CIPD – Page 11 – The Consulting Artist

Case Study Porn

Business population and their associated employment and turnover

At the start of 2012, there were an estimated 4.8 million UK private sector businesses, employing an estimated 23.9 million people and with an estimated combined annual turnover of £3,100 billion.

Almost all of these businesses (99.2 per cent) were small (0 to 49 employees). Only 30,000 (0.6 per cent) were medium-sized (50 to 249 employees) and 6,000 (0.1 per cent) were large (250 or more employees). These percentages have remained fairly stable since 2000 (the earliest point for which comparable data exists).

There were an estimated 4.8 million UK private sector SMEs at the start of 2012, employing an estimated 14.1 million people, and with an estimated combined annual turnover of £1,500 billion.

99.2% of all private sector businesses in the UK employ fewer than 50 people.

In his talk at the CIPD HR Dvelopment Conference this week, Andy Lancaster used this fact to help illustrate an all too common dilemma, ‘how do you develop talent in smaller, flatter organisations?’ Based on the numbers in the BIS research – this challenge matters to an awful lot of us. Even if you take the large numbers of micro businesses out of the equation – the SME marketplace is huge.

So why is it that when we go to conferences, the main ‘attractions’ are often mega brands? Come and listen to sexy companies like Google, Mercedes Benz, BBC, Marks and Spencer etc. I should state I’m not against these companies, I use three of the four I just mentioned on a regular basis. I just don’t particularly want to be like them, and I think that there is a danger that these companies are positioned as the way ahead, with little consideration given to the distorting effect of trying to compare a business employing 25,000 people, to one that employs 250.

At the risk of contradicting myself (I’m sometimes wrong, sometimes right, I rarely know which is which and I reserve the right to change my mind), I do think there are possibilities to learn from bigger companies, and based on what I’ve experienced directly this week, and heard from other sources I trust, those possibilities are being hampered. Hampered by the ‘Case Study Porn’ (CSP) effect.

I’m unsure whether the CSP effect starts when Sexy Mega Brand Incorporated puts themselves on a pedestal (or should that be a pole), or when we do. Either way, my Bullshit Detector (copyright Joe Strummer) went off the scale several times in a direct response to Sexy Mega Brand Incorporated this week.

This week I found I learned much more from smaller organisations, and ones that get useful stuff done (or at least try) in a fussless, humble kind of way, than from organisations like the BBC, Google and Chelsea Football Club, all of whom came across to me as a bit guarded, a bit arrogant, and too assumptive.

Maybe it’s just that Sexy Mega Brand Incorporated can afford better fluffers – but I think conference organisers need to think more carefully about their audience and what their needs and wants are, and less about Case Study Porn. How about you? What influences your decision to attend a conference? And what would encourage you to come back again next year?

Reflecting on #CIPD12

I’ve had an interesting and fun couple of days in Manchester at the CIPD Annual Conference and Exhibition last week. One of the most compelling reasons why I think people go to conferences is the interaction with other people. I’m no exception and I loved catching up with friends and meeting lots more people for the first time. What else struck me about this event?

The Exhibition versus The Conference

The exhibition and conference although both under one main roof, are very separate in Manchester. It feels like people are just passing through, heads down, avoiding eye contact. And often, exhibitions have a bad reputation as places stalked by pushy sales people, I get that.

In an attempt to check this feeling out, I chose to spend plenty of time on the exhibition floor this year. I found a good number of people who wanted to talk, in context with what they were selling and promoting sure, and importantly, in context with the themes that were emerging from the conference too. Plenty of people with a smile, a job to do and sense of wanting to engage with others rather than try and push product. I’m sure there were pushy people there too but I was fortunate not to meet any.

Later in the event I revisited some of the stands where I’d previously been made welcome to see how they were finding things. The feedback was along the lines of ‘yes, we’re having a good event, making new contacts and we’ve had some interesting enquiries about what we do too’. I’m sure not everyone on a stand had a good time but applying my thoroughly unscientific approach of going where I was made welcome and I didn’t feel hassled, worked for me. If you’ve avoided the exhibition floor of late at conferences – maybe you should check it out again?

On my visit to the Ohio State HR Conference in September this year, the conference organising committee did a great job of encouraging conference visitors to invest time at the exhibition. Ohio guests give feedback that the event is great value for money and the committee are quick to recognise that this is in part due to the sponsorship the exhibitors provide. There’s much more too, content, networking, and enthusiasm enough for all, but the link between conference and exhibition is acknowledged very healthily. Another thing I noted in Ohio was that many of the announcements and regroups between talks were staged in the middle of the exhibition. Perhaps there’s something for the CIPD in these observations?

Pot Luck

Because I was spending more time on the exhibition floor I didn’t get to nearly so many conference talks this year as I’ve done before. One I did make it to was ‘Maintaining Employee Engagement Through SME Growth’. Now for sure – this session wasn’t going to win the snappy title award but it was a very engaging panel discussion. Jill Miller from the CIPD sparked some good conversation between Clive Hutchinson of Cougar Automation, Hazel Stimpson of Harrod UK, and Lesley Cotton from P&O Ferries.

All the panellists were lively and spoke plainly and simply about stuff like involvement, helping people see the bigger picture (damn those siloes), and the demise of individual bonuses in favour of profit share (a la John Lewis). You can read more about what Flora Marriott thought specifically of Clive here, and I share her disappointment that this session didn’t reach a wider audience. It might have been by people with SME experience, but it certainly wasn’t just for them.

So why pot luck? Well ordinarily I might have been put off this session by the title but I chose to take a step into the unknown and I benefited from that. Sadly – I picked up some vibes on Twitter that not all the sessions were so useful and enjoyable. That brings me to another aspect of pot luck. As a conference delegate you rarely know, even if you’re grabbed by the session title, how good the speaker(s) will be. Sure, if you’ve seen them before you’ll have an idea and often we don’t have the benefit of that previous experience.

At this point Flora gets another mention, and so too do Darren Hockaday, Tom Paisley and Perry Timms. I listened to all these people speak, and plenty more besides, and these four in particular had some interesting things in common.

They had prepared
They spoke with conviction
They were funny at times

OK the being funny bit may not be essential, though I think it really helps – but the other two points, without them I think you’re always going to struggle to get a result. So if you are invited to speak, I encourage you to see that as a gift and work hard to make the experience as good as you possibly can, for your audience and for you. In the delivery, try and convey a sense of enjoyment. It’s contagious, and it beats miserable every time. When I get a miserable speaker in front of me, that’s a sure fire early depart.

Blogging

To close this post, I want to acknowledge the tip top bloggers at the event, and thumbs up to the CIPD for their continued support of the rise of the HR bloggers here in the UK. Here are links to the ones I know about. If I’ve missed anyone – shout and I’ll stick you on the list.

Values – Impose At Your Own Risk

During a Question & Answer session at the CIPD conference yesterday, Simon Jones tweeted something that caught my eye. Peter Cheese, the recently appointed CIPD CEO asked a gathering of around a hundred people, ‘How many of you can recite your company values?’ Three people raised their hands. There was some surprise about the low response among the audience, but I’m not surprised at all.

From my experience, most sets of company values are utterly forgettable, and there seem to be a few consistent reasons for this:

They are imposed from above. Too often, senior management seem to think that company values are something they are responsible for setting. In an even more horrific extension of imposition, some company’s think it would be really cool to get a marketing agency to help them establish the values. Wrong. If they are going to mean something to anyone beyond the board room they should be co-created from all corners of your organisation, and maybe even beyond…?

They are just a list of words. Trustworthy, Honest, Integrity, Open, Collaborative, blah, blah, bullshit bingo. Where’s the context? Where’s the meaning? People don’t want a shopping list of buzzwords – they want something to unite and connect with. A recent piece of research by SurveyLab shows that 86% of people are committed to delivering quality work and 79% always try to contribute more than is expected of them. I think people want values to be a frame of reference that helps them to give of their best.

They are set in stone. The environment we operate in changes, and we are expected to change and adapt to cope or take advantage. I think company values have more meaning when they are reviewed in context with what you are trying to achieve. It doesn’t follow that they will definitely change, but I think they should be reconsidered and people should know about this and have the chance to have their say.

As the Q&A session continued, Sinead Carville tweeted from afar with a great suggestion. ‘Perhaps a better question might be who can give examples of their values being lived within the business? We remember stories.’ I thought this was a lovely, useful observation, stories beat shopping lists every time.