Tag: HR

Learning To Let Go : Change Is Hard

When things are evolving, and change is afoot, people often hanker for the good old days. ‘Things were so much better back then…’. Were they really?

Leaky Pens

When I first left school I was a trainee draughtsman working at a house building company. I drew housing layouts, road and drainage section drawings, and more, on large sheets of coated film using a technical drawing pens. Expensive, high specification, high maintenance pens, the ink distributed perfectly in lines of uniform width. Except when they leaked and scratched, which was often. When the dam burst, and the ink leaked, depending on how much progress had been made, the choice usually boiled down to starting again, or letting the ink dry and trying to scratch and scrape the excess off the drawing film with a scalpel. It was easy to cut yourself during this part of the process, adding blood to the inky excess. Truthfully I can’t distinguish whether the feeling experienced on completing a drawing was joy in my work, or simply relief that me and my pens hadn’t leaked everywhere. Things were so much better back then…

Mutant Tea Urns

One of my earliest office jobs involved a myriad of fascinating duties. My day started by filling the clanky old hot water urn so that people could make tea and coffee at will through the day. This big steaming tin can, with its shiny spout and oddly ear shaped handles brought to mind a mutant, monstrous metal elephant head, steaming with rage. The mutant was hot, and I often burned myself on its metal skin. Things were so much better back then…

The DeathBringer 5000

Once my burn wounds were dressed, it was mailshot time. We used to send letters to our customers, and the envelopes containing the letters were hand printed, by me. As a new customer joined our ranks, I would stamp their name and address, letter by letter, onto a small lead plate and insert the plate into a metal surround and file it away. When the time came to correspond, I took a handful of these metal surrounds and loaded them into a stamping machine. I then inserted an envelope into the machine, pulled the handle and voila! A movement was triggered. A metal surround containing the lead plate went via an inkpad before being forced against the envelope, where it left its mark, a name and address. We might send a couple of hundred letters in a batch and this machine was hand operated and had the capacity for one envelope at a time.

I had to pull the machine handle downwards really hard to create the force to stamp the address. For some inexplicable reason, the big heavy handle had a hook built into it. One day, at around envelope number 146, my mind somehow drifted from the scintillating task, and I became nothing more than a part of that machine. Load, stamp remove. Load, stamp, remove. Load, stamp, remove. Just prior to experiencing the screaming pain which accompanies your thumb nail departing from your thumb, courtesy of being smashed through by a superfluous hook on the handle of the DeathBringer 5000 Envelope Stamper (for that was its name), my reverie was broken by an abundance of blood all over the place. The thumbnail grew back, the mental scars have never left me. Things were so much better back then…

We have enjoyed many improvements to the process of work. Our drawing pens are better, and complemented by technology. Our mutant tea urns are safer, and slightly less angry, and the DeathBringer 5000 is where it belongs, safely behind bars at the Tower of London torture section.

So if it is not the process we look so longingly back at, what is it?

More to follow…

Change Is Hard : Learning To Let Go was inspired by a conversation with Tim Gardner over a pint or two last week. Thank you Tim.

 

Opening up Engagement

The concept of employee engagement is a pretty divisive issue. Some people think it’s the answer to many organisational woes, others that it’s little more than the corporate wolf of unpaid overtime in fluffy sheep’s clothing. The idea has been kicking around for about a quarter of a century, and it’s widely recognised that in his 1990 article, “Psychological Conditions of Personal Engagement and Disengagement at Work.” William Kahn provided an early formal definition of personal engagement. He described it as:

“The harnessing of organisation members’ selves to their work roles; in engagement, people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively, and emotionally during role performances.”

Since then it’s become a more widely debated idea, and many businesses use surveys and other tools to try and understand it better, and even to try and measure it. I’d advise caution here, as trying to link simple measurements to more abstract human qualities, doesn’t always go to plan.

Like many others, I’ve spent time and effort looking at engagement and what it might mean for us. I volunteered in the discovery phases of what was to become Engage for Success, a process which I disengaged myself from after a few years because although I witnessed plenty of good conversations, I wasn’t seeing any significant shifts in the way we work. I left the matter to one side until the good people at Symposium events contacted me recently and invited me to attend their forthcoming Employee Engagement Summit. I’m happy to go along and see what’s changing – here are a couple of thoughts on what would help reopen my interests.

Improving Responsiveness

I was recently in a conversation with a friend whose work patterns are currently undergoing a lot of shift. The project they are currently working on involves lots of deadlines, lots of travel, and multiple points of accountability and responsibility. The work is mostly interesting, and quite hectic – with the result that my friend’s mood, or level of engagement if you prefer, varies frequently and significantly.

The fluidity of work and our need to be adaptable is often poorly served by many business processes – some of which may be necessary. When it comes to the employee engagement survey as a necessary business process, I’m not convinced.

This scenario I discovered when talking to my friend is not uncommon and is an excellent demonstration of why the shelf life of employee engagement survey results may be too brief to be useful. I think we all feel dramatically different about our work from day to day, and sometimes hour to hour. “How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?”

I’m hoping to hear about new ways in which organisations are trying to be more responsive to employees’ needs.

Broadening the debate

Continuing the conversation with my friend, she suggests that more broadly, maybe engagement is a symptom, rather than a goal or outcome. It’s what occurs when people have challenging, meaningful work and feel valued. It can also be a great avenue to discuss really important issues, like diversity and inclusion, in ways that don’t make people feel defensive and shut down. I’m keen to learn if and how organisations are exploring the concept in this way. Previously I’ve seen thinking on the subject get quite stagnant. When engagement is such a broad concept, there should always be room for creative and important work inside the idea. I’m hoping I will find some on March 10th.

A version of this post was first published on the Symposium web site.

Moving to a more fluid definition of talent

(This post was originally featured in a 2015 White Paper jointly produced by HR Zone and Cornerstone On Demand titled ‘Talent 2020 – What is the Future Talent Landscape’. You can download it here and read further contributions from Rob Briner, Mervyn Dinnen and Dr Tom Calvard)

Moving to a more fluid definition of talent

As someone who relies on improvisation in my work, and someone who practices meditation, I enjoy going with the flow, and trying to be in the moment. The idea of trying to see five years into the future for any reason, let alone what that might mean for talent at work, is a challenge for me. Nevertheless, here are a few thoughts about what talent could mean for an enlightened organisation in five years’ time, and some things that need to shift in order to make talent the dynamic, wider opportunity it should be.

Talent bubble

I find the notion of talent as some exclusive club into which only a few can pass, quite abhorrent. When I worked for BT I declined a request to join the talent community, because it felt like a secretive, invitation only club, into which you were quietly drawn, rather than something everyone knew about and could take advantage of when needed.

Everyone has something to offer, and I prefer to think of talent as an all-encompassing notion which we use to encourage everyone to bring their best, and be the best they can. It’s a fluid concept, my talents may be particularly useful for a given time, and for a given set of requirements. I’d like to see the idea of talent as something highly permeable through which anyone can move through, to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes.

A shift – from employee to freelancer

According to a 2014 report published by the ONS, self-employment in the UK is at its highest level since records began. There are 4.6 million people working for themselves, with the proportion of the total workforce self-employed at 15% compared with 13% in 2008, and as few as 8.7% in 1975.

This shift looks set to increase, with some predicting the number of people in a freelance role could be as high as 50% by 2020. I think what this means is that the bubble in which talent currently operates will burst. The idea of a ring fenced, private club for talent within an organisation will no longer be practical as organisations increasingly look outward to freelance workers to help them deliver. How willing will these organisations be to invest in talent that they don’t ‘own’?

I invest frequently in my own ‘talent development’. In the past 12 months I’ve spent time and money with The Improvisation Academy developing my improvisational skills. I’m investing time and money through the CIPD to learn more about Organisational Design and I’m investing in improving my artistic skills.

Currently I fund these activities directly from my freelance income, and I’m wondering if maybe, my freelance arrangements should be tweaked so that clients who invest in my talents can see that part of their fees is a direct investment in me, and therefore the service I give them?

The same ONS report which confirms the current levels of 15% self-employment in the UK also reveals that income from self-employment has fallen by 22% since 2008/09. There could be all sorts of reasons for this – and maybe, just maybe, if the buyer could see that the freelancer was committing to his or her ongoing development, this fall could start to become a rise.

A shift – from being trained to learning to learn

Within organisations I’m observing a move towards a more self-determined approach to learning and development, albeit currently at quite a slow rate. Technology is a clear enabler for this, and by 2020, I think this will offer a challenge to people in traditional organisational talent communities, for whom membership often means access to an enhanced training programme.

For some – the idea of co-creating and co-owning this facet of talent development will be very exciting, yet there’s a degree of arrogance that comes with admission to the club, and an expectation that learning and development will be done for you. People with that mentality may see this shift as a cheapening of the talent experience, and I’d argue they are not the kind of people you will be looking for in future.

A move to more self-determined learning should make talent communities more open, and make it easier to connect with relevant talent at relevant times, personally and professionally, organisationally and individually.

Clarity in the hiring process

There is already a need for greater clarity in the hiring process, specifically around making sure the role description is tangible, and matches the needs of the employer – regardless of whether this is for a permanent hire or not. I think recruitment agencies need to work much more closely and robustly with their customers – not only in making job descriptions fit the role better, but being generally more responsive and accountable too. A failure to achieve this will mean that talent increasingly bypasses the recruitment industry and goes direct.