Seven facts that HR professionals need to know about Sathnam Sanghera

Over recent months, Sathnam Sanghera has inflamed, irritated and generally got under the skin of the HR community by writing a series of rabble-rousing articles for his column in the Times, with provocative titles such as Human resources departments: I've never understood the point of them and The fuss that HR makes about itself far outstrips its contribution to the world. His most recent column was a highly critical and at times insulting article directed at Cary Cooper (Lancaster Management School’s Professor of Organisational Psychology and Health) oh-so-humorously entitled Genius or rentagob? Is there an expert we can ask?

It’s clearly time for the HR community to get up off its collective backside and fight back rather than just whinge about the ill-informed populist drivel that this man spouts.

Here are a few arrows to keep in your quiver for the offensive.

He’s a journalist
As such his job is to enrage, provoke and inflame. Compared to the complexities of the HR profession, he’s got a very easy life.

He’s a swot
Graduating from Cambridge with a first class degree in English Language and Literature in 1998 clearly marks him out as someone who is much more at home in the world of academia rather than managing the critical and often conflicting demands of employees and management in a challenging commercial environment. Incidentally, previous alumni of his Cambridge college include John Milton and Sacha Baron Cohen, so there’s a wide spectrum of role models to be emulated, isn’t there?

He’s a novelist
As you’ll see from his highly self-congratulatory website, the achievement of which he’s most proud is his first book (“The Boy With The Topknot: A Memoir of Love, Secrets and Lies in Wolverhampton.) This obviously leads one to believe that he has major problems distinguishing between fact and fiction in his writing about HR. Incidentally, one reviewer said of the book, "This is by no means a literary effort. It reads as though he is talking to himself, which is basically what he is doing."

He has had difficulty in holding a job down
Of his own admission Sanghera mentions that before settling down as a writer (not “journalist” please note: that would imply a degree of objectivity and investigation which is sadly lacking from most of his writing) he had “amongst other things,” jobs at a burger chain, a hospital laundry, a market research firm, a sewing factory and a literacy project in New York. Perhaps this maybe the source of his dislike of HR, as one can easily imagine an interviewing HR Manager questioning the likelihood of him remaining in post before the beefburger burns or the hot-wash cycle ends. But then this is a man that is on record as saying, “The hardest thing in life is to work out what you want to do. Once you have worked that out, it is relatively easy to do.”

He gives a new meaning to the word “Narcissistic”
His website consists of little else other than a litany of his achievements and awards, plus links to his writings and projects.

He has no experience of the profession that he criticises
“I’ve never really understood the point of human resources departments” he proclaims in one of his articles. But in the next sentence he admits “I’ve never dealt with HR myself.” Readers will surely draw their own conclusion to such contradictions.

He very mischievously bites the hand than feeds him
Putting aside the assertion that he’s never dealt with HR, he proudly proclaims that his “numerous prizes for journalism” include Watson Wyatt HR Journalist of the Year (“Recognising those journalists who have highlighted issues central to HR management”) in both 2006 and 2009. In 2009 he also received an award in the training and development category. Not bad for someone who has “never had dealings with HR.”

OK HR Community: On your feet and respond!