It appears you're nobody these days unless you have a super-injunction. As the press play the “guess who” game, and our legal system plays catch-up with the social media aficionados, I'm struck by the parallels with an old chestnut topic of mine.

Is HR the champion of bureaucracy, or the core of morality in the organisation? Are we in HR best loved when we create loose rule books that line managers can effectively ignore with complete abandonment and treat staff inappropriately, or when we create a myriad of policies that tie our managers in knots?

This is a question that doesn’t really need answering. It’s what the new breed of writers call a cognitive polyphasia, or in my simple world, “the ability to hold conflicting ideas about the same thing”. We think our policies empower managers; they think they constrain them. We think we create an environment of opportunity; they feel we create a sterile workplace.

Just as the super injunction is a battle of privacy over transparency, I believe the contribution HR makes has become a battle of ethics over indolence. It was Ralph Naylor who said, “the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.” HR leads by example in everything we do and this means not only everything we promote but also everything we allow to happen around us in our organisations.

If we allow our primal survival instinct to get in the way of what we know is right then we deserve the same fate as those whose secrets will all too quickly be revealed.

Stephen R. Covey, has often been quoted as saying “Personal leadership is the process of keeping your vision and values before you and aligning your life to be congruent with them”. I can’t help thinking that personnel (HR) leadership is the process of keeping your vision and values before you and aligning your organisation to be congruent with them. There is never a time when HR can justify poor judgment. It is always the right time to do the right thing.

Joe Paterno is the college football coach at Penn State University. He has been successfully coaching football for over 60 years and is the most highly paid employee in the university. We might ask ourselves how come a football coach is the highest paid employee? I didn’t have to look to far for the answer. “Success without honour is an unseasoned dish; it will satisfy your hunger, but it won't taste good." — Joe Paterno, college football coach.

I prefer my HR to be well seasoned with a good covering of integrity.

It amazing just how often I hear that perpetual cry "It's not my fault, or “it's not my responsibility". It seems that in today's society no one wants to take responsibility for anything. And now we don’t even want to take responsibility for our own relationship failures. Are we seriously suggesting that “my marriage failed because I was forced to have a relationship with a work colleague” or “my relationship failed because my boss made we work long hours”.
How about, we all take responsibility for our actions. We don't abdicate our responsibility. We admit we are human; we make mistakes, and move forward from there. Try and I mean really try not to make the same mistakes over and over. But most important of all, take the responsibility for our own screw ups and don't put the blame on anyone else.

“HR Think Again”
To be HR or not to be HR. that is the question. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outraged members, Or to take arms against a sea of complainers – I say well done CIPD for an excellent and innovative campaign.

“HR Think Again” is just what our profession has needed. For too long we have teetered on the brink of mediocrity with our impact and influence branded as either woolly or risk averse. At a time when other professions have established their credentials in the UK commercial world and created a myriad of exemplars of modern entrepreneurial thinking HR has allowed ourselves to be hoodwinked by fleet footed arbiters whose philosophy has been “absorb, neutralise and survive”.

Orson Wells said in Italy for thirty years under the Borgia’s they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had five hundred years of democracy and peace and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock.

HR needs new blood, we old fogies are starting to believe our own propaganda that we know all the answers. I want a new breed of HR pup biting at my heels and showing me they can do HR better than I can. But I will only get that if my profession becomes one that attracts the best and the most adventurous. HR Think Again has the potential to trigger the reader to think twice and to consider the career potential of our profession.

I say let the proof of the pudding be in the eating – lets look again in twelve months time ands see have we advanced ourselves on or have we continued to make cuckoo clocks. HR Think Again?

The magazine dropped through my letterbox at the same time as my alarm went off.
I walked from the front door with my copy of my professional bodies magazine in one hand reaching for the on button of my television.

And then it happened - In the space of ten seconds i went from tired to depressed to embarrassed to angry. We have done it again. My profession that i love and believe so much in has managed to successfully stick its size 9's in its mouth faster than my black coffee can cool.

In my left hand i am looking at a picture of the Head of HR for a leading financial institution owned by the British public and in my right hand i am turning up the volume of my TV remote.

And here is what happened
The magazine assures me that this HR department is applying lean techniques, making processes more customer centric whilst my television is telling me that unless we agree to pay their staff bonuses of up to one million pounds each the current senior leaders will resign.

My eyes are reading that this HR leader is suddenly optimistic about his future and yet my ears hear that his colleagues don't want their owners to interfere in how the manage their business.

Like many other public sector bodies i am making fine, caring professional men and women redundant because we have become shareholders of an ailing organisation that still doesn't accept responsibility for its actions. The elderly and at risk are facing tougher challenges as we seek to support and protect them with shrinking budgets whilst our professional journal capitulates to a false ideal that bullied and threatened its way into our profession and even now wants us to believe that they are blameless in the consequences of the culture and management style they helped to breed. Get real there is more than one pariah out there.

Overweight Angels

So the voice of DoH(Department of Health) has spoken. Overweight NHS staff must shed the pounds, to set a good example to patients.
I am sure it’s the right thing to do. I am told that over 700,000 nurses, midwives and health visitors are thought to be obese.
It makes sense that our medical angels should set a good example and change their own eating behaviours and lifestyles.
I know it will cost the economy an estimated £50bn a year by 2050.
But I cant help thinking if I was lying in a hospital bed clinging to life will it be the girth of the medical professional that will matter or their skills.
Thank goodness for the sense and logic of Helen Giles, HR director at homeless charity Broadway, who has spoken up and said it is not HR's responsibility to tell employees they are overweight. Its our job to set up a working environment where staff are productive and want to come to work,
Ps if you know me you will know why this has struck a nerve - if you don’t know me I am six foot two blond and have a 28 inch waist line a six pack and a couple of
abs

SHAME Award

We’ve done it again! Just when I thought my precious profession was beginning to understand the importance of being in a relationship with our business colleagues we go right on out there and publically shoot ourselves in the foot. What a skill - the ability to fire off a broadside and still manage to pick off our own tiny podiatry digits is an outstanding result. I suggest we make it a new CIPD annual award. “The Shoot Him And ME in the foot award) or SHAME for short and the winner for 2009 must surely be one of the UK’s biggest financial institutions.
Headline news today confirmed that thousands of jobs will be going from the organisation HR roles will not be part of the cull. And why? because they are protected in their private enclave and are not seen as part of the general support services delivered to the business including IT and Finance. Now tell me I am wrong but if you are a disciple of the business partner model is this not an anomaly. A spokesperson for the company told one of our leading HR publications that HR jobs would not be part of the cull as HR is not part of group manufacturing unlike IT or Finance.
And it just keeps getting better, not only are they not included in the 9,000 job losses but forgive my literal interpretation they believe that in spite of the organisation needing to remove 9,000 posts HR “is not affected by this announcement,"
If I worked in HR and hundreds if not thousands of my colleagues were about to lose their livelihood because my organisation had made some suspect decisions around the recruitment, retention, development and remuneration of influential posts I think I should be affected or maybe shamed?

Evening All........

It’s all too easy to criticise those who put their head above the parapet. I am first to complain about seasoned complainers who find fault in my beloved profession yet never add value themselves but today i must ask are we seriously trying to suggest that the update from our professional body dropping into our in boxes this morning is something to headline and crow about.

But first my credentials so I don’t fall into the same trap. I held a senior role involved in policing for three years and I hold a police long service medal having walked beats and policed the streets for over fifteen years.

So it is good news that a new “equality standard” is being developed for the police to “help increase public confidence in forces across England and Wales”. I am heartened that the new standard is “aimed at helping the police assess the extent to which they have developed beyond basic equality legislation compliance, improve ways of delivering services and make better use of skills and resources”.

And most important of all I absolutely support the hope that “this will focus on improving long-standing problems with the recruitment, retention and career progression of under-represented groups within policing”.

But is this really headline news or should we HR professionals not hold our heads low and acknowledge this is long overdue.