HR – Page 35 – The Consulting Artist

Cover Up?

How’s the decision by the French government on banning veils in public places going? According to the BBC, a woman wearing a veil has today been detained by police in France who insist she was held not because of her veil but for taking part in an unauthorised protest against the ban. I’m not a big fan of banning stuff and I wonder how the French authorities are going to manage this?

I’m not a huge fan of dress codes at all mind you (no jokes about t-shirts or my forthcoming smart shorts project thank you), and I’m pleased that the customer I’m currently spending a lot of time with working on an internal comms plan, doesn’t have one. According to the recently published XpertHR 2011 dress codes survey, they’re in a minority. 72% of organisations which responded to the survey have “dress code regulations or guidelines, or operate a policy on dress or appearance at work.”

Yes or No?

Those employers without a code say they:

“Do not have one because employees dress appropriately without guidelines. Exactly half say that it is not necessary as the organisation has a culture that it describes as “relaxed” and not conducive to having a code telling employees what to wear.”

Those who do have one say they do for a number of reasons, including (in declining order of popularity):

to preserve the external image of the company
for health and safety reasons
to reinforce the internal culture
for practical reasons
to maintain hygiene
to distinguish or identify employees

I love the “reinforce the internal culture” point. I can’t help but read it as “we don’t trust you”.

Is it worth it?

Maybe this sounds harsh, but for me a dress code smacks of HR and head office (where 74% of these guidelines are set according to XpertHR) not having anything better to do. I hope that'[s not the case. And it’s notable that 53% of the employers surveyed said their code provokes complaints from employees and 33% say that too much energy is spent policing it. There’s an easy answer to that last point. Don’t have one.

What are you wearing today?

photo c/o Jacques Delarue

survey data c/o XpertHR

Disengaged

I may be wrong, I often am.

My heart sank with yesterday’s news that the UK Government has launched a taskforce to boost employee engagement. Read that sentence again and tell me it doesn’t reek of despair. However well meaning this taskforce is I shudder when government, any government, starts fiddling with the concept of making work better. There’s a huge industry chuntering out surveys and magic numbers and other guff purporting to be about discretionary effort (that means working harder for no more money). Kevin Ball has written a storming post on engagement surveys which is well worth a read.

This taskforce is to be headed by David MacLeod, an eminent speaker and writer on this subject. I know he’s an eminent writer because I have a stack of ten copies of Engaging for Success (co authored by MacLeod and Nita Clarke and contributed to by me and doubtless hundreds of others) now doubling up as a footstool in my office. Engagingly supportive. And I know that MacLeod is a highly polished speaker on the subject of employee engagement. I’ve seen him speak several times over the years (including once at a conference I disorganised in April 2010) and he’s good at it. Trouble is it feels stuck. It’s the same story, using the same slides, same jokes, same pleas. I am not yet convinced he has the vigour and rigour to drive this along purposefully. Mind you I’m unsure anyone could drive this in a useful way unless that by useful you mean appeasing government bureaucracy, or driving the whole damn thing off a cliff.

I believe engagement is simple, and that doesn’t mean it is easy.

I think I’ll set up a counter taskforce! I already have an army of HR undead massed at the gates of engagement. War is declared – let battle come down.

engagement ninjas we are ready to fight!

Keen to know what other folks think about this. Are you up for more government sponsored plodding or shall we try a more agile, exciting kick ass way to engage with meaning?

photo c/o carloscappaticci

Bully

I should have done more

When I was at school in the 1970s I won a prize, the inaugural Bruce McCallum Memorial Prize for spoken French. Bruce was a fellow pupil of mine at school who wasn’t well and he sadly passed away a few months before the prize giving. I remember his funeral well. The place was packed and lots of us school boys lined the pathway in the church grounds. Bruce suffered more than his fair share of bullying when he was alive and sadly, a few kids in the line persisted in their rudeness even on this sad day. I remember thinking I should do something about this. I asked some of the kids to shut up and got told where to stick it. I didn’t have the bottle to do any more and just stood there feeling awkward. On the day I received the prize I was introduced to his parents and felt quite overwhelmed. Overwhelmed that I’d won something and overwhelmed at my memory of Bruce’s funeral day and the fact that I didn’t do enough. I’ve still got the prize, a copy of David Attenborough’s Life on Earth.

HR should have done more

Back in 2002, as an up and coming manager in BT I was on the receiving end of persistent bullying from my manager. He undermined me, threatened to sack me, was rude to me, and regularly put me down in front of my peers and customers. This went on for months and months. To this day I don’t know why he did it, and I do know that it hurt, badly. I was so undermined, my confidence almost completely crushed. I’d spoken with the bully many times about his behaviour and on each occasion he tried to dismiss it as me over reacting. I’d been to speak with his manager and to HR a couple of times to ask for help, and been told to resolve it with the bully directly. Through all this I was fortunate to have another manager in the business offering me some support. It was helpful to talk and with his reassurance, I finally went to HR and the guy’s manager together – poured out the whole story and put it to them that if they didn’t intervene I was going to go off work sick and take out a grievance against the guy. To this day I’m not proud of what I said but I felt backed into a dark, dark corner. I felt desperate. I got moved to another team and got on with enjoying my work. On reflection I have found the experience very helpful as I now know what it its like to be on the receiving end of persistent unwelcome behaviour. It’s important to learn from these things if we can. The bully left the country shortly after HRs eventual intervention; I think he still works for the company.

They are doing something

There has been a recent case of bullying at my daughter’s school. Since the victim found the courage to speak up, the school has been dealing with her sympathetically and talking with the bullies and the whole school about bullying being unacceptable and the importance of speaking up about bullying. I am pleased the school has both the systems and the pastoral caring attitude in place to feel able to address this unpleasantness.

Deafened by the roar of mice. #bannatynegate

I’ve been fascinated by the recent row sparked by Duncan Bannatyne who tried to spoil the good name of the XpertHR business by throwing around unsubstantiated allegations on Twitter. Here are a few screen shots of the emerging Twitter row which show:

8^th March 2011 – unsubstantiated allegations of dishonesty made by Bannatyne to XpertHR.

8^th March 2011 – when challenged by Ailsa Suttie, queen of all roaring mice, and Deadbeat Mum, aka wonder woman (who messes with super heroes?), Bannatyne becomes rankled and says he will post evidence of XpertHR’s dishonesty the following day.

9^th March 2011 – nothing. No evidence presented by Bannatyne

10^th March 2011 – Bannatyne is reminded of his promise to produce evidence, he becomes irritable (more than usual) and no evidence is provided.

11^th March onwards – Bannatyne blocks everyone and anyone in and around the #connectinghr community who continues to remind him of his pledge. No evidence is provided.

12^th March 2011 onwards, the silence continues.

What have I learned from this collection of experiences? Once folk take a stand and speak out it is much more difficult for the bully to continue to operate. Openness doesn’t suit the modus operandi of a bully.

If you would like to make a comment or tell a story about bullying in general please do so. If you wish to comment on #bannatynegate please pop over to Ailsa’s blog and we can keep all the action in one place.

photo c/o annavanna

Update: 23 May 2011. This post gets lots of views. Today Ben Eubanks tweeted a link to this interesting short piece on bullying. I wanted to add a link to it to keep things flowing:

http://www.jobacle.com/blog/6-steps-to-deal-with-the-office-bully.html

I hope this is useful for you.