while the big boys strut their stuff centre stage with the stars of the show.

And sadly this obsession with reshaping the HR function along Business Partner lines is not restricted to the nation's supermarkets.

A recent report by Mercer suggests that we should be concerned that  HR directors "spend only 15 per cent of time on strategic work." In the survey, despite 65 per cent of respondents considering themselves as strategic partners to their organisations, the average proportion of time spent on strategic work was only 15 per cent.

HR directors spend only 15 per cent of time on strategic work

It seems that the largest proportion of their time was spent delivering HR services.

What a pain that must be. Just think of all the time wasted on making sure that people are recruited, rewarded, motivated, engaged and developed effectively. Such trivia that we can all do without.

And just think of all those fortunate ones in the Commercial and Finance functions, where everyone spends 100% of their time being strategic, without the need to ensure that contracts are correctly written up, or invoices issued.

I leave you with the words of an excellent article by Graham White (HR director at Westminster City Council) where he cogently argues that "the truth is business partnering doesn’t work"

Who will join me in a cup of Horlicks and a dream in which HR becomes accountable for tangible contribution, and is assessed against real, measurable targets?

HR model: dream or nightmare?

Horlicks Original Malt (300g) costs £1.99 in Tesco.

First Century HR Officer asks "What's the role of HR today?"

As revealed last week, previously ignored fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls have been found to contain the diary entries of Malachi Barnabas, a 1st Century HR Officer working in the Bethlehem area of Israel.

World Exclusive! The Secret Diary of a First Century HR Officer.

Today, HR Case Studies publishes a final extract from his diaries.

Well, dear readers, it’s about time to put the diary away for a while.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be a Holy Roman Business Partner (HRBP) these days. There’s been a lot of talk about just what purpose us guys serve, and whether we’re there just to support The Empire, or whether we occasionally have to stand up to an Emperor or a Governor who’s clearly losing his marbles.

I was in a seminar organised by the Central Israel Pharisees Department (CIPD) last week, and they’d actually managed to get some Seriously Big Cheeses along to talk to us. The keynote speaker was actually King Herod. Bet he cost the CIPD a few shekels in speaking fees.

One of his comments intrigued me:

“I can’t bear being told ‘you can’t do it that way’,” he said. “Do not put barriers in the way. Sometimes you have to take a step back from the policy, from the law, and say ‘what do we need to do right now, and how are we going to get there?’ Don’t hide behind the policies.”

I’ve been reflecting on what that means recently.

I spoke to Herod after the conference. He seems a reasonable guy overall. A bit self important and driven perhaps, but I like a man with a clear vision.

Anyway, I must have impressed him, as he’s asked me to do a bit of work for him. He wants me to draw up a Corporate Manslaughter Policy specifically for the Bethlehem area. Not sure what he’s got in mind, but who am I to question someone in authority?

 Look out for Malachi Barnabas's new book "Power, Innovation and Problem Solving: The Challenge of HR in the First Century". Available soon from all good scroll-sellers.

First Century HR Officer gives helpful advice to three blokes with gifts.

As revealed last week, previously ignored fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls have been found to contain the diary entries of Malachi Barnabas, a 1st Century HR Officer working in the Bethlehem area of Israel.

World Exclusive! The Secret Diary of a First Century HR Officer.

Today, HR Case Studies publishes a further extract from his diaries.

Blimey! It’s all go again this week.

Odd, though, isn’t it ,the way you get a message from the government that you assume is nothing to do with you, and then the next minute, you’re in the thick of it!

One of Herod’s envoys jumped off his donkey this morning and proudly announced that as I was a Tier 2 Sponsor (I didn’t even know that I was, to be honest!), I needed to be aware that the Government has (and I quote!) “laid a Statement of Changes to the Immigration Rules relating to Tiers 1 and 2 of the Points Based System” Top and bottom of it is Bethlehem HR Services needs to keep a close eye on how many foreign types we employ.

So far, so good.

But then these three distinctly odd blokes walk into the office claiming to be from Melchior Caspar Balthazar Headhunters. I’d never heard the phrase myself, and they seemed to be talking in code. They waffled on about spotting a particular chap’s profile on LinkedIn (nope, means nothing to me either) But evidently this chap must be worth investigating as he had a star next to his name on his “LinkedIn profile”

I had to ask these guys where they’d come from, and it definitely wasn’t from round here judging from their clothes, so I told them about the new immigration rules, and advised them that unless they had proof of residence permits in Israel, they wouldn’t be able to work round here.

But apparently they weren’t looking for work. They’d actually got some Corporate Hospitality Gifts (nope, another new one for me, that one!) to give out to this chap they were looking for. One each: Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh (I think the last one was some form of soap)

Played right into my hands, they did!

Having only just come back from a Central Israel Pharisees Department (CIPD) update on Employment Law, I was in my element! Quick as a flash I told them that giving someone gold could well be construed as a specific offence of trying to influence a foreign public official with the intention of obtaining or retaining business in a situation where the public official was not permitted or required by law to be influenced.

As far as I understand, the Frankincense is burned and gives off some form of perfumed smoke. I’ve no problem with them using the stuff, as long as they take action to reduce the risk to the health and safety of the peaceful people of Bethlehem from second hand Frankincense smoke to as low a level as is reasonably practicable. In fact I even suspect that the Frankincense could be classed as “Noxious Effluvia” and therefore infringe Caesar’s new Health and Safety at Work Act.

And as myrrh also contains one or two dodgy ingredients I also pointed out that as the Control of Stuff Harmful to Herod (COSHH) regulations extended to chemicals, products containing chemicals, fumes, dusts, vapours, mists and gases, the chances were that the myrrh would have to be put through Risk Assessment.

So, after telling them all that, off they went.

Who says that HR aren’t helpful. Mince Pie anyone?