A couple of weeks ago Siobhan Sheridan shared this photo on Twitter.
I don’t know if it’s real or a spoof, but this homework grid caught my attention and I’ve decided to adopt it as my own summer homework too. You may think that homework for Year 7 is a little advanced for me, but a lot of this stuff looks like fun, I’m up for the challenge. Some of you may think that homework of any nature, is not fun – that’s fine, I’m not setting this for you – simply sharing it. I’ve completed nine tasks so far (with a little help from Keira) and I’m hoping Siobhan will mark my homework at the end of the holidays.
Since sharing this picture with others myself, one of the pieces of feedback I’m regularly getting is ‘it’s just a bit of fun’. It strikes me that we often use that term in a throw away context, and whilst I’m no fan of trying to force fun on anyone, I think there’s real power in something fun, something playful. I’m grateful to the late Brian Sutton-Smith, a well known play theorist, for coining the term:
“The opposite of play is not work, it’s depression.”
Forgive the oxymoron, but I think we need to take play more seriously.
This would be my early bid to take the crown for crap joke of the year, except in the current world of work, it is no joke. An overwhelming number of businesses choose to refer to people not as people, but as resources. Human Resources. According to the great God Google, resources is defined thusly.
Resources: Noun. A stock or supply of money, materials, staff, and other assets that can be drawn on by a person or organisation in order to function effectively.
My curiosity about humans described as resources has been reawakened by a blog post on Forbes.com titled: Airbnb Chief Human Resource Officer Becomes Chief Employee Experience Officer (Warning! Like every article on Forbers.com this one is riddled with irritating adverts, making it exceptionally hard and unpleasant to read. Proceed with caution). I confess my initial reaction to the headline was not altogether positive, then I checked myself. Just because it’s easy to say/refer to Personnel as HR, doesn’t make it the right thing to say. The language we choose to position and describe things is important, and though we need words and actions working together, what we say about something, powerfully shapes the subsequent conversation.
I offered the headline and article up to Twitter and was generously responded to.
Gemma’s suggestion that the idea of framing the conversation about colleagues as resources is hideous, feels easy to agree with. Personnel, people, colleagues, employees, these are all surely preferable to the current, and most common option? I know resources is only a word, and if it’s our starting point then it sends the conversation off in an unhelpful direction.
To Paul’s point – if this move from HR to Employee Experience does represent a shift towards a more supportive environment, rather than the often held belief that Personnel (sorry I’m not using Human Resources any more) are the watchful eye of the employer, there to manage risk/make sure you don’t step out of line, then that too is a shift in a positive direction. I like Paul’s new question – where does the risk function end up? I’m not sure and I’m no expert, and when I’ve worked with and in Personnel departments a lot of risk management is discussed with and referred to lawyers, so maybe cut out the middle person and go straight to legal?
Ade sees this change of language as a good example of Personnel realigning with the business. Hard to argue with that, given so many of us believe and experience that high levels of understanding/integration between departments and functions is a good thing.
I like what all three correspondents have to say, they’ve helped stretch my thinking, and hopefully yours too. When you want to connect to these folks, click the pics above and you can link to their blog sites/twitter.
What do you think? Does it matter that we so frequently label people as resources? Should there be a shift to something less resource, more human? And if so, what? If the term Personnel, the P in CIPD, is good enough for the UK professional body, is it good enough for you too?
Not withstanding my slight disappointment that after hailing the move from HR to Employee Experience, the writer of the Forbes.com article reverts to the current norm in these follow up questions, I offer them to you by way of more food for thought.
Are we still functioning in a Human Resources silo? How can we broaden our vision and begin to partner with other functional groups such as Marketing, Facilities, Real Estate, Communications, and Sustainability to create as memorable an employee experience as we create a customer experience?
How can we use the tools we use for our customer experience such as: ongoing research into needs and perceptions, design thinking, and a marketing mindset to re-invent the Human Resource function?
How do we create and embrace an iterative development model so new Human Resource services are co-created with employees in much the same way new products are co-created by our company’s most passionate consumers?
Google the words ‘hiring for cultural fit’ and you’ll be overwhelmed with results, about 1.18 million of them last time I checked. Recruiters and HR people talk about this stuff, a lot. I appreciate the desire to hire people who will ‘fit in around here’, and at the same time, the world of work needs its dissenting voices too, unless it is to become a whirlpool like hellhole of groupthink.
For cultural fit to have relevance, there needs to be clarity about the culture people are being hired to fit into. I stumbled upon this job vacancy yesterday, please take a minute to have a read through it…
“This is a great opportunity to partner with a demanding corporate audience of around 200 within an international head office environment. It’s a busy generalist role by nature, a key theme of it being the building of close relationships across a range of Directors and providing them with guidance and coaching through the full range of cyclical HR processes and in managing the subtleties of a range of performance and ER issues and any change agendas.
Candidates should possess really solid generalist HR experience developed within a sophisticated corporate environment where HR is used to partnering the business in an evolved HR model, ideally with exposure to matrix business structures. Above all you should possess the gravitas, maturity and resilience to work effectively with demanding senior business stakeholders, combined with a proactive and pragmatic approach that ensures effective, commercial on time delivery.”
This job advert says everything and nothing. It is meaningfully meaningless, specifically vague, and people will be applying for this role. I posted the advert text onto Facebook yesterday; here are some of the excellent comments I received:
It means that once you accept the job they can make you do anything they want. It’s fuzzy logic.
It would read like the role is to dig the directors out of the hole they keep on digging…
1915. Please join us in the trenches. It is a complete clusterfuck over here. We require someone to run messages to and from the incompetents. You will need experience acting as a human shield and serving as cannon fodder.
And companies wonder why they have people issues when this is the best they can do.
I’m not a huge fan of wasting people’s time – yet I am tempted to craft an application for the role which reflects back all the specifically vague buzzword junk contained in the job advert. If I do – I will let you know the outcome. In the meantime, if you are fortunate to be involved in the hiring process, please, do better than this. Unless the cultural fit you are looking for is total befuddlement, in which case, pour yourself a fresh cup of gravitas and get proactively pragmatic.
