Tag Archives: HR Blogs

Detox if you want to

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My timeline tells me that there is an increasing interest in the so-called ‘digital detox’.

I don’t get it.

As well as working in HR, I am also a qualified personal trainer.  In that world, we often see reference to detoxing.  In the physical context, detoxing as it is often portrayed, is unnecessary.  A cynic might even say it is a manufactured concept designed to sell products.  And there are a lot of products.

Generally speaking, our bodies do not any need help to ‘detox’.  They are fully capable of managing the process for themselves.  It is the function of the liver.

That is not to say you can’t help it along with way with a healthy diet and drinking habits.

Detoxing in the fitness and diet space is usually about the denial of something that we perceive to be bad for us.  Giving up alcohol or a particular food stuff.  Cleansing our bodies and diets on the assumption that this will improve our health.  When it comes to the plethora of supporting products, there is little evidence, beyond the anecdotal, that they actually do.

Detoxing is always popular after Christmas.  After a period of indulgence, we try to undo the excesses of the season with a quick fix, as the ‘new year, new you’ marketing juggernaut swings into action.

When it comes to health, what we really need more than a detox is consistent good habits and balance.  Something that applies to the digital world too.

I saw an article recently advocating a detox retreat.  A holiday without access to technology.  No wifi, no devices.

But for most of us, giving up technology means turning off our lives – as well as the benefits it brings us.  Over an average couple of days, I will use technology to do my banking, shop for groceries, listen to music, catch up with the news, watch tv and chat to my friends.

There is nothing wrong with this, for me.  Just like with diet and health, it is all about common sense and where necessary, moderation.  It doesn’t need to be about turning everything off or giving something up entirely, but finding balance in all things – for the long term.

In the same way that you do not need to buy detox socks to draw impurities from your body through your feet (yes really) you don’t need to pay for a retreat or rush to extremes.

Just look at your habits.  Reflect.  For health, or for technology.  If they are not helping you, make some small changes for the better.  This is what makes those changes sustainable.  Most diets and health regimes fail, often because the change is too much, too soon, or doesn’t work with our everyday lives over the long term.  Turning off the tech for a while may help with us to reflect on our habits, but it also isn’t sustainable in our world today.

And if being constantly connected works for you, then don’t feel under pressure to change.  Do what works for you, in all things.

The most important right of all?

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Employment rights have been much in the news of late. The Taylor Report into good work makes a number of recommendations.  I won’t cover them here as finer minds than mine have already done so.

When the law changes for any reason, people like me have to make the necessary changes to HR policies.

But as I have said many times before, when we have to revert to employment law, when we have to find a company policy on the intranet to determine what to do in any particular set of circumstances, sometimes we are half way to losing something important.

Losing our ability to see someone as the individual that they are.

The opportunity to consider the unique context.

The need for common sense, always.

Even the entire argument.

When we defer our decisions to documents, we run the risk of losing our ability to be compassionate, to apply a little tolerance, to treat people as humans and not resources.

The one right we should all have at work, is to be our imperfect human self.

And a simple, human conversation, is our most significant opportunity to change any work situation for the better.

How does this make people feel?

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On the wall in my last office there was a whiteboard.

On it, our projects and priorities.

To the side, questions.  Reminders, challenges to self.

Question number one: How does this make people feel?

‘This’ could be anything.  The new policy in draft.  The project in planning.  The development programme.  The status update on our internal social network.  The letter to an employee.  The new shiny thing.

This people stuff that we do.  Recruitment, reward, learning and development, induction, performance management.  It cannot be separated from how people feel.

When we talk about engagement and motivation and meaning and performance, scratch the surface, see through the theory, and what is underneath is simply feelings.

Maya Angelou is often quoted on this subject.  She said that we forget what people do and what they say but they never forget how we make them feel.

Apply this to people stuff.  Your employees won’t remember much of their induction.  They won’t retain all that much of the PowerPoint from the training course.  They certainly won’t be likely to quote text from your employment policy or handbook.

We have built theory around simplicity…. in concept at least.

Because feelings are messy.  Changeable. Inconsistent.

Something that can’t be turned into a percentage on an engagement survey.  Cannot be represented in a project plan.   But as people practitioners, something that should be at the forefront of what we do all the same.  Even the difficult stuff, the not so nice part of the job, can be done with empathy and decency and with thought to the way people feel.

There has been an increasing call of late for work to become more human.  The starting point for me is to keep the question in mind and in sight…… how does this make people feel?

Eight Hours

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The Zero Hours Contract debate rumbles on.

Are these contracts about flexibility and choice, or are they a race to the bottom? Are they about coffee shops and MacBooks, or exploitative and a symbol of a two-tier workforce?  Are they the dark side of the gig economy?

You can find arguments and opinion to support both frames of reference.

The answer is that they are probably both, depending on your personal circumstances and experiences.  For some, they equal freedom and flexibility.  For others, the best that they can get.

But Zero Hours Contracts are only part of the story.  The rest of the narrative is about low paid, low hours work – whatever the contractual status.

Now anyone who has every used a job alert service via a job board will know that their algorithms are…. interesting.  As a result of a request to receive notifications for new HR roles, I’ve recently been sent information on roles for financial accountants, software developers and chefs.  Some of which were in France.  Someone in my timeline recently commented that the criteria for receiving a notification from some job boards amounted to nothing more than ‘do you have an email address and are you alive?’

One such recent notification caught my eye….for all the wrong reasons.

It was for a leading retailer.  Paying the national minimum wage.  For eight hours each week.

Now you might think that there is nothing wrong with an eight hour per week contract.  It’s better than a Zero Hours one perhaps.  There are plenty of people who might value eight hours of paid employment.  A student looking to work whilst studying.  Someone seeking a second job to top up their income.  The only problem that I could see was exactly when the eight hours were taking place.  Because it could be anytime at all.  The shop was open 12 hours each day, seven days per week.  And the role required total flexibility – actual shifts notified on a weekly basis.  Applying for, and accepting, a position meant agreeing to working those hours whenever.

What would this mean in practice for the successful applicant?  Less than £60 per week, before deductions.  A limited ability to secure other work around that contact. An inability to plan, arrange childcare, make any advance arrangements.  Waiting on a whim.

This isn’t flexibility and choice.  This is barely a weekly food shop for most families.

There are no good reasons that I can think of that a major retailer could not, with some planning and foresight, make this a fixed set of hours or days, or at least offer reasonable parameters or some certainly.  It smacks of lazy management.  There is something just a little arrogant about it too.

I can’t think what it would be like to be employed in this way.  Wondering if there will be any overtime this week.  Wondering if this is the week that your boss will give you a shift that you just can’t get childcare for.  When exactly your hours will fall, if there is any other way to increase your income.

While we debate concepts like meaningful work, workplace democracy, employee engagement and all of that people stuff, let us also look in our own back yards.

Do the jobs, and their design, where you work, allow your employees the basic dignity of both living and working? Or does the way that the work is organised cause stress and uncertainty for the people that undertake it?   Do those jobs and their design enable both parties…. or just the organisation?

When we have a resourcing requirement, when we start drafting that job description and advert, we need to think not only about the needs of the organisation, but the needs of the individual who will be doing the work.

Contracts have many implied terms, amongst all the express ones.  Maybe it is about time that humanity become one of them.

 

 

 

Dress like yourself

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Thanks to the priorities of the leader of the Free World, dress codes are big news today.  According to reports there is a new dress code in force in the White House.  Men are supposed to be smart – that means ties.  Women are supposed to, well, dress like a woman.

I am guessing that means heels, dresses and the like.  I’m not sure why that’s essential for their jobs.  Maybe it’s to ensure that parts of them are easier to grab.

Dress codes have been news in the UK recently too, following a case where a female was sent home from work for refusing to wear high heels, as specified in her employer’s dress policy.

Dress codes bother me.

I get that if you are in a customer-facing role, where uniform and image are important, then you will want to issue some guidance.  But almost everyone has one.  Most companies have such a document, even for employees where it doesn’t matter a jot what they wear.

At my last company, I deleted our policy without telling anybody to see if anyone noticed.  They didn’t.  I suspect someone will, the next time an employee turns up for the 9-5 wearing someone else’s definition of non-acceptable clothing and rather than have a conversation with them adult to adult, they will want to wave a piece of paper instead.

I dislike dress codes for lots of reasons.

I dislike the very idea that you need to tell someone old enough to hold down a job and pay taxes what they can and cannot put on when they get out of bed in the morning.

Maybe I just dislike them because I am not very good at following them.  I don’t really get on very well with formal clothing.  I find suits and the like stifling.  I’m at my best self when I am pacing around, walking outside, sitting on my sofa and talking out loud.  None of these things work all that well with a pair of heels, or other “womanly” clothing.

But the thing I dislike most of all about dress codes is that they have, in most jobs, absolutely nothing at all to do with how someone performs at work.

Don’t judge people on what they wear, judge them on what they do. This is what we should care about – not the height of someones heels.

Competency interviewing. Just say no.

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Competency based interviewing.  Apparently, it is still a thing.  Who knew?

I do, because this week I had a competency based interview.  I was a bit surprised to be honest.  It had been a while since I’d been through that sort of recruitment process.

It was…… interesting.

Let me add some relevant context.

The role was an interim, employee relations role.  There was a need for deep understanding of employment law.  Lots of experience with leading  people change projects.  Even more experience of working in heavily unionised environments.

They didn’t ask me all that much about that stuff.

What that did ask me was this:

‘Can you tell me about a time that you have worked collaboratively as part of a team?’

I resisted the urge to reply simply: ‘all day, every day’.

It was followed by:

‘Can you give me an example of when you have prioritised your workload?’

For answer, please see above.

Here’s the thing.

I have worked collaboratively as part of a team.  I have a handy example.  I would think most people do.  But past experience doesn’t predict future performance.  With me or anyone else.  My ability to collaborate in the example shared might have been down to a whole range of related factors.  It might have been because I worked in a highly collaborative environment or a great team and the conditions were therefore predisposed to collaboration.  It might have been because I was engaged with my employer or the task in hand.  Equally, I might just be a quick thinker who can make a relevant example up off the top of their head.

There is no guarantee, even with the shiniest answer in the world that scores the most points on a grid, that I am going to be able to replicate what I did before in another organisation or under a different set of circumstances.

Competency based questions like these assess people in the past, not the now or the future.  They tell you nothing about someone’s potential to do a good job other than their ability to find a good example in the moment.

They certainly don’t tell you whether someone could do the job in question, any more than the trend towards questions like ‘if you were a kitchen appliance which one would you be?’ does.*

I’ll take strengths based interviewing over a competency approach any day.  Strengths based interviews allow you to get to know the person in front of you.  What gets them motivated.  What they like doing.  Dislike too.  Assess potential.  You are also much less likely to get some sort of pre-prepared, scripted, generic reply.  They allow candidates to bring their real self, not their example one.

Competency based interviews have had their time.

Let’s start recruiting like its 2017.

 

PS: I am hoping to hold a Candidate Experience Unconference later this year, to explore how we can work towards better recruitment. If you are interested in coming along, comment below.

*PPS – my answer to the above is easy…. The fridge. Because we are both usually full of chocolate and Prosecco.

The #SocialLeaders Series – Tom Riordan

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tom-r

The time for social leadership is now.  To engage with customers and employees alike, to create a personal brand, to lead authentically and openly. To share and collaborate in a different way. To role model the digital skills that all organisations need now and tomorrow. We need social leaders.  But they are still few and far between.

This is the first in a series of conversations with leaders who already get this stuff.  Who are effectively using social media as part of their leadership role to engage and connect with employees, customers and service users.  We have asked a range of leaders from different industry sectors exactly why they use social media and how do they feel it benefits them in their role – as well as to share their advice to anyone who thinks they should be getting a little more social.

First up is Tom Riordan.  Tom is CEO of Leeds City Council, and an active Tweeter – he has even got himself a coveted blue tick.  He uses Twitter to share news about the Council, its work and its people.  He engages with followers and isn’t afraid to bring his whole self to Twitter, including pictures of his family, and a bio that tells you about him as a person, not just a CEO.

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This is what Tom had to say about leading socially….

What is your social media platform of choice and why?

Twitter is my platform of choice. I was quite an early adopter because I like its mix of brevity, openness, wide reach, content and security (i.e. unacceptable behaviour can be blocked).

How do you believe that your use of social media has benefited you in your leadership role?

It’s allowed me a direct communication route to the outside world from a big organisation and to “walk the talk” of one of our main values of openness and honesty. I’ve tried to give more of a human face to a CEO role often seen as distant and protected, and to champion Leeds, public services and local government.

How engaged do you find the rest of your organisation with social media? 

Increasingly. Social media has become much more central to people’s lives over the last five years, and in that time the organisation has engaged with it more and more.  There are some great role models within the council, such as Phil Jewitt an excellent social media user who recently won a lifetime achievement unconference award. Many of our councillors now use social media widely now, which also helps.

What, if any, downsides do you see to being a leader on social media – and what do you do to avoid them?

99 percent of people are great to engage with on social media.  You have to take care at times not to be provoked by the 1 percent who, often anonymously, just want to cause trouble.  Never tweet when you’re angry is not a bad rule of thumb.

How have you used social media to connect with customers/service users/key stakeholders?

I’ve used it to get more direct messages out to a wider audience about what the council does, especially those front-line workers who make the city tick. Twitter has allowed me to contact a wide range of innovators both in the city and across the world and led directly to inward investment, new approaches on open data and great new ideas from people within and outside Leeds. I also get a pretty good idea of what people think about the council and the city!

What advice would you give to other leaders who want to use social media?

Don’t see it as a panacea but do treat it as a vital communication and engagement mechanism. Only do what you’re comfortable with and what suits your own personal style. Make sure your priority is enhancing the city or organisation, not your personal image or standing, because you’re almost bound to trip up if you think it’s all about you.

We’d like to send a big thanks to Tom for his insight.  If you are a leader who wants to use social media for their role then check out his Twitter feed for a great example on how to do this social stuff well.  And if you want to know more about social leadership – both the why and the how – then we’ve just released our latest book on Putting Social Media to Work – a version dedicated to just that subject.

Next time on the #SocialLeaders series…. Peter Cheese, CEO of the CIPD shares his thoughts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Recruitment & social media – how far is too far?

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I got into a Twitter chat recently about social media and recruitment.  Specifically, whether or not it is okay to check out people’s social media feeds during the recruitment process.

Now I’ve seen some fairly risk-averse advice on the subject that cautions you on the risk of (among other things) discrimination claims.

My view on it is simple.

It depends where you go.

On my CV, I am open about much of my social media.  There are links to my Twitter bio (hoping that prospective employers or clients will overlook my frequent Prosecco references), my LinkedIn profile and my blog.  When it comes to applying for jobs, my blog is going to give anyone reading it a sense of who I am and what I believe about my work more than a 2-page CV ever will. What isn’t on there is a link to either my Instagram or Facebook profiles.  The reason for that is that they aren’t about work.  They are for family and friends, or at the very least people I know, sometimes through other social networks.  My regular selfies of me and my significant other (#sorrynotsorry) are not for strangers… or employers.

Those sites that are professional should expect to be reviewed.  When I have been hiring, it is the first place I go and I would expect anyone thinking of hiring me to do the same.  If someone wants to scroll through my unlocked Twitter feed, fill your boots.  You will find a few mentions of One Direction too.  But the other stuff… not so much.

In our social world, platforms are ever-evolving.  There are no rules, apart from your own, about what is public and what is private.  There are fewer expectations of privacy than those of previous generations.  Even if you opt not to use social media, or are even too young to do so, you can still very much have a digital footprint.

So to job seekers I say this… expect to be looked for and at.  Google searched.  If you want stuff to be private, set it that way.

And to employers… if you are going to search people’s social media feeds then say so up front.  Put it on the ATS or the job advert.  Better still, openly ask people to send you their online stuff.  Allow links on your system.  Actively encourage it.  Go to the professional networking sites and read what you need to. But you don’t need to, and should not, trawl through what is clearly something else.  Personal photos.  Shares from many years ago.  Student day stuff.  What someone intends to be personal, platform aside, is probably obvious.

You wouldn’t follow someone down the pub and listen to their conversation before deciding to give them a job.  So leave their social social media alone.

 

What a candidate wants

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It’s that time of year again, when organisations and people start to think about recruitment and job hunting.  A few years ago, after securing my last permanent position, I wrote about the candidate experience.  About how often, it leaves much to be desired.

On returning to the job market a few years on….  nothing much has changed.  More companies are doing good social stuff.  You can get an insight, to some extent, into an organisation’s culture through sites like Glassdoor, but that’s about all that is new.   Much of the bad stuff I experienced still seems to be hard wired into the system.

Applications that take hours to complete, pointlessly requiring you to type in information that is already available on a CV.  Systems that are supposed to upload the information from your CV into their database but which never work properly.  Poor communication.  Lack of any sort of real feedback.  Clunky Applicant Tracking Systems.  Entirely automated processes lacking any sort of human touch.

If you haven’t heard from us in 14 days……..

A black hole of applications and expectations.

The candidate experience is an opportunity.  It is your employer brand.  It is your opportunity to engage with someone who may come and work for you….  or certainly talk about you.  A consumer of your products or services perhaps.   It is the start of that thing we call the employment life cycle.  So why do so many get it so wrong?

Perhaps, in 2017, we could do better.  So here is what I think the candidate really wants.

2017-01-03-07-45-28

Candidates don’t want to have to create an account for your ATS.  Most likely, they want to apply for one job and only one job.

If you have a system candidates want it to be easy to use.

Candidates would like the ability to engage with the recruiter.  Just for question or two. A live chat, an email address or even a Twitter handle.

Candidates would really like their time not to be wasted by advertising jobs that don’t really exist, or haven’t yet been fully thought through.

Candidates very much want an email (or something) to tell us that they aren’t being considered.  An email at the start of the process saying that they will hear in so many days if they have been successful simply isn’t good enough.  If people take the time to fill out what are often lengthy applications, the very least a company do is automate another “thank you but no thank you” email.  It’s just one more button to press after all.

Candidates don’t want to have to give you loads of personal information at the first stage.  Of late, I have been asked for my National Insurance number, sexual orientation and marital status as part of an initial application. There did not appear to be a ‘actually that is none of your business’ option on the drop down menu.

A question I have always asked recruiters is this: when did you last apply for a job at your place?  When did you last go onto your careers site or ATS from the outside, and experience it as a candidate does.  When did you last review your careers site to see if it is interesting, useful or easy to navigate?

If the answer is either ‘never’ or ‘not lately’ then just go do it. Challenge every part of the process.  Is it necessary? How will it make people feel?  Is it adding value – and to whom?  Is it more about the candidate, or you?  Too many recruitment processes are designed with the recruiter and the organisation in mind – not the candidate.  In my last HRD role, we launched a new recruitment system.  Applying for jobs with candidate eyes was how we refined it; how we made it work for both us and the people who were interested in working with us.

Applying for jobs doesn’t need to be a dispiriting experience.

What candidates want is really quite simple.  A straight forward, user friendly application process.  A little bit of timely communication.  The opportunity for some personal interaction.  Just because you can automate every single bit of the process doesn’t mean you should (nod to David D’Souza). Finally, some useful feedback.

That’s all folks.

 

Why no one cares about your internal social network

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I love a bit of social media.  No surprise there then to any regular reader of my blog.

Only when it comes to internal social media networks, Yammer and the like, many of them end up being underused.  Unfulfilled potential.

Sometimes this is acknowledged.  Sometimes not.  See this great slide share from Paul Taylor detailing the signs that you are not a social business.

Like with any people stuff, there are some great examples of organisations that have made their internal social networks really deliver.  But many places are not even close.

Why? There are lots of reasons.  And many of them aren’t specific to social networks either.

Sometimes it is about employee’s engagement with the broader organisation. Or lack thereof.

Sometimes it is about a lack of digital and social skills generally.

Sometimes it is about having the time to engage in anything other than the immediate task at hand.

When it comes to the social network itself…..

Sometimes it is about employees not having a clue what the heck it is for or what they are supposed to do with it.

Sometimes it is about practically not knowing how to use a social network.

Sometimes it is about the network being seen to be Somebody Else’s Problem.  HR or Internal Comms being top of the list of suspects.

Sometimes it is about line managers not letting people use them because they think it’s not proper work. Whatever that is.

Sometimes it is that the organisation hasn’t launched it properly, given people a reason to go there, given it a focus or purpose – or perhaps even more importantly, it hasn’t given people the right sort of permission.

It isn’t unusual in my experience to find that social networks have a small cohort of regular users, sharers and commentators.  And then the rest of the organisation is either all so-what or oblivious to its existence.

Get it right, and social media networks can be game changing.  They can open your organisation right up, getting over the age-old complaints about communication and silo working and not knowing what is going on around here and never seeing any of the leaders. It can be a real driver of change.  Of transparency.  Of innovation.

But otherwise, it is just something else on the to-do list, something else for people to complain about, something else that there has to be a policy for.

Employees won’t care about your internal social media network unless you give them a reason to care. And even then, they still might not.  Of course, a social media network does not stand alone within an organisation, it is part of the system.  Often, what occurs (or doesn’t) on an internal social network is representative of what takes place within that wider system.  So going back to that earlier point; if employees aren’t willing to engage on your internal social media platform, if they aren’t willing to share, to communicate, to collaborate, recognise and discuss…. just what does that say about your organisation, its leadership and its culture?

yammer-user

Post-Human?

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We live in a post-truth world apparently.

I can’t help wondering if, based on the news that appears in my Twitter timeline at least, we are entering a post-human world of work.

I’m not talking about all the automation, robots, AI stuff.  This isn’t about suggesting work doesn’t need people.  But instead that many of our organisations have become places in which we have lost sight of the human element of work.

Amazon are the latest in a long line of companies being heavily criticised about working conditions in their distribution centres.  Not for the first time either.  Sports Direct had all of the headlines previously.  The accusations are familiar.  Poor treatment of agency workers. Harsh sanctions. Lack of job security. Fear. Oppressive management.

Scientific management, just with added tech for the digital age, rules still.

Despite everything we know about what motivates and engages people and what does not.

Despite the impact that we must know these working conditions have on the people that operate within them.

This isn’t about criticising one particular company.  I don’t have any information beyond the headlines.

But this is about suggesting, again, that we can do better.

As I have quoted in a previous blog post, in the machine age, only the human organisation will survive.

We can merge technology, targets and good people stuff.  We can create human centred workplaces, that ask, not only how will this improve the bottom line but also how will this make people feel?

It is possible.

Or maybe we’d just prefer to have a new sandwich toaster delivered within an hour. 

 

Human Up

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Automation.  Robots. Artificial intelligence.  Digital and social.

The future of work is [fill in the blanks].

We can’t accurately predict the future.  But we do know that it will involve all of this technology stuff.  More and more.  Faster and faster.

A few years ago talk of cognitive assistants meant asking Siri what the weather was going to be like.  Now we are seeing them in use in our own homes.

Last night I was at an event at Liverpool John Moores University, where we were talking about work, technology and HR.  For me, several ideas coming together at once.

There is much in HR work that can be automated.  The routine stuff in particular – and so much of what we do is just that.  This is both good… and bad.  Good in that we can get rid of the non-value add work and focus on what can really make a difference to work and working lives.

But it can lead to a dehumanized experience.  Take recruitment.  When you apply for a job, get all the way to interview, but never actually engage with a person, only an ATS.  It might be time efficient, but it certainly ain’t human.  It is cold.

Can more HR work be undertaken by robots?  Probably. Definitely.

It is all too easy to reject the notion.  Our perception is constrained by what we know and do now. Arthur Danto said that the future is a mirror in which we can only see ourselves.

But even within a future with more and more automated people stuff, or even a first line HR advice robot, this is when our most human side of human resources can come to the forefront.

The World Economic Forum said that in the machine age, only the human organization will survive.

There are some things that only a human can do.  Show real empathy.  Have emotional intelligence.  Listen, completely – not with the intention to respond with a programmed response but simply to be there for someone.  To live, work and act with values that we have determined for ourselves.

It has become something of a cliché to talk about putting the human back into human resources.  But in clichés there is often truth.  Perhaps it is time to embrace it.

The future of work will be more automated. More digital. Filled with more and more tech. More work will be lost to robots and algorithms.  This is inevitable.

But the future of work can also be more human.  If we let it.

Repeating myself (about social media)

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Blogging déjà vu

I am fairly sure I have written this blog post before.

I am bored of saying it.  Maybe you are bored of reading it.

But I’m posting it again all the same.

Scrolling through my Twitter timeline this morning, I came across a post about social media and employment law.  I’m not going to name and shame; it’s not about that. It’s about wanting to see something different.  Pretty please.

You have probably seen the like before.  Stuff about all of the risks.  About the potential claims just waiting to be made against you by employees and interview candidates alike.  About what should be in the policy and what you should and shouldn’t do and, meh, it was so risk averse.

Misconceptions built in.  Myth number one in the post?  Older people can’t or don’t or won’t use social media. So it might be age discrimination.  Or something.

First things first.  That isn’t true.  And peddling that particular myth is right up there with all the millennial clickbait crap. Social media isn’t just for kids you know.

It’s hard wired into the HR profession to consider risk.  It is part of the job after all.  Only sometimes we take it too far.  We write all the policies and issue all the warnings.  Unfortunately, we sometimes forget along the way to balance the potential rewards with the possible risks.

Transparency.  Internal communication opened right up. Dialogue not monologue.  Breaking down the silos. Connecting leaders to the people that work for them.  Employee advocacy.  Totally new ways of learning.  Bringing the outside in.  Collaboration.  Employer brand.

The benefits are many.  I could go on, but there’s a whole back catalogue of blog posts where I bang on about it enough.

My request of HR folks is this.

Worry less.

Some people will do dumb stuff on social media.  Most of them won’t.

Some employees will do stuff on social media that might find its way into the employment tribunal.  Some employers will do that too.  But most of them won’t.

But many of you, any of you, can have the benefits if you put the work in to making your place more social.

So next time you read some employment law social media write a policy now (we can help you with that of course) clickbait, then just close the link and read something (anything) less risk averse instead.

Pretty please.

 

PS – more on social media myths from my co-author and collaborator Tim Scott here.

Wellbeing and the importance of choice

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I’m drafting this blog post on a Sunday evening. I’ve just spent an hour or so responding to emails that came in on Friday when I was on leave. I’ve also spent a little time getting myself organised for the day ahead tomorrow.

There is much being talked and written about on the subject of wellbeing right now. About mental health.  About stress in the workplaces.  About the scourge of emails and the impact that always on technology is having upon us. It is the subject of many a conference, many a blog post.  There is plenty too about what we should do about it.  There’s even been a suggestion in France that out of hours emailing be entirely banned.  Then there are other countries experimenting with shorter working days to assess the impact on productivity.

Here’s my take on it. When it comes to my own wellbeing, a big part of it is about having choice.

It is about doing what is right for me, working when it is right for me. That is what true flexibility means.  Working how it works for me to be best effective.  I don’t do well when I am told what to do and when to do it.  That is what causes me to be stressed and unhappy at work.

There is nothing wrong with email; it is how we use it that can cause a problem. There is nothing wrong too with having a notification pinging constantly on your watch – if you like that and find it helpful for you. (I do.  I want to see ALL of the tweets).  There is something wrong with making people undertake commute to an office when they don’t need to and work in an office environment that doesn’t cause them to be well, or to be effective.  There is something wrong with requiring everyone to work a standard set of hours because that is the default in the contract of employment. There is something wrong with people using technology in ways that could cause stress without evening being aware of it.

There is no one size fits all advice. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen a recommendation to turn off your email notifications.  Have a few hours per day when you are not checking them.  There are even Apps that will manage your notifications, silencing them for a period.  If this helps you, then fill your boots.  But for every person that finds this an effective way of working there is someone else that doesn’t want to, can’t comprehend working that way. It wouldn’t work for me. I want to see what is in my in-box.  I want to respond as quickly as possible to the easy things, delete the unnecessary things.  That is the right thing for my wellbeing.

I might be one of the few people that quite like the 9-5. I like it because it fits really well around my exercise regime. I also like being in the office rather than being at home, as I need the stimulation of the team environment.  I think best, create best, out loud.  As my team would no doubt attest.

Here’s the thing. I’m not here, sitting on my sofa, working on a Sunday evening because I am an awesome employee.  I’m not doing it because I am over worked.  I am not doing it because I am trying to prove to someone else how hard I’m working. I’m doing it because I want to and it will help me have an effective day tomorrow.  And TBH, there’s nothing on the TV and I’ve already been to the gym.

What can organisations and HR professionals do around wellbeing at work? Plenty.  But for me, it starts with recognising each employee as an individual with their own needs, their own ways of working personal to them.

Help people find what that is.  Help leaders understand this very simple concept.

 

Flexible Futures

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I found out yesterday via Twitter (where else) that it is flexible working awareness day today. A subject I am passionate about, but something that many organisations still aren’t getting their head around, and for many a missed opportunity too.

Our history in the UK around flexible working started with rights for parents of young children, then went onto encompass carers and then finally, everyone. We have taken rights (and the associated process) initially designed for parents and then extended it to others, just like we have with maternity leave. It is a right only to request, and have that request duly considered.

There is a whole framework around it that goes something like this….. (which is my way of saying I haven’t read the Regs for a while). There is a service requirement before you can even ask.  Then there’s a formal request process, including stuff you are supposed to include in your letter.  There’s a time period for responding.  The right to appeal.  A whole prescribed list of reasons for which you can be turned down.

But it is all a little too processes driven… a little, well, inflexible.

We need to move past the parental rights and part time paradigms.

Because too often when we say flexible working we really mean (or think of) is part time working. But there is so much more to it than that.  Long term contractual changes and short term arrangements.  Term time, part time, compressed hours, reduced hours, flexi-time, home working, working outside the traditional 9-5, anywhere and anywhen.

But flexible working is one thing…. agility and choice something else entirely. For me, working flexibly doesn’t mean going through a process.  It means getting up on Monday and instead of driving to the office deciding to do the one minute to my home office.  It means being effective anywhere I have a wifi connection.  It means getting the job done without necessarily being present at a desk for the hours of work set down in my Contract of Employment.

When will we know we have achieved a more flexible approach to work?

Simple. When we don’t need the process.  When we don’t need to fill in a form and write a change to terms and conditions of employment.  When we don’t need to ask permission. When we can just do it.  When it is the norm.  When the job still gets done.  When we don’t need even more legislation.  When we finally recognise how much our people value it, how it will retain and engage them.

When it is simply, the way that we work every day.

Be More Awesome

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I am partial to the word awesome. There is even a warning in my Twitter bio to this effect.  Yesterday I saw a postcard that said; be awesome or don’t bother. I’m not entirely sure about the don’t bother part, but I did get to thinking…… what is the people stuff version of this little statement?

Be awesome…. Be more HR awesome.

Some ideas from me on that……

Promise to never again use the phrase ‘it might set a precedent’.

Promise also never to introduce something because Google did.  Or some place very similar.

Review all those standard letters that you send people with the eyes of a recipient. How would they make you feel and what do they say about your department?  Change as appropriate.

Delete probation periods from your contracts of employments. You know they are kind of pointless so why bother?

Put the coffee machine on free vend for a while. What would it cost you anyway?

Apply for a job at your own company. Think about how the process made you feel. Change as appropriate.

Smile at people. (Try not to scare them).

Do a random act of kindness. Anything that takes your fancy.

Hold a Fika. Invite other teams to join you. It is, erm, awesome.

Let your team go home early.

Send a thank you card. Make thank you cards available for anyone to come and take and send.

Buy Crunchies on a Friday. Because, you know.

Go out and buy a load of plants for the office. Green it up.

Find out what websites you block on the corporate network for no good reason and go and talk to IT and see if they will change their minds.

Celebrate National Donut Week. Yes this is really a thing.  And it is next week.

Find an employment policy that states the bleeding obvious and delete it. See if anyone notices.

Have your next meeting outside, or go for a walk while you are talking.

Talk to all of the people who have joined your organisation in the last six months. Ask them what it was like and what would have made it better for them.  Amend as appropriate.

Go onto your internal social media network and share something useful or interesting that other people might learn from.

Do some wellbeing stuff. Anything. It doesn’t have to cost a fortune. Let your people know that you give a damn about them outside of whether or not they hit their KPI.

Little things add up to big awesome. Over to you……

What is the most awesome thing you can do today, at your place?

 

In other news, on Sunday I am running Leeds Half Marathon in aid of Retrak Charity – their mission is a world where no child has to live on the streets.  If you fancy it, you can sponsor me here.

No Survey Required

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I saw some discussion on Twitter recently about measuring employee engagement.

I can confirm that I was polite in my contribution.

Of course if measuring employee engagement is something you feel it is important to do, then there are the obvious solutions. Annual surveys and pulse surveys and temperature checks.  Surveys on paper surveys on apps.  Big fat long surveys and little ones too.  Hit a button as you leave the office emoticon style how are you feeling today type checks.

They are all there to choose from. To measure something for you.

Measurement. In inverted commas.

Because of course there is more to engagement than percentages. Filled in forms and one to five ratings and net promoter scores and do you have a best friend at work?

I’ll confess. About all of that I am so….. meh.

Data is useful. Important.

I get it. Evidence.  Proof.  Business cases and return on investment and a basis for decision making.

But there is more to how your employees feel than numbers. The day to day experience can’t easily be quantified.

Percentages are neat and tidy and precise. But people are not.

So here are my strictly unscientific, untidy, unquantifiable and entirely subjective ways to assess how your people really feel about working at your place. No survey required.

First up. Good noise. I always think that when people are happy at work, when there is some team spirit going, on you can not only feel it but hear it.  There will be laughter and chatting.  Good noises, team noises, having fun and working at the same type noises. Silence… tells you something else.

Next is absence and lateness. Something that you can actually put a percentage on if you choose.  I don’t mean the genuine stuck on the motorway serious illness sent home because they look terrible sort of absence and lateness.  Instead the I can’t be arsed type.  The dog ate my homework type.  Which really translates into I don’t really care all that much.  And you know you know the difference.

The state of the place. Disengaged employees don’t care about where they work. Sometimes, very low levels of engagement translate into deliberate damage to the environment. I once worked for an organisation in which casual damage and graffiti were rife.  If people like their jobs and like their colleagues they will be part of making it a nice place to be every day.

Collaboration. Especially when it comes to new stuff and change.  Engaged employees will pitch in, ask questions and take it on board.  People who are disengaged, won’t.  See next point.

Moaning. People who are unhappy at work, moan. Simple but true.  And if there isn’t anything to moan about they will moan about that.  From the big stuff to the minutiae.  Pity parties all round.

Ideas. Engaged employees have ideas and are willing to share them. You will get suggestions for improvements, sometimes without evening asking. They will speak up because they feel that they can and they want things to be better.

Grievances. Employees have a legal right to raise a grievance and have it dealt with in accordance with the ACAS code.  But when employees are engaged and have strong relationships with their managers you are much more likely to see people having conversations about their issues in an adult way rather than writing a formal letter.  Ditto discipline.

The extracurricular. Engaged employees come to learning events.  They take part in team activities.  They are part of the dress down day, the charity bake-off, the wellbeing month and the team lunch.  Because they want too.  When people are disengaged, for whatever reason that may be, they will put often put themselves outside anything that is strictly the day job.

Finally, and perhaps the most telling of all.  The language that people use.  How they speak to each other. Whether it is broadly positive or negative.  How much time is spent in criticism or in anger. Them or I.  The management or us.  They or we.

So by all means run your survey. Figure out a percentage and where you sit in comparison to other companies and set a target for next year.

But don’t forget to look and listen to what else your people are telling you about their level of engagement.

Even when they don’t even know it.

Wot, no cat pictures?

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I had THAT conversation again yesterday.

The one where, following my confession to loving all things social, someone replied:

Urgh. I can’t be bothered with all that. It’s just cat pictures and what people had for their breakfast.

Here’s the thing.

It really isn’t.

Here’s the second thing.

If you are on social media and that is actually your feed, then my advice is follow better people.

Find some more interesting friends. Hit your unfollow button – that is what it is there for.

If you are however saying this and you are not actually on social media then I am going to suggest trying it for yourself. To establish whether or not this is reality or just a belief.

That is all.

30 Second People Strategy

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Earlier this week, I was watching the Twitter backchannel from a HR event. Several people tweeted all at once about whether it is possible to explain your people strategy in 30 seconds, presumably prompted by one of the speakers.

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Now I have never been all that keen on having a People Strategy. For me, you have a business strategy, mission, vision…. People stuff is just part of that big picture.  Having a separate people strategy just feels a little too close to talking about ‘the business’….making us separate.  But maybe that’s just me being overly fussy.

What I do have of course, is a plan. A plan for those people things that we are going to do, that support and enable those big organisational goals. And to go alongside those, a set of guiding principles to keep us honest, keep us focused.  A thought process, perhaps.

So if I have a people strategy, this is it. In very much less than 30 seconds.

Do good people stuff, always.

Focus on making things more awesome, at your place.

Make peoples’ lives easier at work, wherever you can.

Chuck out your chintz (by which I mean make things simpler, get rid of unnecessary bureaucracy)

Never lose sight of how something will make people feel.

Help those people around you to be the best that they can be.

Provide the best possible employee experience that you can, within your context, with whatever resources you have.

 

What’s your 30 second people strategy?

More signs that you have a culture problem

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I recently wrote a blog post about the signs that might suggest an organisation has a culture problem.  Here are just a few more.

High employee turnover

This one is kind of obvious perhaps. There are many reasons behind turnover, and sweeping generalisations should be avoided.  Even that one about people leaving managers and not jobs.  But if people are exiting at a rapid rate, especially when they have short tenure, then something, somewhere, isn’t quite right. Note – a bog standard exit interview won’t answer the question.

Meetings and more meetings

You have to have one for every bloody thing. They run over time, there’s no agenda and if there is no one sticks to it.  They are stuffed full of PowerPoint, and they are all about updates and not decisions.  I recently came across a HBR article, in which it said that the sign of a great meeting isn’t the meeting itself, but what happens after it.  Never a truer word was blogged

The answer to every challenge, is to write a policy……

Which no one will ever read. People are taking too long on their breaks, lets write a policy about that.  Someone turns up at the office with blue hair, lets write a policy about that.  You end up with a load of stupid rules that most people won’t even realise exist, rather than sensible conversations from one adult to another.

There is a lack of concern about people stuff.

Whether we are talking about how the candidate is treated during their application process through to whether anyone ever gets a feedback conversation. Often, people stuff is the easiest stuff to let slide.   Here’s a question for you.  At your place, would a manager get the same angst about not getting their 121s in the diary as they would for going over budget?

The Disciplinary Stick is wielded often.

I once worked at a place where so many disciplinary hearings were held, they became a focus of fun. At the start of a shift, the manager would hand out all the little white envelopes with invitations to investigations, invitations to hearings.  An almost perverse badge of honour.  Is it your turn today?  There are times that discipline is appropriate.  Repeated issues, gross misconduct.  But all too often it is a sign that adult dialogue has failed.

There are unhelpful colloquialisms

Many years ago, I worked somewhere that had developed its own slang. A whole internal language.  The place was so rife with people getting blamed, getting pulled up and being shouted down, it had its own special phrase: getting a pineapple.  Which was short for, I have just had a pineapple placed robustly in a delicate part of my anatomy by a more senior member of staff.  Including the spikey bit. Humour can be useful. It can also be destructive and perpetuate problems.

Culture, is contextual. There are few generalisations that can be made, apart from to say simply, that if any of these signs or symptoms exist at your place, it is important to listen, to understand, to ask why.

It is often said that culture is hard to change. That if takes a very long time if you try.  There is some truth in both of these statements. But it is possible to take small steps and address the symptoms as well as the causes.  Challenge the language, change the approach, role model a different path.  And these are spaces that HR can absolutely lead the way.