Richard Beatty, Rutger HR Professor (USA) has certainly sparked some online “debate” from his recent presentation to 300-odd Financial Executives in Orlando USA. As I read the information, Beatty says that HR are spending too much time on trying to engage employees who are “unengageable” or just couldn’t care less about working in the organisation. He bases his information on the Gallup survey of customer services employees in a Financial firm and the negative impact of the bottom quartile on customer reaction. He also states that HR isn’t very good at data analytics and we don’t think like business people. “Many of them entered human resources because they wanted to help people.”

I think on the analytics side he is probably right, I have worked in large Blue Chips and the data gathering and analysis in HR is woefully bad, HR Professionals end up running around fire-fighting or introducing the lastest HR “must-have” Strategy (soon to dropped as implementation didn’t stick as the organisation was too busy getting business done). Basic numbers and measures are forgottten in the dash towards “employer of choice”.

Beatty’s arguments and solutions remind me very much of Jack Welch’s (General Electric), 20, 70, 10 principle for performance management. Reward the top 20% performers, satisfy the middle 70% and get rid of the bottom 10%. Translated recently to “performance manage” the bottom 10%. Problem is that the bottom 10% soon are of a high standard and you start alienating good people and get a reputation.

I have to agree that some HR Professionals aren’t business-minded, but in the majority we are pretty savvy when it comes to seeing the bottom line - if you had to deliver on some of the budgets given by Boards, you would have to be. I think good HR professionals would agree with Beatty that finding out what makes top performers tick and training and selecting those attributes makes sense - but isn’t that part of engagement? Getting employees the skills and the knowledge to be able to contribute to the goals of the business. Engagement isn’t just making people feel warm and fuzzy about the organsiation they work for.

Other interesting comments come from Denise Cooper of Profitablity through Human Captial, who relates Beatty’s comments back to 2005 article “why we hate HR” and Jim Holincheck who breaks down the article into sections and comments well on each - particularly on the analytics side (I am presuming that is his consultancy area). Also Gautam Ghosh who points out that Beatty could be playing to the audience and enforcing some age-old stereotypes (I am with him on that point)

We love our jargon, I have seen many definitions of engagement but still the myth perpetuates that it is about “employer of choice” and “feeling warm and fuzzy about the organisation”. Really - there is nothing very cuddly about a Corporation to feel fuzzy about!

Mercer has produced a report on Absence and Healthcare benefits for 2008. I am a bit cheap and haven’t purchased the 2008 survey but looking at the 2007. One of the most interesting facts for me is that 80% of business managers surveyed know the rate of absence (eg the percentage) but only half of that number know the reasons and even less know the cost of the absence.

No surprises, but how can you tackle absence if you don’t know the reasons (you could have an institutional problem you don’t even know about) and why would a business manager but motivated to do anything if they dont know the cost effect?

Quite horrified by the lack of compassion shown by Guru, but hey I suppose the blog is funny and supposed to be controversial…

Guru’s blog here: http://www.personneltoday.com/blogs/human-resources-guru/2009/03/jade-goody—the-unemployed-mo.html

This was my comment:

Well, I think it is a sign of the times - more redundancies, particularly effecting retail etc, indirectly effecting the female population more.

The female population being more likely to have a sympathetic bone in their body (please note that remark is vaguely directed at “disciple Rob” and you, Guru) and able to give time to delivering floral tributes. Also more likely to be part time employed and full time “home-makers”.

Probably already been to the job centre, seen the queues and decided to be pragmatic and do the job search online later.

I wasn’t a Jade fan either, but in view that a majority of a workforce might be - in interests of motivation and employee care - having a heart might be politic.

Yesterday, I spent some time with Phil Pluck, Northern Director of ACAS. Really informative and enlightening meeting. I have always been an advocate of ACAS as a useful source of advice for employees and on occasion for myself! I have also used them for training Employee Representatives in a TUPE situation - very good training, good price and additional benefit of employees having a trusted, independent source for answers.

Some of the interesting points discussed with Phil:

The Recession - % increase in cases for ACAS is 40% (not dissimilar to the last recessions figures), they were hoping that this would start to decrease somewhat but has remained steady due to different sectors being effected at difference times. Interestingly the corelation between the onset of redundancy processes and the increase in mental health issues - Phil had had some interesting conversations with the GMC

The Grimsby TOTAL “strike” non-union politically-motivated pickets posing as union members, the fact that TOTAL’s orignal contractor prior to the Italians was British but failed to fulfill the terms of the contract (interesting that wasn’t widely reported!). Also the diffculties faced when ACAS were brought in by the Government.

I didn’t realise that ACAS were called on for international work, we chatted around work completed in China for the Government, in understanding what employee relations actually is and how it contributes to organisational development.

Phil was a feast of information on the changes in mediation requirements, the types of training that ACAS conduct for employees and employers. Phil was great to chat to, clearly knowledgable and able. Although his first Public Sector appointment, Phil is dedicated to improving ACAS, its commerciality and its services, expanding more into serving the private sector. ACAS mainly work with the public sector but in my experience can add incredible value to SME’s and Corporations as a trusted name for employees in negotiations/mediations, expertise (in my experience - I admit that not everyone’s experiences will be the same) and value for money.

So, Sharon Shoesmith has lodged a claim in the Employment Tribunal. No big surprise there! It will be an interesting one to watch, completely outside the harrowing details of the Baby P case - did Haringey manage to follow their procedures correctly in such a high pressure case?

I have to say, Mr Balls publicly announcing in a Press conference that she “was not fit for purpose” was ill considered in terms of employment law and good management. I can see some parallels in cases I have had to deal with, Senior Management making comments which severely prejudice a fair dismissal process making it a foregone conclusion. I am sure every HR Professional has had that crushing “doh!” moment at some point in their career!

Most interestingly, was she treated differently than a man would have been? Would she have been offered a compromise agreement to resign quietly and go away (silently taking the blame?), would she have been offered early retirement and a smoothly managed exit to retain her reputation? Were all the strategies and tools that corporations can employ to make a “situation” go quietly thought about and discarded or was it offered “without prejudice” and she refused?

What is Haringey’s history of solving these types of employment issues?

One thing is for sure, the compensation will be high, because she is more or less unemployable now and was on a high salary. But don’t go thinking that most discrimination cases settle for 100’s of thousands.

I received a message from a blog-reader (if that is the technical term!) on Linkedin about my blog about it is the job not the person. The writer has recently been made redundant and it helped to remind him that it wasn’t about him or his performance but the fact that the job couldn’t be supported any longer.

At the time of writing the blog, I wasn’t thinking about the employees, just business reasons and lack of knowledge/good sense on the behalf of management (HR can be included quite happily in this catagory). It allowed me to remember the time I was put at risk - I cried. I knew intellectually it wasn’t about me - it was a case of wrong time, wrong place in the organisation but I still was very emotional about it - which rather took back my Director as he thought I was “stronger than that”.

It is too easy to forget or neglect the human impact in redundancy, sometimes as a protection mechanism for ourselves against the obvious emotional impact of telling someone they are to be sacked through no fault of their own (well, those who don’t end up at the bottom of the selection pile for poor performance etc).

I suppose let’s remember the “human” in Human Resources.

I was very pleased to see a mention for my blog in Personnel Today by Tara Craig - who wrote:

“A UK HR blog - rarer than you might think – written by the delightfully named Suzie Bogle, an HR consultant and strategy adviser with 15 years’ in-house experience. Bogle is obviously passionate about HR. She evidently reads around the topic – her blogs are often comments or angles on reports or articles she has seen, and as such represent a useful tool for anyone without the time to do the reading themselves. This is a relatively new blog, launched in November 2008, but this is actually an advantage – too many bloggers let their blogs lapse after the initial enthusiasm, whereas Bogle is still very much in the honeymoon period.”

Sorry about the change to the look of the blog, I am attempting to change it back!

I take on board that some bloggers lapse - I hope that I don’t and continue to share my thoughts with anyone who cares to log on! If anybody would like to see other issues discussed or questions answered - write a comment and we can get the conversation going…

However I did wonder about the “delightfully named” bit, made me smile!