HR to HR 2.0 and Human Capital (HCM)

#ECTalent Managing in the Great Reset / 1

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Ingham) — Wed, 22 May 2013 08:15:00 +0000

A lot of the Economist's Talent Management conference did focus on changes in the world of work. Dean Royles even nicked Peter Cheese's phrase about work, the workforce and the workplace. Here are my highlights:

Firstly, Will Hutton provided en excellent context for this change. The great reset is being caused by the depth and length of the current recessionary period. This of course varies by country - Will is upbeat about the Eurozone but pretty pessimistic about China.

In the UK, we've got to deal with ineffective innovation, the dysfunctionality about our approaches to ownership (I think Will was talking about housing but I'd put the stock market in the same category).

There are big shifts in technology underway as well. The last century has seen 9 general purpose technologies - technologies which impact other technologies - the internal combustion engine, electricity, motor vehicles, aeroplanes, mass production, the computer, lean production, the internet and biotechnology. But the next generation will see about 20 - the mobile phone, nanotechnologies, fusion energy, advanced materials, carbon sequestration, space, managing the nitrogen cycle, water, health informatics, durable customised infrastructure, customised medicine, the brain, cyberspace security, enhanced virtual reality, personalised learning, new manufacturing methods eg 3D printing, and the internet of things. Oh and big data? - eg the driverless car and pilotless airplane are dependent on sensors and communication networks - transport as big data (so car manufacturers are having to learn from Google about the next generation of cars!)

In her later session on how HR is impacted by all of this, Naomi Stanford mentioned Anybots too. Well, their impact may be less profound than most of the above but they're a great example of how technologies can be humanised too:

We need to get serious about innovation - no company is smart enough alone to navigate this new world. So we need to be open to outside influences, ideas, people and agencies. Firms need to be really clear about what they think is their core business and hence which ecosystem they need to join. Then open up - co-invent, co-create and co-produce, eg P&G and Unilever with their 'open innovation' orchestrators. Develop absorptive capacity. Organise open innovation calls, exploratory 'dates' and open contracts. Change behaviours (and change rewards - especially of top executives who Will thinks are well over-paid):

(The point about unknown unknowns is why I'm down on big data in HR - at least in aspects of this which are strategically important.)

All of this, and other factors, are causing big changes in the nature of employment and hence talent management. One of these shifts is the move to knowledge based roles which are driving improvements in the economy.

According to some economists, this is leading to the people-less economy, a world in which 50% do not work.

The remaining jobs are moving into things like micro-production, human well-being, 'wicked' issues and the digital world itself, from cyber security to digital clutter management!

We're also seeing labour market flexibility morphing into indentured labour.

#ECTalent - big data analytics

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Ingham) — Tue, 21 May 2013 15:39:00 +0000

I'm at the Economist's Talent Management Summit today. It's been trailed, and I've trailed it, as being focused on the mobile, agile workforce. I have to say that I've not seen much about this far (and it's now lunch time).

We did have an absolutely great kick off from Will Hutton, but that was about the new mobile, agile business - not the workforce. And after that, most of the focus has actually been pretty transactional. We need to engage our people, yes, but we need to go beyond this too.

So I was pleased to listen to a short input from the Economist's Kenneth Cukier on big data. And that's without being a huge fan of big data, but I certainly accept it's part of the move to a mobile and agile future, whereas I think most of the rest of this morning has been mainly about what's already been going on today.

Kenneth started by supporting Andy Albon's message that big data analytics are about knowing which way to jump when our assumptions provide wrong. He then provided a summary of some of the emerging big data practices:

1. In the US, 60% of employees are hourly wage (call centre) workers. 50% of these will change jobs over the course of a year. So it's a big problem. One organisation looked at 3m data points based on 30,000 employees and found that when people apply for these jobs, if they apply using a browser they have installed (eg Firefox or Chrome) they are 15% more likely to stay longer than if they apply from a browser that came bundled in with a computer (Explorer / Safari). You can't use this as the only signal but it's still interesting.

2. Another organisation found that selecting people with a criminal record can lead to improved performance and likelihood to stay. But the best predictor of whether they stay in a job is if their friends work there, or better, if they like their supervisor . So it's more valuable to ensure that supervisors are better trained and give better reviews that paying the employees more money.

3. A large international brokerage pays £10m to a couple of thousand highly paid employees. Everything these employees do is measured and they're fine with this. The company scores each research report whether it's opened, printed out etc. And it turns out there's a correlation between if this is not a solo report but has ben co-authored with someone from a different area and whether it is likely to be seen as more valuable. Employees are now measured and rewarded on this. It may not be the way for all employees as it's too intrusive?

4. Finding diamonds in the rough through social media, eg using git hub (a repository of software networkers) - spying on them - finding out who are the developers who contribute most, who's code is downloaded most.

Kenneth and the organisation have no idea why these things works like this - perhaps something about the gumption of those who take an extra effort to improve their computers being the same sort who take a bit extra care in selecting their next role.

But does that mean you can then recruit on these measures? Kenneth seems to think it does. Eg if you could use credit score to raise the quality of your recruit wouldn't you do it? Well, I wouldn't, no. That's not a moral issue but a business performance and effectiveness one. Even if there is a real and meaningful correlation here, it's not a causation. Changing your browser does not make you a better employee and neither does a higher credit score. Something else is causing both factors. Find out what that something else is and then recruit for that.

That's my first worry about big data. No matter how large the data set there'll always be other stuff outside it. And if it's that other stuff that's truly causal, not just predictive or correlated then you're not going to know and you're likely to be led towards recruiting for completely random reasons. Especially as the more important aspects of HR are often the hardest to capture in quantitive data form. And are therefore less likely to be included in your data set.

My second worry is about how much all of this is being over-hyped. Yes, data, big and small, and analytical insight into this data is important. But does it deserve to be on every conference, every magazine issue, ever blog? For me, the answer's no. This isn't the future (thought it is probably a part of the future) of our profession.

Actually I thought it was interesting that most of Kenneth's examples were from the Economist's recent article on robot recruiters. Is this the extent of the interesting case studies? And OK, this could just be because it's early days on the journey to a more mobile and agile workforce. But I still suspect it's something else.

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Technorati Tags: big data, Economist, talent management, Kenneth Cukier, summit, robot recruiters

Dave Ulrich Support Act - South America

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Ingham) — Tue, 21 May 2013 10:31:00 +0000

I'm also going to be doing my Dave Ulrich support act once again at Seminarium's annual HR conference in Chile and Colombia next month.

This promises to be a great event:

"Today the HR function is evolving and expanding their responsibilities to provide a skilled workforce to improve communication, attraction and retention of customers, increase the value of the company and create a sustainable business leadership through people.

Seminarium presents The Annual HR Conference 2013. Three international experts presenting the keys for Human Resource Management, along with their teams, build organizational changes affecting business growth."

I'm certainly looking forward to the conference, and more generally to the trip. I'll be talking about social capital - more here on that shortly...

However if you're in Bogota, Colombia or Santiago, Chile, do try to come long. Or if you're a regular reader, do at least let me know you're there and perhaps we can get a chance for a quick face-to-face '¡hola'?

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Technorati Tags: conference, Dave Ulrich, HR, Seminarium, Bogota, Colombia, Santiago, Chile, social capital, South America

Social Media Applications in Asia / Singapore

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Ingham) — Tue, 21 May 2013 09:50:00 +0000

I'm back in Asia at the end of June delivering this programme on effective use of social media. It's being held in Singapore on 24th and 25th June.

If you'd like to know more about how social media can support HR, effective management and business operations too, do come along (book at enquiry [at] long [dash] trends [dot] com).

Or if you're a reader of this blog and would like to meet up whilst I'm in Singapore, or just want to say hello, do get in touch with me (at info [at] strategic [dash] hcm [dot] com)!

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Technorati Tags: collaboration, customer service, HR, innovation, Long Trends, marketing, media, social, Singapore, Asia

#ECTalent: Creating a Mobile, Agile Workforce

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Ingham) — Wed, 15 May 2013 09:51:00 +0000

I had thought I was going to be in China straight after my session in Malaysia, but that trip has been delayed to August so I am going to be at the Economist's Talent Management Summit on Tuesday 21 May now. Woohoo! (not Wuhou :-( ).

This year's event focuses on 'creating a mobile, agile workforce'. So the Economist has clearly selected a very important, and increasingly topical, theme again. I'll be blogging from the conference as I have done for the last couple of years but here are my top three high level thoughts on what I think should be some of the key issues to come up:

1. Neither mobile nor agile are about technology or infrastructure but attitude and behaviour.

2. The behaviour change isn't about replacing one set of best practice behaviours with another set of better practices, it's about clearly understanding what needs to be different and then making a small but important set of changes to align around this.

3. Generating the desired behaviour change isn't easy. Old traditions and ways of working are hard to change.

I've already posted on this last point in connection to a couple of things I'm involved in or paying attention to - eg the CIPD / MIX's hackathon, the CIPD's 100 thoughts and the Engage for Success movement. However I've criticised the way these are being implemented* (suggesting that this is being done in a non-agile / adaptable sort of way) and I haven't spelled out how I think they should be executed differently - which obviously has a link to how mobile, agile businesses need to run as well. So here are my suggestions:

1. Leaders need to get out of way. They don't need to do everything themselves, and in fact doing this detracts from the ability of followers to do things for themselves - it makes the entity (hackthon, movement, community, organisation…) less adaptable, not more. It's not you - it's us.

Peter Cheese / Gary Hamel - let us do the hangouts, or at least let us hangout with you and stop hogging the front page.
Peter / your CIPD colleagues - stop making special invitations. It makes the other contributors seem / feel less valued. If special people can't be bothered to contribute off their own backs they're maybe not so special after all.
David McLeod / Nita Clarke - let the movement do the presentations. I mean give us the slides if you must, though perhaps we can all co-create them. But let us take the movement forward. You're over exposed, and whilst the movement's all about you, it's not able to grow. You've already earned your OBEs - get off the stage.
Business leaders - ask your staff about what your organisation needs, listen to them and try to do what they suggest. And as much as possible, let them take things forward.

2. When leaders intervene they need to do so in an enabling sort of way. The role of leaders isn't to provide expert insight, it's to facilitate and encourage others to provide theirs - shaping, building on or challenging these if they need. Their focus needs to be managing the community not providing all the content. Wait, back off and comment when you think someone's missed a point - and nobody else is stepping in. Or come in to recognise those you think are contributing great insights.

Now I will admit that David and Nita do some of this rather well. Though you probably don't need to be on so many of the movement's podcasts - so spend the time helping find other members of, or people associated with, the movement to be guests, or to co-host some of the shows too.

Peter, Gary (and most of the other hackathon coaches and guides) - we see nothing. If you can't be bothered commenting on other people's suggestions, even when they directly ask you for yours, you've missed the point I'm afraid. Well, you both clearly understand the future of management - time to start acting like it too!

3. This one is a smaller point but when you do ask for opinions, ask about what's important, and what you want really want to know. Don't ask dumb questions! (and don't provide the answer when you do):

Eg: "Is your organisation changing as fast as the world around it?

Let's face it, for most organisations, the answer is no."

Err, right. Like that's going to generate a lot of comments then!

4. This one is more of a personal reflection but think carefully about who you include / exclude. As someone who has participated in a few hackathons previously and is deeply involved in this agenda I was bound to get involved. If I'd be invited to be a coach / guide I'd have been more likely to have got on board.

This isn't an issue for me (really - I've got lots of other things to do) but since I haven't been involved it's much easier to snark from the sidelines. Both the MIX and the CIPD know that I'm a trouble maker (ahem!) so it shouldn't have been that hard.

That's the problem with hierarchy really - not that it naturally constrains adaptability (and implemented well, I don't think it does.) But that as soon as you put people at the top, you place others at the bottom, and the people at the bottom are never going to feel the same way about the initiative / organisation as people at the top.

(It also makes it more important that the people at the top exhibit the very best behaviours whether that's not cheating their expenses or not abusing their status as a guide.)

* Note I'm a big supporter of all these things (the Engage for Success movement, the CIPD / MIX's hackathon and the CIPD's 100 thoughts) - I just think they could have been done better if they were being done in more agile / adaptable way. And these are current initiatives focusing on creating agility and adaptability. If they can't rise to the opportunity, what hope do our organisations have?

Well quite a lot hopefully - but I think the above illustrates how hard generating more adaptable behaviours can be.

Anyway, more on this probably from the Economist Talent Management Summit next week!

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Technorati Tags: agile, conference, Economist, mobile, Talent Management

Qinetiqette qits - can it be true?

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Ingham) — Mon, 13 May 2013 21:00:00 +0000

I don't get to spend anything like as much time as I would like to read other peoples' blogs. But one of those that I have paid a lot of attention to for several years though, and very often talk about at workshops to illustrate one reason why we need to give more attention to our employees and candidates, is Qinetiqette.

You might have seen that I blogged on this issue in relation to Glassdoor.com recently, but it's always worth remembering that employees don't need something like Glassdoor to express how they feel about things.

Qinetiqette has been a blog written by a disgruntled employee at QinetiQ for several years, providing a caustic insight at developments in the UK's former Defence Research Agency. Each post gets something like 30-70 comments, mainly from other disgruntled employees. (And actually the Glassdoor reviews for the company aren't great either.)

Will this have had an impact on Qinetiq's employee brand? - absolutely. Will it have had an impact on the main corporate brand? - yes, it will as well - despite the CEO's protestations - particularly as the blog comes third top in a Google search on the company.

Don't get me wrong - if I was the HRD at Qintetiq I would be immensely frustrated by the blog, particularly as I'm sure the reporting isn't always / often fair. But as an external commentator it's been a really interesting phenomena to observe.

So, it's also interesting (and good or bad depending on your perspective) so see that the blog may have come to an end. The last post (pictured above) was put up some time ago and asked for guest posts from other members of the company. Someone commented that this was the last desperate act of a site that has passed its sell-by date. Someone else suggested the author had been sacked. And as of this weekend the site has been taken down.

Is this the end of Qinetiqette? I hope at least that if it is, we'll see more author blogging on workplaces issues somewhere else. And if they'd like to come along to the ConnectingHR unconference and share some of their experiences and perspectives on less-than-Brave HR it'd be great to see them there.

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Technorati Tags: employee, Qinetiqette, employer, brand

Modern HR, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Ingham) — Fri, 10 May 2013 06:47:00 +0000

Next week I'll be out in Kuala Lumpur delivering the first two days of Marcus Evans' Modern HR Week (Monday 13 and Tuesday 14 May).

In most organisations, top talent recruitment and retention should already be a number one priority. The real challenge will be in adjusting the strategy to accommodate changes in the workforce, thus it is critical for HR professionals and the business to develop an innovative strategy to meet the new complexities of the business world. A range of measures that provide insights on the effectiveness of talent management practices and explore the efficiency and effectiveness of the HR organisation will be vital.

Benefit from these 2 day course led by Jon Ingham during which he will bring together key knowledge and case studies in adapting and re-aligning talent strategies to develop a sustained approach to talent management. This course strives to address critical metrics to measure human capital in organisations, focusing on talent delivery and return on investment.

I'm a bit late letting you know, but if you're a reader of my blog based there, do get in touch and let me know - it'd be great to meet up or chat.

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#CIPD #Hackmanagement - Hierarchical ideas dying slowly

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Ingham) — Wed, 08 May 2013 21:55:00 +0000

I've been thinking about posting something on this for a few weeks, linked in to my previous comments on employee engagement becoming more social.

As you may know, I'm involved in the Engage for Success movement for promoting engagement, e.g. being one of the team which host its podcast show. I also got involved in one of the special interest groups, focusing on the future of engagement, recently. And I was going to facilitate one of their workgroups but felt I had to back out for a couple of different reasons. One of these was that I was planning on facilitating a session to identify the major forces acting on engagement, and how these forces and therefore the way we need to engage people, needs to change. But it turned out that we'd already asked a number of academics to give us their perspectives and my work was to help people react to these. I don't like this split between academic and practitioners - I think we all have an equal potential to comment on anything like engagement - and particularly on something as unmeasurable as how this may change in the future.

Even more importantly, it's a poor way to engage, so if engagement in an idea is as important as the idea itself, it makes no sense to just tell people the idea and ask for their comments - this is never going to be as compelling as getting people to input into the original idea. Particularly when the idea is actually about engagement!

I talk quite about this with business leaders about this too. I think the tendency is to worry about employees coming up with the wrong suggestion if they're consulted in major business or organisational decisions. I try to remind the executives about the wisdom of the crowd i.e. that if employees come up with a decision which is different to the ones the leaders were going to have made it may well be that the employees will be right! Plus of course, whatever the decision is, it means the employees will be more committed to it. Better a less good strategy executed well than a perfect strategy which nobody wants to support.

Of course if executives are going to consult like this they need to be prepared to take the actions their employees suggest. Acting on employee suggestions will be more motivating than telling employees to implement something, but telling them this will still be a lot more motivating than consulting employees for their views and then ignoring what they say.

It makes a lot of sense to me, but I'm increasingly noticing how hard we find it to do.

So in my last post I talked about how pleased I was that the CIPD is pursuing some actions to stimulate innovation in HR e.g. the hackathon it's running with Gary Hamel's Management Innovation Exchange (the MIX). I also suggested that it'd got off to a poor start. Maybe it's just me but I find being given the perspectives of a supposed expert on something (can anyone really be an expert on the future?) and being asked to comment as a lot less engaging than being given the opportunity to leap in on an equal footing to everyone else.

And why have the experts make their inputs first, meaning it is less likely for others to find space to contribute their ideas (like Gary Hamel opening up the CIPD's hackathon - surely if they really are experts, they should be in a better position to fill in the gaps once everyone else has already had their go?

There's a further incongruity in that the hackathon is designed as a forum to encourage social innovation in which people can act together to swarm and cluster around good ideas, building on these and developing them organically and naturally into new management approaches, or hacks. So why limit this ability by imposing hierarchy on what is supposed to be social and spontaneous? Ie do we really need the MIX's mix (sorry) of mavericks, guides, coaches and hackers (which I've just noticed includes me apparently).

I also thought that innovation is supposed to come from the periphery. This isn't Gary, it's us!

I also think that social innovation is more about social connection that it is social content sharing. It's great to be able to share ideas on innovating HR, but if we're not connected with each other, if we don't trust each other, it's going to limit our ability to build on each others' ideas.

The other action the CIPD have been taking is asking people to suggest '100 thoughts' on how the profession is going to develop over the next 100 years. I really, really like some of the suggestions in this - and plan to post soon. But why give a 'special invitation' to supposed experts - and why give them more space to comment than everyone else?

The only answer I've got to these questions is that, whilst we understand the future needs to be more social and collaborative, we're still thinking hierarchically about how we create this future.

That's not that I'm set against hierarchy - there are quite a few suggestions in the hackathon about ditching hierarchy but I can't see it happening. And I don't think we necessarily need to do so anyway. Most of what people object to in hierarchy aren't natural, necessary aspects of hierarchy, they're symptoms of hierarchies implemented badly. Hierarchies have a use, and, implemented well, they shouldn't stop people doing what they need to do - working sideways as well as up and down.

Hierarchical thinking is different - it serves no purpose and we need to try harder to get rid of it.

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Technorati Tags: CIPD, innovation, Gary Hamel, management, exchange, MIX, hackathon, hierarchy

Peter Cheese CIPD Progress Update

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Ingham) — Tue, 07 May 2013 09:20:00 +0000

So Peter Cheese has been in post as the CIPD's CEO for 9 months now and I thought it might be time for a review of progress during this time.

That's partly because I feel a level of, well, not quite ownership or even involvement, but something a bit stronger than interest, in how this is going, having included Peter as my third out of 10 suggestions for the role back in February 2012).

I also advised Peter on five points for his new strategy when he started work last July (quite without any request for this of course, just as this review is similarly unrequested). So I thought it might be useful?, or at least fun? to review how Peter and the institute are doing against these five things:

1. Developing more focus on Strategic HR (or HCM)…

I've got to give Peter full marks for this. I love his suggestion that the HR profession is at an inflection point - that given the changes in the world of work, the workforce and workplace, much (most?) of what we do in HR is no longer fit for purpose. And I also love to see the way the profession has responded to this with some really revolutionary (and some counter revolutionary) suggestions for the development of the profession in this '100 thoughts' series of provocations.

I'm not too impressed with the way the CIPD's hackathon, together with Gary Hamel's MIX, has been set-up (see my comment on Gary's article, Changing the Way we Change) but I'm still hopefully about using this sort of approach to reinvent what HR does. It's certainly a breath of fresh air that we're trying to do this now!

2. …. Including more focus on Social HR

We're seeing less of this so far but there are some good early signs that Peter understands why HR needs to be more social. (Actually I know he does as I saw him present on this at Gary Hamel's Management Lab back in 2009).

It's also good news that Peter's taken to Twitter, and I love his early tweet I've included at the top of this post. HR's got to get to grips with dealing with communities and not just individuals. This lies at the heart of where I think the HR profession is going to have to go.

The rest of CIPD still could be using social media before - blogging, tweeting and as Michael Carty XpertHR notes, commenting on other peoples' blogs as well (if the President of the HR Institute of New Zealand can do it, we should be able to do it to).

3. Being more social itself ie more membership based

Just about top marks for this one too. I've not seen that much of this myself, but that may just be because I'm not involved in branch events as much as I've been in the past. But I've heard Peter talking about the need for the CIPD to be more social / inclusive e.g. responding to and including consultants rather than just practitioners, and doing more through local groups. Great stuff - though future reviews will need to focus rather more on the execution.

4. Getting rid of Bridge (spit!)

No change here unfortunately which makes Peter's intent to include consultants feel rather hollow too. (We're not going to feel included whilst your competing with us.)

Get rid of it Peter - ideally before July!

5. Developing these themes through the conference

Coming on nicely - I didn't get to the CIPD annual conference last year as I was keynoting at HR Norge, and I missed this Spring's HRD conference too, but I did follow the tweets and things seemed to be developing well:

More of a strategic focus, though I still think there's more that we can do.

More on social HR, but this needs much more focus still. This is partly about more use and more talk about social media, but it's about using more social approaches too. I thought we could have done the live hackathon at E20S better than we did, but the approach has got potential, and it'd be great to do us trying this at the CIPD conference.

More of a social approach from the CIPD and it was great to see Peter getting some comments on his approachability.

So just a bit less than full marks for this area because the CIPD are still wheeling Lee Sears round their various events spurting the same nonsense about Next Generation HR (it's great to see most people in the 100 Thoughts putting forward a different type of agenda though).

In summary, great performance on four out of five of my suggestions. I may come back with some new thoughts for Peter's second year, though I probably won't, and in case of this, here's one more suggestion for next year.

We know the average tenure of CEOs is continuing to fall and if he's not already done so, Peter needs to start thinking about succession (the institute should be role modelling good HR after all). We really shouldn't have to be paying an agency to find us the head of our profession (as my post in February 2012 was designed to illustrate).

But given everything that I've just been discussing, can't we do this in a more strategic, social was as well. Eg I love the way the CIPR have been asking their members to elect their new President. If we could do this for the next CIPD CEO I think we (the institute and the profession) would really be moving forward...

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Technorati Tags: CEO, CIPD, Peter Cheese, performance

Brave HR / 2

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Ingham) — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 06:49:00 +0000

I'll also be speaking about brave HR in Eversheds' HR Summer School at Oxford University this Summer:

HR Confidence: Value Creation from our People Focus

We hear a lot about HR needing to be business people first, HR people second, but often HR creates more value by being different rather than the same. For example, finance’s focus on efficiency is strengthened when combined with HR’s advocacy of alignment and engagement – particularly when it comes to attracting and retaining next generation talent. John will illustrate the importance of remaining people focused post-Ulrich.

Maybe see you there?

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Brave HR

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Ingham) — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 20:56:00 +0000

This Summer's ConnectingHR unconference focuses on Brave HR. So what is brave HR?

Today, one of the ConnectingHR community members and organisers of the unconference, Graham Frost, started a twitter conversation on what we think this thing is. For me, three different things came to mind.

The first of these is challenging our businesses when they do stupid things. Trust in business is at an all time low (down to 38% of people in Edelman's Trust Barometer UK results). And employee engagement is down as well (35% in the CIPD's Engagement Index in their last Employee Outlook). This isn't our employees fault. Every time a business defrauds its customers or investors (by needlessly giving their money to its CEOs); every time it finds a way round regulation or avoids paying appropriate taxes; every time it colludes with its competitors; every time it contaminates our environment; every time it treats its employees as dispensable assets, it turns people off business. That's business in general and this business in particular. And it needs to stop. HR can and should play a role and possibly a leading role in this. The tendency however is to collude with other business leaders and we need to be braver to speak out.

Also see:

The second aspect of brave HR is not being confined by a business agenda. We're becoming so conditioned by the need to support the business but we can often create more impact by making our businesses better fit for our people than we can be aligning the people with our businesses. It may not make us popular to say this but for me it needs saying...

Also see:

This then led me onto thinking about what I think is the best articulation I've seen recently of how businesses as a whole need to change. This is from John Mackey at Whole Foods Stores in his presentation at the Concious Capitalism conference this year.

Mackey talks about How businesses need to do more than earn money in the same way that other professions such as teachers and doctors aren't just focused on what they do to earn money. And I wonder is this should be the case for HR? It's certainly true, linked to my first point above, that we should encourage a more conscious approach in the businesses we work within.

But linked to my second point, should our profession focus on more than just helping business? In an individual organisation, probably not - we need to focus on helping that organisation do whatever it is attempting, though we can certainly encourage a long-term perspective to this eg investing in local communities because otherwise the business eventually won't have any communities to operate within.

But as a profession, there's certainly an opportunity for us to be concerned about things like tackling youth unemployment; meeting future skill needs; providing compelling work and careers; and developing greater social mobility more than we are. I think this would be brave HR as well.

Also see:

Want to know more? Come to the Unconference! You can also join the ConnectingHR community at connectinghr.org.

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What is Social HR?

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Ingham) — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 08:27:00 +0000

I'm not normally very good at remembering to send posts to HR Carnivals, but this month this is being done by Anita Lettink who I think generates some very interesting ideas for HR, so it's one that I particularly wanted to enter into. Oh, and it's on Social HR, which is also where I seem to be spending most of my time these days.Anita says the carnival was triggered by a post from Paul Taylor at Bromford on 'how social is your CEO?' and has therefore invited contributions on 'how social is your HR?'.

I'd like to deal with he social CEO first. This is something I've spoken about previously and I also linked to another recent post on the subject in the Social HR community:

For me, the key issue isn't whether your CEO is on social media. They may want to be, they may not. The choice depends on a lot of things including them and their priorities and the culture of the business, etc (I think Paul expresses it very well too).

And OK, it's not going to help if they ignore their social tools completely but I don't think they need to feel that they should be using them extensively. Now they do need to connect with their employees, and they probably need to be quite 'social' to do this. But the biggest issue for me, and I believe for lots of people these days, isn't whether a CEO is using social media. The big issue generally today is their reward.

If a CEO is on 354 times the average employee they're simply not going to connect with other employees. They can tweet all they like but they're just not going to be able to connect. It's why I thought Lord Wolfson's actions last week to distribute his £2m bonus to Next's employees was such a great thing to do. Now he's a social CEO.

That then leads us onto social HR. And this, again, I don't think is just or mainly about social media. And although there will be exceptions for most HR Directors social HR isn't going to be about the size of their own rewards. Instead it's about how they're injecting social approaches, and looking for social outcomes, in their people management and organisation development work.

If you want to understand more about what social HR looks like - and that includes the broader 'being social' elements as well as the use of social media, for each process in the employee lifecycle, and beyond, they stay tuned in the Social HR community as I'm going to encourage some discussions on each of these processes there.

However, there is another difference between the CEO and HR. Some of social HR is normally going to be informed through the use of social media. It's also the newest element of social HR for many people and organisations. It's one that can go badly wrong if mis-handled. And it's the area where there is the greatest and fastest change. HR does need to understand and sponsor social media.

For a CEO I don't think this is that important. For HR, it is. We need to be using social media ourselves, as practitioners and as functions. And we need to be using it socially - for connection. And we need to be using it where appropriate to support our HR processes too.

But the key thing is that we need to be using it ourselves - as this will help us understand these technologies' opportunities and limitations.

There you go. Oh, and I know I've not really addressed Anita's question about assessing how social your HR is. But before we can assess this we need to understand what we're measuring ourselves against. And I hope I've explained why, for me, this is about being social, and perhaps using and understanding social media ourselves, and not just about incorporating social technologies into HR. That's why the HR Carnival remains important and relevant too.

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#SEEngage #E4S: Tailoring the Engagement Survey

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Ingham) — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 22:35:00 +0000

I mentioned in yesterday's Engage for Success radio show that I was looking forward to today's Employee Engagement Summit with Symposium Events.

It's been a varied conference with quite a bit of input from Engage for Success (David Macleod and Nita Clarke presenting once again), quite a bit on values and a fair amount on surveys. For example Geoffrey Matthews who has just written a book on engagement with Linda Holbeche, 'Engaged' presented 10 warning signs to avoid engagement surveys being a bottleneck vs breakthrough. You can see these described in an article at HR Review, managed by the Symposium people.

I don't disagree with any of these 10 points but I still think it's the design of engagement surveys which is key. That's particularly the case as it becomes easier to understand engagement levels on an ongoing basis through semantic analysis of enterprise social network conversations, or through simple mobile tools like Joel Cheesman's Morale.Me, or other oil technologies like Thymo Metrics (I came across today).

I've already blogged quite a bit on formal engagement surveys and suggested the most important requirement (which I think becomes more important as other informal tools become more popular) is the linking of satisfaction and engagement, i.e. activity and outcome. However I've also suggested that we should actually broaden out from engagement into other areas of organisational capability, e.g. things like confidence too.

Increasingly however, I've become convinced that a major key to engagement, and therefore to engagement surveys too, is to tailor the outcomes i.e. the type of engagement we're asking about to the specific capabilities of the organisation. I posted about the importance of this in terms of raising engagement yesterday (point #2) but didn't develop the argument through to discussing engagement surveys.

It means that if a company's key capability is about innovation, it's outcome questions about engagement need to include the standard stuff about retention and advocacy but should also focus in on generation of ideas, participation in innovation processes, quality of weak ties etc. If the capability is about speed of execution, the engagement questions should focus on speed of response, flexibility, focus on priorities etc.

To me, it's this tailoring of engagement surveys which is, or should be, our greatest priority currently (in terms of survey. And I do agree with Geoffrey that it's what comes after the survey that's important. But a well designed, insightful survey starts those actions off much more effectively than can otherwise be the case.)

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The Economist's Talent Management Summit and the new rules of Employee Engagement

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Ingham) — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 16:58:00 +0000

One of my favourite conferences is the Economist's talent management summit which I spoke at last year and this blog has been supporting for three years now (see my competition to attend and blog for me at this year's event).

As usual this year there'll be the normal range of great quality sessions. For example, one I'd be keen to see is Data and Smarter Decision-Making: Making Analytics Work for Your Business featuring Marlon Sullivan from Abbott Laboratories and Matthew Jeffery now at SAP. That's partly because Matthew is always such good value but mainly because I think the link to decision making is the common missing link in the big data agenda. Data analysis is only useful if it informs better decision making and I think we often forget this fact.

But I thought I'd post on one of the other sessions which is with Jean Martin from CEB on the New Rules of Engagement. That's partly because it's a topic I've been presenting on myself recently and have been meaning to post on for some time. So I don't know what Jean will say, but for me the new rules (I'd prefer guidelines) are about:

1. Prioritising engagement - understanding that it's important, and will continue to increase in importance, as more and more organisations compete on their culture / organisational capability and which needs to include at least an element of engagement.

2. Investing in engagement - acknowledging that engagement is difficult to achieve as although there are simple things which can be done, they're mostly not simple things to do on a continual basis. And also because not all of these things are simple anyway. Engagement should always be engagement to do certain things (engagement in innovation needs to look different to engagement in speed or efficiency) and understanding, articulating and building an environment around these specific connections generally isn't that easy to do.

These first two 'rules' aren't necessarily that new, but they are certainly now more of a requirement. Whilst engagement was a new and less important concept it was probably enough just to focus on doing the basic management essentials well. That's no longer enough today. We need to understand much more clearly what engagement needs to look like within our own particular organisations, and see developing what's required as a key strategic requirement too.

3. Making engagement more human. We used to be able to ask for peoples' engagement simply to support business needs, or because of our hierarchical position of authority. That doesn't work these days. Instead of this, we need to focus on developing personal relationships as the basis for engagement. People will increasingly engage in supporting us if they want to support us as individuals - not just because they want to achieve certain business needs. This shift is making the belief that managers lie at the centre of engagement ('people join organisations but leave managers') even less true.

4. Accepting challenge is engagement. Another change has been in moving away from wanting everyone to line up behind us. This never worked that well anyway. But increasingly asking for this unthinking compliance just turns people off. Employees may still keep quite and line up, though increasingly they won't (they'll just blog about you instead). What works these days is to present arguments, have conversations and to try and bring people on board. But if people still don't agree then we need to accept this. This challenge and conflict is still engagement (it's the silent cynical compliance which is non engaged). This doesn't stop us having people working to the same plan, but it certainly alters the dynamics involved in getting to this.

By the way, I think a really good example of what I'm writing about here comes through from the government's actions in the NHS post the Mid Staffs debacle and in particular the banning of gagging clauses to silence whistle blowers. Take this quote from Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt:

"There has been a culture where people felt if you speak up about problems in the NHS you didn't love the NHS. Actually it's exactly the opposite.

Criticism is positive you see - but I don't think that's the way we tend to think about engagement now. So I do think these last two 'rules' are new, and it'll be interesting to see whether they come up at the Economist's event. Are there any other 'rules' that you'd add, or do you agree / disagree with mine?

Hopefully we'll get some input here from Jean's presentation at the Talent Management summit too...

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#HCSummit - virtual learning at Avon Products

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Ingham) — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 15:09:00 +0000

I'm virtually attending another of HCI's annual summits. We've had sessions from Dan Pink and Liz Wiseman and leading practitioners such as Colleen McCreary at Zynga.

My favourite session however has been from Andrea Procaccino, Global Director of Learning and Development at Avon Products, focusing on innovative learning delivery, particularly virtual and social communities.

Out of these areas it's been the virtual aspect that I've found most interesting, and I also found rather surreal - since I have been engaged in virtual learning myself.

So we're talking about immersive, 3D learning environments featuring virtual offices or meeting rooms with multiple interactive displays for people using avatars to work, collaborate and learn together. These environments have webcams, VOIP, videoconferencing and text chat features but more importantly the ability to present social cues (Andrea talked about a session she'd been running where someone took a look at their watch to let her know to move on).

The first big player one virtual worlds, Second Life, are still operating in this pace but Avon use and prefer Proton Media's systems. They use these in a range of areas but sales training seemed to be a key one. Andrea talked about a scenario to help sales people listen to what others told them featuring a guy reading a fishing magazine which led onto a conversation about bugs and provided an opportunity to introduce Avon's skin products.

I liked the session because we are no seeing a lot of companies focusing on social, mobile, gamification etc - all of which Andrea talked about too. But there are a lot of other opportunities too.

Andrea mentioned the importance of all these tools for the younger generation which I thought were a bit overblown. But I do support Andrea's points about the challenges involved in getting engagement in these different ways of doing learning / HR. It took them one year to introduce their new approach, but the major challenge and time requirement within this change was getting leaders to understand that it's OK for people to have fun!

Anyway, the HCI virtual learning experience hasn't been quite so as advanced - I've had no avatar for example - but it's still been great to attend the conference without having to hop across the pond.

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Cloud, big data and social media transforming HR

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Ingham) — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 23:31:00 +0000

I only recently came across this interview in Computer Weekly that I provided during HR Tech Europe's Spring Warm-Up. I talk about the need for HR and IT to work more closely together and then go on to say:

"In most UK organisations, the technology used to underpin HR operations is "woefully inadequate" compared to level of IT used in the rest of the business, Ingham said.

“What you have is a huge gap between what organisations are doing and what they could be doing, in one of the areas that is becoming the most important for business,” he said.

Ingham advised HR professionals start learning about the impact that social analytics, cloud and other technical innovations could have in driving the effectiveness of business."

The first paragraph sounds a bit stronger than I really believe but I did mean what I said about the gap. And we do need to get much more closely connected to the developments in HR tech...

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Social Talent Acquisition

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Ingham) — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 08:05:00 +0000

Probably the best example of social talent management exists in recruiting. I think there’s a good few reasons for this, including that:

Recruiting is fairly process oriented, with an extensive adoption of traditional technology use

It is often one of the least well executed areas of HR (see my post on the candidate experience) so has the most potential for improvement

It’s externally oriented and therefore more impacted by the general uptake of social media outside business, which is generally ahead of uptake within organisations

There’s also more opportunity for external stakeholders ie candidates to make more of a fuss than internal ones ie employees when things don’t go well.

In my presentation at the Enterprise 2.0 Summit I referred to Glassdoor and the impact this and other sites having in forcing companies to get their act together here. I know a lot of readers know about this site, the ‘TripAdvisor of recruitment and employment’, but an awful lot of recruiters still don’t.

But I know from my trips to the States that many people are now looking here before they have a look at a company’s career site. And that if they do decide to apply they’ll look in Glassdoor for information on roles, salaries and the employment experience. And that if they get an interview, they’ll look on the site for information about tests and questions etc. I also know that when I search on US based HR people, the top entry which comes up is increasingly an entry about them on Glassdoor (and it’s often not that nice). We will increasingly see the same thing in the UK, Europe and beyond.

A lot of people dismiss all this as just something that’s going to happen and that people with gripes always comment more than people with good feedback. And that’s true, but the ratings are still pretty valid (see Lauri Bassi’s book, Good Company) which is why candidates feel able to rely on them.

Zwi Segal also shared some similar if less comprehensive data on this as part of his presentation, again confirming that there is a link between Glassdoor ratings and company performance.

It’s because of these factors that I think more recruiters than in other areas of HR realise they need to move to a more social approach, combining traditional recruiting technologies with the use of social media. But even in recruiting, a lot of the use of social media isn’t very social. Sure we can use Linkedin and other tools to advertise our jobs. But we also need to change our approaches to be more social, helping us connect and communicate with our candidates in a way that we’ve not had the need or the ability to do before.

There are really just two key needs which I can demonstrate using iCIMS Connect product (I’ll also explore iCIMS’ social jobs distribution tools at a later date).

Firstly, you need an ability for candidates to connect with you without having to apply for a specific job. Doing this also helps avoid the high applicant to hire ratios which do nothing for employer branding or the ability to make sensible recruitment decisions. iCIMS support this through their Social Connect Portal: with as little as one click candidates can share their social media profile to subscribe to recruitment communications and be informed of new positions that meet their interests.

Secondly, you need an ability to connect and easily communicate with your candidates on a regular basis. iCIMS’ email tool allows you to create Talent Pools of candidates by function (e.g., Sales, Engineering, G&A) and to personalise the experience based on hiring needs, available talent and business activity.

So the technology is there, but you do also need a mindset which gives the candidate much more attention and focus than we’ve often applied to them in the past.

This post is sponsored by iCIMS.

iCIMS is the leading provider of talent acquisition software for growing businesses. Through the implementation of easy-to-use, web-based solutions, the iCIMS Talent Platform helps organisations manage everything from sourcing, to recruitment, to induction all within one streamlined application.

Check out a free walk-through of the iCIMS system or make contact at +44 (0) 118 9000 706 or europeansales@icims.com.

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#E20S Social Talent Management

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Ingham) — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 15:11:00 +0000

My own session at the Enterprise 2.0 Summit was on Social Talent Management. Unfortunately attendance wasn’t great so I’m going to post here covering the key points of my presentation.

I was asked to talk about the evolution of talent management and I wanted to start by pushing back against the common tendency, which seems particularly strong in Enterprise 2.0 circles, to present roadmaps and journeys that all organisations are or should be on. I don't believe this is true in general and it's certainly not the case for talent management. There are many different approaches in talent management, and many different directions of travel going on at once as well.

To the extent that there are common trends, the use of social media is certainly one. But I still don't think this means talent management has become particularly social. I took people through Gary Hame's thoughts on management 2.0, which should really apply to the whole of Enterprise 2.0 too, but I think they have, or should have, particular resonance for talent management 2.0 as well.

But there's not much going on in talent management that demonstrates Hamel's principles:

Everyone has a voice
Capability counts for more than credentials and titles
Commitment is voluntary
Power is granted from below
Authority is fluid and contingent on value-added
The only hierarchies are ‘natural’ hierarchies
Communities are self-defining
Individuals are richly empowered with information
Just about everything is decentralised
Ideas compete on an equal footing
It's easy for buyers and sellers to find each other
Resources are free to follow opportunities
Decisions are peer-based.

So the good news is that there are things happening in just about every sub-process of talent management, except for, in the main, reward. We'll be discussing all of these over the next year at the Google Plus Social HR community, so if you're interested in finding out more, join us there too.

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#E20S Management Hackathon

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Ingham) — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 14:02:00 +0000

We've been running a short hackathon process looking at innovating management within a social / enterprise 2.0 business. We were takes to identify principles that would underpin action in the organisation.

Here are some of the outputs:

Organisation #1

Exponential organisation - able to grow quickly
Network organisation
Fractal organisation - hierarchies within hierarchies
Based on diversity supported by flexible working
A bit like a club, enabling everyone to follow their own needs
Always thinking about the customer
Based on social media and big data
Transparent

Organisation #2

Traditional core of the organisation
Fractal and pod ideas from Dave Gray
Enabling both project based and continual operation type work
Enabling people to move around or doing the same thing
Managers acting as sponsors for a project
Processes for rotation between projects
Tenure limits to stay in the core (don't want people to stay as the boss)
Fail forward - encourage people to fail - pay them for their failures
Accountability in the core and the pods
Self regulation

Leadership #1

Different to management (fossilised leadership and management is no longer necessary)
Distributed - everyone is a leader
Empowered to decide and act
Listening
Emerging, recognised as a leader for their charisma, not appointed
A feeling, a way to do things
Introverts as well as extroverts
Able to handle fear, supporting failure
Being inclusive, comfortable with difference, leveraging diversity
Developing and using collective intelligence
Alternative = authentic, honest and transparent
Chasing their own passions
Embracing change so fluid and transient
Remaining open question on whether we still need leaders or even a CEO

Leadership #2

The why of the organisation (management is the how - empowering and developing people)
Walking the talk in order to be credible
Driving soft and social skills
Supporting complexity
Being able to be challenged against an environment of constant change
Experimenting on the edge.

There were also two groups using lego.

Lego 1:

People with good networks
Open flexible structure - based on creativity
A clear vision of where we want to go
Open, agile minds looking into the future
Bringing the whole organisation together
People on top

Lego 2 with an image of an airport:

Users in a plane trying to take off
Empowered by ingredients, enablers and values of respect
And some leaders
The wind of serendipity
Growing motivated people
A bridge to bring people together
An airport tower with complete view of the whole organisation

I wouldn't support all of these points but we did better than I thought we would. But I thought we could have done with more structure, some pre-formed relationships, and clarity in what we were trying to develop (I still don't think we're all sure / agree what social / 2.0 is - see the above point on 'users'!).

I really liked the team presentations that demonstrated some of these points, e.g. the teams that gave themselves a name, supporting these relationships (the age experimenters, and the change eggperts as they had trouble deciding between the chicken and the egg). And the teams that worked in the the style of the organisation e.g. demonstrating distributed leadership with full team presenting together.

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#E20S Jon Husband on the future of work

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Ingham) — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 09:08:00 +0000

We're onto day 2 of the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Paris. I've already done my session on social talent management and today we're starting off with a slot on the HR perspective on E2.0.

The key speaker here is Jon Husband of wirearchy fame who I met for the first time yesterday.

Jon doesn't think organisations will become democratic - they exist to get things done. But they would do well to adopt some democratic principles, which makes them more difficult to control.

So we need Social Business 2.0? This about going deeper. Most of what we;re trying to do is to reach customers better, not engage our people or respond to the changes in the world of work by focusing more on purpose and capability leading to resilience.

This is supported by effective leadership which is made clearer through an effective structure - hierarchy plus network. We also need to be able to manage paradoxes - centralisation and decentralisation etc.

The good news is that there are things happening. Jon disagrees with Gary Hamel that there's been no innovation in management. There has, but it's been in areas like learning and development, organisation development etc helping people become the owners of work.

Eg participative work design - elbow room for decision making etc.

So, wow. A lot of content - too much for me to capture, but check out Emanuele Quintarelli's Social Enterprise blog.

I can't say I agree with all of it - I think organisations will become more democratic, not just look more democratic, e.g. see WorldBlu. But I agree with most - particularly the need to change the language - a point I often make to HR (our desire to talk the language of business i.e. finance is at odds with the shift in the language of business to become more people shaped - there's a big risk of these two ships missing each other in the night).

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#HRTechEurope: Caitlin Hogan on Google People Analytics

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Ingham) — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 12:44:00 +0000

Draft - but I want to get this up before Martin Couzins!

Google People Operations (HR) team - same rigour to what we do in HR to what we use in any other area of the company.

What we do in HR Operations e.g. satisfaction on food, fitness and perks

Use analytics to attract engage retain and improve the experience of Googlers

Googlegiest top of mind go oglers today

Make people data accessible and useful - managers with more than 3 respondents get a personal report - Googlers can see these results for their location and function.

Are a laboratory for innovative people research e.g. on social networks to improve co-operation throughout the company.

Reseachers

HR experts for context

Data analysts statistical techniques and methods

All huge data geeks

Find most important and interesting questions, test with data and take action on results

Finding, growing and keeping Googlers

Finding - use data to hire the best people - high performers excited by their work, comfortable with ambiguity and have a cultural fit

Hiring committees vs individual hiring managers, may talk up to five Googlers (based on analytics pointing towards optimum number of interviews)

Over 2m applications per year.

Mine resumes for teams that show hiring potential through automatic text analysis

Scored a second set of resumes

Good link quality and numbers hired.

Ran algorithm against resumes available on the internet - particularly to increase diversity

Also internal candidates - found rejected candidates

Grow them

Project Oxygen

400 variables

Had completely got rid of managers in some parts of the company - didn't work that well

Remaining stigma that managers don't matter

Performance and how managers are perceived from the Googlegeist survey

Most go oglers happy with their managers

Regression analysis - higher scores lower turnover, happier and higher performing teams

Qualitative data understand Googlers themselves

Googlegeist

Perofrmnace reviews

Double blind interviews (neither m or e know whether manager was high performing)

From a position said let's get rid of managers started recognising them.

Great Manager Awards

8 points (Oygen has atomic number 8)

Engaging in Working Time Change

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Ingham) — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 16:07:00 +0000

Today I’m at the second day of Working-Time Solutions’ annual forum where I’lll be presenting on employee engagement. But first, we’ve got another keynote from John Jeffrey, Head of Waste Management and Street Scene at Cheshire West and Chester Council.

The project John described followed on from a Labour led £50m efficiency programme and has been in response to the then new coalition government’ austerity drive requiring a further 30% budget cut over three years, and a more recent £26m cut over the next three years. Gulp. As John suggested, in this environment incremental methodologies salami slicing 3% of the budget are no longer enough, Instead what was required was a fundamental rethink to maintain a high quality service and current levels of employment as well as to achieve financial savings required.

John’s a fan of Deming and particularly likes this quote: “85% of the reasons for failure to meet customer expectations are related to deficiencies in systems and processes, rather that the employee. The role of management is to change the process rather than badgering individuals to do better.”

The key to this, and any working time change, is to start by understanding the demand eg what’s the balance between planned and reactive service? This was done largely through focus groups with employees. John had thought he already had integrated, mobile teams made up of multi-skilled employees but it became clear that he hadn’t. The challenge was therefore about matching resources to the demand and work to meet the challenge has included:

Optimising routes and productivity - removing over sweeping etc - allowing them to improve services, better allocate resources and save costs, eg they’ve been able to take out one of the six expensive sweeping machines they were using.

Removing reliance on agencies, overtime and unpaid goodwill to deliver services

Introducing new shift patterns. For example, mobile teams had been working till 4.30 every day but couldn’t actually continue working in the dark, so now their winter schedule allows them to finish at 3.00.

Removing voluntary overtime (street operatives are paid £15 to 18k but could make £31k through voluntary overtime).

This has also included rostering in holiday entitlement (which was a big issue for staff used to complete flexibility in scheduling their holidays but was also a show stopper for John. Always wanting to remove flexibility, his compromise was leaving flexibility for 10 out of employees’ 30 or 25 days holidays.

Changes in employees’ terms and conditions. These dated back to the 1960s with the most recent review in 1974. Peoples’ personal schedules is now part of their contract of employment. And these also include the martini clause (‘anytime, any place, anywhere’). “The lads don’t like it, in fact they absolutely hate it” but it is now becoming an accepted part of the job.

The changes have also required a big mindset change to get people to understand the benefits of this new approach. That’s not been easy.

John worked with the Council’s HR Director to try to increase engagement. The changes were supported by extensive briefings, functional working parties, individual area meetings, whole organisation events, service work groups, formal union negotiation meetings.

But it sounds like it was a very difficult process and John wasn’t successful in getting the changes agreed through negotiation. Instead they had to fall back on Plan B, the ultimate sanction: dismissal and re-engagement. This applied to the Council’s full 7000 employees as part of a wider requirement for efficiency and harmonisation of terms and conditions, though it’s only John’s 220 people to be working the martini clause in practice.

So there has been industrial unrest including strike action before Christmas. And there have been in industrial tribunals: one case brought by someone who had said too much in the canteen and needed to leave to keep face - which was lost; and one wider tribunal claim about the process used for the full 7300 employees, which continues.

John also hasn’t been made very welcome in the depots. More worryingly still, the GMB campaigned against both the changes and John personally - including writing open letters suggesting that John has become mentally ill (he stopped paying his £38/month union fees at this point).

Absence has also increased slightly from 4.45 to 4.54 days per FTE

But overall the project’s been a success. Eg the national performance assessments (Ni195 ) conducted by the Tidy Britain group have substantially improved.

John also believes the changes have created a healthier working culture and environment.

And yes, it’s delivered £500,000 in savings.

But the approach has not yet being taken up in many other Councils

The obvious question is why not? I’m not a fan of the government’s over emphasis on austerity, but I guess organisations do sometimes need this type of radical challenge to make them do things which should really have been done decades previously! Working time change has clearly worked here and it will work elsewhere too. And it’s far preferable to just about any of the other alternatives I can think of.

I will say that I’m not keen on the martini clause - as I think this shifts the balance of power too far to the employer - or the way it was introduced - as this will have a profound, long-term impact on engagement, but it does sound as if the requirement for this approach was created by the union. It’s sad to hear that unions still haven’t shifted as much as you’d expect and sometimes read or hear about.

In my session I talked about the need to engage employees in working time changes, and how working time change can create engagement - eg by focusing on the needs of the employee, as well as the business. But I also emphasised the need to create a positive culture of engagement before embarking on this sort of change. Given that the age of austerity is going to continue for the forseeable future, and also in light of most organisations’ low levels of engagement, we’ve left doing this a bit late. But there’s still no better time than now to begin.

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Technorati Tags: Working time, flexibility, shifts, schedules, engagement, solutions

Economist's Change Ambassadors

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Ingham) — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 22:57:00 +0000

I love the variety of things I seem somehow to get involved in these days.

One interesting programme I'm supporting this year is the Economist's new Change Ambassadors awards - open to individuals who have driven change in their organisations, rather than the usual thing or recognising the organisations these people work within:

"Sometimes employees just don't get the recognition they deserve. We can change that.

Change Ambassadors is about recognising those employees who, often behind the scenes, have helped execute successful change- big or small.

The competition is for organisations, divisions or departments of all sizes.

If you or a colleague have implemented change that has produced tangible business outcomes, then you qualify.

Why Enter?

Get national recognition for you and your company
Win an executive seminar at one of the UK's top business schools
Enhance your industry profile
Have your achievements viewed by our well-respected judges
Ensure your hard work over the past two years is celebrated at the Awards Ceremony on Thursday May 16th 2013

The hard work has already been done. It's easy to enter. Make sure you get the recognition you deserve."

Neat idea huh?

I'm going to be a judge for the people & culture category of the awards - recognising the successful execution of change initiative within a company’s workforce or culture (e.g. a person who successfully implemented a health and wellbeing programme; person who made the company more attractive to universities and graduates etc).

If you're interested in applying, you can do so here.

By the way, in case you've been confused by the picture - I do get involved in an interesting activities, but I'm not, of course, Unilever's CHRO! - I'm sure the Economist will have that changed soon!

Also, don't forget about my current competition for tickets to attend (and blog at) the Economist's Talent Management Summit this Sumer!

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Technorati Tags: awards, Economist, Change Ambassadors, judging

TENEO Recruitment in Engineering and Technology

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Ingham) — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 21:18:00 +0000

Another conference I'm looking forward to this Summer is Teneo's Recruitment in Engineering and Technology conference in Frankfurt on 12th and 13th June. We know how in demand technical staff such as engineers, IT technicians and telecommunications specialists so it's a great opportunity to apply some new practices within recruitment to these key verticals.

I'm co-chairing this conference together with Kate Bellingham from Tomorrow's World.

Speakers include:

EADS – Germany - Head of EADS Recruitment Center
Siemens – Germany - Head of Global University Relations
AGFA -- Belgium – Group VP of HR
British Airways - UK - Head of Resourcing
British Airways - UK – Lead Resourcing Manager
CERN – Switzerland - Recruitment & Sourcing Specialist
Belgacom – Belgium – Head of Recruitment
EDF Energy – UK – Head of Resourcing
Caterpillar – UK – Head of Recruitment
Intel – Germany - TES Marketing & Channels EMEA & Talent Advisor
Cisco – Denmark - Senior Manager, Global Staffing, at Cisco
Atkins global – UK – Director of Resourcing

More details at http://www.teneoevents.eu/future-events/recruitment-in-engineering-technology.html and it'd be great to see you there.

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The Talent Management Summit 2013 - Opportunity to Win!

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Ingham) — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 11:31:00 +0000

OK, time to share a key event later in the year with you.

You may remember that I've acted as social media partner for the Economist's Talent Management Summit for the last two years. Well, this year I am, or at least my blog is, going to be supporting it again.

The Summit is in London on May 21st. Now unfortunately I'm going to be in Asia for most of the Summer and am going to miss this event. This means I need you!

I need two senior, internal HR practitioners to attend the event - free - and blog for me! That's at least one post each and preferably two, or more. It's a great event, so that shouldn't be difficult. Check out these posts I've made in previous years to get an idea of the level of content!:

2012:

#ECTalent – Net Gen Leadership (this was the one I participated in)

#ECTalent - Strategic Workforce Plannning

#ECTalent next gen leadership styles

#ECTalent - Repositoning HR

#ECTalent - Doug Baillie, Unilever on talent and talent and the business

2011:

#ECTalent - Recognising Individuals: GE vs. Aviva

#ECTalent: Leadership Behaviours for the Future

#ECTalent: Future Proofing the Business (Strategic Workforce Planning

#ECTalent: Setting a Talent Agenda

Social leadership at Cisco

Social leadership at GE

Social Business at the Economist’s Talent Management Summit

Sessions this year include:

TALENT - A 360° PERSPECTIVE

Leading tomorrow’s global talent business - Gina Qiao, Senior Vice-president, Human Resources, Lenovo

TALENT AND THE BIGGER PICTURE

The war for talent - Deborah Baker, Director for People, Sky; Dean Royles, Director, NHS Employers

BIG DATA - THE BEDROCK FOR DECISION-MAKING?

Making analytics work for your business

The future of work, and how we’ll see it differently - Naomi Stanford, Organisational Design Director, NBBJ

Building tomorrow's winning team - Arjen Vermazen, Senior Vice-president, HR and Procurement, Astellas Pharma Europe; James Watts, Vice-president of HR and Chief People Officer, KFC UK and Ireland

COMPETING IN THE KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY - and why agility will matter - Eleanor Tabi Haller-Jorden, Senior Vice-president, Global Learning Strategies, Catalyst Europe

Tickets generally cost £1,314 - so you'll also be getting a great deal.

This year's summit focuses on creating a mobile, agile workforce, and if you want to attend the event, I need some suggestions on doing this from you!

How do you think we should be creating a mobile, agile workforce, or how are you attempting to do this in your own organisation?

Email me a couple of paragraphs (or if you wish, something else, e.g. a video), and I'll publish your inputs at the end of March. I will then, together with anyone who wants to add their comments to this post, select a winner who will then get to attend the summit, and blog again from there. Clear?

I'll do the same thing again for a second ticket during April.

For more details, check out http://www.economistconferences.co.uk/event/talent-management-summit-2013/7232.

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Technorati Tags: mobile, Summit, Economist, Talent Management, agile, tickets, competition