Couraud Blog

HR in a downturn

nick.jefferson@couraud.com Nick Jefferson

So what does the downturn mean for most HR directors?

Probably some redundancies, and certainly getting around to dealing with those employees who have been poorly performning but who were tolerated during the good times.

But what about the stars? Even the most self-confident individuals are not immune to the news on the radio every morning and a lot of people can start to feel vulnerable.

Talking to some of our clients, the fix that a lot find themselves in is being terribly conscious of needing to retain these people but unable to find any budget to do it.

The days of sending people on expensive personal development courses are, for the moment, coming to a close. So some HR directors are thinking innovatively - sabbaticals, 360 feedback, some quality time with the top dogs.

I think we might actually see some really positive developments in HR over the next couple of years, as HR professionals are forced to think about doing more with less.

Necessity is the mother of invention. Watch this space........

Personality Profiler - Battle of the Michaels....

nick.jefferson@couraud.com Nick Jefferson

I sometimes play a dinner party game where I ask people whether they would rather spend 12 months in a prison cell with Michael Jackson or Michael Barrymore.

It's a truly awful decision and it started out as a bit of fun one idle day, but I have been struck by how it genuinely divides people. They argue so stridently that it would be better to be locked up with Jacko for X reason, or Barrymore for Y reason.

Given that humans will always ultimately tend to define themselves by reference to other humans, is this perhaps an incipient personality profiling device? Maybe those who have a Barrymore preference are better suited to certain types of work and environments, and those who have a Jacko preference are better off doing something different?

Clearly Battle of the Michaels is currently relatively unsophisicated because it is only bi-polar. But how about if we introduced other Michaels, to help further distinguish between preferences? Of course I'm being tongue-in-cheek, but is describing yourself as 'ESTJ' (MBTI - see Dan's blog below) or 'Red' (Insights Discovery) really any less weird and bizarre than describing yourself as a Barrymore-Stipe-Caine?

Thinking outside the box

dan.o'shea@couraud.com Dan O'Shea

“Don’t put me in a box”

This is without question the most common accusation levelled at personality profiling tools.

But MBTI doesn’t tell you who you are: it indicates your preferences. A very important distinction.

And whilst other personality tools attach complete importance to the online questionnaire you fill out and essentially say “this is your personality, Joe Bloggs, take it or leave it”, MBTI is far less prescriptive and recognises that the recipient is, ultimately, the best judge of who they are.

So after filling out the questionnaire, you have a chat with a licensed practitioner who guides you through the tool and helps you identify your preferences by means of anecdotes, questions and gentle challenging. Then it’s down to you to decide where you sit.

A good way of thinking outside the box with MBTI is to imagine your preferred personality style as your favourite room in a large house. You’re not locked into this room – you have the keys and can get up and wonder around the house whenever you like. It just so happens that the further away you get from your favourite room, the less familiar and comfortable you feel. But the more regularly you move around, the more at ease you become.

The point being, we are all capable of turning our hand to all personality styles: it just comes down to which are natural and which can, with work, become second nature.

Give me the money

clare.bradwell@couraud.com Clare Bradwell

It seems the younger Castro is taking steps to make Cubans happier. The introduction of performance related pay appears to be old hat to much of the capitalist world but to Cubans it means possibilities and openings.

It is interesting to see what motivates a doctor or lawyer to study and gain qualifications when their pay is comparable to that of an unskilled worker. Pure passion of the subject perhaps…? It leads one to ponder also whether having incentives and aims as the capitalist world does, dampens an individual’s pure love for their job and to regain some motivation we pile more money at them.

Couraud Confidential: an anonymous HR Director writes.........

nick.jefferson@couraud.com Nick Jefferson

Nick Jefferson of Couraud says....we had an overwhelming response from HR Directors wishing to be the voice of Couraud Confidential. So in the short term we'll be trialling a few different bloggers. Here's one early entry. Let us know what you think............

Trade Unions

A thing of the past or part of the continuous improvement network?

Coming from a working class background and brought up with a strict bias towards the traditional Labour Government, I was regularly fed an unhealthy diet of “one out all out, down the tools lads” from my father.

Now some 30 years on just the thought of me sitting the other side of the desk representing the Company against his beloved unions would be enough for my old man to splutter his Yorkshire pudding across the dinner table. Recently I lost my train of thought as the full time convener goes off on yet another militant rant and I’m left thinking we are in 2008, surely times have changed since my Dad and his colleagues led us to the Winter of discontent in 1979. Unfortunately for me and more importantly the business, this would appear not to be the case. The Union members, despite reassurances of job security and an above inflationary increase voted to take industrial action leaving the Company to lick its wounds and ponder the consequences. With regular reminders that petrol, energy bills, milk and bread are all going through the roof, I find the whole situation difficult and increasingly frustrating. The disillusioned Company Director looks at me with clear disappointment and asks “who runs this place”?

The business is a conscientious employer and I cannot help feeling that this whole process is an abuse of power from the Union Officials and that the Company has undeservedly been shown in a negative light. Some of my father’s principles did stick and I am all for a fair days pay for a fair days work. This, I believe, amongst job security, enrichment and advancement are key ingredients to a businesses success but with the balance of power swinging back in favour of the employee along with a tighter economy, increased competition, I am siding with the doom and gloomers as we tread carefully into the unknown. Trade Unions = Continuous Improvement? For whom?

HR.....or cash in the bank?

nick.jefferson@couraud.com Nick Jefferson

So an HR director yesterday told me that she had (only half-jokingly) been mulling over whether she and her team were worth the money that they cost the business.

I don't know but I guess that she and her team will cost her business somewhere between £300k and £500k per annum.

Her (deliberately provocative) question was: would that money be better sitting in a reserve account earning interest, sitting there as a fighting fund to pay lawyers and disgruntled former employees if the proverbial ever hits the fan? Sometimes of course, it would be needed. But often, she speculated, it wouldn't. So if HR wants to be truly commercial, her tongue-in-cheek thinking went, why not simply disband?

It kind of sounds counter-intuitive coming from someone who relies on HR to put a roof over her head, but it is worthy of a bit more analysis before an instant dismissal.

Tell me what you think........

How to please your clients... and your prospects...with biscuits

clare.bradwell@couraud.com Clare Bradwell

Remember I mentioned that having biscuits in one's meeting room can affect people's judgements of you and your business...

Well further research has been found! Apparently, according to this article http://www.greenerconsulting.com/greenerconsulting/DisplayArticle.asp?ID=18437, the legal profession are most impressed with good biscuits, followed by media and marketing agencies.

Useful information indeed.

And how many biscuits, if any, would you deem acceptable to munch on in a meeting?

How to keep your people

clare.bradwell@couraud.com Clare Bradwell

The infrastructure sector in Australia is struggling from a skills shortage and there is much debate as to how to solve this. The apprenticeship scheme does not appear to be working, and the wages seem extremely low, hence a 48% drop-out rate is not surprising.

A bit of glam needs adding and some incentives for both employers and employees to embark in apprenticeships. As well as some more ‘doing’ rather than endless ‘proposing’.

In my opinion a good place to start would be to up the wages.

Have a look at this article and let me know your thoughts.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/07/10/2299496.htm

The quest for originality

clare.bradwell@couraud.com Clare Bradwell

...is ongoing, hard, and part of our daily lives. Presenting, selling, negotiating, innovating, designing, the list is endless. A struggle for each HR Manager amongst the hurly burly of paperwork and people management.

I found originality in a speech made by a homeless person on the tube, asking for money. A true entrepreneur. Everyone was listening to him.

Where've you found it?

Rewarding Social Conscience: Turning CSR on its head

dan.o'shea@couraud.com Dan O'Shea

This article also appears as part of Changeboard's article on CSR and social justice by Natalie Cooper: http://www.changeboard.com/hrcircles/blogs/csrbusiness/archive/2008/07/05/csr-amp-social-justice-hr-carnival.aspx

Market your green credentials strategically and you could protect your bottom line.
Green is definitely the new black: it has never been so de rigueur for organisations to exercise their ethical conscience.

But is it really enough to lure in the next crop of 20-something grads? Quite possibly – a friend of mine told me recently that 14% of Generation Y would happily put their money where their mouth is by taking a pay cut to get on board with an ethically minded company. So there’s clearly a Machiavellian angle to all of this: being socially conscious can enhance reputation but also double up as a key marketing tool…potentially. That’s not to say companies should tow a tokenistic line and not practice what they preach in the marketing materials. Companies must not be fair weather friends and jump on the bandwagon: they must invest in this issue by ensuring it is visible in daily corporate life – ‘think before you print’ signatures are all very well but what about giving 1% of all revenue to a charitable outfit or carbon neutralising all foreign flights? Companies need to demonstrate deep commitment to pull it off.

Carrot, Stick, Reward?

We all know the power of incentives: freakonomists Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner told us that, for better or worse, incentives make the world go round. It’s a simple but ever-enduring case of quid pro quo: you give a little, we give you something in return - a gift, a reward. On this basis, maybe in decades to come, green commitment could feature on internal competency frameworks as something to measure staff against. Far-fetched perhaps but with CSR gathering momentum, surely not out of the question. And what better way to get staff to buy into the issue than by turning it into a performance metric. A friend of mine told me that he knows companies that reward employees for cycling into work. So seems like the wheels have already been set in motion…..

What is the point of HR?

nick.jefferson@couraud.com Nick Jefferson

I think that Jon Ingham talks alot of sense, in fact, we often share the same viewpoint and commented on a blog post within 5 minutes of each other last week!

You might be interested to look at my guest blog on his website http://strategic-hcm.blogspot.com/

Inmates taking over the asylum?

rebecca.roberts@couraud.com Rebecca Roberts

A new type of working is emerging; staff are being given more freedom than ever, as long as they produce the results. Dan - could this be the ultimate carrot?

The 'Results Only Work Environment' (ROWE) asks only that staff complete their work and hit their targets. They can do this in the hours and location that suit them, and are not asked to log any of their holiday. ROWE has recently been set up for US company Best Buy and has been extremely successful, staff have changed their minds about leaving and productivity increased in some groups by 10 to 20 percent.

Although it is a great initiative, is it a sustainable solution? The model cannot be translated for all positions and this could create inequalities. Surely staff also want to develop and progress within their career, and if they are only ever asked to meet their set performance goals these opportunities are limited.

What do you think?

The old carrot and stick one-two

dan.o'shea@couraud.com Dan O'Shea

Why does anyone…do anything?

Freakonomists Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner believe that, for better or worse, incentives make the world go round.

They can certainly reap huge rewards in HR. How do you bring up the performance of your staff? Why not start by linking up appraisals to bonuses? A golden carrot for the lucky few, a reality-check stick for the stragglers that miss the grade.

You’ll certainly get their attention.

What is the point of HR?

nick.jefferson@couraud.com Nick Jefferson

So asks the editor of Management Today on his recent blog post - take a look:

http://www.managementtoday.co.uk/channel/HumanCapital/news/814250/editors-blog-whats-point-hr/

Chocolate digestives or Hobnobs?

clare.bradwell@couraud.com Clare Bradwell

Would a biscuit sway your ground-breaking big deal decision? An article on the BBC website suggests that even the particular type of biscuit you offer may be crucial to clinching that deal.

Should you visit an organisation’s office, would the surroundings, atmosphere, type of coffee and biscuits offered affect the way you think, feel and judge them?

To take it one step further, would the delivery of a difficult message be softened if you offered the ever faithful custard cream? Or could you keep talent on board with regular orders of exciting and fun jammy dodgers?

A Marks and Spencers Viennese Swirl could definitely tempt me!

Will you be able to work out your computer in 5 years?

andrew.metcalfe@couraud.com Andrew Metcalfe

Google and Microsoft are both making noises about the their future plans for the computers and mobiles at the moment. Google are outlining their plans for the way we will use these devices in the near future:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7425209.stm

Whether it will actually happen the way they plan is very much open to speculation. I do think the fact it will change in someway is not speculative. From an IT skills point of view this presents a very real threat. I have written before about how people can be very inefficient if they are poor with computers and this is compounded as these people are least likely to adapt to the new changes.

I worry that large numbers of people are going to find themselves in real difficulties in the near future and just don't realise it. If you just don't understand anything more than simple tasks on a computer you will be left behind. Can you alter the predictive text mode on your mobile phone? Do you even know that you could alter the predictive text mode? I am sure that the companies building the hardware and operating systems will do their best to help but the hard fact is that we are moving into a world where if you can't use a computer effectively the range of jobs you can do will become narrower and narrower.

I don't think companies do enough to ensure that their employees are staying up to date with technology. The companies that evolve effectively will have a clear competitive advantage. They may do this by recruiting skilled people but I think upskilling existing staff will be cheaper albeit challenging. I did a session on "zip" files recently, it was far more challenging than I had anticipated but recently the biggest troublemaker of the session sent me a zipped up folder without me requesting it. It can be done.

Genuine sickie?

rebecca.roberts@couraud.com Rebecca Roberts

It is estimated that sick days cost the UK economy £13 billion per year and one out of eight absences is not genuine. This has led to some companies outsourcing their absence management, using nurses to field calls and expose fake sickness.

The new idea is to take this one step further, and use lie detectors to tell when employees are calling in with false sickness claims. The Voice Risk Analysis (VRA) system works by picking up changes in a caller’s voice before making thousands of calculations and then alerting the person taking the call. The VRA system has been trialled successfully at Harrow Borough Council to detect false benefit claims, and it is thought it would be a useful tool in reducing bogus sickness.

However it has also been highlighted recently that 67% of workers are too scared to call in sick; two in three Britons go to work while they are ill because they worry what their boss will think if they phoned in sick. This can sometimes cause more of a problem; damaging morale and other people’s health.

So, will the introduction of lie detectors expose bogus sickness and save money? Or will it have a detrimental effect making genuinely ill staff so nervous to make that call, that they soldier on at work unproductively and risk other employees’ wellbeing?

I think introducing lie detectors could take things a ‘Big Brother’ step too far - I would be interested to hear your thoughts.

Nude teacher sacked

nick.jefferson@couraud.com Nick Jefferson

So this is an interesting case for HR directors to consider.

A Sydney primary school teacher is dismissed for appearing naked in a magazine shoot. She also detailed her sex life.

Doubtless, like the rest of us these days, she had a clause in her employment contract about 'behaviour which brings either you or us (the employer) into disrepute'. These clauses become operable by the employer who can terminate in cases such as this.

The question is: what is and is not disreputable?

Is this really a morality question? If so, how do HR directors effectively exercise their discretion here? Do they make a judgement according to their own morality, the morality of the mob, the morality of their church, the morality of their business?

Or should the decision be based only on whether or not the performance of the person in question has been affected? In which case, arguably, there are very few jobs that could not be done just as well without clothes on as with.

Most of us can probably see why this teacher had to go (it's a little hard to explain to little Johnny why all the big boys at school are sniggering and pointing at miss all day long) but what about an identical case, save that the teacher in question was a teacher of adults?

This is such a tricky one, and I'm very interested in your thoughts.

Different competencies for women?

nick.jefferson@couraud.com Nick Jefferson

We know of at least one organisation where they have developed a whole new set of supposedly female-friendly competencies. Apparently women weren't succeeding against the existing 'unisex' competencies, which had been written by men.

Interesting.

Should we all be measured against the same competencies or different ones? Are all women the same? Are all men? Do we require the same things of successful men as we do of successful women? How far - if at all - should this 'diversity in metrics' idea continue? Should we take into account educational background, or social status?

Retention, retention, retention....

rebecca.roberts@couraud.com Rebecca Roberts

Marji Lefroy's piece in today's Herald raises some interesting questions about how to deal with Australia's skills shortage.

She is right that a number of forces need to come together to deal with this very real manifestation of the (Global) War For Talent.

But even if these factors do coalesce (and that will be no mean feat, requiring foresight from Mr Rudd down), they only cure the problem for the nation. What they don't do - at least in the short term - is cure the problem for individual businesses . How does business A stop business B from poaching that brilliant new Pom who has just got off the boat?

Obviously business A can raise salaries, pay bigger bonuses etc - but ultimately this simply makes life more difficult for everyone.

Instead, the smarter firms are working on the psychological - as opposed to purely financial - contract that exists between employee and employee. Employee engagement survey after employee engagement survey makes it very clear that Generation X and Generation Y are after much more than salary alone: because these days big bucks are a given.

Better management, better development, greater opportunities - this is where the action is going to be over coming years. Easy it ain't, but in order to secure and retain the very best staff engaging in this field is absolutely vital.

Judgement Day...

dan.o'shea@couraud.com Dan O'Shea

Ken or Boris?

Is it just me or have the London Mayor candidates all said the same thing?

I listened to their last gasp sales pitches last night and couldn't see daylight between any of their policy promises.

So, who do you choose?

Is it bad form to cast a vote based on personality alone? (born-again buffoon or old school maverick?) Or should such a choice always be anchored in potential performance? Surely both sets of reasoning are as 'illogical' and risky as eachother? How do we make the right choice?

Employee Singagement....

nick.jefferson@couraud.com Nick Jefferson

Ok, this is only half serious but I think there might be an important point here.

Supporters of religion always say one of the great things about religion is that people come together and sing, and that their singing binds them in something special. The same is said of national anthems: they glue otherwise disparate states, counties and regions together through the power of song. And of course, no Saturday afternoon is complete without the tribal singing that emanates from the terraces of football pitches.

Sooooo, why aren’t more businesses using song as a way of further deepening the psychological contract that exists between employer and employee? Is singing the next step in employee engagement? The Couraud team spent six and half hours at karaoke one night this week.

In an age of post-modern relativism, does the stonking, certain power of a good Whitney Houston ballad, or a rousing rendition of Come On Eileen, serve to help people find their identity, and to make their work and their colleagues part of that identity?

Or do people just like to have a damn good sing song when they’re hammered?

YouGov say 4 in 10 may quit jobs

andrew.metcalfe@couraud.com Andrew Metcalfe

The BBC has put an article on their Business News section stating that 4 in 10 people may quit their jobs in the next year. This is based on a poll conducted by YouGov.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7357451.stm

This is quite an astonishing stat really and one that has obviously struck home with the website visitors, it is top of the most popular stories shortlist as I write this.

I guess this shows the complacency so many companies have towards their staff. I have always worked on the principle that anything above 15% staff turnover needs analysing. There will always be people who retire, emigrate or fall sick but if a company reaches 25% turnover then things are going wrong somewhere!!

Some companies like fast food restaurants can deal with high turnover but for many companies someone leaving means that they are taking a lot of invested time and money with them. This impacts on the bottom line. I have long thought that a company with high staff turnover is a sick company.

Time for a change

clare.bradwell@couraud.com Clare Bradwell

The UK is often attributed as a ‘multi-cultural society’

But why is it that the senior end of our government bodies do not reflect this diversity whether it be ethnicity or gender?

Take a look at this article http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/13/race.houseofcommons

So, time for a change?

Team Tonics

rebecca.roberts@couraud.com Rebecca Roberts

Should team Away Days be business focused or a jaunt out of the office?

What is your experience of them?

Have a look at Couraud's contribution to the article in City AM.

Sarko the syco..

dan.o'shea@couraud.com Dan O'Shea

Did you hear Sarkozy’s speech to the House of Lords?

“My dear British friends…:

“I was so often inspired in my youth by the greatness of Britain!”
“Your nation represents a touchstone of everything our democracies stand for!”
“France will never forget (the war) because she has no right to forget!”

“Vive le Royaume-Uni! Vive la France!"

I like flattery as much as the next man but Nicolas needs to work on his feedback skills: discard the platitudes and focus on the real praise.

Dale Carnegie warns against the perils of fawning and idle flattery in business, pointing to the value of the specific and the evidential – Sarko needs to ditch the sycophancy and smarten up.

Dull, irritating, and you spend most of your life doing it.

roly.walter@couraud.co.uk Roly Walter

Yes, it's Work.

Check out the BBC's Grumpy Guide To Work: Open iPlayer

All kinds of topics get put through the mangle in rather hilarious fashion: management speak, appraisals, making up CVs, team bonding days, how to behave in an interview. All this wisdom is brought to you by Mariella Frostrup, Alvin Hall, Stuart Maconie and so on, all with the dry commentary of Geoffrey Palmer.

Essential viewing for anyone needing some HR detox. Ultimately all the commentators come to the same view: you work because you have to.

What do you think?

Enjoying your job: too good to be true?

Underwater motorcycling...

roly.walter@couraud.co.uk Roly Walter

Piano lessons, ballroom dancing, cricket nets, Hapkido (er... try Google!), even a new pair of trainers.

All are things our team have received in recent months, paid for by Couraud as part of their Personal Development Allowance. We want everyone that works for us to have varied and fulfilling lives and this one way of getting people to do things they may not ordinarily do (and ensuring they're useful at a dance).

It all started when one of the directors decided to join a gym. The other couldn't imagine anything worse.

Does your company offer something similar? What's your attitide to extra-curricular activities, above and beyond the standard stuff?

HR Softworld Show - Hammersmith 26 February 2008

rebecca.roberts@couraud.com Rebecca Roberts

Couraud will be exhibiting at the HR Softworld Show next Tuesday. We will be demonstrating and discussing our tools: OMTonline (our online appraisla tool), OMT360 (our online 360 degree feedback tool), OMT MOT (our sophisticated online staff survey), online training booking system, online mentoring system and online executive coaching system.

We will also be hosting a seminar at 1.30pm in seminar room 1. The seminar content is:

How to lose staff and alienate colleagues...

...or how to develop staff and bring together colleagues. Our step-by-step approach will help you avoid the perils and ptufalls of 360 degree feedback reviews. From selling it internally to capturing 360 feedback to using it constructively. Zero to 360 in 45 minutes!

For tickets and information please visit: www.softworld.co.uk.

Andrew, Roly and I look forward to seeing you at stand 11.

Jung's Insights

nick.jefferson@couraud.com Nick Jefferson

Psychometric testing. The very mention of it sends a shiver down some clients' spines. Californian claptrap they say. I used to be a sceptic so I know where they're coming from.

Assuming for a minute that all psychometric tools are of equal value (which I do not for a minute believe to be the case - there is some terribly dodgy 'science' out there), the real danger with all psychometrics is the reinforcing of one's own prejudices about oneself - and then using those prejudices to avoid doing the things that one doesn't like doing. "Oh, I can't possibly do that because I am an ENTJ", or similar.

This for me is the big problem. However elegant Marcus Buckingham's 'play to your strengths' theories (see www.marcusbuckingham.com or read 'The One Thing You Need To Know'), we cannot as managers and leaders give our teams carte blanche to avoid certain pieces of work by virtue of their 'typing'. This is particularly so in smaller teams where individuals need to be able to turn their hands to infinitely varied tasks, and do all equally well.

So whenever we offer psychometric testing to clients, it is always on the basis that this is a tool for development; to find out what the weaknesses are, and to fix them. Progress not stagnation. Couraud offers both MBTI and Insights personality profiling on this basis alone, and this is why it works really, really well. Based on Jungian theories of personality, both tools enable us to take a good long look at ourselves and our colleagues - and work out how to work better together.

Because if you don't do the last bit (which is all down to the quality of facilitation and follow-up coaching), you'd be better off not wasting your money.

Switch off

clare.bradwell@couraud.com Clare Bradwell

The media hype centred around helping the environment is unavoidable. Following the World Economic Forum last month, I began thinking about practical, simple strategies that can help save the environment.

I concluded that there are no easy methods: realistically, saving the environment is difficult. I admit it’s a lot easier to throw my yoghurt pot in the bin rather than separate the plastic from the cardboard and similarly to throw my used post-it in the bin by my desk rather than the recycling bin – but laziness is no excuse.

I’d like to draw your attention to a few great ways in which you can contribute.

1. Give up carbon for lent. Yes, following the ingenious idea from the BBC –see article http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7226488.stm

2. Carbon neutralise your flights – offsetting the carbon used by contributing to worthwhile environmental projects worldwide. We do this for all our business flights, see www.carbonneutral.com

3. Go to www.earthhour.org. Turn off your lights for an hour along with the Couraud team and the rest of the world – imagine the power being saved in just one hour. Go on, get out those smelly candles you had for Christmas 5 years ago…!

Diversity - Do HR professionals even reflect ethnicity?

andrew.metcalfe@couraud.com Andrew Metcalfe

The enormously successful Couraud Cabaret has taken place and I had a great time welcoming all our clients, suppliers and other friends of Couraud.

Towards the end of the night as we were unwinding I began to cast my eye round the room. At this point I noticed a very strange occurrence. Everyone bar 5 people was white, we easily had over 100 attend. I am a 27 year old from the proud County of Shropshire. Salop (Shropshire in local speak!!) is not known as cosmopolitan so I have clearly been to events with similar proportions of different cultures but even so I was actually quite shocked and a little disappointed.

Couraud invited all sorts of people to the event, encouraged people to bring colleagues and other interested parties. Thus it makes me wonder if HR departments themselves are as lacking in diversity as other departments, yet these are the departments in charge of putting this lack of diversity right. I had thought that the gender balance was more representative but having aired this in the office the view was that in addition HR departments are grossly skewed to females in their 20s, 30s and 40s.

I am the IT Manager and have no real agenda or points to prove with diversity indeed I am normally tutting when my pieces get edited for "wrong" language but I have realised that much is needed to be done, starting with HR departments.

Is HR "expensive, bureaucratic hogwash?" - Luke Johnson, FT.com

roly.walter@couraud.co.uk Roly Walter

Link to: Luke Johnson's article in FT.com on the value of HR

There are some great points in this article – it’s a shame they have been inelegantly put and occasionally contradicted. Let’s take some of them in turn:

“Tragically, we live in a time of overwhelming employment legislation, so getting legal procedures right can save time and heartache – that is the sort of task HR handles.”

Yes. That’s why this article should be targeted at legislators, not HR.

“HR is like many parts of modern businesses: a simple expense, and a burden on the backs of the productive workers. Other divisions that can become the enemy include IT, legal and marketing. They don’t sell or produce: they consume.”

Luke Johnson overlooks the fact that income-generating parts of the business are consumers too: of IT, legal services, marketing and HR. Maybe it does make financial sense to outsource these services – but in saying this he accepts the need for them.

“All this paraphernalia [appraisal experts, training, corporate social responsibility etc.] is accepted as essential good practice by modern-thinking corporate management. I think most of it is expensive, bureaucratic hogwash.”

It often is. But our developed markets are pretty efficient at destroying useless industries. But these practices remain, grow and refine, attracting great numbers of followers. Why? Is this inertia and mass hype led by HR practitioners themselves? I doubt it. It’s because there is value here. The problem lies not with these ideas, but with the poorly-managed non-commercial HR staff that have been hired by the CEO.

Luke Johnson is right to scrutinise the value HR brings. All CEOs should do this. In many cases it can be cut back and stripped to the bare value-adding essentials and ditching some of the “non-essential”. But to write it off completely is clumsy - and diminishes the credibility of an otherwise useful spotlight on an area that needs it.

What do you think?

SMART objectives: Richard Reeves is right (kind of........)

nick.jefferson@couraud.com Nick Jefferson

Richard Reeves is a distinguished thinker who writes regularly and elegantly in Management Today. And he makes a good point in January's edition in his piece 'The trouble with targets'. The essence of the argument here is that too many organisations overdo it on targets, and that the subsequent target overload drives people (and organisations) crazy.

We see this all the time, with our clients in both the private sector and government. In his piece Reeves refers us to the all-consuming fervour for benchmarks, metrics, scorecards and key performance indicators (KPIs). His pinpointing of the danger of 'targetology' is spot on - that in creating endless, murky objectives and targets, one actually disenfranchises and disengages people and organisations rather than helps them.

But is this a problem with objectives per se, or - as I believe to be the case - a problem with the volume of objectives, and the frankly gross errors that draughtsmen and women all too often make in drafting objectives?

Ultimately the simple truth is that What You Measure Is What You Get (as we proudly shout on our website). The moon landings just wouldn't have happened if Kennedy hadn't made that speech in '61 (now there's a SMART objective if ever I saw one - "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth'). So objectives and targets, at least in my mind, are a sine qua non of both effective leadership and management. Flawless no, extremely helpful yes. Just like a map won't guarantee you'll arrive safe and sound at your destination, it makes it much, much more likely.

But if What You Measure Is What You Get, then as creators of objectives, we have a far higher degree of responsibility than most people recognise. Because of course if you are measuring every single thing you can lay your hands on (my volume point from earlier), you're going to get bureaucracy by the bucket-load. Ask any civil servant. And if you're not getting the drafting right (my errors point from earlier), you're not going to get the right outcomes. Instead, you'll get a lot of output, a lot of activity and not much productivity. Garbage in, garbage out, as our friends in IT eloquently put it.

So the idea that objectives are yesterday's news is attractive in its neatness - ie. let's just scrap objectives. The problem is, it won't work. We all need guidance and parameters, and objectives are probably the best (although by no means perfect) method of achieving this.

The key is twofold:-

i) keep objectives to a minimum

ii) keep objectives SMART (anyone who'd like to talk through the advantages and disadvantages of the SMART mindset and acronym is more than welcome to post, as I think that's worthy of separate discussion)

Finally, don't forget the power of objectives. Without Kennedy's speech (read: objective), we wouldn't know who Neil Armstrong is.

Nick

IT illiteracy, a ticking timebomb?

andrew.metcalfe@couraud.com Andrew Metcalfe

Are your staff and office locations ready for the IT revolution? Are they even ready for the world with IT today?

Bill Gates has received a large amount of press coverage this week for launching Microsoft’s vision of how we will interact with computers in the next 15 years. This will probably mean that the use of the QWERTY keyboard disappears and that understanding the way computers work will have to become second nature for the developed world’s workforce.

However it seems that many members of the work force are not even up to speed with where we are at the moment. How many of your staff would understand what I mean when I ask them what the following key press combinations should do:

1) CTRL+X, ALT+TAB, CTRL+V

2) CTRL+P (Print)

(answers at the end of the post)

If the truth is next to none then your company may need to start worrying about it’s productivity. Keyboard shortcuts on their own may only help you save 5-10 minutes a day. But add that up across say 200 days in a year and that equates to 2-4 days lost. Imagine there are 10-20 things similarly time wasting in the way someone works. Can you even touch-type?

Microsoft’s vision is one of having many more things integrated into one device, even more processes automated and accessed. For many businesses productivity will involve having people that can use these systems quickly and unaided. If your staff can’t cut and paste using the keyboard are they really going to be able to use 6 different programs at once, work from multiple locations and understand the latest buzzwords that come along.

Many companies will embrace this fully and see it as an opportunity, others as a hassle. Training staff to be more efficient and skilled, launching products to meet this new world and learning how to make sure existing products don’t become expensive legacy systems will be crucial to remaining competitive. Are your senior managers capable of facilitating this?

From a purely people perspective staff are likely to come into workforces very soon with next to no problem with modern, ever present IT. This trend is only going to increase. Unmanaged this could create a divide between different types of people, where the same staff are not able to be as productive in the simple, everyday tasks. In simplest terms, what if one set of employees could touch type and another not? Think what a gap in productivity that alone could cause.

For now your company needs to assess if they are even ready for today’s IT world. For most PC users things haven’t really changed all that much for the 5-10 years since a machine started appearing on each desk: most of the change has been for the IT team in streamlining the admin processes. However if your staff still look at you slightly strangely when asked to put the contents of a folder in a zip file or if they can access the internet through wi-fi at home, you may need to get them trained up, and fast! Asking the IT guy for help when he walks past the desk as a means to get the tougher things done won't wash as more and more of the workforce can do the tougher things by second nature and are able to move on even further in terms of productivity.

At Couraud we have started to run informal and basic training each Friday for all members of staff. "Keyboard shortcuts" was the first lesson and it proved to be very enlightening for those attending! We still run through the shortcuts in group meetings and people are getting much better and with it gaining more confidence. Since then we have covered simple tasks in Microsoft Word and Excel, how to use Zip files, connect to wireless networks and search for information effectively. We are considering offering this kind of “get up to speed” training to other companies at some stage this year. Would anyone be interested in this form of training for your organisation or team? If so contact me on andrew.metcalfe@couraud.com.

If you think that some people will just never get computers, remember that the Queen was apparently using a Wii to play computer games on Christmas day and she is 81.

ANSWERS TO KEY COMBINATIONS:

1) Cut, switch to last used program, paste

2) Print

Reading between the lines: Dispelling the fears surrounding qualitative feedback

dan.o'shea@couraud.com Dan O'Shea

Why do so few businesses refuse to place their faith in text-based analysis when relaying staff feedback? Simple - they don’t trust the results: what if anonymity is compromised? What if the results are imbalanced? How do you get round the subjectivity of the analyst? These are all, of course, highly legitimate concerns but can be swiftly allayed by recognising the rigorous methodology underpinning the qualitative process.

1: Respecting the text

The first rule for the analyst charged with converting raw data into qualitative feedback is to remain unswervingly loyal to the source text. He/she must never read between the lines by making inferences or unravelling the ‘true’ meaning of remarks: for the analyst, there is nothing beyond the text. But loyalty, of course, does not mean slavishly relaying every single recorded comment and insight. Rather, the analyst needs to meticulously study the raw data and begin synthesising the material.

2: Synthesising the text

Experience shows that some reviewers often repeat their opinions across different parts of the competency framework so the analyst needs to slot the remark into the most appropriate cluster and then cut the repetition elsewhere. The text is thus contracted and more tightly arranged without losing any key details. Similarly, if multiple reviewers express the same viewpoint under a particular behavioural indicator, the analyst is required to tie these remarks together and convey it as succinctly as possible. But the most critical element of synthesising the raw data is establishing the balance of opinion. Take this example: if one reviewer is highly critical of the reviewee and supports this stance both specifically and evidentially yet four other reviewers are far more complimentary without substantiating their praise, the analysis needs to be constructed very carefully: the negative comments represent a minority view and should therefore not dominate the analysis. They should of course be included but must be acknowledged as anomalous.

3: Structuring the text

It is highly recommended that the qualitative analysis mirrors the competency framework in terms of its flow and structure as the resultant report will be far more accessible, familiar and digestible to the recipient. This method also means the analyst is much less likely to inadvertently omit important information.

4: Anonymising the text

Once the content and structure have been determined, the analyst needs to ensure anonymity is safeguarded at all times. Quotations, for instance, must be handled with extreme caution: does the raw data contain highly idiosyncratic vocabulary which might betray identity? If so, paraphrasing is paramount: in this way, the message is delivered by the analyst on behalf of the reviewer without losing any of the resonance or impact of the original. This is not to say that quotes can’t be used – they are sometimes extremely useful. The key criterion is this: the analyst must respect the sensitivity of the raw data at all times.

5: Translating the text

Contemporary translation theorists (Venuti, Bassnett, Lefevere) concur that the translated text is inextricably bound to the original: it does not exist without it and it is this notion of interdependence which must be borne in mind every time the analyst begins the process of converting raw data into qualitative feedback.

360 feedback: a positive step forward or circular nonsense? Depends what you do with the data…

dan.o'shea@couraud.com Dan O'Shea

As HR managers, the success or failure of your 360° system is down to you. Decode the data right and you’re laughing, writes Dan O'Shea.

So you’ve bought into the idea of 360. You’ve rolled it out to all your staff and the results are in: you now have an absolutely priceless portrait of what your people really think of each other. You have a good balance of textual feedback and scores.

What do you do now? You have 2 options

Option 1
Input the scores into a computer and get a 30-page summary of soulless stats: graphs, pie charts, tables.

Option 2
Let the text do the talking. Analyse the perceptions (both positive and negative) of your people. Tease out the key themes. Anonymize the feedback and make it constructive. Then write a 1-page, easily digestible report. Let page two summarise the scores.

30 pages of tables or two pages of insightful and instructive feedback? I know which report I’d prefer to get back from HR. Yet you’d be surprised at how many businesses fall down at this final hurdle by letting bureaucracy triumph over common sense. Nothing could be more counter-productive: by bombarding staff with reams of paperwork, tables, charts and other statistics, one risks breeding resentment and causing people to lose faith in HRs ability to deliver. So why do so many businesses insist on relaying the results in this unhelpful way? What lies behind this reluctance to switch from quantity to quality?

“By using graphs and tables to illustrate the raw data, I’m getting much more value for money”

This is a common misconception with score-based feedback: providing your managers with a weighty 30-page tome to sift through won’t leave them any the wiser. The key reason here is that the messages delivered by these statistics are simply not clear enough: what does it mean, for instance, to average 5.3 out of 10 for people skills? What, specifically, is stopping your peers and subordinates awarding you a higher mark? Do you need to be more consultative or do you need to act with more conviction? Do you need to grant employees more autonomy or keep a closer eye on their workload and capacity? The scores won’t tell you: they’ll flag up underperformance without drilling down and getting to the heart of the problem. They won’t help you move forward and come up with development objectives. In short, this kind of superficial analysis is not a satisfactory return on your investment- you’re being short-changed.

Take this case-study: we recently carried out a 360° review for all the partners at a leading City law firm. A handful of them didn’t receive a sufficient level of qualitative feedback to enable a report to be produced so they were provided instead with a page of (below average) scores. Soon after, we were instructed by the client to repeat the exercise so that more qualitative data could be collected and a report then created. Why? Because scores can do more harm than good: they are alarmist rather than constructive as they indicate poor performance but deny the recipient any further detail or explanation.

But qualitative feedback does much more than just skate the surface; it puts the scores to one side and hones in on the textual feedback: it then synthesises these comments and converts them into a crystal clear page of analysis. This way, strengths and weaknesses are thrown into sharp relief and – crucially – they are substantiated. The report is consequently specific, evidential and constructive. Managers can then use this document to come up with development objectives so that when the 360 exercise is repeated, say, 6 months down the line, their improvement (or indeed lack of it) will be strikingly transparent.

“The data I get from the computer is more reliable”

As we highlighted above, score-based data simply doesn’t add up; it only gives you part of the picture so it can’t be wholly relied or acted upon. But what about qualitative data? Clearly, the author charged with turning the raw data into a page of textual analysis has a huge responsibility on his hands. The 360 tool does after all generate highly sensitive and candid comments so it’s crucial to get this right. The process should work as follows:

1. Start by reading through the raw data and pinpoint the key themes and recurrent trends
2. Synthesise the various disparate comments, bringing them together to form a clean and coherent narrative
3. Ensure the analysis is both constructive and anonymous
4. Show utter loyalty to the raw data: don’t ever try and draw inferences or be subjective

If the above four rules are closely adhered to, then the report will be immensely reliable and valuable to the manager involved. It’s also important to state here that each individual has their own particular skill sets, strengths and areas for improvement: qualitative analysis will highlight and amplify these nuances and the report will consequently feel like a bespoke, personalised document. But quantitative data –with its emphasis on statistical analysis - is much more homogenised and impersonal. If you want managers to drive their own development and have renewed faith in HR, you need to engage them on a personal level. So it has to be qualitative over quantitative every time.

“I don’t have time to write reports. Using the graphs and tables to represent the data is much quicker and more efficient”

It might only take you a minute to put the scores into a computer and print off the 30-page report but what happens when you hand it over to the manager? They’ll have to spend hours poring over the document to try and make sense of the stats and decipher what they’re actually being told. They won’t thank you for that: it’s both time-consuming and tedious. And worst of all, completely unnecessary. The qualitative process will take up a touch more of HR time but anything takes longer than mindless number crunching. And it really is time well-spent as it will be adding such a huge amount of value to the whole process. In any case, a qualitative culture really isn’t that time-consuming.

So put your faith in qualitative data and you’ll soon see the results: your people will be more self-aware and HR will be seen as a strategic asset rather than a cost centre. Put common sense before process and opt for quality over quantity.

Couraud Cabaret!

rebecca.roberts@couraud.com Rebecca Roberts

Wilkommen, bienvenue, welcome......

Yes, Couraud Cabaret is upon us. Talented amateurs singing, acting, joking, playing, conjuring. Fancy doing a 5 minute slot?

Great location, free booze and food all night long, on either 6 or 7 February 2008. The crowd will be friendly, consisting of the Couraud Community - staff, clients, friends of the business.

C'mon, you know you want to........

Please get in touch with me (rebecca.roberts@couraud.com) or Clare Bradwell (clare.bradwell@couraud.com) for more information and to sign up!

Culture, Not Structure

nick.jefferson@couraud.com Nick Jefferson

Gus O'Donnell rightly makes a big deal of professional skills for government.

Parity of esteem, he says, for corporate services, service delivery and policy. Spot on Gus, a good idea.

But good ideas aren't actually that hard to come by (just ask Felix Dennis - www.felixdennis.com), the difficult bit is actually making them work. It's all about implementation.

The tragedy of government (of all colours, of all nations) is the overvaluing of ideas and the undervaluing of delivery. PSG is designed to correct this but, in a rich irony, PSG itself risks just being a good idea, and no more.

If the government is serious about upskilling the civil service (and by jove, it should be) then it needs to apply itself. And that means application in a nuts and bolts sense. Hard graft and reform. Reform not just of structures (any shiny suited 23 year old consultant can reform a structure) but reform of culture. Structures were in place at HMRC but my son's personal details still went missing. They went missing because the culture just isn't right.

It is the culture(s) of the civil service that, above all else, that needs reforming. Do the senior people really understand this? You can invent as many schemes, programmes, policies as you like - but they're only ever going to be as good as the people and the cultures sustaining them.

Appraisals Are A Waste Of Time

rebecca.roberts@couraud.com Rebecca Roberts

...says the Investors in People survey. Most people just seem to hate them. But is this appraisals per se, or just most people's experience of them?

If your experience of appraisals is a meandering, paper-chasing, process-for-process'-sake type exercise, then you've got my sympathy.

But surely the point is not that appraisals are 'bad' (any people-dependent organisation must, by definition, engage in them), simply that most managers don't enjoy the skills, tools and cultures to deliver them properly?

Becci