Untaught ability
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How much risk do you take? Does it differ in your work to your personal life? Do you use the same basis for making “risky” decisions depending on the context?
These are the questions that have been buzzing through my head all night when I should have been getting much-needed beauty sleep. I have a lot of things on at the moment, both at home and at work. A lot of things that have required me to take a risk, both with my future and the future of others.
Most of the time I tend to work on quite a rational basis. You work out the likely scenarios, you work out what is tolerable and then you make a decision based on what you believe is most likely to bring the best outcome for you or your family or your organisation. There is no such thing as a calculated risk, only a thought through decision.
But sometimes there aren’t enough facts or data to allow you to make a logical decision. And that is where it comes down to gut instinct, or the tummy test. I’m not one to shy away from instinct at work, I’m no scientist, but I believe our subconscious can tell us things through our body that our conscious mind cannot or will not.
I wonder though, whether in this data centric world, whether we are happy to go with our gut instinct when it is a personal choice that impacts only us, or whether we would be brave enough to make important business decisions, wholly or partly on gut feeling? And does this differ depending on the size of the business?
Personally, I think if we want to work in truly entrepreneurial, innovative businesses, we need to throw the data out of the window sometimes and go with a hunch. There may be as many failures and successes, but truly great creations come from feeling not just from thought.
Trying Behaviour
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Well who would have believed the brouhaha that arose last Thursday and Friday? I write a post. And things go mental. What started with a press release on 30 September heralding the launch of Think HR, Think Again finished with the CIPD being forced to issue a further statement in defence of the campaign. The power of social media in action. Thank you to everyone who tweeted and re-tweeted the original post.
The CIPDs claim that THEY, “started a debate that need to be had” is of course laughable. They didn’t start the debate, we did. They didn’t want the debate in any shape or form that is why they tried to shut it down. I’m not going to carry on banging on about the specific campaign though, I thing I have said my piece on that. As have you all. Some for and some against. Rick is pro CIPD, Harriet is more in the anti camp. But even the defenders seem to agree that the campaign itself is duff. Nice effort from the people who run the CIPD Marketing Awards, “the most coveted, robust and prestigious awards in the UK recruitment industry”.
The sad thing about the whole affair is that the only defence seems to be, “they were trying”. Three words that leave me feeling entirely flat. When I was at school I had a teacher who whenever a pupil stated they were “trying” would dryly reply, “yes you are…..very”. What a British disease. Doesn’t matter what the outcome, as long as we try. We teach our kids that winning isn’t important, as long as we try. We talk about our sportspeople making “brave attempts”. Brave failures more like.
The HR profession is full of tryers. We don’t need that and nor do we need to excuse failure away. If we are truly striving to improve standards, then trying is not enough. And that should be the case for each and every one of us as well as our professional body. The statement from the CIPD that, “It’s always possible to pick on an element of a campaign like this, but we want people to take a step back and ask whether the CIPD is doing the right thing?” Is basically saying, OK we fucked up the execution we get that….but you know…we meant well. And by the way, it wasn’t an “element” it was the headline that YOU trumpeted. (Oops…..I said I wouldn’t go there didn’t I?)
But my point is this. If we want to improve our profession. If we want a better professional body, then we will only get it if we identify underperformance and hold those responsible to account. Brushing it under the carpet and polite acceptance is the breeding ground for mediocrity. Being satisfactory, being adequate is not enough. I don’t accept it from myself, I don’t accept it from my team. And I don’t accept it from my professional body. Not because I want to damage it, because I want to make it better.
Think Stink
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PLEASE SEE THE UPDATE BELOW – 1 OCTOBER 2010
Not since Gerald Ratner uttered the immortal phrase,
We also do cut-glass sherry decanters complete with six glasses on a silver-plated tray that your butler can serve you drinks on, all for £4.95. People say, “How can you sell this for such a low price?”, I say, “because it’s total crap”.
has a marketing campaign backfired so massively (ok well there was the Post Office and Consignia) as the one launched by the CIPD today,
“THINK HR, THINK AGAIN”
Which cockless half-brain came up with this as an idea is beyond me. The fact that it actually made it past brief and into the public domain is enough to make me want to take a machete to every advertising executive this side of Watford. Come to think of it I don’t think the poncey marketing types know that there is anything north of Watford.
CIPD …..WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING?????
So the immediate joke is the obvious one, thinking of HR…..I’d think again! Did you not notice that? Or were you so high on your own sense of self-importance that you completely overlooked the eye wateringly obvious? Are your heads so far up your own sphincters that you cannot see that you have launched a campaign prime for mockery?
As if to add insult to injury, there is a website…..to break your preconceptions of HR being “dull” and “bureaucratic”. On the front page it has a man who (whilst I am sure is a really nice guy) is juggling balls with a look on his face that I find somewhat disturbing. Because…..guess what? In HR……we have to juggle…..priorities……geddit?
If that doesn’t put you off there is a “day in the life” category so you can see what groovy people we are in HR. In one of them the writer mentions the word “meetings” no fewer than 10 times……in another the groovy HR ninja, “attended a pre-meeting” before attending a meeting. No we aren’t dull or bureaucratic…..we’re in…..meetings…..wooohoooooo!
I despair…..if this is the campaign that the CIPD think is going to change the image, then I may as well lower my trousers, bend over and prepare to take it like a big boy. I’m angry, I’m disappointed, I’m frustrated…..
This is my profession. You are my professional body. It’s hard enough trying to be cool in HR, but when you weigh in like this, like a Dad dancing at a wedding, well quite frankly it makes me want to run and hide in the toilets with a bottle of contraband and a pack of fags.
If you want my subs, if you want my respect, if you want me to support you. Then get with it, get real, stop behaving like a bunch of fucking jerks and start understanding what the profession really does, what it needs and why.
Oh and another thing…….. for fuck sake……get a new agency.
UPDATE
Well what an interesting 24 hours it has been. After posting this yesterday, the traffic went through the roof….over twice the normal daily visits, which are healthy in themselves. I was looking at the traffic stats, when I noticed that a number of people were coming in from the CIPD website itself. I check out the link and it showed that there was a Twitter feed on the site. You can see it here. It was showing anything that had a hastag #CIPD.
Well sure enough it was full of tweets about this post and others questioning the campaign. I thought this really quite amusing and decided to tweet the link. In less than an hour, the feed had been changed so that it only showed tweets using the #CIPD10 hash tag. Of which there were a couple of glowing tweets by the CIPD and associates themselves.
I don’t believe in censorship, I believe in open debate and honesty. So last night I and others tweeted links and comments on this development using the #CIPD10 hash tag. The CIPD are clearly late starter, because it wasn’t until about 10 o’clock this morning that they clocked this and ONCE AGAIN changed the feed to now only showing those tweets including @CIPD_events.
Then I received this,
I was amazed. Here was my professional body, who I fund basically telling me to shut up. Once again they were trying to censor me. I sent a message back asking for confirmation that everyone who used that hashtag for non-conference related information were also going to be told off. Sure enough I started to hear from people that they too were being censored. Now clearly the CIPD don’t read my blog, otherwise they would know my views on hashtags.
I replied (from bottom up),
To this point, I haven’t had a reply.
So to those of you that say, engage and debate don’t criticise…..well what can you do? It doesn’t really work when people keep trying to prevent your views from being heard.
CIPD – Another big fat fail I’m afraid.
Profit Prophet
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How much do you need to live on? What do you think is reasonable? What do you think is morally acceptable? What do you think is affordable?
£7 per hour?
£280 per week?
£14,560 per annum?
The mathematicians amongst you will be working out now that, for a forty hour week, those figures are the same. Doesn’t seem a lot does it? Given that you need to deduct tax and National Insurance.
But my friends, I tell you…..this figure, this number……it will be the ruin of our economy, it will bring businesses to their knees…..it will lead to mass unemployment and dole queues stretching for miles.
Bollocks will it.
But if you read the comments by the British Chamber of Commerce and the Institute of Directors you’d be led to believe that it would. And you know the reason why?
THEY DO NOT CARE ABOUT YOU. THEY CARE ABOUT THEIR PROFITS.
I’ve said it before and I will say it again. These are lies. Lies made to scare people. Lies made to protect the imbalance between people who earn well (and yes I am one of them) and between people who scrape to make a living.
Increasing the minimum wage to a “living wage” is not going to reduce the number of jobs. Following the recession most organisations are already understaffed and over worked. You can only make so many cuts. All it would do is to reduce the amount of money going into the pockets of the bosses.
Never mind the fact that increasing wages, increases both the tax yield and the amount of disposable income in the economy – which of course is used to buy goods and services, some of which will come from UK businesses. Never mind, that by reducing the number of jobs you place an increased burden on the State which requires an increase in tax to pay for it.
Don’t buy the lies, don’t buy the rhetoric, don’t buy the thinly veiled threats. Businesses CAN afford a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. They just don’t want to.
Because they don’t care about you.
Just for a gig(gle)
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I’m not going to talk about HR today. HR can take a break, a long and well needed one. I’m going to talk about music. Music has a very important part in my life, it always has had. Those of you who hang out here on a regular basis will know that before my holidays I asked you for recommendations for my iPod. The response was diverse and interesting and I found some really good artists that way. Unfortunately my iPod was a victim of a late night drinking, early morning plane debacle in Berlin and never made it back into the country.
I’ve tried to instill a love of music in my kids too. They both fall asleep to Classic FM, as they have since they were babies, but not only that they listen to a wide range of music and both play instruments. A little while ago I took my son to his first gig. We went to see Otis Gibbs. If you don’t know Otis, check him out. He’s not only a talented musician, agitator, environmentalist but also an all round nice guy. He even managed to get the population of a sleepy middle-class, middle-England venue to shout, “FUCK ERIC CLAPTON!” as one. My 10-year-old especially loved that bit.
This is a long way away from my first gig, which was Yazz and the Plastic Population at Portsmouth Guildhall! I was young and foolish and I didn’t come from an area of the world that was high on the list of cultural hotspots. To this day I remember the sensation of, “what the fuck am I doing here?” and fortunately after that, the only way WAS up and the rest of my life has been a musical reaction to that moment.
One of the great things about going off topic, is that I get the chance to hear from people who read this blog who maybe don’t want to put themselves out there (understandably) on some of the other topics. And it allows me to find out a little more about you lot, which believe it or not I kind of like.
So, over to you guys, old, new, regulars and Johnnie come latelys….your first gigs, who, what, when and why…… and be honest now, they can’t be any worse than Yazz!
Stuff and nonsense
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I’ve been amazed over the past few days at the way in which “the community” of HR bloggers and tweeters has reverted to type. One of the things about the online world is the lack of order, the lack of hierarchy and the lack of rules. But it seems that HR people just aren’t comfortable with that. Am I surprised? No. Am I disappointed…….well…..
What started as a debate about favourite blogs, became a debate about what makes an HR blog became a debate over categorisations of blogs which is spread over a number of different sites and blogs. Really, you couldn’t make it up could you?
I mean, I have strong views on what I personally think about blogging and bloggers. There are blogs out there that I would rather shove a marrow up my arse than read, there are blogs which make my eyeballs want to bleed and many which I just simply don’t understand. But someone must like them and good on you to the bloggers.
Does it really need the blog police to come in and define categories sub-categories? Ok, so I admit I have a personal beef here when I see the “Top 500 Talent blogs” and there are people with one post on it about some niche bollocks and I don’t even feature…… But that aside…..
And then to top it all off, I saw a conversation on Twitter about the use of hash tags and how they should and shouldn’t be used and the amount that you should use and whether they should be used when re-tweeting and…..and…..and…..and….WHAT THE FUCK???? I mean really……
I will read what I want to read. I don’t care what category it comes in. I don’t care who recommends it or doesn’t. If it makes me laugh, if it makes me think, if it makes me question myself, you or others….it is all fair game. I don’t care whether it falls under the category HR, Recruitment, Talent or Donkey Porn. It makes no difference.
I will also use whatever damn hash tag I want in the way that I want to when I want to. And if you don’t like it tough. Cool shit becomes un-cool shit when you start to create rules and order and govern by the un-elected, self-selected.
If you want to hang out with the prefects then fine. Me? I’ll be behind the bikes sheds. And I know who’ll be having all the fun.
Dear employees
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You know what? Sometimes you just have to suck it up. Life isn’t always roses and sweet little pastiches of all the films that suck your common sense out and replace it with unfounded expectations of what the universe owes you. Sometimes things are fucked.
Even when it isn’t your fault.
But that my friends is life and you have two choices, opt out or get on with it. For those of you choosing to adopt the former strategy, I would like to place a quick disclaimer*. No amount of whinging and whining is going to make it better. I don’t know where you got the idea it was going to be different from?
So just buck up the attitude, accept that from time to time things don’t go your way and focus on the things that are good, the things that are positive and the things that make you feel alive and not one of the walking dead. See you’re feeling better already.
It won’t change your life, it won’t change your environment, it won’t even stop bad things happening to you. But it might make you a nicer person to be around and it will, as sure as hell, make my life a whole load better.
Love,
TheHRD
*The owners of this blog would like to point out that in no way are they responsible for you losing the will to live, unless you have read more than three of our blog posts in one sitting at which point we sympathise with you wholeheartedly
RecNet – The words that got away
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First and foremost an apology if you came to last night’s Recruiters Networking event and were disappointed by my lack of coherence. In honesty, I was tired, my mind was elsewhere dealing with a few problems and cameras do nothing for my level of concentration.
Secondly, if you have any interest in what I was saying in my head (that failed to come out of my mouth) it is this:
As a principle, you should only outsource those aspects of your business that do not add value, but where efficiency is important. The only exception to this is where the subject knowledge is so highly technical and infrequently used that it makes no sense for these skills to sit within the business. You should never outsource your core.
If you believe that within your organisation, people are a part of that core, then why would you allow anyone else to be involved in the sourcing and recruitment? The simple answer to this, is that most HR people do not see it this way. They see recruitment as a chore, as a menial task something that gets in the way of their preferred modus operandi…..”being strategic”.
Part of the problem here is the generalist/specialist divide. It won’t come as a surprise to know that I’m no great fan of the Ulrich model, but I do believe that there are people who are “recruiters” and people who are not. In the absence of any in-house specialists, recruitment tasks tend to get devolved to the lowest common denominator, normally an HR Assistant who, unless they are very good, can’t be expected to understand all the facets of recruitment.
The answer is not to essentially outsource your recruitment. Recruitment agencies are like wasps. They add little known value or purpose, they aggravate and annoy and they have a sting in the tail. But, we accept them as a necessary part of our ecosystem. The answer is to improve your in-house capability. OK, so I accept that if you are a SME, this may not be financially viable and your workforce may not be big enough to maintain a recruiter or even an HR generalist at all, and of course then you need to work with outside agencies. Or you may be a FTSE100 business opening up a new centre and requiring some support. There are always exceptions.
But for most companies, working in most markets, there is a clear cost benefit argument for bringing the process in-house – not to mention the benefits in quality. Personally, some of the best results I saw were when we brought a team of agency recruiters in-house, freed them from the constraints of selling, quotas, commission and client visits and allowed them to do what they loved and were very talented at. That isn’t to say that we didn’t measure success, we had a range of quantitative and qualitative measures, but we measured in the long-term, not on the weekly hires.
So my recruiting friends, I don’t hate you, I actually think you have a lot of value to add but I think the existing B2B model that exists just doesn’t deliver the goods. There are (and this seemed to be the consensus last night too) too many cowboys in your profession, but a seeming unwillingness to allow for any sort of professional standards or regulatory body.
The answer has to be to take the skills, the passion and the knowledge that exists and to bring that in-house to combine with the passion for the brand, the knowledge of the business and link it all together in a seemless approach to our people.
Because after all they are our greatest asset……..right?
In out in out shake it all about…..
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I’m coming out of the shadows tonight, perhaps for the final time, to attend the Recruiters Network event. It is a networking event…….for recruiters. Liking neither recruiters nor networking it seems a strange way to spend a Wednesday evening, but it is run and organised by the lovely Louise Triance, so I’ve said I’ll go along.
In fact, I’m not just going along, I’m debating. In a form of tag team wrestling, allegedly without the wrestling but knowing the participants anything might happen. I will be lining up with the gimp mask wearing Yogi bear of a man that is Gary Franklin. Against us will be the Statler and Waldorf of recruitment, Mervyn Dinnen and Gareth Jones.
The title of the debate is “innie or outtie”. Problem is, up until this morning I thought we were discussing belly buttons and all things fluff related. First it turns out I was wrong. Instead we’re going to be debating in-house recruitment versus out-house recruitment (wtf?). AND THEN it turns out I don’t actually have an opinion on this one……
So my friends, dear souls I need your help. I need your views…….make them up, make them as radical as you can, as offensive as you can. One liners or diatribes I’ll take them all. And I’ll try to fit in as many as I can tonight. Complete the following phrase,
“Agency recruitment sucks because……….”
PS. Merv, Gareth…….feel free to join in too…..I know you agree with me really…..
Back to school, back to reality
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Yesterday Charlie said, “the education system doesn’t provide skills suitable for employment at any level and employers are reluctant to pick up the slack and train employees”. There is a lot of truth in this, but as increasingly seems to be the case these days, I think the issues are slightly more complicated.
First of all let’s be clear. The education system is not failing. Children are better taught and better educated than they have ever been. The problem is that the stuff, the information, the knowledge that we need to have has increased exponentially over the past decades, yet the education system has (in terms of time) remained the same.
Let’s take an example. Remember Physics? It was the tough part of science, the bit that made your ears bleed. But some people liked it and went on to study it at University (weirdos). Take a quick look at the UCAS database and you’ll see that there are 21 different specialist Physics degrees that you can take now. Because what we know and what we think we know has expanded beyond belief, a simple cover all isn’t possible.
Likewise, we hear constant cries of despair about how much easier exams are these days. They’re not. They just haven’t got any harder and we have got both better at taking them and more informed. When we complain about this all we are really doing is showing our age and our fear of progress.
The response from the business world to these issues has been typical short-sighted and ill-conceived. With one voice we called for more vocational training for degrees to be more practical, for 16 plus education to be more varied. Then when the newly trained graduates come through the production line, we claim their education and skills are out of date and they lack the intellectual rigor. No shit Sherlock.
The academic world will never be able to offer up to date truly vocational education at the highest level, because it is unable to attract the people who will be able to teach it without becoming completely economically unviable. And they shouldn’t be aiming to do so. That shouldn’t be their role.
You want to know what I think? Well tough. You have no choice. We need to reframe the way that we think about education, we need to reframe the relationship between business and education. When you buy a new phone, they tell you to charge it fully and then let it discharge. The idea is to increase the capacity of the battery so that in future it can retain more power. We need to start thinking about education in this way. It is “merely” expanding the capacity for learning and information.
So where does that leave us as employers? Well, if the market isn’t providing what you need, you need to incentivize it to do so, or intervene directly. We need to recognize that our needs are so diverse that we cannot expect the generic education system to meet them. We need to impress upon the need to provide us with people capable of learning, but we need to provide the specific skills training we require ourselves.
But don’t expect this to be all one way. When businesses invest, they want a return. And that isn’t going to be over the short-term. Bonded labour? It might not be a million miles off.
My Hell is Other People 