Author: Blog

We can’t work it out

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Another Government, another job creation scheme, another waste of time and money.

Last Friday saw the launch of the latest employment white elephant, “The Work Programme” charmingly described by Employment Minister Chris Grayling as,

“a giant employment dating agency”

The concept is to use private companies to find employment for unemployed people and incentivise them to do so with the payments for success ranging depending on how unemployable the placed people are.  There are a number of serious faults with the scheme, many of which have more than adequately been highlighted by my friends at the Work Foundation:

  • Unemployment has huge regionality – if you’re unemployed in an area of high unemployment then incentives to contractors to find you work are not going to help one iota
  • Unemployment has huge emotional, social and psychological implications. Trying to solve it through a commissioned based system is a recipe for disaster – expect to hear stories of vulnerable people being ill-advised and placed in roles that are unsuitable
  • Private enterprise will focus on where it can achieve a return, not where it can be most socially useful
  • The scheme is focussed on demand side, not supply side

And this last point is the real issue, the real area where this and other job schemes come crashing down.  Employers don’t (generally) create jobs because of Government schemes.  There may be some headline grabbing stories – generally from retailers creating part-time, low paid jobs. But that hardly deals with the issues that are driving the unemployment figures – such as tens of thousands of public sector workers losing their jobs.

If we are serious about creating meaningful sustainable employment, we need investment in the key market sectors that Britain can be strong in. We need to invest in the knowledge economy, in creative industries, in R&D. We need to learn the lessons from the financial crisis and incentivise the development of a mixed economy. But perhaps most importantly we need to understand that the burden of tax on businesses needs to be reduced.  Business creates jobs when they are growing and investing in their future, not when they are holding their own or at worst contracting.

There is no genuine, long-lasting value behind “job creation” schemes or incentives, they don’t lead to a step change in the labour market, they are political window dressing that hide the main issues of economic frailty. Within the UK, if we are serious about solving the current unemployment situation (and we should be as it is a 17 year high) then we  need to create an environment that supports business growth, entrepreneurialism and innovation.

At the same time, we need to address long-term skills shortages, through significant investment in retraining and finally to support business development in those communities that have been devastated through long-term unemployment and public sector cuts.

The “Work Programme” does nothing to tackle the crux of our unemployment problem. It is time to grow up and start discussing the real issues that lie at the heart of the matter, only then will we take any meaningful steps forward.

Dogma eat Dogma

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Let me state something very clearly, HR people do not like new legislation. Why do I say this? Because of a wonderful statement issued by the Institute of Directors Director General, Miles Templeman,

“The HR lobby is the biggest vested interest of all when it comes to the subject of employment law. When governments create complex regulation, employers are forced to increase their HR budgets to ensure compliance”

Really? As someone who has worked through the introduction of the Disability Discrimination Act, the Data Protection Act, the National Minimum Wage, the Fixed term Workers Regulations (to name but a few) and is currently struggling with the Agency Workers Regulations am I really enthused and excited about new legislation?

And if I spoke to my peers and contacts they would probably say the same. So why would Templeman say that? Because the CIPD had the temerity to suggest that productivity shortfalls in the UK economy, might not be due to “red tape” but might actually be due to,

“relatively low rates of capital investment, long-standing deficiencies in the supply and quality of work-related skills, poor management of available skills in the workplace”

Radical thinking………….

If the IoD calling anyone else a “vested interest” group in itself wasn’t ironic, the thing is that HR people are probably the LEAST likely to want new legislation. And the CIPD aren’t suggesting in any shape or form that there should be more. Instead they seem to be arguing that the problems might lie elsewhere – which sounds like a sensible conversation to have, whether you agree or not. And given that Templeman is a board member of Young Enterprise, you would have thought that he might have some sympathy.

Legislation isn’t introduced because people are already compliant.  The Minimum Wage was introduced because people were being paid ridiculously low hourly rates, the Working Time Directive was introduced to give employees some protection against excessive working hours. I could go on. What we really need to do is have a sensible debate about how to improve the UK economic performance AND improve social justice, free from sound bite and dogma. And that is going to take a whole lot more than chucking out the rule book.

Funny thing is, the IoD know that………..they just have a vested interest.

HR isn’t Marketing, it is unique

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“There are so many similarities between Marketing and HR” seems to be one of the hot phrases and concepts at the moment. For this I read, “HR can learn a lot from Marketing”. From this I read, “I want to play with the cool kids and the cool kids play in Marketing”.

Are there really a lot of similarities between HR and Marketing? Well only if you have a rather narrow and ill-defined concept of both HR and Marketing, then yes. Sure there are elements of cross over, it would be hard to think that on employer branding or indeed on some other areas of recruitment that there wasn’t something that the HR profession could take from Marketing. And if you look at employee engagement, then of course I there are definite synergies.

But to suggest that these elements are the only aspects of either Marketing or HR that exist seems slightly bizarre. I’m not going to dissect the Marketing profession; I’ll leave that to someone else with more time. HR professionals would be better off stopping chasing the perceived sexiness of one profession (there is NOTHING sexy about the dirty end of product marketing I can tell you) and instead look at the entire remit of an HR role

–          Compensation, benefits and remuneration strategy

–          Industrial relations, trade unions and collective negotiations

–          Employee relations, individual dispute resolution

–          Learning and development

–          Talent management and career planning

–          Health and Welfare

–          Organisational development

–          Organisational design and structure

–          Recruitment and selection

–          Coaching and facilitation

The list feels almost endless and of course highly variable depending on the industry and the organisation.  The thing is, HR has the potential to be one of the truly multi disciplinary roles within the business, with elements of Finance, Sales, Strategy, PR and yes Marketing to name but a few. We may be specialists in certain areas, but we are generalists in the true sense of the word.

Valuable HR teams work collaboratively with all functions and departments, not just on their HR needs, but also on the entire people offering – pulling in specialist skills that add to projects or initiatives or even simple thought processes and planning.

True HR professionals don’t just want to play with the sexy, they want to play with the valuable and sometimes that means being a geek or a nerd.  And that’s ok. Just ask your friends in the bowels of the Marketing department, they know all about that.

Ethical choices define us. Who are you?

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A little while ago, not long after the banking crisis, I was asked what I thought the role of HR was (or should have been) in preventing or avoiding the institutional failures that led to the meltdown. When I mentioned that I thought HR had a role to play as the organisational conscience there were very mixed views in the room.  My view was and remains that you cannot claim that HR is adding value to a business and then in the same breath deny any responsibility for organisational failure. It is a quid pro quo.

As a profession, we have a Code of Conduct and today the CIPD is launching a consultation on that code. What is ethical? What is unethical? And what are the grey areas…the ones that we really REALLY need to discuss?

  • Who does HR work for and where is the balance of power?
  • Can you operate processes and procedures that are knowingly discriminatory because they are too complicated, too expensive to change?
  • Is it fair game to use any source to get information on an employee, or a future recruit?
  • If you felt the future security of employment, the shareholder investment was at risk through malpractice, would you speak out? And to whom?
  • Would you manage out an employee who you believed was a victim of sexual harassment  at the behest of the senior manager who you felt had harassed them?
  • Would you provide personal details of an employee to the CEO if you were uncomfortable with their reason for wanting them?

I guess what I’m asking is,

“Do you know what is expected of you as a professional?”

Regardless of whether you are a CIPD member or not. If you work in recruitment, the law or PR; what standards do you hold dear? And for my American friends, what can we learn from your side of the pond?

I’d really like to hear as wide a debate as possible on this one, a range of opinions.  We have the chance to make our voices heard and steer the agenda….please don’t overlook this opportunity. Comment here, comment on the Linkedin discussion group, comment on the CIPD website, Tweet about it, blog about it…….

Make your views known and encourage others to do the same.

Going back to the original discussion that started this post. Talking personally ……..I needed to be able to look myself in the mirror every morning.  I need to work, that is an undeniable truth.  But I also need to like myself.  And in this world there is no gig good enough to trade the latter off for the former. A line needs to be drawn, but where I draw that line will be very different to where you draw yours. And that is the value of having a professional code.

Ethical choices define us. Who are you?