That was the year that was
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Well what a year eh? I mean who would have thought….? This time last year, I wrote my expectations and hopes for the new decade. If the remaining 9 years are anything like the first one, then I might not make it out alive…but I’ll have had a hell of a journey!
You’re all so wonderful and giving to me and in recognition of that, I want to give something back to you. So here are the inaugural…………………… My Hell is Other People awards!
Methodology: I have looked at reach, resonance are relevance and then I’ve tossed them to one side and done exactly what I wanted.
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Hero of the year – MJCarty. Michael is the sort of guy that if he didn’t exist you would have to make up. Kind, genuine, supportive, funny and a complete stalwart of the HR online community. I know that I and many other bloggers would be lost without the support that Michael gives us….not to mention the retweets and a strange almost hobbit like use of language.
Event of the year – #SocRecCamp. How many other events took a range of people many who’ve never met, doused them in alcohol and then wrapped them in rubber? I mean….talk about an HR nightmare! I met such a great group of people there and they all took my naming as Theo within their stride. The sloe gin, however, was a step too far.
Rapprochement of the year – Bill Boorman. In April I wrote an open letter to Bill following a bit of a stupid online tiff. We’ve met a couple of times now and I think everything is settled. Not only do we have a lot of similar views on blogs and blogging, we are also (surprisingly) almost neighbours. Although far enough apart that I manage to get some bandwidth.
Pantomime villain of the year – Stephen O’Donnell. Some people need to be contrary. Some people can’t help being contrary. Stephen is somewhere in between. After getting me stuck in the blog post that I wished I hadn’t written I’ve realised the behaviour isn’t naive, there is just a gene missing somewhere.
Blondie of the year – Lisa Scales. Facing off ridiculously stiff (ahem) competition from Sarah Knight, Betty B Blonde and Wendy Jacob. What can I say about Lisa that hasn’t been said? Very little. But she is one hilarious lady and she of course gave me the moment of the year when she reversed her car over her own tent at the camp…..genius behaviour and for that alone she gets the gong.
Disappointment of the year – #CHRchat. Maybe my expectations were too high, maybe I’m a cynical old bastard. The Tweet ups were fun, the Unconference, I’m told, was promising, but the chats….eurgh. Is it the participants? Is it the topics? Is it the formats? I don’t know, but as a business person I know that if something isn’t working, you kill it….and quick.
Blog of the year – Joe Gerstandt. If there is one blog I read that says something different, that swims against the tide, that makes me think and makes me want to do something about it, it is Joe’s. I don’t know him, but I love his writing, I love his thinking and I love the way that he writes about topics that most of us would rather ignore or kick deep deep into the long grass. PLUS, he looks like at any moment he might be pushed over the edge and stab you. I like that in a blogger.
#HRfamous moment of the year – Laurie Ruettimann. So Laurie has always been my blog crush. It is no secret, I think what she did and what she does is amazing. I met her, we were in a bar in London and someone came up and said, “You’re that HRD guy”……..yeah….and she is LAURIE RUETTIMANN! And Ken was lovely too!
Blogger of the future – Damon Klotz. Yeah, I’d never heard of him either. But then most people hadn’t heard of Justin Bieber. So your point is? Read the boy, meet the boy at #TruLondon. And watch out for him in the future. Remember…you heard it here almost first.
Commenter of the year – Henry Berry. What can I say? Henry has been there from the beginning…..almost from post one. Providing me with as many laughs and thoughts as you can possible pack in to a comment. Intelligent, frivolous, challenging, pointless, amusing…none of these apply to him.
Blog I wished I wrote – Corporate Daycare. So you may or you may not know this blog. If you don’t then you should. Blogging since 2006….yes 2006 this HR pro has a wonderful way with words, a sense of humour and despite this they are Canadian. Now how about that for a triumph against adversity?
Item of the year – The Mask. Oh sweet mother of Jesus….where do I go with this one? I blame Gary Franklin the owner of the afore-mentioned mask. It is touring around the world as we speak, making guest appearances. You know you want it to come to a town near you…..don’t you?
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So there you go, for all those unlucky winners…..Congratulations! For all those lucky losers….I’ll get you next time……..
Thanks to all of you for your general awesomeness and total wonderfulness. Have a wonderful Christmas and a peaceful and enriching New Year.
Christmas isn’t Chrismas…..
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….without you…. Or at least that is how “The Boy Least Likely To” see it on their album Christmas Special. Personally I’m not so sure. Not least because I don’t know who “you” is and even if I did, having never spent Christmas with “you”, it would be hard to see how spending it without “you” would make it less like Christmas. Unless of course “you” is my wife, in which case I’d like to know why the fuck someone else is writing songs about Christmas not being Christmas without her.
But once again I digress…….
Rituals are one of the things that make celebration special. Humans need and have always needed ritual to bring them together, to give a shared sense of purpose and belonging and the warmth of collective understanding. Our memories are often strongly linked in one way or another to ritualistic behaviour and the repetition of this is a reminder of happy times in the past.
My parents have a specific Christmas bauble, which is in fact an old lightbulb. It has been kicking around the family for a long old-time and as a kid, placing it on the tree was one of those special moments that reminded you it was truly Christmas. When we are back there at Christmas I always look out for it and of course, it is always there. It isn’t big or special and to any normal person it probably wouldn’t have any relevance or import. But to me and my family, it does.
So in the penultimate Christmas Goodness post I really want to know what rituals are important to you? I love these moments that give me a glimpse into other people’s lives and make a bunch of names and faces become a little bit more real.
If HR ran Christmas…..
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The elves would spend their time bitching about Santa’s remuneration package and abundant holidays.
Rudolph would be pulled over on suspicion of DUI and sent for counsellling.
Gender specific toys would be forbidden. A ball and cup would be deemed provocative, never mind finding nuts in your stockings……
Fairies would be called “small ethereal people of unspecific gender orientation”.
Santa would be sent to wellbeing classes and retrained on Elf and Safety. (ok…shit joke)
God would rest “ye merry gentle people”. And the three kings would be one king, one queen and a eunuch.
Charades would require a competency based assessment system, linked to a 360 and feeding into a chocolate reward strategy.
Snow men would not be exclusively white, nor male.
And sprouts would be compulsory,
Just because……
But they still wouldn’t get a seat at the top table!
O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum
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This weekend left me under no illusion that Christmas is on its way to the point that I even started to dust off the old Christmas music and give it a play. The national grid went down for a while when we plugged in our lights and the Christmas cards are sat in a pile waiting for me to write them.
We haven’t got a tree yet, mainly because Christmas is abroad this year and past experience has shown that early buying of tree leads to the return home presenting us with a seasonal stick and a floor covered in baubles and needles! The tree for me though, is one of those rituals that I would never change. A blaze of colour and memories, music playing and of course the obligatory domestic about whether the damned thing is straight or not. (I’m ALWAYS right on that one…..well almost).
Some people like coordination, some people like random messiness and I’m pretty sure that behind most decorated trees there is at least one story or memory. So I want to try something….and this is one of those posts where you hold you breath, cross your fingers and pray for participation that doesn’t make you look like a total twat!
I know a lot of you already have your trees up and away because I’ve seen the photos on Twitter so I thought why not bring them together in one glittering whirlwind of all things Chrismassy and nice? So if you’ve put your tree up and you’ve taken a picture of it, how about putting it in the comment section below (you can do this via www.twitpic.com or www.yfrog.com and I’m sure other sites which allow you to copy the HTML) if it all gets too hard drop me an email and I’ll do it for you.
Here is hoping and praying…….I mean……you wouldn’t want me to be without a tree now would you? 🙂
Point. Click. Delete.
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I have a guilty confession. Each day I delete nearly half of my emails without reading them. That’s right. Point. Click. Delete. I consider it operational efficiency. The problem is, as quick as I can delete the little blighters, there are more of them…..like in Gremlins. Remember that?
Some of them come from you guys. Some of them come from people I know in my real life. But nonetheless, they get the same treatment. Point. Click. Delete. Operational efficiency AND natural selection. Haven’t heard back from me? You just didn’t make the cut.
Ok, so I’m not that anti-social. I’m talking about unsolicited emails, spam, begging letters, whatever you want to call them. I was discussing this with an advertising agency the other day who were seeking my advice about pitching the services of a third-party to HR Directors. When he asked me what I thought about email, I sighed.
The truth is that on anyone day I get upward of 40 emails from would be suppliers/consultants or newsletters. And all of them go directly into the bin. I’ve not signed up for them directly, I’m assuming that they’ve bought my details from a database. I don’t read them and even when I do they tend to get my name or company name wrong. So why the hell would I give them my business?
I appreciate that it is a tough market out there, but the numbers game is not the way to play it. If you want to work with me, then you need to connect with me. You need to understand me and you need to treat me as a partner not a target, even before you have my business.
I’m not trying to cause a big sensation….
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So I’m a bit of a geek. I get it and I’m ok with it. Although being a geek I should be able to do technical stuff, which I clearly can’t…which makes me somewhat of a Luddite geek, if that isn’t an oxymoron. I’ve written before about demography, because a) as I said, I’m a geek b) it interests me and c) it is incredibly important and much overlooked.
If you explore the blogosphere and the journals over the past few years, you’d be excused for thinking that there was only one generation that we needed to worry about, the aptly named Generation Y. But our organisations are stacked with people from across the generations, with different needs and requirements and with different hopes and aspirations. Yet 9 times out of 10 we deal with them as a homogenous mass taking no account of the stage of life or individual aspirations. Ok, so I know I run the risk here of being labelled as stereotyping, “not all people close to retirement just want to work their last years in peace” or “not all young people are ambitious and wanting to progress”. I get that, but then treating people the same isn’t any better either.
We do it because of the concerns around discrimination, but exactly through our attempts to be seen to be whiter than white we inevitably discriminate against people, maybe not illegally but certainly inappropriately. Addressing different demographic groups within our workforce and tailoring our offer to meed their needs will be an essential element to the retention of key individuals.
– Do your talent management programmes recognise the ebb and flow of the life cycle? Do they allow for parents to have children but then continue to progress their careers at a time that is right for them, in a way that means they can make a valuable contribution and manage to balance work and life?
– Do your compensation packages recognise that those earlier in their careers are more motivated by increasing their base salary whereas those later on may be more inclined to think about pension contributions, PHI cover and life assurance? Is reward ultimately service driven and does this lead to retention issues amongst newer staff?
– Does your development offering focus on the different learning styles that different generation have based on their educational background? Do you focus your offer on different phases of the human life cycle or do you only focus on employee life cycle?
Focus on the shifting demographic profile of our work places is going to become even more crucial as retirement is pushed later and later, as third and fourth generation immigrant families, with different value sets, become a regular part of the workforce, as lifestyle choices become wider and wider and the differences between being directly employed or self-employed become less and less.
It may make you a geek to start talking about it, we all have a bit of that inside us. But if it makes a difference for your business and your workforce, then surely it has to be worth it?
Yes darling, I know you’re impotent……
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To (almost) start the week, I give you 5 things that you think make you look important but actually prove you’re a knob:
1) Being late for meetings – OK I get it, your diary is busy because of all of those wonderfully productive meetings that you attend. I really do. Because you know what? My diary is full of them at your behest. But the difference is that I’m always there, because I respect the other poor fuckers that have proper work to do but instead have to listen to you drone on and on.
2) Carrying your Blackberry around the building with you – Please…..the business wouldn’t know if you were run over by a bus, well ok they’d be less meetings but apart from that. You don’t need to demonstrate that you have a BB…everyone has one now. What’s that you say? Me? Yeah I’m always holding on to my phone…but that is because I’m tweeting what a cock you are.
3) Telling me how busy you are – Look around you, can you see anyone who isn’t busy? And you know what? They are mostly busy dealing with the last lot of crap that you caused through your ineffective presence on this earth. And if you really are that busy…then how come you have time to blather on to me about how busy you are? I know I don’t.
4) Sending me pointless emails anytime between 8pm and 6am – If you want to spend the night making love to your keyboard then fine. I have a family and a taste for wine, we each plot our own course. But sending me non-important “Thanks” or “Let’s talk” emails at stupid o’clock is….well stupid! I really don’t care and nor does anyone else. And no, I won’t reply. Delete.
5) Getting your letters pp’d – If you can’t be bothered to put your name on the bottom, I can’t be bothered to read it. I know you’ve read it, I know your hand has touched it, but you can’t be arsed. Unless your name is Adolph Blaine Charles David Earl Frederick Jack Gerald Hubert Irvin John Kenneth Lloyd Martin Nero Oliver Paul Quincy Randolph Sherman Thomas Uncas Victor William Xerxes Yancy Zeus Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorft Senior , there is no damned excuse.
Green eyed blind spot
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Last week I made a foolish mistake. No not the one about weeing in the laundry basket and putting my socks in the toilet and no, not the one about using my real name in front of people whilst being the ninja of the night. I made the mistake of commenting on a thread of the LinkedIn group CIPD Members, run by the wonderfully incredible Mr. Mike Morrison.
So the story is that Jackie Orme, the CEO of the CIPD has been paid some money and some bonus and stuff and we’re all really jealous that we earn shit next to her and after all we’re so important and she is…..well she is just the CEO of a business and THAT IS JUST NOT FAIR. So what we are going to do is whinge on about it like a bunch of bitches until someone comes with a big bucket of water to put us out of our misery.
The thing is this, whether you like it or not, there is a constitution and remuneration committee and that objectives are agreed and bonus targets are set and blah blah blah…..guess what…she achieved them she got paid. Well howdy doody would you ever believe it? I mean what radical thinking will befall us next? But along the sidelines are a bunch of grubby, generally speaking, ineffective self-employed consultants shrieking,”That’s unfair!”.
No it isn’t, it is completely fair and reasonable. You just are jealous and stupid and confusing equity for parity.
But my biggest issue is that the most vociferous debate is about something internal. We have a whole world of shit going on around our ears. We have change that makes seismic look incremental. We have economic movement and changes to currency and foreign exchange markets that could seriously rock the core of the industrial basis of the world. But what are we talking about? The fact that someone got some money that we would like to have had.
And this my friends is the fault with our profession. This is the macro version of an existence that plays out in nearly every HR department throughout the country if not the world. Whilst big shit is happening outside, we’re too busy worrying about whether we are HR or Personnel, or whatever other shit that we can be, whether the appraisal system is right or whether we need to redesign the core competencies to allow for the ins and outs of a duck’s asshole to be wholly and justly considered.
This people, is institutional fuck wittery and stupidity. And for one, I won’t partake, because you know what? My CEO doesn’t give a shit about Jackie Orme’s remuneration. So I’ll spend my time making a better future for my business and my employees, because that will reflect on my salary and bonus which means I can put a roof over my kids heads and dinner in their bellies and plan for a retirement that is going to be hard to achieve.
And that, THAT, my friends, is what most people are out there doing. That is the reality for the vast majority of workers. And that is what really matters to them…..and that is what matters to me……
The Beat(en) generation
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Youth is wasted on the young? Well to be honest it isn’t a great time to be a young person right now. Figures out from the Prince’s Trust charity this morning show that the number of people aged between 16 and 24 claiming unemployment benefit for more than a year has also quadrupled since the start of the recession. Not surprising the same period of time has seen the cost of youth crime increase 20% to around £1.2bn per annum.
I’d proffer that the figures are probably hide a situation that is significantly worse. The measure of long-term unemployment is pretty urban centric and rules out a lot of seasonal workers in rural areas who break long periods of unemployment with short periods of employment. But that aside this is a hell of a bleak outlook for our next generation and a significant cost to the tax payer at about £20m per week.
It is hard to see what we are doing at the moment to try to tackle any of these issues. Young people, and particularly those shorter educational backgrounds, are stereotyped. Partly because they are ill-equipped for the world of work but also partly through prejudice and fear. Crime we believe to be purely because of misintention and evil and never because of need, anger or frustration.
I’ve said it before, but our education system is not fit for purpose and is failing our young people. The answer is not to compel education but instead to make education compelling. Young people become disaffected and leave the education system because their talents are not recognised and they see no relevance in the lessons. So we need to understand how to make this better, more relevant and more diverse. Some may call it dumbing down, I’d happily argue that some education is better than no education and just because a course is, for example, vocational doesn’t mean it is easy.
And then we need to tackle the labour market. Spending £20m a week to keep people out of work is a complete nonsense. But subsidizing employers to employ young people doesn’t work either. We need to take a longer term view, to understand the sectors that we believe are growth and the ones in which we want UK plc to excel in. Then we need to encourage capital investment to make sure that we are world-class and the background skills development to ensure that we can provide the local labour force to add to the competitive advantage.
Sure it isn’t easy and there are greater minds than mine who will wrestle with this. But big problems require big thinking, courage and passion. Everybody should have the right to a decent education and a decent job. What that means will be different for different people, but the disaffected youth are no exception.
Oh what a tangled web we weave
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Man this anonymous shit deals up some weird days sometimes and yesterday was one of the weirdest.
You may remember that a while ago I wrote a post about the CIPD’s latest campaign Think HR, Think Again. And it kind of became a little controversial and along with other commentators then became a news story in itself. One of the main criticisms in the aftermath was that the CIPD didn’t engage with those critics within the social media world. Well yesterday they proved me and others wrong. Following the Think Stink thingy I started talking with Natalia Alexandrou at the CIPD which (to cut a long story short) ended up with me visiting CIPD Towers.
If you’re anonymous, arriving at reception is always a tough one. I can confirm that if you get hit by a blizzard 30 secs from entering it doesn’t make it any easier.
Reception: Blimey are you ok
HRD: Yes, I thought I’d come disguised as a snowman
Reception: Can I take your name?
HRD: No, not really
It doesn’t tend to lead to the easiest conversations you’ll ever have, but thankfully she was game for a laugh (despite describing me as a kind of HR mystery shopper). The meeting was, I think, good and I’m hopeful that some exciting things will come out of it. Words are one thing, actions are another, but I certainly understood that there are within people wanting to do something differently, whether they can convince an institution to shake itself up a little is another matter. I for one am willing to help and I am sure that there are many of you out there that will be too.
If that wasn’t enough, in the evening I attended the Personnel Today awards courtesy of HR’s very own Clarke Kent Rob Moss.
The evening kind of went a bit like this,
Them: Hi, I’m blah blah blah from blah blah blah
Me: Hi
Them:…………
Me:…………….
Them: ………..and you are?
Me:……right….this is going to sound weird……but I can’t tell you……
Them: edging away …………right………..
Me: It is a bit like an ice bath…..harsh at first, but you get used to it……..
Them: OK………so what do you do?
Me: Mainly talk shit and swear a lot
As you can imagine, the networking opportunities were just fantastic. Fortunately I met Gareth Jones (rapidly becoming one of my regular playmates) Rob Jones ( top geezer as long as you don’t have to sit next to him on a train), Jon Ingham (who made tweeting acceptable during dinner) Noel O’Reilly (journo and selective vegetarian) Eugene Farrell (health dude and part-time anarchist) and Laura Chamberlain (total babe and my new virtual crush).
So yes it is weird and yes it is awkward being anonymous. But good shit has and does come from it if you just put yourself out there a little and trust. And that is before I mention the high-class prostitutes on floor 28……..
My Hell is Other People 