The Bog (standard) Squad

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Having a blog is easy. Using Twitter is simple. That’s why any idiot can do it.

It is also why the mere fact that you can use a bit of simple tech does not in any way make you a rock star. It does not make you powerful, influential, interesting, cool or informed.

It does, however, mean that you sometimes get noticed.

Being invited to conferences is a privilege, it is not a recognition of your supreme existence. Being asked to cover an event is not a declaration of the second coming, it is bestowing a simple responsibility.

DO NOT: Think this is an opportunity to convey your superior intelligence.
DO: Think about what will engage your audience.

DO NOT: Think you have to constantly tweet platitudes.
DO: Be mindful of balance, moaning all day long isn’t going to help.

DO NOT: Treat the hospitality as your God given right.
DO: Be thankful of the organisers and sponsors that brought you there.

DO NOT: Think you can duck out of half the sessions and spend your time in the pub.
DO: Give yourself and the audience a break.

DO NOT: Think your presence there in anyway makes you clever or special.
DO: Help inform those that aren’t able to attend like yourself.

DO NOT: Tweet mindless soundbites that have no context.
DO: Ask questions and seek opinions of a wider audience.

Ultimately it comes down to this. Don’t be an arse about it, but do be human. Nobody wants to follow a stream of ridiculously vacuous tweets and blogs that mean nothing and create noise. They want humour and context and insight. They want to get the feeling of what is going on. If you’re not enjoying a session, that’s fine, but if you’re there on the back of the organisation, slagging off their entire conference makes you look like a vacuous, ungrateful leech.

There’s a skill to being a blogger, that is more than knowing how to sign in. There is a skill to tweeting about an event that is more than being there with a phone. Next time you’re asked to cover an event, think what you can do to make it a success for other people, not what’s in it for you.

Refocussing HR…..on employees

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I’m constantly reminded about the need for HR to “refocus”. I get it. I hear it at conferences, in journals, on social media. We need to refocus. That’s great. Normally the schtick is based one of two things,

We need to be externally focussed.

We need to be commercially focussed.

Both are true and yet both are incomplete assessments of the state of HR.  The missing piece for me, the area that we should not speak, the real truth is,

We need to be more employee focussed.

If you speak to anyone in a consumer facing marketing function, they will wax lyrical about the need to focus on that consumer, to understand their behaviour, to open the channels of communication with them, to have a dialogue and to serve (yes, I said serve) them better.

But when we come to the world of people management, it appears we feel that employees are somewhat of an inconvenience that get in the way of good HR practice. If only it wasn’t for these pesky folk, we’d be doing great things.

Yes we need to be commercially minded and we need to understand the context in which our organisations operate. Yes we need to be confident with the financial aspects of our business and the economic conditions. But we also need to remember that our primary purpose as a function is to understand our employees’ needs better than anyone else. And to serve those needs.

I have a simple test, a simple analytic that I’ve built up over a few years when assessing what we’re doing and whether it is worthwhile. Ask yourself three questions,

Does it make life better for employees?

Does it make things simpler for managers?

Does it add tangible value to the business?

And if you can’t say yes to one of these three questions, then you should simply stop doing it. 

Here is my challenge to you, give it a go, ask yourself those questions. You’ll be surprised what you find.

A chain of thought

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It seems a a week can’t pass without someone warning of the risk to business of the ageing workforce and a resultant skills gap.

I also repeatedly hear arguments to fragment the function by separating out Resourcing, Learning and Development, Talent (repeat and replace with whichever specialism the complaining person works in) from the evil HR.

And I sigh and try not to resort to my wearied protestations of idiocy.

I don’t know of any other area of business where we would fragment the management of the supply chain and believe that it would result in a better performance.

Internal capability, succession, resourcing, talent, skills, development and education need to be seamless and integrated, not fragmented and disparate. We need to unite, not divide.

Instead of assuaging our fragile egos, let’s think about the challenges that face us and how we might raise our game to meet them.

Complex problems, require complex solutions. Not simplistic thinking and vacuous soundbites.

You’re so fit

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“I just didn’t feel they were a right fit”.

That’s the feedback heard time and time again in recruitment. But is it fair? Is “fit” something that you can reasonably justify and does it really matter?

As much as we would like to pretend recruitment is a science, so much of it still resides firmly in art. We make decisions not just based on technical skills and abilities, but on how we feel about the person. And the irony is that we both accept and reject this concept in modern HR practice.

On one hand we applaud the Google approach to assessment and selection being analytic and impartial. At the same time we congratulate Netflix for their intolerance towards mavericks and disruptive individuals. We want you to have the skills, but we want you to fit in.

Of course fit has a whole host of discriminatory overtones to it too. I’m not entirely sure I’d be judged as a good fit in a conservative, Catholic institution. But that is perhaps a too trivial way of looking at things. What about a woman applying to an all male environment, or a muslim to a secular workplace?

Yet at the same time, I understand the importance of “fit”, the need for someone coming in to the workplace to embed within the team and to gel with the organisational ethos. In many ways I think the organisational fit will be more important than technical skills in the future of our corporate lives.

But is “fit” ever justified? I think it is. As a candidate, I assess an organisation on whether I think I’ll be happy there, whether it matches with my ethics and opinions. So why shouldn’t organisations do just the same thing, providing it isn’t discriminatory?

I think that’s ok. Don’t you?