Famous, Rich and Patronising
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Presumably for some grave sin in our previous collective lives, the BBC decided last night to punish us by showing the first episode in a new series, “Famous, Rich and Jobless” a follow-on from last year’s “Famous, Rich and Homeless”. I hear that “Famous, Rich and Gormless” is in production for 2011 but they are having trouble whittling down the cast……
The concept is that they take four “celebs” and, in this series, they give them four days worth of Job Seekers Allowance, house them in accommodation, “which a proper unemployed person would live in” in four of the areas of highest unemployment within the UK and then tell them to go and try to find work. Meanwhile, two smug “experts” Emma Harrison and Craig Last walk around saying such banalities as, “see this is what an unemployed person experiences day after day” and when the celebs do get a job they tell them they are “cheating the benefits system” as they had been given Jobseekers allowance.
As vacuous television goes this really takes the biscuit, but worse than that it completely belittles the plight of the unemployed rather than do anything to build understanding. For one, the unemployed are not a homogenous mass of people sat in deprived towns in far-flung corners of these isles, they are people like you and I. They are different, some are professionals, some are labourers, some are middle class, some are working class. Some have been unemployed for a long time, others for only a short while.
Finding work IS tough, but by putting celebs in towns where they know nobody, they speak with a different accent (one of them is Emma Parker-Bowles, does the name ring a bell? And actually, as a point of interest, when did she become “famous”?), limiting them to four days job seeking and having a TV camera following them. Is this really supposed to be in any way shape or form informative or “real”?
The only redeeming moment of the entire programme came in the saddest moment, when a real person, with real problems and real unemployment was interviewed. Through her tears she talked about the pressures and the impact on her mentally, “you feel like a beggar” she said, “all I want is a job”. Her few minutes alone pierced through the backdrop of banality and the undercooked sensationalism that Harrison and Last were trying to stir up.
Unemployment is a real issue that impacts millions and millions of people in this country and across the world both directly and indirectly. There are a whole host of reasons that people suffer joblessness and a whole host of impacts. The programme does nothing to reflect this and only shows the reactions of celebrities when deprived of their normal creature comforts, nothing more.
Unemployment is not a subject that should ever be sensationalised and celebritised to try to create an audience and certainly not using the tax payers’ money. This was the first episode, I can only pray that the next three go some way towards pulling the series out of the gutter and discussing the issues with the gravity and sincerity they deserve.
And suddenly we have nothing to offer…..
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Last week I wrote about my dislike of the Ulrich model and particularly the way in which the HR community latches on to the latest fad and fashion. One of the most damaging elements of the introduction of the Ulrich model, however, has been the dumbing down of the HR function. I daren’t try and quantify the amount of investment that departments have put into “Business Partner Skills development” and “Up skilling the HR function”, but in all of this, we have in fact taken the first steps towards deskilling the profession.
I am by no means long in the tooth, though I am bald. But as Trish points out at HR Ringleader, the profession seems to attract baldies, so I am in good company! But once again I digress and run the risk of forgetting why I set out to write this and instead put in an impassioned defence for baldness as the new black……
The point is that when I started out in my career, I did everything. I would recruit, I would discipline, I would work on reward, I would train and develop and I would administer. I learnt my trade through doing. I always used to say that after studying the CIPD I had to forget everything I had been taught and then learn to do it all again properly. Now the value of the CIPD is a whole different post, but the truth is, like many professions, you learnt your job by doing the grunt work and progressing upwards. You would do the basics but you would also then pick up projects to help you develop (the Employee Handbook needs revising…….*groan*).
With the implementation of the Ulrich model, where do young starters into the profession go? I imagine they all come out wanting to be “Business Partners”, but can you effectively partner a business if you haven’t experienced first hand a lot of the interventions you will be calling on others to apply? If you go into a “Centre of Excellence” sure you might be able to progress until you are “Chief Recruiter”, but what do you know about Learning and Development or Employee Relations? And if you go into the “Shared Services”…well are you convinced you will ever get out alive?
The value of the generalist model was that there was clear career progression. You could dip in and out of specialisms during your career, you were a rounded professional with areas of expertise, but a breadth of knowledge. That meant that when you finally climbed to the top of the tree, you understood everything that lay beneath you. Maybe not in detail, but in enough detail to make sure it was functioning correctly and servicing the business well.
Our value to an organisation is as an expert that understands the business and that can apply our expertise in the right way to drive improvements within our organisations. If we allow our knowledge and insight to dissipate, all that we are left with is knowledge of the business. And let’s be honest that is not a USP! Other business areas have it and many in significantly higher proportions that their HR colleagues! So I wonder, is it a coincidence that the faddism for Ulrich has coincided with an increased number of “non HR professional” moving into HR Director roles?
On discussing this the other day I was asked, “Well if you had the choice who would you appoint as HR Director? An HR Business Partner or someone who really knew your business?” My response was simple, “Who would you rather appoint someone who really knew your business or someone who really knew your business and was an expert in HR management?”
The best things in life are free
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I wrote a while ago about a cracking book called “You Really Are Rich, You Just Don’t Know it” which is a tongue in cheek view of life and placing a value on the free things that we have that are good in our lives. I was thinking about it this morning coming into work and telling myself that under all of this pressure there are good things to remember.
My sense is that this year is going to be harder than last year, not because things are going to get significantly worse economically, but because it is more of the same. A couple of years back I set out to climb the three biggest mountains in the UK in 24 hours. The third was the smallest, but by God was it the hardest. But that is what you would expect right? And the same thing goes for work. We only have a certain amount of energy and resilience.
You only have to look at the number of HR bloggers out there struggling. I read a post yesterday by Charlie at HR Fishbowl about the difficulty of balancing his current business demands with the maintenance of his blog and it really resonated with me. On the same day one of my team came to see me because they “didn’t have time to breathe” and felt like they should “be asleep all of the time”. Could I help? I tried, but probably sucked because, well…….I feel the same.
Last night my wife asked if I wanted to go out this Thursday. When I replied I did, she asked me what I wanted to do. And I had no capacity to take on anything else. My feeble response was something along the lines of, “I don’t care as long as I don’t have to plan or organise it”. Something good, just felt like a task.
Why am I writing this? Well partly as catharsis and partly because I am sure there are other people experiencing similar feelings. We have been here before and we all got out the other end. And you can be sure we will be here again at another point in our careers. But it doesn’t hurt to remember that there are good things going on in our lives all of the time, if we’d just let them in.
UPDATE: And one of those really good things is that I have just realised that a year ago this very day, I posted my first entry on the blog that became My Hell is Other People. Happy Birthday to me! I’m feeling all uplifted!
Why Ulrich is killing HR
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A while ago I was asked to attend a debate entitled, “Ulrich, the end of the affair” – or words to that effect. Now I know that there will be those of you who would rather take sandpaper to sensitive parts of your body that attend something like that, but I went along because a) I was invited and b) I have Ulrich issues.
For those of you who don’t know, Ulrich set out in 1997, his answer to the woes of HR and their need to “add value”. In doing so he proposed a structure where HR was split into three sections, Business Partnering, Centres of Excellence and Shared Services. The last 13 years have seen organisations dogmatically move towards such a structure, almost without exception. In fact, I was at a conference last year where one of the speakers said, “If you haven’t centralised your HR services, why the hell not?”
Anyway, back to the debate. Well actually, back to the non-debate. Over coffee at the beginning, one of the participants said to me that he expected it to reveal pretty entrenched views. It did, but in honesty the views were entrenched in the same place, “If it works for your business then good, if it doesn’t then do something that does” Logical right?
So, why is this a big deal? Why are we even having debates about the topic? I put it down to two interrelated phenomenon,
1) The HR professions need for faddism to give it purpose and meaning
2) HR media, fanning the flames to justify its existence
And interestingly, within the room of professionals having this debate, although people were very laissez-faire in their comments, over 90% had applied the Ulrich model within their organisatons…..presumably it worked for all of them?
I should be clear, I don’t blame Ulrich for this in any way. To do so would be like blaming Mr Smith and Mr Wesson for Columbine. It is not the tool itself but the application. The persistent noise about Ulrich (voted HR Magazine’s most influential thinker year after year – yawn) is leading people to make the wrong decisions about their business and ultimately leading to criticism of the profession and attacks by the likes of Sathnam Sanghera.
A quick search of the HR journals shows hundreds upon hundred of articles, letters, features about Ulrich. Headlines such as, “Business guru Dave Ulrich urges HR to focus on outcomes to add value” – ummm, yeah thanks Mr. Guru, there was me thinking about how I could sit on my arse, take my money and do as little to help the business as possible. What this does though is stir up a sense within the profession, that if you aren’t doing it, you are somehow second class, second level and inferior and a less strategic HR professional. So quick, jump on the bandwagon, there is safety in numbers and if everyone is doing it, it must be right!
I have been working in HR now for nearly 15 years and there was not one year in my memory where we weren’t either restructuring the department, planning to restructure or recovering from restructure. Was any of this driven by a business imperative? Were the leaders of the business asking us to realign ourselves? I think not.
The question I would ask is this, if we want to be strategic, if we truly believe that we can add value, is this best done through the dogmatic implementation of a model that you feel you need to do to change your perception and “status” within the organisation? Or is it best done by understanding your business, talking to the people and providing interventions that suit your culture, industry and circumstances?
Think it over, let me know?
The forces of nature collude
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I am aware that I was quiet last week and not my usual gobby self…..my apologies. This is for me a hobby, not a profession and at times the real world has a habit of getting in the way. Unfortunately I can’t control the outside world…..believe me…..if I could………
And as if to prove a point, I was going to write something quite cerebral this morning (well for me anyway) but following a mercy dash late last night to try to help solve the problems of some people I care for, hitting black ice this morning on the drive in – going around corners sideways is not my preferred modus operandi, and a surgical procedure to look forward to this afternoon….well hell, I kind of lost my mojo.
So I’ll be back tomorrow, with the aforementioned, non ranty post. In the meantime, play nicely…..
PS – As many of you have kindly pointed out, my twitter account was hacked last week. If you received a tweet from me last week of a sexual nature – it was spam. If you receive a tweet from me this week of a sexual nature, you’ll know I like you!
The ingredients of success
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In a conversation last night, I was discussing the frustrations of working in HR one of the key ones I believe is that we cannot solve peoples problems. We can proffer ideas, influence, coach, develop, but we cannot “do” to an individual or more commonly a relationship between two or more individuals. This often requires significant effort without visible results and is, in my experience, the biggest demotivator for HR professionals. Some people would say this is because HR is ineffective, some people would say it was because it is not a real profession. My personal view is that it is just damned tough sometimes.
I was talking about this last week too when discussing my love for cooking. Given any spare time and I will try to place myself in the kitchen whether it is making cakes, biscuits, or a three course meal. Why? I don’t eat a huge amount myself but enjoying the process, I enjoy the simplicity and I enjoy (hopefully) the pleasure that it gives to others. It is the complete antithesis to my work. The goal is clear and simple, the steps to be taken prescribed and easy to follow, the outcome tangible and the feedback immediate.
Of course there is an upside to the kind of work we do, when we get a result after all the effort it feels fantastic, when we get positive feedback it feels wonderful. And this is the moment when you see HR professionals at their highest peaks, but in my experience these moments are few and far between.
Psychologically, we all need to feel that we are achieving, that we are delivering, progressing, however you wish to term it. That effort in is equal to output. If you don’t get it in your job, you look for it elsewhere. We all have our ways of achieving this, me I find it in the kitchen.
Hell’s Demons – The CEO
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The last of the demons and perhaps the most troublesome is the CEO. Fortunately there is only one (although often people behave as if there are more). But what they lack in numbers, they make up for in pure pain and suffering.
There are two versions of reality where the CEO is involved. Reality and their reality. Whilst everyone else is living in one, they inhabit the other. Unfortunately given that they somehow made their way to the top of the pile, the trick is to allow them to remain thinking and living in their world, whilst managing everything else that is going on in the “real world”. The downside comes when they gain a sudden moment of clarity and demand to know what the hell is going on. At this point, they need nursing back into their reality as you would sing a child to sleep.
Most CEOs are mad. Whether they were mad before or whether the process of getting to where they are has made them go bonkers, no-one really knows. Each one differs in their “idiosyncracies” but failure to identify these early on and take appropriate action can only lead to one result, career suicide.
The most astonishing thing about the CEO however, is that they already know everything I have just told you (although they would never admit it). They are always one step ahead no matter how fast you run – that is how they got to where they are. They problem is diagnosed and the cure prescribed. Simple really. There must always be someone there to take the bullet, to blame and to tell them that everything will be ok.
That person, they call the HRD.
Hell’s Demons – The Time Traveler
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(Don’t worry we are nearly at the end…I’m a stubborn bugger, when I start something I need to finish it)
So, day four brings us to the hardest character of them all to manage…The Time Traveler. Not the Sniper, not the Brat? Nope. Based on one simple fact…..the Timetraveller is not there. Time Travelers come in many shapes and sizes and inhabit many different worlds. Some are in the past, some are in the future, some are on this planet, some are in complete fucking world of their own.
You can spot a Time Traveler by the slightly vacant faraway look in their eye. Their clothes are dishevelled as God only knows when the last time they changed was or even if they ever have, the aroma a unique blend of old bibles crossed with goat cheese and banana. They work in highly technical or specialist areas, requiring a brain the size of Peru and the conceptual thinking skills of da Vinci. But putting one foot in front of another…..that is another thing entirely.
Nothing worries a Time Traveler, because they aren’t there. Need them to do something? No problem, they press the big red internal button marked “take off” and….woosh! You can’t criticize a Time Traveler because you can’t pin them down or work out where the hell they are….and deepdown you know that the truth is, they are probably all geniuses!
Hell’s Demons – The Brat
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The Brat is probably one of the most commonly known and frequently encountered demons. Indeed some organisations (like my own) are staffed almost entirely by brats. Where the ration of Brats to non-brats exceeds two to one, you know you are either working in a consultancy, an advertising agency or a crèche.
But spare a thought for the Brat, they weren’t created that way, the evolved all thanks to the organisation. Probably considered at one time the “talent” within the organisation they threw their toys out of the pram once only to find that the nurse maid came, picked them up put them back in the pram and gave them a lollipop to boot. Now anyone with kids will know the power of conditioning. And of course the next thing the Brat did….was to throw the toys out of the pram again.
One of the problems for an organisation with many Brats is trying to make sure that you are not knocked out by the deluge of toys. And HR we sit on the sidelines like an unthumbed copy of Gina Ford, begging for the lollipop supply to end. But just like the mother with the child sprawled out on the floor in the supermarket, red in the face from screaming and wailing old habits die-hard. And unfortunately, so do Brats.
My Hell is Other People 