organisation

It is all about the rituals

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I’m sure like me you have your rituals, whether that’s the daily coffee always bought from the same coffee shop, the time that you eat your lunch or the run that you take after work. The small and seemingly important fabric of our lives that we execute without much conscious thought or application. And as we go about our days we notice the pattern in others, the woman always stood on the same corner waiting for a lift as we drive to work, the car that always parks in the same spot in the carpark, the person who gets on the train in the same carriage every day, the person who sits in the same seat at the bar, come rain or shine.

Those of us who’ve been involved in the raising of children are acutely aware of the importance of ritual, the bed, the food, the temperature, the bedtime story and hot milk. Change any of the fundamental parts and we deal with the repercussions for days if not weeks thereafter. And anyone with a pet will tell you that they become accustomed to patterns and will know when to sit by the door for a walk or when there is likely to be a warm lap about for a snooze.

When we think about work and the workplace there is, of course, no difference. Our workplace rituals form part of the same fabric, equally important but also so deeply ingrained that they cease to play in our consciousness. The seat that you sit in, the coffee with the team before setting out for the day, the coffee break to catch up on the chat and gossip with our co-workers, the order in which we approach work and how we deal with the daily tasks that arise.

And in the same way we rankle when someone is parked in our space, the coffee shop is closed, the same way that children fail to sleep or wake to early, when we mess with these rituals then we create a sense of disquiet and unease. That’s why change at work is never a science and is always an art. Over the years I’ve learnt that anyone who thinks change is explained through a gang chart is probably going to be gone before the full ramifications are understood. It is why I hate the faddism for “disruption” promoted by the same Linkedin voices that will also happily share their daily routine for success, “I get up before I go to sleep, run two marathons powered only by pecan nuts and then meditate on hot stones. Smashing it.”

We’re hugely adaptable as a species, the pandemic has shown that in technicolour, but that doesn’t mean that the adaption doesn’t cause stress and discomfort. And during that period we are less productive, less focused, more risk adverse and generally less happy. To make change effective we need to understand this, support it and take it into account in our planning but execute it with compassion, care and consideration.

We need to stand for something more

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Cast your mind back to April 2020, let’s be more specific, 2 April 2020. You might not remember what you were doing, I’m not sure I do, but I guarantee that even amongst the steeliest of you there was a growing sense of anxiety. In the UK we were in lockdown, lockdown 1. It was, and I think this is the absolutely perfect application of the word, discombobulating. And whilst I don’t know what you were doing that day, I can have a bet on what you were doing that evening at around 8pm and I reckon I’ll have a 1 in 2 chance of getting it right.

2 April 2020 was the first clap for key workers, in recognition of the “healthcare workers, emergency services, armed services, delivery drivers, people who work in shops, teachers, waste collectors, manufacturers, postal workers, cleaners, vets and engineers”, who were keeping the country going as many of us were confined to our houses. As the founder of the movement in the UK wrote at the time, “tonight we will show our appreciation again! For ALL that go out to work so that we can stay in!”

Fast forward less than 18 months and we are in a situation where mile long queues are forming outside of petrol stations, with many limiting the supply and many others closed. And whilst there is absolutely enough fuel to go around, whilst there is no need for panic, it has become a complete and utter free for all. Meanwhile the warnings are growing that the individual actions of many of us are likely to put those very people that we clapped for at risk of being unable to get to fulfil their essential roles in society.

It didn’t take long for us to forget.

If you’ve read anything I’ve written over the last year or so, then you’ve either a sucker for punishment or you’ll have noted that this is becoming something of a familiar refrain, but I’m not one to let a good argument go. The moment the worst of the pandemic was seemingly passed, we collectively dropped all focus on those essential workers and went back to our fetishisation of the white collar knowledge worker. From the mainstream press to our professional bodies, we dropped them like an embarrassing fat friend and are once again pretending that the only people that exist in our economy work in multi-storey offices in Central London or cool converted warehouses on the outskirts. And quite frankly, the HR profession missed a fundamental opportunity to shift the debate about good and meaningful work, because they were caught up in the rainbows and unicorns and blinded by vested self-interest.

Work, and therefore by definition organisations, has a fundamental role to play in the fabric of society. That stretches beyond our own employee base and our workforce, it stretches into the role and influence that we can play in shaping our communities and making a better and fairer world for all. To give an environmental parallel, when you’re making decisions as an organisation you’re not just interested in the physical environment directly around your workplaces, but you take a broader global view. So why when it comes to society do we think our obligations stop at funding a local football team and painting a school?

So, I hear you ask, what the hell do petrol queues and HR practices have in common? As I’ve written before, it is the increasing, pernicious presence of neo-liberalism in our workplaces, driven by the desire for HR departments and leadership teams to be popular rather than thoughtful, to serve rather than lead. It is the very same logic that leads a person wants to work from wherever they want and to fill up multiple jerry cans of petrol with little or no concern for others. They are putting their needs and their desires beyond those of society. And we, in our desperate search to be wanted, are willingly facilitating that shift.

We have to stand for something bigger and better than just giving people what they think they want. We have to believe that we can play a more important role than just appeasing the short term needs of our employees. We should do better, we must do better. But the track record of the last 18 months suggests we have a long long way to go.

In an Octopus’s garden

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We all know that, in the view of the general public, HR has a bad reputation. Those of us that work in the profession are either aware of this and battling against it every day, or hopelessly unaware and therefore probably part of the problem. We get reminded on a regular basis by polls, tweets and of course newspaper articles. The normal form of attack is, “there is no need for HR”.

Having worked in the profession for the last 25 years, it does beg a couple of questions:

  • Why am I still employed?
  • Are the people that employ me, therefore, entirely stupid?

Last week, the BBC ran an interview with CEO of Octopus Energy, Greg Jackson entitled, “My billion pound company has no HR department”. I’ve got a lot of respect for Octopus Energy, from what I’ve seen they’ve got a great culture, and whilst I don’t know Greg, every CEO is entitled to run their organisation in the way that they think best delivers their outcomes. I do, however, take issue with the sloppy reporting from the BBC that was clearly more about driving clicks than any sort of quality journalism. Unsurprisingly, this was then picked up by the Daily Mail and you only have to read the comments to get the general sense – interestingly whilst he said that he didn’t have an HR or IT department, you can see which one is used for both headlines and gets the kicking.

Now whilst I’m the first person to point the finger at bad and sloppy HR practice (you can read the last ten years of writing if you don’t believe me) I like to think we should base our arguments on data and evidence rather than silly, pointless articles which are far from the levels of journalistic quality we’d expect from the license fee. A quick search through Linkedin shows that there are “HR” people in Octopus Energy, they are currently advertising for someone to join their Learning and Development team and Octopus Group, the overall holding company has a Head of People. They’ve also recently clarified that they do have learning and development and recruiters (and presumably payroll and reward) but just no “HR Department”. Although that does beg the question what HR is, if it isn’t recruiting, training and rewarding people?

In essence, the discussion is about how much HR responsibility is devolved to the line and how much of it is centralised – which in experience works very differently for different companies, sectors and industries. And Octopus Energy look like they’ve found a balance that works for them – which is brilliant. It probably wouldn’t work for every other company and, who knows, it may not even work for them in the longer term. But that is all it is, one CEO explaining how he runs a specific company – yet the coverage (and many idiot commentators) seem to want to make it into a larger debate.

Why does it matter? It doesn’t really. It is silly and nonsensical to try to extrapolate. Most will shake their heads at another pointless article and go back to their day job figuring out what works best for their organisation and how to improve performance through people. But in a year when people in the profession, across industry have been thrown into more emotion, complexity, challenge and difficulty, where the profession has had to stand up and lead more than ever. Well, some people will feel this is an unnecessary and untimely kick in the teeth from people with too much time on their hands and who’ve never walked in their shoes. And to be honest, in the context, I’d forgive them for thinking this way.

Lifelong learning

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I wrote recently about the perils of organisations delegating responsibility to employees under the guise of empowerment and “individual choice”. Effectively placing every individual at jeopardy to changes in the economy, society and the organisations that they work for. The continued, pernicious rise of neoliberalism in the workplace.

Don’t have enough pension to retire? That’s what you chose.

Don’t have the healthcare provision to cover your operation? That’s what you chose.

Don’t have the skills to make you employable? That’s what you chose.

And it is this last point that I really want to focus on today. Because on one hand I hear organisations constantly talk about particular skill sets being short in supply and then at the same time I see those same organisations making people redundant. Of course, I’m not talking about the impact of Covid-19 here, which has placed so many organisations in exceptional circumstances, this is a pattern that has been ongoing for as long as I’ve been in business.

The simple answer is retraining, a concept that often invokes images of Government schemes and interventions routed in the decline of industrial cities. No mining? Don’t worry we can retrain you as a call centre operative. But of course, retraining and reskilling doesn’t have to be after an employee has ceased to be of “economic value”, in fact I’d argue that it should be significantly before then. If organisations are making people redundant because they don’t have the skills that they need for the future, that’s a failure of the organisation, not the individual.

This is where organisations need to be intervening for the good of their workforce, their communities and for society as a whole. And this is also why individualism once again falls down. You can’t expect any one employee to be able to predict the decline of their particular skill set, or indeed the speed of that decline. Because they simply don’t have the data required. But organisations do.

That’s why we need to see retraining, reskilling and lifelong learning as a fundamental part of the psychological contract, a key tenet of the leadership philosophy of our organisations. It is why the HR profession should spend as much time focusing on internally meeting future skills requirements as it does on identifying the gaps. It is why we need to make careers for life a viable option for anyone who wants it and not look down our nose at those who choose to be a one company employee.

If you’re interested in this topic, you can hear me and others talking about it on Monday 16 November at 10am as part of the CBI@10 series. You can find out more here.