[tweetmeme]
The sun is starting to make its annual appearance and in turn we await the numerous blog posts about what is and isn’t acceptable to wear in the office. So to save you all the bother, here is the definitive list of office do’s and don’ts:
Do – Wear a suit
Don’t – Wear anything but a suit
Clear? Ok…so maybe that is a little draconian. I’m a liberal guy. In fact I’m wearing a pink, lime and sky blue shirt this morning…..so I know how to push the envelope. But the point remains…..just because there is a little sun there is no need to go completely over the top.
I don’t want to see abundant flesh in the workplace. It’s work for crying out loud. I see you with flip-flops on my overwhelming urge is to “accidently” tread on your foot to make a point. If you are wearing clothes which struggle to contain your body then either buy bigger clothes or a smaller body. Even if it is hot, you can still dress appropriately and stay cool….lots of people manage it.
And as for you creative monkeys out there…..before we here the argument about “stifling your creative juices”. Did Michelangelo paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in ripped jeans and an “ironic” t-shirt? Did Da Vinci paint the Mona Lisa in Converse and shorts? Don’t get me started………..
So debate over. No need for any more discussion. You have been told.
You’d better get yourself together…..
[tweetmeme]
I’ve been a bad boy. There, I’ve said it. And I’m sorry. Ok? Now will karma please stay off my back.
I give you the events of the last 24 hours:
- I managed to shrink my rather nice Jasper Conran merino wool jumper. Not so that it fits my wife. Not so that is fits my son. But so that it fits my daughter. She is happy. I am not.
- On making a sandwich The knife struck the bottom of the pot. At which point the bottom of the pot fell out and landed on the floor. On the way down managing to cut open my leg.
- Whilst washing my hands I hit the soap dispenser, only for the liquid soap to shoot out across the sink and hit me in the crotch. Perfectly timed to coincide with a delivery arriving at the door….and accompanying strange looks and quick departure from delivery person.
- I only have one headphone. I had two when I left home. But only one when I got to the train. So what you say? I was sat next to hacking cough man. The one with phlegm constantly in the back of his throat. Instead of soothing music I had the grolly symphony.
I have the CEO for two hours this morning.
I’m going to be good from now on.
Before this gets serious.
Promise.
Cutting the crap
[tweetmeme]
Following the election of the ConDem coalition here there has been a huge amount of talk about efficiency savings….there is even an “Emergency Budget” (think Accountant on-call) to set out the efficiency savings that are going to save us from doing an impersonation of Greece (without Rizzo and Frenchy).
The term efficiency saving is not unfamiliar in business. I’ve probably used it more than a couple of times myself. Times are tough we need to find efficiency savings etc. etc. The thing that struck me this weekend though was the realisation that the phrase in itself is in most case just PR spin and twaddle. What we are talking about are cuts. Sounds less appealing don’t you think?
Let’s take a definition of efficiency,
The ratio of the effective or useful output to the total input in any system.
And this is where the problem lies. In most cases we are talking about the “useful output” falling. When we reduce headcount or restructure, sometimes I admit we are genuinely looking for efficiency savings but sometimes as well we are just looking to cut costs. And similarly on a Macro economic level we are often talking about cuts….you don’t take £6bn out of Public Services and expect them to perform at the same level.
It is sadly too much to suggest that our politicians are open and honest with us, but organizationally we can lead the way. If you are talking cost out then tell people, believe it or not they will understand. We’ve all had to do it as families at one time or another. Not going on holiday was not an efficiency saving…… Sure it may seem unpalatable but at least if we are open and honest we can shed some of the distrust that surrounds the HR profession.
“Guys, times are tough. We need to make some cuts to ensure that we can survive.”
Now that wasn’t so hard. Was it?
Chartered Institute of Pointless Direction
[tweetmeme]
I was having a mental blank this morning. Normally I know what I’m going to write about days and days in advance. Looking for inspiration I asked my friends on Twitter for ideas and Michael Carty replied asking me for a 140 character treatise on what Sartre means to me. Now I’m not doing that because a) I don’t think it’s possible and b) you don’t deserve that! But it did remind me of a conversation I’d had with Michael at the last #ConnectingHR event when he asked me when I was going to share my views on the CIPD.
Ironically, I arrived in the office to find a communication from this auspicious organisation sitting on my desk. It was fate. For those of you who don’t know, the CIPD (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development) is the professional organisation for HR bods in the UK. I should say that I am a member and have been for 15 years now….long before it added the C to its name but not long enough for it to have an M instead of a D.
And that is symbolic of the problems with the CIPD….they really don’t know who they are, what they are and indeed what they are for. Well maybe they think they know…but if that is the case they sure as hell don’t make it clear to the rest of us. And given that I was asked to complete a long questionnaire some time ago on what I would be willing to pay for my membership if the services were varied….I think change is a foot. So being the loving helpful giving person I am, here is my agenda for change:
- Make the letters count. If you are going to have professional standards, stick to them. Make them hard….really hard and kick out people who don’t meet them. A few years ago I was working for a FTSE100 company and the CIPD sent me a list of the membership levels of my HR team. There were people two or three levels below me that were Fellows of the CIPD. As part of the membership criteria for this level, you need to be a “Board/executive team member with regular access to the senior management team” and “Influence business/organisational policy and strategic aims and objectives.” How on earth are you supposed to take the qualifications seriously, if they are being given away like Smarties? Some of these people were as strategic as a fence post…… How do we expect anyone to take us seriously when we can’t take ourselves seriously?
- Stop trying to be something you are not. There are better providers of legal advice and guides out there. You have missed the boat. If you wanted to focus on this you should have been doing what XpertHR were doing, when they were doing it. Not now. There is a lot of information and guidance that you can provide members, unleash John Philpott for example. Raise the game. Provide real insight, challenge….look at the CRF papers as an example.
- Ditch the CIPD Exhibition. Ok….so I know it raises money for the conference etc. But have you ever walked around it? It is a day out for all the ineffective, bureaucratic, tea and sympathy HR administrators trying to fill up on mugs, pens and anything else they can get their hands on. If you took the attendance as a snapshot of the HR population you would think we were a completely pointless, cost incurring,waste of space……oh hang on!
- Reform the CIPD branch network. Start engaging with the 90% of HR professionals that aren’t involved with them and ask them why. I am sure there must be some good ones, but I am yet to experience anything that doesn’t feel akin to entering a School staffroom in the 1970s. If we are a commercial forward thinking profession, lets start looking like one, behaving like one and organising like one….not like some charity committee.
- Start having controversial views. Stop sucking up to which ever Government is in power and stand up and be counted. Provide us with a little thought leadership . What you are doing is what poor HR people do…they defer, they become a shadow, they suck up to the boss and don’t have any backbone. Be a role model for the profession. Get some balls.
I’m available for consultancy at extortionate rates…..should you need.
Brand new personality
[tweetmeme]
People…..there is a dangerous, highly infectious, highly contagious condition that is going around the webosphere. As a responsible blogger and upstanding member of the interweb community I feel it is only good and proper that I both bring it to your attention.
The condition is called……Personal Branding. Whoever created this fuckwittery of a concept should be sat pulling cactus spines out of their genitalia. Unfortunately instead they are probably sitting by a pool with lithe and sexy members of the opposite sex draped all over their body. Let us be clear here….in common with the Yeti, the Tooth Fairy and the perfect nights sleep….personal branding does not exist.
Ok….maybe if you are David Beckham or Bono….or Johnny Depp…..maybe….just maybe you could claim to be a brand as well as a person. For the rest of us. For us normal folk……we have personalities. They’ve been around for years so call me old-fashioned but I think it has served us well and you know me….I’m old skool.
So look after yourselves. Stay safe. Avoid this vile and rabid condition. And if you see someone spouting delusional nonsense about themselves and their “brand” Remember, the only branding they should have, is FUCKWIT….on the forehead.
Lessons learnt from a week at home
[tweetmeme]
Well what can I say? Thank you everyone for all the wonderful messages that I received on here via Twitter and by email. I was genuinely very touched.
This time last week I was getting ready to travel to hospital and now a week later I’m back at my desk (albeit with a sling) and ready to rock and roll. I have never been off work for a week, it was a very strange experience. But we need to find learning wherever we can and so in true L&D mode, the things last week taught me are:
– Watching yourself being operated on is really quite amazing – technology never ceases to baffle/amaze me
– Nerve block injections make you feel like you have dead flesh attached to your body. Which is quite unnerving. Which in itself is ironic.
– Key hole surgery sucks, because it hurts like hell inside, but you have no manly scar outside to justify your pain to the outside world. They just think you are a wuss.
– Losing the use of a limb requires you to think about life in a whole different way and challenges your habits. I always put my train ticket in my back right pocket….which is not helpful when your right arm is in a sling. And as for visiting the little boys room…….
– Commuters still push into you regardless. I pity pregnant commuters.
– I am not good at sitting around and convalescing. I need to be doing things (including mowing the lawn with one arm!)
– I like being at home with my children. I prefer it to work.
That last one is going to take some pondering and revisiting. I guess I always knew it, but I had never really tested it. Watch this space……
Shouldering the blame
[tweetmeme]
I need to go away for a while. But don’t worry, this isn’t another April Fool’s pretend outing! Promise. Let me explain…..
When I joined my current firm I went for a medical with the company Doc. All was well apart from a little blood pressure issue – but you’ve read my writing…..what do you expect?!? It was when I was putting my jacket back on that he asked me why I was wriggling back into it. “Is there a problem with your arm?”
“Umm, I replied….it’s my shoulder. It doesn’t work properly” Doc looked at me (and I should point out at this stage, this isn’t the “Hot Doc” but just the Doc…so it wasn’t that kind of look….more a kind of idiot boy look…..). “How long has it been like this?”
The truth was that it had been well over 2 years that I hadn’t been able to lift my arm over head height. I’d got used to it, my life had adapted, it really wasn’t a problem. There was only pain every now and then and in between it was just a bit of an inconvenience that you got used to. Like when the escalators are down on the tube.
So after x-rays and radiography and steroid injections and an MRI, finally on Monday I’m going in for an Op to make it better. Technically it’s called a arthroscpoic subacromisal decompression and excision of calcium in reality I’m told this means, “making your shoulder not be cack like it is now”.
Unfortunately it’s my right arm, which means no driving, no self pleasure and most importantly no typing for a while. Which, in turn, means I’m saying goodbye for a time. I don’t think it will be that long….maybe a week…..maybe a bit less.
Anyway in my absence, read these blogs. And I’ll use the time to catch up on a lot of the writing other people have been doing and maybe typing the odd one fingered comment.
And if you really want to see part of what they are going to do to me then you can watch this (but not if you’re eating):
I’ll be back soon, but in the meantime, play nicely y’all…..
Art of the matter
[tweetmeme]
I wrote earlier this week about recruiters and as I mentioned then, recruitment is not one of my favourite subjects. One of the things that really disturbs me about the scene is the seemed desire to try to make the whole selection process scientific.
Let me be clear. Recruitment is an art, it is not a science. It never has been a science and it never will….. You can tell me that there are predictive tests for this and for that and that you can psychometric my balls to within an inch of their life and heave them begging to be permanently removed, but you are never going to be able to create any form of selection process that is scientific.
How many times have you sat in a process and you look at the test results and they say that you should be recruiting candidate A, but everything in your gut tells you candidate B? Bad HR people recruit based on the tests, they tell managers to listen to the tests. And in reality that is probably a good thing, because they are crap HR people and therefore their judgment is also probably skewed. These are the guys that recruit the Normans….who sit in the corner shaking and eventually either blow up the Cafeteria or go off with long-term stress. “But their test results were so good…….”
Over thousands of years we as humans have learned to read people, to look at their gestures that non-verbal signals, their movements and twitches. If we spent less of our time worrying about which “competency based” bollock question we were going to drop next and more time watching and listening to the candidate and assessing them based on our own human instincts then we’d succeed in
a) Recruiting better people
b) Saving a shed load of money
c) Improving the candidate’s experience
d) Not coming across like a bunch of aliens who’ve had a sense of humour transplant
The perpetuation of this myth is essentially to keep the myriad of consultants and experts in a job, the people who tell you that they have developed “new and more accurate ways of assessing potential”. Think about it. If you really could design a foolproof way of doing this, you wouldn’t be selling it for thousands. You’d be selling it for millions. You’d have the major businesses in the world lining up to sign exclusivity agreements, not a bunch of salespeople with over shiny shoes, over strong cologne and the ability to replace three words with thirty.
The answer is to stop thinking and start to rely on your intuition, “Feel, don’t think. Use your instincts.” That, my friends is the path to being a true HR Jedi.
Pretty Vacant
[tweetmeme]
This social media stuff is all about networking? Well I want to let you in on an exclusive opportunity…..the opportunity……to work for me.
Yep, that’s right…..I’m recruiting, for my number 2.
On the positive side, the pay and rations are pretty good (package c.£100k), its London-based and the people are all completely mad and so have no idea whether you are competent or not……and of course you get to work with me.
On the downside…..umm…….you get to work with me…..
What am I looking for?
– Someone who doesn’t take HR too seriously but at the same time has a drive and passion for changing things
– Someone who can look at the world in a slightly different way and doesn’t believe in HR bollocks
– Someone with a broad generalist background and the ability to turn their hand to anything
– Someone with the potential to be a true HR ninja and lead a team of mini-wouldbe-ninjas onto bigger and better things
– Someone who is not worried about bad language and the occasional hissy fit
And perhaps most importantly,
– Someone to take the blame when things go wrong
Ok, the last one isn’t true….unless its your fault and the hell yeah you take the blame…..own the pain…..I could go on….
Obviously I will need to interview you in a mask (me not you, pervert!) or a dark room. And then make you sign an NDA, or kill you. But it has to be worth it right? Just for the opportunity?
If you’re not put off yet and you tick some or all of the above boxes….or hell, you just want to make a left field pitch that will take my interest, then get in contact….what are you waiting for?
My Hell is Other People 