A name by any other rose is just as prickly

Human Resources magazine reports that Cable & Wireless has renamed its HR function “People & Brand”; to be lead by their new Director of Brand and Culture.

The news item says that the new man’s responsibilities cover HR, resourcing, talent management, culture change, corporate communications and brand management across the business. So possibly things are not quite as bad as they seem and when an employee (bet they call them colleagues) wants to discuss pay the door they go through may still say HR. If not, pity the poor graduate trainee  having to write ‘People and Brand Officer’ in the ‘what job’ box on the ‘where are they now’ section of the alumni newsletter.

OK, a new label can help to kick-start change but stick to words that work in everyday use and have face-value currency. I for one do not want to be accredited to a Chartered Institute of People.

The right to silence – recruitment

The recent court case in which Cheltenham Council failed in its attempt to sue its former managing director for not declaring her history of depression attracted much comment – mostly on the side of candidates’ right not to tell all. That is fine if the matter withheld really is long in the past; then why would an ex-condition ever come to light. It was because the condition was anything other than past that the lady’s medical history was relevant.

The root of the problem was, of course, the Council’s sloppy recruitment practices. They relied on a loosely-worded medical questionnaire that included such gems as “Do you normally enjoy good health?” Well, if I suffered from depression I would enjoy my occasional days of good health very much indeed. A self-administered questionnaire (even a better-drafted one) may be sufficient for run-of-the-mill jobs but appointing an MD should be treated more seriously.

The role of HR is one of the most linked-to tags in frankly HR and here is a good example of where HR can get it wrong. Clearly, I do not know the ins and outs of Cheltenham’s recruitment and HR processes but staffing – getting the right people into the right posts should be a central plank of any HR department’s role and is key to its reputation.

All to often, HR limits itself to setting up the recruitment processes and ducks out of the decision-making. There are many regulations and considerations of ‘fairness’ that HR must impose on reluctant line managers but there is a duty to the employer as well as to potential employees. If HR is not seen to be on both sides of that recruitment equation managers will draw the obvious conclusion.

Reward & recession

To a CIPD reward forum this week on the topic of “Rewarding in a Recession”. The scene was set by John Philpott of the CIPD with a number of highly depressing going-downhill graphs followed by general advice on how to get value for your non-pay benefits from Mark Eaton of Personal Group. Chris Johnson of Mercer then gave an all-round view of what is happening in larger companies. I will post some more detailed comments at another date but here are four key points that I brought away with me.

HR by numbers – measuring workforce performance

The CIPD has announced the latest in its compendium of toolkits. This one is on Human Capital Management (HCM). Mostly I am very impressed with their toolkits. They provide a good deal of clarity and help people understand what the various topics involve (thankfully, without implying that it is so easy that they do not need professional help!). In this case I am not so sure.

It may just be that I have always reacted badly to HCM as a piece of jargon. ‘Human Resources’ as a replacement for ‘personnel’ was meant to imply a wider, less bureaucratic role but soon became just as easy a butt for jokes (and HR is easier to say than personnel) so some tried to achieve the same end by implying that Human Resource Management (HRM) was the ‘something else’ that could take HR to the centre of organisational life. That never found currency outside the HR bubble. Human Capital Management is a term mostly kept away from the workforce, which is just as well as it is meaningless in everyday life. However employee-centred your company’s approach, do you really want to be referred to as piece of ‘capital’ that has to be ‘managed’. So; putting that little rant aside there is a lot of good stuff in the toolkit. So what’s my problem?

Appraisals – can everyone really be outstanding?

Recently, while Googling for something else, I came across the Cabinet Office evidence to the Senior Salaries Review Board. This reminded me that, among Senior Civil Servants at least, a robust approach is taken to performance pay. Annual bonuses for this group (paid out of an accumulated pot) are distributed strictly in line with appraisal ratings.

So do many organisations, I hear you say, but what is different here is that they openly use a forced distribution. The top 25% of performers receive the highest bonus (at least 10% of salary), the next 40% typically receive a more modest bonus (5-10%). The rest get nothing and, amongst them, remedial action will be taken for the bottom 5-10% of performers.

Over the years I have had numerous discussions with managers as to whether, for example, ‘excellent’ or ‘outstanding’ ratings are relative or absolute. The consequence of taking the absolutive approach is that, theoretically at least, everyone could be ‘outstanding’. “This company only recruits the best people” is the argument often put forward to defend over-generous marking. If that really is true then it should be reflected in pay rates not bonuses or appraisal scores. Just as awarding too many A* GCSE awards dilutes the currency of that mark too many top box appraisal ratings will reduce the incentive to achieve or maintain that level of performance.

Grumbles about appraisal ratings, especially from managers, are among HR departments’ most frequent irritants. There is an article on my website that goes into this in more detail but it is good to know that some parts of the Civil Service have their priorities right.

Web 2.0 – a bit of clarity

The CIPD have just published a discussion paper “Web 2.0 and HR” that provides a really good explanation of the technology and all the associated techniques and terminology. Well worth reading and downloading for reference even if you are not directly involved yourself.

Its definition of web 2.0 (see my earlier post) is better than most but still runs to 90 words. The document provides a clear summary of the many ways this new technology can be used. However, I still think that it is a mistake to give this collection of Internet facilities a collective name. “We’re using Web 2.0″ will become just as unenlightening a piece of pomposity as “We’re applying an HRM approach” was a few years ago.

The technology really does provide several innovative approaches for collaboration, collective input to knowledge banks and policy development but there are potential downsides. How do we keep it all in proportion and get enough regular work done? In recent weeks there have been several reports of companies banning staff from personal social networking sites (that is on top of booking their holidays from their desks) and enforcing email-free periods (happy hours?).

Then there is the risk of creating a two-tier workforce: those whose job involves a desk and a computer and those out there doing real stuff on the shop floor, building site or in the community who cannot easily get on line. It also puts an increasing emphasis on written communications skills, which if the press is to be believed, are not all they used to be. Somebody who will happily SMS their friends in broken txt spk English may not feel quite as comfortable writing real words on the company blog.

Web 2 to you

More on the topic of checking out candidates. A CIPD press release ahead of their recruitment and retention conference talks about how well or badly HR is embracing Web 2.0 in their recruitment activities (note to self: do try to get a clear definition for Web 2.0 into my head*). Deborah Fernon, their Organisation and Resourcing Adviser rightly warns against being overly concerned by what you read about someone on their social networking site but then goes on to say: “Good practice requires that every candidate is treated equally, which means all candidates would have to have similar profiles before information is used, and … not everyone has a … profile.”

Sorry, but if you learn something about a candidate that calls their suitability into question you cannot just go ahead and risk your employer’s business because the other candidates knew how to use the privacy settings on facebook. Do you keep the information away from the other interviewers? Or do you tell them and order them to ignore it; sharing the blame? And when something goes wrong later on?

*ps. have just tried to get a definition for Web 2.0 via Google. Seems there are several hundred of them, all complicated, over-long and as concerned about what it is not as what it is. On balance it seems to mean all that interactive stuff that you could not do with just a web page and email – like this blog (but only if people post a comment). My best advice is that if you are faced with someone pontificating about Web 2.0 do not, whatever you do, ask them to define it. Unless, of course, you can offer a succinct sentence of explanation.

More on the role of HR

At least one of the speakers at the Westminster conference that I wrote about last week quoted the Ulrich model of the HR role. Thus a news article in the new edition of People Management (the CIPD magazine) caught my attention this morning.

The item is a report of a talk by HR guru Dave Ulrich at the CIPD Scottish conference recently. The point that Ulrich is quoted as making, and it is one I have made before now in my Newsletter articles, is to warn about the danger for HR of focussing on the strategic and ignoring the transactional. While he stresses the importance of being able to talk to senior managers about mergers, acquisitions, globalisation etc, etc, HR, he says, must also provide a top class administration function.

In my experience it is often the day-to-day that provides an opportunity to discuss the strategic. If the routine is in someone else’s hands you may struggle to get a longer-term discussion going. 

HR Transformation

To the HRM conference at Westminster Business School this week on the theme of “HRM Transformation – worthwhile day with good speakers and good hospitality. The theme was generally on the topic of how HR can improve it’s act in today’s climate. In practice most of the issues discussed were long standing ones about why HR does not have a better image among CEOs or their client managers.