When is it OK to ignore the elephant in the room? At what point should we acknowledge ‘I can’t cope’, or ‘dammit I’ve screwed up here’, and take action or make that call for help?
The security firm G4S are splashed all across the news here in the UK after seemingly goofing up the security recruitment and training plans for the Olympics. It’s not a minor slip, they are thousands of people short of their targets. In March 2011 G4S won a £284m contract to provide 13,700 guards, but only has 4,000 in place. It says a further 9,000 are in the pipeline. G4s revealed this two days ago, with just two weeks to go before the start of the biggest world sporting event, and yet as recently as May 2012 G4S was riding high as winner of Best Global Recruitment Strategy award at the Recruiter’s Awards for Excellence.
I expect this goof up will cost G4S dearly (although bizarrely there is no penalty clause for failure within the contract itself), but at least it serves as a powerful reminder to the rest of us. Too often in the workplace we wait for someone else to take a lead, or assume it’s someone else’s responsibility.
When you think something’s going badly wrong, whether it be malpractice, bullying, or just good old fashioned human error, take courage and say something.
Update:
The plot thickens. Since I wrote this post it has emerged that the UK Government were warned about difficulties with the recruiting process ten months ago. The warnings came from Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, not the security company itself. So now the UK Government is under pressure to explain why it didn’t take the matter further. Much pointing of fingers is currently going on.