CIPD Blogs

Re work – well, it’s very busy for the team - the project team are out every day working in the communities giving very much needed health and child protection messages coupled with surveying the areas to decide which areas to run our projects.  We already had an office here when the quake struck and our most senior staff member lost his home and office.  It has been a priority to find alternative accommodation for him. The partners that Tearfund work with also lost so much and have been trying to get back on their feet in order to help the communities get back on theirs.  This is the story of the recovery process. On the surface, I continue to be impressed by the Haitians resilience to what has happened.  But I know underneath there is an awful lot of trauma and grief that so many will be dealing with for a long time.  I’m pleased to say this has not been underestimated – there are a lot of counsellors making themselves available and teams are being set up to support those affected including the aid workers themselves.

I’ve been to the On-Site Operations Coordination Centre (UN) compound mostly to glean information and contacts in order to build some decent HR systems.  Interestingly there is a ‘cluster’ for pretty much every sector (there’s about 6 cluster meetings a day – shelter, water and sanitation, logistics, child protection, child friendly spaces, health etc) except there isn’t one for HR!  So after a little hunting around (and an email from People In Aid), I found out one NGO had had the initiative to call the HR bods together for a meeting yesterday – which was very much needed.  It was good to meet other HR peers and understand the issues they are facing.  I realised that most in the room would be leaving in the next couple of weeks so as time goes on lots of new faces will arrive – the second wave!  A lot of the people in the room are in organisations that were here before the quake so I’ve been pretty lucky being able to tap into this wealth of knowledge so I can produce things like salary scales, terms and conditions and staff handbooks for the Haitian staff we hope to hire.

I’ve been spending these last few days recruiting assessment teams and domestic staff for our base camp.  I’m pleased to say we have a wonderful cook who I’m sure would love to cook us more Creole food if we only had the facilities.  The recruitment requests from our project staff are starting to come in and I expect I will be spending most of my time next week sourcing people as well as writing policy and systems.  

My assistant is unfortunately still in San Domingo (Dominican Republic), waiting for flights and people to arrive, and hopefully will get to us by Friday with 2 more people including the Director from HQ.  It’s always great to have new people arrive.

One of the issue for me is that I make glacial progress but as you’ll know from my first posting on H&H habits take a lot more than the oft quoted time of 21 days to embed. The latest research indicates a range of between 18 days and 256 days to "automaticity" I.e. doing/not doing without thinking, depending on the "ease/difficulty of the change. I am sort of there because I am going to the health club as often as 3 x per week, I am trying to eat better, and drink less. Great example today I avoided cherry cheesecake in our excellent staff café and instead had grapes. I have also recently taken up a boxer training. It’s been great for a whole lot of things and has given me great insight as a learning adviser.

For example it’s taught me that putting a boxing bandage on is a cognitive skill in itself, almost as tricky as knitting. It’s also taught me that knowing how to duck and keep you feet is an essential skill in boxing.

Boxing also shows me I have a deficit in what psychologists call "kinaesthetic intelligence" .( sporty co-ordination) It’s also taught me that boxing if done properly and rapidly is an exhausting and enervating workout which leaves you wanting to take on the world, though not literally as Chris Eubank and Nigel Benn have done on occasion! It’s also great for focus as the great Nelson Mandela demonstrated when he boxed to keep himself mentally and physically fit while imprisoned under apartheid. he doesn’t look bad for his age either.

Once learned the basic techniques are embedded I can pair up- with other people and My trainer Richard Wall trained with David Haye is excellent he is well aware of the need to learn and unlike a lot of trainers he doesn’t just shout. So that’s a habit I intend to keep. Next week I’ll e carrying on with an update on my progress and look at some of the issues around how we make and break habits.

I arrived in the Dominican Republic on Tuesday along with other members of the team with 25 large bags in tow, including tents, laptops, food and more from Tearfund’s offices in Teddington, UK.

The drive yesterday from San Domingo, Dominican Republic into Port-au-Prince, Haiti took eight hours. Although it is too early for us to fully realise the devastation from the earthquake, the surrounding poverty is clear with makeshift camps lining the road in.

Getting communications set up was an obvious priority and emails and mobile phones are both now working. Everyone has been really accommodating at the campsite. There are ten of us here with Tearfund and the compound is shared with two other charities as well as around 150 people who sleep under the trees.

HR and people priorities will become clearer over the coming days, owing to the amount that needs to be done. Today we are assessing sites we may be able to work in. People have already approached us asking for work and interviews are in the process of being set up. More on which in the next post. In the meantime, later on today we are interviewing for our cook and translator. 

After our first night, team morale is good despite a few very small earthquake tremors this morning.

It’s finally over. The snowman is reduced to a puddle in which two sticks and three bottle tops float, forlornly. If the trains aren’t running on time it’s only for all the usual reasons. Visits to HR directors can begin again without trying to force a pair of wellies into my briefcase. We are no longer jammed belly to belly with other commuters, trying to find somewhere to put our eyes. 

Post-thaw, though, the UK might justifiably be a little embarrassed. A bit like Auntie Mabel after one too many Christmas sherries, getting wound up by Uncle Ernie and throwing a badly-aimed punch at the dog. What was all the indignation about?   

Presumably the only way to keep all roads absolutely clear would have been to throw unbudgeted money at the problem. Then in six months’ time - with the snow thawed, and the panic forgotten - the resulting financial shortfall would mean more services would be cut, in a year when harsh winds will already be blowing through our public services - provoking more outrage.

It’s not a fashionable view I know, but when was ‘grin and bear it’ totally discredited as a strategy? Do Norwegian tabloids run headlines wailing ‘How come the UK can cope with dreary amounts of rainfall, and we can’t?’ Or is it that – like every other nation – there are some things we’re good at, and some things we’re not; and snow, being a relatively rare occurrence, is the latter? In short, snow stops stuff - but not for long. That’s what I’ve learnt. It may be glib, but better that than unrealistic. 

On one of the worst days, this guy stomped onto the platform in front of me, panting into his mobile phone, red-faced with cold, drenched, and bug-eyed with hassle. And then I heard him say: ‘Weeelll, could be worse. Did you see Haiti? Terrible. After all, snow melts. Earthquakes don’t.’

Now that’s what I call perspective.  

The success I celebrate is the fact that I have managed to stay out of the pub, eat reasonably healthily and got to the health club 3 times weekly as promised. I have fulfilled all of these obligations and I have lost 3.5 pounds (1.6 kilos). What has motivated me? One thing has been the welter of programmes on TV about fat people losing weight. It made me realise (to bring the insights of behavioural psychology into the picture again), that for too long I have been "anchoring" my own weight against people who I consider to be really fat. Anchoring is what happens when you see a £1.99 price as significantly cheaper than £2, even though logic tells you it isn’t. It’s because you become sensitised to certain levels and quantities of things, to the extent that your brain subconsciously relates those levels to your decision. There is a lot of evidence on this. Once again Dan Ariely is the "go to" for this stuff. I take the irrational view that a thirty stone guy is really fat when he is actually really really really fat and I am quite fat.(if you follow my logic).

Talking of logic what about the heart surgeon who would ban butter, a simple whole food made from the freshest ingredients because he sees some patients who need heart bypasses at a young age? Now butter bingers or saturated fat abusers do themselves harm and cost the NHS lots but banning whole food is just plain daft. No subject invites the spouting of more rubbish than nutrition. It’s a field where it easy to call yourself a professional without any training and just adopt faddy approach like "strawberries are the ultimate super food just eat them and you’ll get all your nutritional needs." Doctors are generally very evidence based and heart surgeons especially command great respect. That means they get listened to sometimes when what they say is ill researched nonsense. Dr Atkins for example whose own fat laden diet actually killed him was a heart doctor for example. So, even if a doctor said something like ."To ward off heart disease go to the bottom of your garden and talk to the fairies". It it would get published. Maybe the surgeon was suffering from a condition called known as "availability bias" when we focus attention too much on the area we know to the exclusion of the stuff we don’t/can’t know. It must be depressing treating 32 year old bypass patients but there aren’t that many relative to the number in the higher risk older age groups, and , being a top surgeon he sees more of them. Maybe the stats rich NHS will prove him right in time but at the moment the idea of banning a food because his patients and some others overindulge is likely to do more for headlines more than waistlines or arteries.

Anyway now I have that off my chest and 3.5 pounds lost off somewhere I will celebrate success probably too much at my Burns night on Monday.

The following article from HR zone caught my eye this week. It’s talking about corporate volunteering and highlighting the fact that BT is allowing its people to volunteer during work time.

What does your company do when it comes to volunteering? Your policy might not stretch this far, but there’s increasing recognition of the development opportunities working with a charity can provide - as well as helping with your business’ CSR credentials.

I’m on the Board of Trustees for a local branch of Homestart UK. The charity’s volunteers visit families of young children in need of friendship and support on a weekly basis. We’re keen to work with local organisations who are interested in volunteering opportunities for their people. It would be great to know any success stories you have when it comes to corporate volunteering. For the kind of service Homestart gives, it wouldn’t be about one day ‘paintbrush’ volunteering - but about commitment and relationship building over time - and benefiting from some excellent training.

Any suggestions from your experience would be very welcome.

As much of Britain slogged back to work in the snow last week, how many of us were labouring under the burden of the New Year’s resolution?  Whether it’s to shed the Christmas pounds, give up smoking or start a whole new life, is a dreary day in January really the time to make a start?

And for how many does that list of resolutions include “get a new job”?  Well quite a few probably given the response to the CIPD Employee outlook survey last quarter when a quarter of employees said they were looking for a new job.

But is that search motivated by a real desire for a new challenge or new horizons or to escape from the same old problems, the manager who never listens, the requests for training that keep getting turned down, the promises of promotion that never materialise?  Worse, the talent that goes unrecognised and the potential that remains untapped.

So given that new jobs are still pretty scarce, even if the snow is now bigger news than the latest redundancy figures, are most of these resolutions set up for a fall? 

Maybe the answer is that employers ought to be setting a few resolutions of their own.  To make the best of the talent available to them, to make sure they get the best return possible for their investment in development and to make sure people are motivated to innovate and help their organisation perform its way out of the recession rather than saving their energy for the job search.

David MacLeod in his recent review of employee engagement wrote:  

“..at its core is a blindingly obvious but nevertheless often overlooked truth. If it is how the workforce performs that determines to a large extent whether companies or organisations succeed, then whether or not the workforce is positively encouraged to perform at its best should be a prime consideration for every leader and manager, and be placed at the heart of business strategy.”

So maybe the resolution for 2010 should be to put this into practice before the jobs market picks up and the talent starts walking to pastures where their contribution will be better recognised.

Yes I have noticed and felt a change. I have got fatter it’s as simple as that. By not attending the health club because of a twinge I got on the running machine after our Manchester conference, I have let myself fall off the habit changing horse. With the festive over indulgence over I have downed too many goodies. Like the British economy it’s time for a bit of austerity. Incidentally brilliant book about how people lived after the war in times of real privation by the excellent historian David Kynaston should help anyone who thinks we are about to undergo a period of hair shirted hardship. I read it whilst quaffing more food casually on the Christmas couch than a citizen of that period would have got in a month. yet people weren’t exactly unhappy for all of that.

hhttp://www.amazon.co.uk/Austerity-Britain-1945-1951-David-Kynaston/dp/0747579857

So what will I do/ I will re-set my goals of losing 14 ibs (6kgs) by March the 1st. I need to do this otherwise I will re-activate a pattern of procrastination, which as well as being the thief of time is also in this case the limiter of clothing choices and the culprit for jokes about when the baby is due. part of my problem is that because of my height I have never seen myself as fat. my flawlessly honest mother though disabused ne of this on my recent visit to Scotland. "you are getting an awful belly on you John". If I don’t feel the change other people see it. So what do I know about procrastination? My old friend (sorry namedropping there I have never met him!), but Dan Ariely the brilliant behavioural economist points discusses procrastination and lack of self control. http://www.predictablyirrational.com/.

As Dan points out the P word comes from the Latin pro meaning for and cras meaning tomorrow. "put it off till tomorrow", Whatever your habit changing need the P word will pull you down. That’s why I probably thought "Well it’s too close to the festive bingeout so I’ll just wait till January and I’ll make a new year’s resolution (NYR)". At a decent age I have made a lot of these NYR’s. My Goal is to lose weight my reality is I am not losing it my Can I actually keep myself on track this time? I am making the gaols a bit more specific and I will make myself what I call "cumulatively accountable for achieving them. that’s is I will lose 2bs next week four pounds by the 17^{th and 6bs by the 24th. I am also going to boxercise (6 sessions). I will also commit to be more serious about this generally. Part of sharing my goals with all of you is to use peer and community pressure. Let me know how you are getting on also. When I next post next Monday I want to celebrate success by getting that 2Ib weight loss!}

It seems like only yesterday, but 2010 will see the tenth anniversary of the Institute gaining chartered status (when IPD became CIPD) and the seventh since full members were able to use the individual chartered title (Chartered CCIPD, Chartered FCIPD or Chartered MCIPD). We now have over 52,000 individual chartered members who have not only met the knowledge requirements for chartered membership but who have demonstrated management level experience, as well as an ongoing commitment to their continuing professional development.

Many professional bodies would be proud to have over 50,000 chartered members, as indeed we are. However, there are some key issues that have been at the forefront of our thinking as we seek to transform CIPD membership and ensure it is relevant and fit for the future.

Firstly, how do we reinforce chartered membership as the gold standard for professionalism in HR – one which employers both understand and value? Secondly how do we open up access to the many HR practitioners operating at Chartered Member level and above, who through the nature of their career path into HR or choice of specialist career have not been able to access chartered membership in the past? And finally, how do we open up access and still ensure that standards remain at a high and consistent level?

This is where our new membership criteria which I’ve talked about in my previous post come in. Derived from the CIPD HR Profession Map (HRPM) and based on the best practice that employers recognise and demand, they describe the knowledge, activities and behaviours required at three key levels in the profession – Associate, Chartered Member and Chartered Fellow. In future access to these grades is solely dependent on an individual’s ability to meet the membership criteria for the relevant grade of membership.

In terms of chartered membership, this means that access will no longer be based on out of date notions such as time-served or be reliant on an individual holding a previous, or lower grade, of CIPD membership. In fact the way we have approached the development of the new criteria is that, although there will be progression pathways, the criteria for Chartered Member and Chartered Fellow are very different, reflecting the different requirements when operating at management versus strategic leadership level.

The criteria draw heavily from the ‘Strategy, Insights and Solutions’ and ‘Leading and Managing the HR function’ areas of the HRPM. What this mean in practice is that whilst chartered members will still need to demonstrate they have the underpinning knowledge (i.e. can meet the knowledge criteria for the relevant grade of membership), the emphasis in the future will be on the individual’s ability to effectively plan and implement context specific HR strategies and solutions to the benefit of their organisation. For specialists, as well as requiring evidence of the depth of specialist knowledge and application, this also means having sufficient knowledge of all other areas of HR in order to understand the impact of their specialism on the delivery of the overall HR strategy and plans.

We will be using the new Chartered Member and Chartered Fellow criteria as part of our new upgrade process for existing Graduates and Chartered Members from 1 July 2010 and they will also be the basis for access to chartered membership for those studying the new CIPD qualifications or one of the new direct routes to membership that we are currently developing.

2010 has started with a bang. Thankfully, no exploding underpants (though a late night curry on New Year's eve almost triggered a bomb warning down our road). But the icy weather's already hit the headlines, while the pre-general election campaign has got off to a weird start. Tory leader David Cameron immediately made a gaffe about his party's laudable plan to favour marriage in the tax system. And yesterday Gordon Brown had to shrug off a lame attempt by some of his own disgruntled backbenchers to oust him from Downing Street before the latest snowfall has melted. What fun the next few months promise to be.

Here at the CIPD we have bravely battled the elements and published our own public policy platform for 2010 - a coherent package of proposed measures that we reckon would be good for jobs as the economy recovers and help make the UK more productive in the coming decade. Because our platform aims to improve the common good of Britain it doesn't fall neatly into any political category, right, left or centre. Inevitably, this means it challenges ideological vested interest across the spectrum of opinion.

Commentators on the political right have criticised us for arguing that the government shouldn't make big cuts in public spending before the economic recovery is clearly underway. At the same time, those on the left condem our call to freeze both the public sector pay bill and the national minimum wage for young people aged under 22.

On public spending, we fully appreciate the need to cut the record fiscal deficit and understand the case for early action to reduce it. On balance, however, we think that the risks associated with cutting public spending in 2010 when the economy is still likely to be in a fragile condition outweigh the risks of delaying tough medicine until 2011. Now is not the time for fiscal conservatism (with a small 'c'). Our priority this year must be to limit any further rise in unemployment, which would of course itself add to the fiscal deficit by way of higher outlays on Jobseeker's Allowance and lower tax receipts.

The same logic applies to our platform for pay. An immediate freeze on the public sector pay bill would help contain costs while offering employers and staff scope to determine how best to manage their reward budget. As many cash strapped private sector businesses have shown during the recession, sensible action on pay and hours of work can help limit job cuts when times are tough. With youth unemployment already at a record high and set to rise further it would also be folly to increase the youth minimum wage this year. The government has rightly just introduced a job guarantee for the young long-term unemployed at public expense. While the considerable sum of taxpayers' money needed for this represents money well spent, doing so while at the same time raising the cost of employing young people doesn't make sense. Those who say the CIPD lacks concern for Britain's hard pressed young people should themselves acknoweldge that bleating on about youth unemployment and calling for higher youth pay in the same breath is illogical. 

All our platform proposals for 2010 must be seen in the light of the need for a recovery that works. Keeping people in work and getting the jobless back to work must come first this year. All else is ideological self-indulgence. It's all about jobs, stupid!  

For many of us, today marks a return to work after the Christmas break. And I’ve been asked by a BBC journalist to comment on how productive this first day back might be.

My guess would be that while some of us will be feeling refreshed and rejuvenated after the break - and ready to tackle the day’s tasks with a fresh focus and energy, others will be slower to get back into their workload. And might (like me) still be suffering from the sniffles and sneezes which have seem to have blighted many a break!

One area where I have noticed a real difference is, however, people taking the time to chat to their colleagues and find out more about how they’ve spent the holidays. Is this a negative blow to productivity levels? 2009 has been a difficult year for many businesses - and our CIPD research shows that many workers have been feeling stressed and under pressure. Building relationships with your colleagues, and laying the foundations for good team work throughout the year really is important if you want to build a sustainably high-performing organisation.

So while time chatting by the drinks machine may not be productive in the short-term, in my view it really is 'good to talk'.

When I say to HR Directors I have a target of meeting 150 of them a year, they tend to look aghast. They then adopt an expression of intense bemused sympathy, as if Norbert, the CIPD guinea pig, has just died.

Not only is Norbert alive and well and currently nibbling his way through some 1980s research reports we thoughtfully put in his CIPD-branded cage, but this is hardly the torture some seem to imply. After all, whatever the lazier sitcom writers might say, HR directors are a pretty capable, approachable and engaging bunch, with a lot to offer the discerning HR institute.

Moreover, I get to see them in their natural habitat. It’s a truism that you can tell a fair bit from an organisation’s HQ. If organisations get the HR they deserve, maybe they get the Reception Areas they deserve too.

So for instance the Met Office’s beautiful ‘open sails’ building is as innovative and as dynamically-branded as you’d expect from probably the only public sector organisation to sell ad space on its website. HM Treasury’s Parliament Street offices are neat and bright inside, but the reception boasts two Victorian fireplaces so large you could hide a Chancellor inside them and still have space for a junior Minister.

Walking into HM Prison Service’s HQ, however, does make you feel as if you’re in for a four-stretch. Fortunately my wife had taken the precaution of sending me off with a large fruit cake in my briefcase, in which was covertly baked an iron file.

Then there’s BSkyB’s bold and shining HQ In wind-blown Isleworth. Which includes Dave. Dave was a man on their reception, probably in his late fifties, who was so naturally helpful and enthusiastic I almost signed up to Sky+ on the spot (despite having a perfectly serviceable Betamax video recorder).

Maybe more HQs should have fireplaces. Certainly every Reception should have a Dave.

Happy Christmas – wherever you’re based.

In my recent article in People Management (19 November 2009), I talked about our journey of transformation in terms of CIPD standards and membership. And, as 2009 draws to a close, it seems timely not only to reflect on what has been achieved over the past year, but also on the opportunities we will be creating in 2010 for HR professionals to get the membership recognition they deserve.

One of the most significant changes we are making, alongside the introduction of our new membership structure is the launch of our new membership criteria. These criteria, based on our HR Profession Map, set out the knowledge, activities and behaviours that individuals will be assessed against in the workplace in order to achieve one of our three new levels of membership – Associate, Chartered Member and Chartered Fellow.

In developing these criteria, we have set a new benchmark for the profession – one in which the application of knowledge and impact in the workplace are what matters, over and above the acquisition of that knowledge alone. Equipped with these criteria, we will be opening up new and flexible routes to membership. Routes that reflect the diverse nature of the profession and HR career paths. Routes that recognise the importance of qualifications but do not solely rely on them as a means to demonstrate HR knowledge. And finally routes which are both robust and challenging, based on a common standard that represents HR practice at its best.

In the future, we will have two main routes into membership. Those individuals for whom it is more appropriate to study for one of our qualifications will be able to upgrade to the relevant professional grade of membership using our new upgrade process. This process will assess impact in the workplace and behaviours, as underpinned by the knowledge gained though the qualification.

The second option will be through what we are currently calling direct admission routes. These routes are for those individuals who have already acquired the underpinning knowledge to be assessed for membership through experience or the achievement of other non-CIPD qualifications and who do not wish or need to study any further. There will be choice and flexibility in these routes, dependent on the level at which an individual is working.

You may well recognise yourself in this description, perhaps as someone who has come into HR as a late entrant, as an HR senior with lots of experience but no CIPD qualification, or as someone who has taken a more specialist HR career path. And, you may well have thought about membership assessment in the past and found our current direct routes too time consuming, expensive or too focused on the minutiae to add any real value to you in your professional development. These are the issues we want to address head on as we develop our new direct routes to membership, whilst still maintaining standards.

We’ll be looking for volunteers not only to help us with the assessment but to try out some of these new routes early in the New Year. So, if you are interested in being part of our membership transformation do let us know.

On the way home from work last week I was sitting next to two guys on the tube, chatting about their day. They had both been asked by their managers to do a part of their job differently because it wasn’t cost effective. While the guy on my left seemed quite happy to do this, the guy opposite was quite frustrated and said he’d flatly refuse to do it when he saw his boss the next day.

The guy on the left said that they didn’t have much choice because everyone in their job had to do it. But the guy opposite said he wouldn’t do it because it would annoy his customers and they were the ones he thought should be treated well. He had built up relationships with them and they were paying to get a good service. He appeared to have a high level of engagement with his customers, which had superseded that with his organisation.

Employees’ engagement on one level, whether that be with their organisation, team, line manager or customers, can potentially override or undermine engagement on other levels. And being engaged on one level does not necessarily determine engagement on others. For example, people may be engaged with their work yet disengaged with their employer. 

What is the locus of people’s engagement within your organisation? How can the objectives of customer service, team, business unit and individual be aligned so no matter what employees’ locus of engagement, performance does not suffer?  

Employees’ locus of engagement is one of our 6 key insights from the first year of our Shaping the Future research and engagement programme. This programme of work examines what drives sustainable performance to ensure organisations stay successful for the long haul. The interim report of our findings and further details of the 6 organisational insights we have drawn from our work so far is available to download from our website on 26^th January.

The hostile reaction of business and employers' organisations to the Chancellor’s pre-budget report announcement today that employers’ national insurance contributions (NICs) will increase by a total of 1% from April 2011 is understandable but only partly justified.

It is simplistic to describe payroll taxes, such as employers’ NICs, as a ‘tax on jobs’. The incidence of the tax ultimately falls on employees rather than employers because employers will shift the tax onto employees by way of lower pay increases. The tax will therefore have a neutral effect on the cost of employment and should not harm employment.

This does not, however, mean that raising employers NICs by 1% in 2011 is a good idea. Shifting the tax onto employees is neither automatic nor easy, especially following a prolonged period of modest pay growth and at the same time as employees earning more than £20,000 per year will themselves be hit by a sudden sharp hike in their own NICs. It is therefore likely that the increase in employers’ NICS will result in at least a temporary rise in wage costs and stymie growth in employment at what may still be a fragile stage in the economic recovery. Moreover, against a background of modest growth in real earnings the increase in employee NICs will itself have a dampening effect on overall spending and demand for labour in the economy.

In defending the hike in NICs, government ministers appear sanguine about the overall impact given that the Treasury is forecasting the economy will be growing well above trend from 2011 onward. Aside from the possibility that this might prove to be a heroic assumption, it also assumes that employers and employees will not anticipate the impending increase in NICs and alter their hiring, redundancy and spending plans in 2010.  If so, the Chancellor’s announcement on NICs could harm what is anyway likely to be a ‘jobs light’ recovery.

While the Chancellor has shown that he recognises the short-run risk to jobs from cutting the fiscal deficit too quickly he seems to have underplayed the risk associated with his planned rise in NICs. It would be better to abandon the rise in NICs and instead seek savings from 2011 onward by deeper cuts in public spending than indicated in today's pre-budget report, a two-year freeze in the public sector pay bill rather than a 1% cap on public sector pay rises, and a increase in green taxation which would carry less risk to job creation.           

I've just had one of those jaw dropping moments. Interviewed in the latest edition of People Management magazine, Neil Roden, head of HR at the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), says "I think people in RBS have a lot of sympathy with Fred Goodwin". Unbelievable! Sir Fred, you may recall, was at the helm of RBS in the years of reckless expansion which finally came to an end when the bank hit the rocks during the financial crisis of autumn 2008. Fortunately, the government, or should I say the taxpayer (that's you and me), rescued RBS with a multi-billion pound bail-out and now holds a whopping 84% ownership stake in the business.

As a taxpayer stakeholder I have little personal sympathy for Sir Fred (who at least has the consolation of considerable wealth and a lucrative annual pension to drown his sorrows). The people I'm most concerned for are the thousands of RBS staff who have lost, or are about to lose, their jobs as a result of the bank's travails, not to mention the rest of us who in one way or another are bearing the cost of propping up RBS and a number of other financial institutions. I'd like to think that the current bosses of RBS feel this way too. But judging by the brinkmanship of the RBS board in its dealings with the government over the matter of bonuses for investment bankers I doubt it.

The RBS top brass have threatened to resign en masse if the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, decides to use the government's recently acquired power of veto over their reported decision to pay out around £1.5 billion in bonuses early next year. If the pay out goes ahead many of the beneficiaries are likely to receive bonuses in excess of £1 million. I don't know about you, but I find it outrageous that a bank dependent on taxpayer support is even contemplating this at a time of high and rising unemployment and when many of us in work are lucky to get any sort of pay rise.

The RBS argument is that if they deny their top investment bankers mega bucks they will flee the bank for rival institutions, making it more difficult for the bank to do its best for the taxpayer. If the board jumps ship too, the RBS reckons, things will be even worse for the taxpayer. However, if I were the Chancellor I would either put this argument to the test by blocking the proposed bonuses or instead tax the bonuses of very highly paid employees (those earning more than £500,000 each year) of financial institutions like the RBS in receipt of taxpayer support. Indeed, there is in current circumstances a strong case for extending such a tax to bonuses paid out to big earners in all UK based financial institutions, though perhaps with the proviso that the tax is only levied if bonuses are paid in cash, so as to create an incentive for bankers to seek reward linked to longer term stakes in the businesses they work for.     

The pre-Budget report statement, due this Wednesday (9 December), provides the Chancellor with an ideal opportunity to show that in tough times those in society with the deepest pockets, such as highly paid investment bankers, should bear the greatest burden. Such action would doubtless bring howls of protest and references to a brain drain of talent that would harm the economy. I'm not so sure it would. But I am sure such a move would be popular and convince the millions of people who don't earn in a lifetime what some people earn in a few months that we are truly 'all in it together'.                 

Relatives occasionally buy me t-shirts that state something incomprehensible about surfing, and give off an exciting whiff of California. As we live in Croydon, and I’m much more likely to travel by bus, I can only admire their ambition. 

Of course, we live in an age of acute and understandable scepticism about authority, and anything that makes claims for itself runs the risk of hoots and jeers. This has pretty testing implications for the sturdiest of employer brands. The gap between what the Board want the organisation to be, and how it actually is, may be unhelpfully wide.

Worse still, your constituency – that mass of shrewd and ruthlessly expressed opinion known as ‘people’ – have a hair trigger sensitivity to anything false. For instance, I have a dull blue suit which is thrillingly branded ‘URBAN RESISTANCE’ when ‘SUBURBAN CONFORMITY’ might have been more appropriate. And I’m the proud owner of an ‘XTreme’ drill which of course I use to put up shelves (you can’t get more ‘XTreme’ than that).
 
It’s the same with organisations, with management teams claiming all sorts of things for their organisations that literally baffle their employees - the kind of credibility gaps that turn a corporate landscape into a minefield. It’s a kind of lazy corporate boasting: ‘if I say I’m this, I am this.’ But just because someone tells you to Have a nice day, it doesn’t mean you’re definitively going to.
  
In short, as everyone instinctively knows (but management teams sometimes forget), if organisations aren’t authentic, people quickly cease to believe in them. Which has deep implications for HR, as our Next Generation HR research programme explains. Similarly, it was striking how many speakers at the recent CIPD Annual Conference referenced values as the key to sustainable performance.  

Without bold values that mean something across the organisation, you may as well join me on my non-existent surfboard as we confidently ride the waves down Croydon High Street.   

My colleague, Grahame Smith, and I spent a stimulating couple of days at "Manchester" (as opposed to "Harrogate"!) for the CIPD Annual Conference and Exhibition. We were running sessions in the Personal Development Zone on three of the Behaviours identified in the HR Profession Map. We were overwhelmed by the enthusiastic response from those who came along to the sessions. Now I don't think that the level of interest in the Behaviours was just because the Development Zone offered somewhere for people sit after walking round the exhibition (it was next to the cafe area where they could have had free coffee and a seat!). Not only would it seem that the Behaviours resonate for people, but there is also a very healthy appetite for development beyond the technical domains of HR.

Our sessions focused on Curious, Courage to Challenge and Role Model and what's interesting is that these are the kind of behaviours that can feel as if they're optional or perhaps the window dressing. After all, it's the Behaviours like Driven to Deliver and Decisive Thinker that describe the rather sexier competencies for contributors in organisations. The three we focused on require a little deeper thought about why they matter above the challenges of day-to-day operational delivery, and they're also behaviours that have the potential for a higher degree of personal risk. So this makes the level of engagement we experienced more reassuring still.  

So why are these particular behaviours so important for HR professionals? There seems to be a strong link between these three - if you are a credible role model in your organisation then you'll be taken more seriously (as will the HR function) and others are more likely to be open to your views and challenges. Being actively curious means that you're likely to keep yourself ahead of the game and be aware of where you need to be developing, factors that contribute to you staying effective as a role model. It's interesting to reflect on the participants for the Personal Development Zone sessions - they certainly showed curiosity by coming along (!) and their interest suggests that CIPD have struck a chord with the Behaviours included in the HR Profession Map.

One's left wondering are line managers ready to embrace and invest in the development of the kind of behaviours that will help HR to be more challenging to them and able to make an even greater impact? And are managers in HR willing to stand up and ensure that the development of HR doesn't come second and is truly valuable, or will the demands of line "urgent" managers in the wider organisation always come first?

Habits and Happiness: Part 5: Don’t Get Derailed by Setbacks

Just back from our Annual Conference in Manchester and it was a learning and networking triumph. Nick Baylis positively wowed us with his captivating session “The Rough Guide to Happiness”. Nick was inspiring funny, serious and challenging as he literally balanced our need for achievement, our striving and our work-life with our need as animals to get physical. We need to do stuff which makes us use our bodies when most of our jobs use only our minds. If we don’t we get anxious and unhappy. That’s brought me to tracking progress. Well I have been doing it all the way through with my goal/guild grid so here’s the news and it’s not that good. I wasn’t so much derailed as crashed into the buffers at high speed.

Manchester as that depressing but beautiful Smith’s song goes, has “so much to answer for.” Conferences can be opportunities for excess and I indulged. Big breakfasts, long drinking sessions and I forgot to bring my swimming gear so that I could at least go in the pool. Even most manual jobs except digging holes , harvesting produce etc. are not that physical so we need more than ever to exercise. Exercise also helps us connect with our minds again through learning. That is a significant incentive to me as I really value learning.

So I was delighted to stumble on research by one of my favourite writers John Ratey. Ratey’s book "The Brain; A Users Guide" is one of the most accessible guides to neuroscience available. It’s up there with Susan Greenfield’s excellent book on the brain. Ratey a clinical researcher and neuro-scientist has taken a further giant step for mankind with his brilliant study of how exercise literally powers learning. His book isn’t just a work of science it’s a real “call to activity”, from Ratey who is also a medical doctor. Citing research which shows the statistically verified impact of exercise on learning among previously sluggish school pupils. Ratey sees our indolence and sloth as a real betrayal of our evolutionary heritage and like Baylis fingers it as the culprit for our increasing anxiety, stress and depression. Here is a summary of some of the research.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2008-03-04-phys-ed-study_N.htm

http://johnratey.typepad.com/blog/

We programmed to vigorously exercise, as we did when we ran away from animals which wanted to eat us or ran after animals we fancied for lunch. Now we vegetate abetted by our technological cocoon. Ratey puts it best.

We’ve become cyber slaves to an easy life, and we don’t have to move much at all. Our clickers and videos entertain us and keep us in our seats and we have become too sedentary and solitary…

Even a little bit of activity goes a, long way. Running after a bus is a good example. Ok now I know that and energised by Nick Baylis’s brilliant session I am going to get physical in a much more determined way. I will get back on track. I’ll have the benefit that I will be sharper and better. I am going to set up five a side football league in work so that I can run around. For too long I have been content with the life of the mind but it is genuinely mindless to neglect your body as I have been doing. Onwards and upwards.

Happiness is Habit Forming: 4: Set SMART Goals

Getting ready for ACE Manchester which isn’t a new private eye but our annual conference. We’ve moved from the beautiful quaint market town of Harrogate after almost 60 years. So it’s understandably difficult for CIPD staff to get out of the habit of referring to Harrogate the home of Betty’s team rooms when they think about our Annual Conference and Exhibition. Indeed our conference team are unofficially calling it Mangate!. I think this is a very clever way of "transitioning" us out of the "Harrogate habit" Anyway our conference it’s going to be in the bustling city of Manchester which is almost officially today part of the UAE as well!

Wednesday 18th at 11.15 in E3

Now, just as people in the coaching world can be sniffy about the GROW model because it’s fairly simple quite a few people in have had a pop at the idea of SMART goals. However in terms of keeping fallible irrational human on the straight and narrow they work. SMART goals and I won’t spell it (link), work because they make you mindful and set up a little nagging mechanism in your brain. SMART goal setting forces you to think through stuff. Now for me it’s the fact that I wasn’t setting them. This week I vowed to do three things and I won’t bore you with the SMART steps but I sat down and set out what I would do and how I would hold myself to account. Now look a what I call t my" Goalgrid" or "GuiltGrid." when I feel less virtuous!

Progress indeed! Now I have not lost much weight. That’s fine there is a bit of randomness to these things. One of the issues about "sustainable" weight loss is water and a big bloke sometimes builds muscle when he doesn’t want to. In know the weight loss will come. But I am not distracted or derailed. I am genuinely happy that I have managed this. It’s not easy when I pass the convivial warming beacon of the pub on a cool autumn night. I sometimes head automatically like Homer Simpson in his automaton quest for Duff^TM beer. The beer is anything but duff! I also feel great because exercise makes you feel good and it’s also improves your brain. I’ll be sharing the evidence base for exercise based learning next week. See you all in Manchester.

Take action. Yes I have taken action. Last week I vowed following Mark’s advice to take action by developing conscious practice. Now as a basic rule of thumb if I could lose a steady level of weight by following all three behaviour changes I should be able to achieve over two months about one stone or 14 Ibs or 6.3 kilos. (in new money). If it takes me three months then I’ll lose more weight. So that is my goal and I am not achieving it. So far we have concentrated on awareness and mindfulness. Now we’ll talk about the "real deal" taking action. Remember my goal grid below. There has been a slight improvement but not that much.

Yes I have been mindful but I haven’t really been that focused. Yes I did think about it, yes I knew I had to do it, but to be honest I deceived myself into thinking it was achievable because I thought it’s such a small change that it may have been realistic but was I deceiving myself?

It’s easy to deceive yourself and I am going to give you some insight into an exciting approach which will help you understand why. The "behavioural economist" Dan Ariely in his brilliant book Predictably Irrational shows how we deceive ourselves all the time. Ariely points out that that we subconsciously see our habits as rational, because we get a pay off from them. Much of the time the payoff is negative but sometimes we don’t notice. That because we practice the habit even if its costs us. Like say compulsive shoe buying and in my case book buying. Airely has advice for lots of areas of life. For example poor saving and overspending are the subject of his latest thinking.

http://www.predictablyirrational.com/.

Last week I said I wouldn’t make excuses but I would offer explanantions. Habit changing is is also about dealing with thought processes called "heuristics." These are little unconscious rules we follow which often make no rational sense but which can become habitual. I always buy a burger at Fulham matches. Usually it’s a carb injection to supplement the beer. You know I know it’s bad for me but I keep doing it. So much so in fact when the club replaced the usual burger stall where the quality wasn’t exactly farmers market gourmet standard, with one where the taste could only be described as possibly BSE inducing. Yet eat it I did. The reason?  Its tastes fine when allied with a lot of beer. Give me that burger in the CIPD canteen and I would be asking for our excellent Chef Mark to be given the Gordon Ramsay blowtorch.

So having set out the SMART goals for myself my dumb ritualistic behaviour took over. I am not making excuses but understanding my motivations and behaviours. Will I manage to the health club 3 times this week? Will I cut down what I should be honest and call binge drinking at football matches? Will I cut down on the eating which the latest research shows is also bad for your mental health? I suppose you could call it "bilge" eating. I know this stuff is awful and bad for me so why? I might help myself with another piece of evidence. This was widely reported in the press and should concentrate my mind. Too much junk food is bad for your head. Civil servants who ate a healthy diet rich in good stuff and eating fruit and fish more than most were compared with a group who ate mainly fried and saturated foods. The evidence is summarised below. Next week. Will I get fed up offering explanations or will I make some progress? By the way my weight fell by 21bs! How does that Work?

At various points in my work I've been fortunate to run development programmes outside the UK. This year I've been working with management groups in both Italy and Germany with a mix of European nationalities. In this particular organisation English is the accepted language of work and I've been impressed by the dedication of non-English managers leading multi-nationality teams and using their second (or possibilly third language) to do it.

Managing & leading others is one of the biggest challenges in the workplace and this can be even tougher when facing the kind of economic climate we've had of late. To deliver clear, consistent messages requires thought and care to ensure that people really understand what's happening and what is required of them. To have to develop and deliver those messages in another language requires even more thought and attention. And of course, that's assuming you don't have to respond to unexpected comments or questions. So this has set me wondering - do English managers have it easy? We only really have to focus on the content and delivery of the message, we don't have to think so much about the language we use.

I'm interested to find if there's any assessment of the quality of management in different countries and of those managing international teams. If it were possible to make an objective comparison, I wonder if we'd find that actually we fall behind as international managers, or are we using the spare intellectual capacity of operating in our own language to do something else better?! Or, do we get an unfair advantage in international organisations because we fail to develop sufficient language skills at school?

Time to “fess up”.  I set myself an overall goal of changing some habits, in order to lose weight.  My progress is listed in the table below.

So overall I didn’t do very well. Most of you will have spotted that my habit breaking goals aren’t very SMART. They are sort of  Specific as I have outlined some behaviours I need to change, but only in a half- hearted way. They are sort of Measureable as I have set out some objectives but they are vague and woolly. So my means by which to gauge them will be as well.  Are they Achievable?. Well I think they are but I am obviously finding it difficult. That means they may not be Realistic, and of course I haven’t put any Time-lines around them.

 In short my habit changing steps were a cop out and I did almost exactly what I have done. An old coaching saw says:. “If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’ll keep getting what you’re getting”.  

Now for a bit more science. One of the key issues about habit changing is that you need to be aware and mindful of the habit to change it.  I am going to concentrate on mindfulness here though I won’t be going into its deeper aspects like meditation. Take Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Sufferers of OCD cannot break extreme ingrained habits like chronic hand-washing rituals. Leading neuroscientist Jeffrey Schwarz’s has helped OCD sufferers change by using mindfulness techniques. Sufferers have an incentive to try mindfulness because most existing therapies were somewhat cruel. For example hand washers could be forced to smear their hands with excrement and sit for long periods without washing to re-acquaint them with the real reason for hand washing. Nice! Schwarz’s breakthrough was that encouraging people to reflect and think about the habits of OCD ( to develop mindfulness) was much more humane, helpful and effective, because it acted on a part of the brain known as the “worry circuit”.  http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/549

Incidentally, I hope the worry circuit is real because I can’t help thinking of “Shatner Bassoon” An ingenious fake medical term coined by the satirist Chris Morris. I am assured that the “worry circuit” is real but you never know!

http://www.myspace.com/shatnersbassoon1

 Now as I shared with you last week I am aware that I needed to lose weight but I wasn’t mindful. Thankfully, I am now more mindful because I have written it down and shared it. That’s a key tip on changing behaviour and to get mindfulness. Write it down and share it. Now I am going to sit down this evening and write down a SMARTER approach to changing my bad habits and getting the positive payback of being less porky. I am hoping this will work. If it doesn’t I have plenty of excuses from psychology, neuroscience and behavioural economics to line up in my defence!  Since I want to change I won’t use those intellectual alibis. Luckily I also have some great advice from all of you out there. Thanks to Mark from Brighton for this insight.

“ In order to break a habit you need a “conscious practice”. This will take around 90 days to embody. This is what 12 step programs use for starters”.

So next week I will take action to develop that conscious practice.

As a Learning and Talent Development Adviser I am very interested in habits. The way we form and break habits is a major factor in our performance. It is also a major factor in our learning. Habits contribute to happiness and its opposite. This is a growing field of study, and at ACE Conference  on the 18th November I will be chairing Dr Nick Baylis’s masterclass on the subject. I promise you’ll leave that session happy!

To get you warmed up for that I want to give you some insights into habits. First, I  hope to get you into a habit of reading this blog for the next while because I will hook you with some interesting insights about habits. I’ll share with you a bit of my own struggle with good and  bad habits. I also want to get you into the habit of looking for an evidence base to the stuff we think we know. For example we are told by research based on work with amputee victims (Google it!), that habits take 21 days to break. Not quite!

The latest research on habit forming, shows that habits actually take much longer to break on average than 21 days. Social psychologists who study deep motivations and feelings have found that on average a new positive habit doesn’t become second nature till around two months. I like evidence based research and  Philppa Lally and her colleagues interviewed 90 odd people  ( and I am sure some fairly normal ones),  and tracked their intention to  take small but positive steps such as eating a piece of fruit with lunch or running for 15 minutes per day. This was published in a peer reviewed journal with a robust experimental design so that the results couldn’t just have happened by chance.  The research indicates a range of  between 18 days and 256 days to “automaticity”  I.e. doing/not doing without thinking, depending on the “ease/difficulty of the change.

 I am indebted to PyschBlog for the natty hand drawn chart below and the three bullet points summarising the wider insights.   Having a glass of water every day is easy so it’s close to the horizontal axis. Doing 50 sit ups in the morning is difficult unless you are a real gym bunny in which case it’s like drinking glasses of water so you’d have to do something difficult. Maybe 100 dips  with lead trainers. Anyway that habit is more difficult and  takes longer to establish so hence its further away from the horizontal axis and has a shallower  curve. http://www.spring.org.uk/2009/09/how-long-to-form-a-habit.php

•  Missing a single day did not reduce the chance of forming a habit. 
   
• A sub-group took much longer than the others to form their habits, perhaps suggesting some people are 'habit-resistant'.
• Other types of habits may well take much longer.

Now I am going to form a new habit in the next two months before Christmas. I will

• Work-out at health club at last 3 x weekly Monday to Friday

• Eat healthy diet cutting down on saturate fats

• Stop drinking on weekdays and when I do offset it by drinking less on weekends.

If you want to join me choose your own new habits and let’s see where we get. More next  week.

As next month’s Annual Conference draws closer, I’ve been racing around helping tie up research for the work we’ll be launching on Next Generation HR. Working on the project has given me a fascinating insight into some very different case study organisations. I’ve found myself in a room full of telecoms engineers who maintain vital parts of our country’s infrastructure. I’ve interviewed police constables in their protective stab vests with their walkie talkies on. And I must admit to particularly enjoying (courtesy of my hosts at General Mills who produce ice cream among other things) free Haagen-Dazs while taking a break.

The time has come now to pull together the themes emerging from the research. To look at what factors are in play when HR is really able to make a difference in an organisation - to allow them to thrive now and in the future. Amid the notebooks and flipchart paper, one simple message stands out for me. It’s about the need for mutual respect between line managers and HR.  It may sound easy enough – but my experience tells me this isn’t the reality as often as we'd like.

For too long HR has struggled to cast off an image of the forbidding policeman in the organisation. And for this reason I particularly like one HR director’s description of “getting to 'yes' together….You work with people in the business, work to the solution together and keep an open mind”.

I’d love to hear some other example of this process in practice!