Just how rigid are the working practices in your organization?

Not sure?

Well, try this check list.

• is the typical day worked by most people ‘nine to five’?
• do people tend to stay in the same departments and type of roles for the duration of their career with you?
• are on-going training and skills improvement programs in place for all of your employees?
• is the IT infrastructure in place to allow staff to work from home?

If your answer to the first two questions is ‘yes’, and the last two ‘no’, then I would define your organisation as super-inflexible.

And that’s going to be a problem.

Why? Well, in a survey of 1,000 UK university leavers carried out by UK-based market research agency Redshift on behalf of mobile network Orange this year, many graduates cited that learning experiences, happiness and flexible working would be more important to them than a big salary.

I believe that graduates are just the tip of the iceberg. People’s lives in general are getting busier and busier with the demarcation lines between home and work, domestic and career, getting more and more blurred. Employees at all levels are going to need a more flexible working environment to cope.

So… far-sighted companies are going to realise this, adjust their policies and working practices and attract staff at all levels including the graduates who will become their future middle and senior managers.

And inflexible companies are going to struggle to recruit and retain key workers.

There’s some good news for the inflexible! My experience of super-inflexible companies is that they worry that unleashing more flexible working practices is going to cost not only in terms of money but also in terms of productivity. Well, inflexible CEO’s might like to know that Orange’s ‘Connected Britain’ report estimated that UK businesses could save up to £31.7bn by helping workers fulfill their ideal work life balance.

Time to let go!?

Tags: demarcation lines duration flexible working graduates happiness improvement programs key workers market research agency mobile network productivity redshift senior managers skills improvement tip of the iceberg typical day uk businesses university leavers work life balance working environment working practices
 

To you and yours

Someone asked me recently what, in my opinion, was the most contentious exercise that organizations undertake. Several candidates occurred!

Implementing a new expenses policy is a good one to start with. And the annual pay review is always a source of some heartache. As for developing, launching and getting ‘buy-in’ to and compliance with new corporate identity guidelines—well let’s just not go there.

However, ahead of all of these and without question the toughest project must be the universal job re-grading exercise!

We’ve all been there. HR has been working with a team of job grading consultants and developed a new job grading approach blah blah blah… and now every job’s going to be looked at and a revised grade arrived at.

Of course, it’s not difficult to see why job grading exercises have to be done. Jobs change and a grading exercise is a good stimulus to updating tired job descriptions. A merger may demand harmonization of two different grading structures.

The business world changes as well, particularly from a technological point of view, so ‘grading points’ once bestowed for typewriting ability or management of a manual switchboard may no longer be applicable!

And, naturally, in large organizations, some rationalization of job grades is necessary to keep the whole process simple.

It’s also not difficult to see where contention creeps in. Colleagues once on similar grades can find themselves on different grades and therefore pay-scales. Some people feel promoted and some feel demoted. Some feel singularly put out.

The potential for a dip in morale is massive. So, I say, having seen the bull in a china shop approach so often employed in these situations, handle with extreme care. Explain why the exercise is being done. Commit to maintain current job-holders’ grades even if the job grade has been lowered. Make sure you’re happy with the approach HR and consultants are taking in weighting responsibilities and competencies. Be sensitive.

Oh… and if it’s an exercise that does not really need to be done?

Then avoid it like the plague!

Tags: blah business world china shop contention corporate identity guidelines exercises extreme care harmonization heartache job descriptions merger new job point of view rationalization scales shop approach stimulus switchboard typewriting world changes
 

Excellent leadership of your senior team, the intelligent strategies for growth you’ve put in place, the persuasive presentation you recently gave to major shareholders, the 20% year on year profitability increase you’re forecasting…

… none of these mean a damn if I go into your retail outlet and spend a frustrating 15 minutes being poorly served by a member of your staff.

Or if I telephone your premium rate helpline (what an impertinence they are!) and spend 30 minutes negotiating an answer system menu and am then waiting in a ‘queue’.

Or if, despite me telling your staff a number of times that its ‘K’, ‘a’, ‘n’, ‘u’—ignoring the wait for more characters—correspondence from your company to me is always addressed to Mr. F Canoe.

Or if I keep telling it’s pronounced:

(just look up how Canoe is pronounced!) but kept being called ‘Can U’.

Or if your salesman claims benefits ‘a’, ‘b’ and ‘c’ for the product I have just bought from you, it only does ‘a’ and ‘b’. Or it does ‘x’, ‘y’ and ‘z’ instead.

Because if these things happen, I am going to decide that in future I’ll do business with one of your competitors instead.

I am also going to tell five of my friends to avoid your company… and each of those will tell five each of their friends and so on. If that happens each day, 9,765,625 potential customers will not be dealing with you after day 10.

This isn’t a homage to ‘word of mouth’ or exponential growth.

It’s about you making sure you know what’s going on at the coal face, i.e.: at the point where your company and your prospective customers touch.

I’ve gone on about that before… and I’ll doubtless return to it ‘a’,'g’,'a’,'i’,'n’.

Tags: 15 minutes 30 minutes answer system canoe coal face correspondence exponential growth homage impertinence persuasive presentation premium rate profitability prospective customers queue retail outlet shareholders system menu word of mouth
 

My thanks go to J.D. Meier for taking the time to add their valuable opinions to my blog.

Here’s a thorny one.

Can you cut staff number and increase productivity?

This seems a contradiction on the face of it—but I wonder. Have you ever heard the phrase ‘if you want something done then ask a busy person’?

British Fire Chief Tony McGuirk clearly has. He has said that British public services are riddled with ‘bone idle’ people who have damaged the productivity of the state sector. Mr McGuirk, chief fire officer of Merseyside, sparked outrage at a Trades Union Congress conference with his views by saying that he has been able to reduce staff numbers by 40 per cent and actually provide a better service.

He also said that lazy workers had led to an ‘epidemic of sickness leave’ and that bosses should ‘manage performance, reward good performance, develop people with poor performance or ultimately sack them’.

Mr McGuirk’s opinions have not made him popular. ‘There were 2,000 people walking through Liverpool wearing shirts saying on the back “I hate McGuirk”,’ he claimed.

What do I think?

Well, first of all, I think there are a lot of busy people being dumped on in organizations because of their capacity to get things done. And I have seen for myself a lot of work-shy individuals getting away with it, with no apparent impact in their annual appraisal or on their remuneration.

That’s not fair.

And I think that the performance of work-shy people should be managed back to an acceptable level. In other words, they should be given a chance.

And if they can’t respond—and there’s no reasonable explanation for that other than their unpreparedness to work, then they should go.

I also think unions really should take a more commercial view sometimes if they truly want to protect their members’ jobs.

Tags: acceptable level apparent impact chief fire officer congress conference contradiction epidemic fire chief increase productivity liverpool mcguirk outrage performance performance reward poor performance remuneration sickness leave staff number staff numbers state sector trades union congress work shy individuals
 

A Head of Marketing once told me that he could fashion a business case persuading others to his cause out of any market research findings, regardless of whether they were truly supportive.

His boast reminded me of two things. The first was the phrase attributed to Benjamin Disraeli’ (19th century British Prime Minister) by Mark Twain—’lies, damned lies and statistics’. The phrase describes how numbers can be manipulated to support weak arguments or to refute a reasonable position.

The second was a claim in an advertisement for razor blades which, apparently, 68% of 85 men agreed with.

Let’s look at this latter statistic. 57.8 men out of 85 agreed. This means that 27.2 men disagreed. That’s almost one third, not an insignificant proportion and enough to make the opposite claim, i.e.: almost one third disagreed.

So, what’s this got to do with leadership? Actually, quite a lot.

You’re constantly making decisions based on reports which will invariably have statistical content and interpretation. I encourage you to look at the numbers first, arrive at your own interpretation and then see whether this agrees with that of your direct report or other member of staff. If it doesn’t, then you could have a damned lie on your hands!

Tags: advertisement benjamin disraeli boast british prime minister business case making decisions mark twain market research marketing phrase proportion razor blades research findings statistic statistical content statistics
 

A friend told me that concern had been expressed during his recruitment for a senior role that he would move on after a short-time in his new job should he secure it.

My friend was surprised. He had been in his previous role for over seven years and his potential new employer knew this. In other words, his track record did not suggest someone who was ‘here today and gone tomorrow’.

I was also surprised, but for different reasons.

I was surprised, because if I was recruiting someone senior, I’d be hoping that they would move on in under four years!

Why?

Because I would be looking for someone who:

• once settled, would constructively challenge what they saw, identify the priority issues and pour their business energies into resolving them
• wanted to make their mark, do a great job and add to their CV and credentials
• saw their success in the role I was recruiting for as a stepping stone to their next appointment.

You cannot have you cake and eat it!

The type of person many organizations need to lead them into a new phase of growth and development isn’t the type of person to hang around once their work is done. They will do a great job for you and then they’ll want to do a great job at a more senior level or in a bigger organization somewhere else.

So—turning this issue around—if you’re recruiting a leader who you want to challenge your organization and make changes—and if, in answer to the question, they say their intention is to stay—then contrary to what you currently think, they might not be what you’re looking for.

Not everyone that departs after the work is finished is a quitter. Sometimes, overstaying is the real quitting.

Tags: appointment credentials cv development different reasons growth growth and development intention new job priority issues recruitment seven years short time stepping stone