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.

AND WITH THIS YOUR HONOUR I REST MY CASE

How does that joke go Why won't sharks attack lawyers? - Professional courtesy. Well he who laughs last laughs longest. We might have found it tough struggling with those shop floor barristers or barrack room lawyers but it just got better because it looks like we will find ourselves as HR professionals having to go head to head with the best the legal profession can throw at us. Up to now, we only had to deal with the amateur at least in internal disciplinary hearings where in the absence of any contractual rights our staff only had the choice of a work colleague or trade union rep.

However thanks to a recent High Court decision employees will; in certain cases; have the right to have a lawyer represent them. More seriously I am neither surprised nor disappointed with this decision of the High Court. What the court has said is that it would be appropriate for an employee facing discipline that could include the addition of his/her name on the register of individuals deemed unsuitable to work with children to be allowed to be accompanied by a lawyer at any internal disciplinary hearing .

The gravity of such allegations, added to the potential impact on the employee's future career including being added to the sex-offenders register mean that the employee should be entitled to legal representation at any disciplinary hearing but it also means we as the employer have to do the same

So welcome to the office courtroom I cant help thinking that this is only the beginning and before long any disciplinary outcome that has significant ramification to the employability of the individual will go the same way. Is it just me or are the only real winners lawyers who will get richer.

PHYSICIAN HEAL THY SELF

They say every plumber has a dripping tap at home and you tell the quality of a hairdresser by their own poor hair cut. So maybe just maybe I should not be surprised or saddened by the fact that my colleagues in central government HR claim they can help any part of their organisation or business transform and do so at breakneck speed except for its self.
There are times when you read a report and you know something is bothering you but you just cant put your finger on it. Well not this time We cant make the change happen because of disparity between pay and recruitment is like a mountaineer saying they cant climb Everest because it’s high.
Of course processes across the Civil Service HR will make it "very difficult" to create shared service back-office that’s why we have professional HR to be the tool to make organisations effective and sustainable. Its an afront to our profession that we have to be told by a minister that smaller public organisations and quangos under a certain size should share HR, IT and finance functions. If that isn’t a blinding flash of the obvious what is.
And then we hear that age old excuse of “ not yet - were not ready“.
AA Milne wrote
Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs,
but sometimes he feels that there really is another way. If only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it.
Thank goodness previous CIPD leadership has stepped into the affray and like AA Milne told HR to stop banging its heads on the stairs, grow up and stop shroud waving. We have an unsustainable position.. The real issues for our profession are more about time. Have we got enough time to make the contribution effectively before others see an opportunity to replace us.
This time the age old tactic of public sector Personnel of absorb and neutralise is not going to work. The end of recession and any green shoots of recovery wont signal a return to outdated people management processes. As soon as the Treasury sees the real green shoots of recovery they will seek to address their previous spending and implement the control measures necessary to balance books severely weakened by funding the finance sector.
So colleagues you no longer have a third choice. You either get dragged into effective HR kicking and screaming or you set the path that others in your departments can follow. I know what I would want to do.

Because the SatNav says so?

Mr Jones with his car teetering on a cliff edge next to Pennine pathway said he could not turn left or right and had to keep driving straight because his Sat Nav said so.

Too many times I have had to speak up when my HR colleagues fall into the trap of telling managers they can’t do something because the HR policy says so.

Policy does not drive practice it’s the other way around. We are not controlled by the machine; we are not in a perpetual groove that has no turns. We are here to release the power of our workforce by helping managers see, appreciate and capitalise on potential. We don’t to that by relying on policies designed to absorb and neutralise initiative

Police have charged Mr Jones with driving without due care and attention. HR what about us???

Let them eat cake

Close the Channel Tunnel, tie up the ferries and ground the planes. The 2nd Great French revolution is underway. Fill the sand bags, bar the doors, store up some bottled water and make sure the chocolate vending machine is full as this time it might just reach England.

The HR manager of Sony France was taken hostage over the weekend by staff being made redundant. They were demanding higher redundancy payments than he had offered or else……?

His offer was redundancy payments 5 times greater that statutory redundancy but this was not enough to stop the raid

Good luck Roland – whatever you do don’t tell them to use there enhanced redundancy to buy cake or we are all done for.

Are you an HR Driver or an HR Steerer

My position remains unchanged in spite of the latest news on job losses in central goverment. I said weeks ago in personnel today that good public sector HR staff need not worry about job insecurity. Whitehall HR job losses will come and for many the news does not come as a surprise but I say again good HR professionals who have worked to build strong relationships with the services they work in have nothing to worry about. Many years ago i was the HR Director for a large Haulage and distribution company, in any one day up to 500 vehicles left depots all over the UK but of those 500 staff only about 100 were real drivers the rest were just steerers. It was never hard to spot the difference just take a look inside the cab. The driver keeps touch up paint under their seat because they knew the value of presenting a professional image. In the glove compartment a cloth so at every set of traffic lights mirrors can been cleaned so the driver can see all around. And finally a good map so that they always knew in which direction to take the vehicle.
If you are working along side your customer in some kind of enforced partnership then you are right to be afraid but if you are in a strong relationship you are in the driving seat.

Regression or Recession

Another organisation steps up to 21st century people practice and wants to be seen as open, frank and honest with its staff. Long before BERR demands it they are living the values and doing the right thing by saying it as it is and what happens - its like watching black and white television

Human Rage or Human Respect

So as the dust settles we are beginning to see what has really been going on in the boardrooms of the great institutions we once called banks. BULLYING AND HUMILIATION. if you want people to break rules, take unnecessary risks and flaunt the law the here is a great lesson. but hold on - these institutions have been waived in our faces for the last five years as examples of 21st century HR. we have been told we are not in the same league as these great bastions of exemplary people management. their HR leaders are given positions of rank in our professional bodies and we are told they are the most influential in our professions. Take note HR colleagues many of us have never signed up to this school of HUMAN RAGE we have instead continued to make our organisations successful because we didn't partner them in poor people management we engage and we create relationships and we can be proud of what we do.

Re-endangering your workforce

It’s been a busy weekend so I am only catching up on my personal emails now. There were the usual anticipated e mails from friends updating me on what’s happening in their lives, some facebook activity, a few eBay items I failed to win and an apparent anomaly?
In my in-box I had an invitation to attend an evening event in April. The invitation I was being given was to be an opportunity to hear a discussion between five well known HR experts who will share their experience of re-engaging staff to gain success in the future.

Wow i have to go i think t myself and then.............

I thought the brochure was completely wrong but now I realise its only the date of the event that is wrong it should be the 1st of April 2009

A day to remember

I spent part of a day recently at a conference listening to approaches to absence management. It was a useful time and there were many differing views but i really cant sign up to this idea that HR can avoid the responsibility for ensuring staff feel part of their workplace. Everyone seems keen to push back. OH wants to say they only give advice and line managers claim they are unqualified. This is just the void we have been looking for to fill it with real HR .



So in future lets step up and help our work colleagues realise that we can make things happen. We are not signed up to everlasting welfare or unquantified pastoral care. Its the company who pays our wages so its the company that gets the input.

If the doctors don't want to make the decision then move over
If the line managers bottle at making tough choices
Then stop shredding HR to make savings and start listening to us

Its not rocket science but attendance management can make or break your organisations attempt to step up