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I was referred, by one on my team, to a recent thread in HR space on the theme of 'Big ideas in HR'.

Naturally I was curious to find out what had been written. I must say I was quite disappointed with the reponses. Some contributors should get out more!

Here's a few not only doing the rounds in thought leadership but have already begun to cross-over into organisation application:

Strategic Human Capital Management (Vol 1 No 1 2007 & Vol 2 No 1 2008)

HR Function 2.0 (Brave New HR World) (Vol 1 No 1&2 2007)

Performance based employee engagement (Vol 1 No 1&2, 2007; Vol 2 No 1 2008 and Vol 3 No 1 forthcoming)

Evidence based Management/Leadership (Vol 2 No 1 2008)

Human Capital Reporting (Vol 1 No 3 2007)

Real HR Transformation (Vol 1 No 3 2007)

Human Capital Management Intelligence (Vol 2 No 1 2008)

Organisation Engagement (Vol 1 No 2 2007)

Other articles relating to all of these can be found at either (a) Journal of AHCM, or (b) ISHCM.

If that fails to light your fire then I would suggest new insights into topics related to people management include:

Behavioural economics (and neuroscience) 

Analytics and decision-making; and the role of everyday probability (decision theory)

The continuing talent management debate

White collar deception and fraud causes and forensics

Business intelligence

I've mentioned evidence based management already but its a potentially large area and its at the heart of what we do/stand for - I trust that HR isn't in danger of missing the boat again!

There's also evidence-based ethics (includes elements of philosophy but that's not new) and its role in decision-making and culture which we are currently developing as a cross-hybrid as well!

For those of you who want to really push the boat out there's the heuristic/predictive thingy related to analytics and decison-making (see above) and its organisational application (which is where we're at)

Of course there's always the new 12-month part-time HCMI qualification to learn about these.

So no big ideas? Have a read and let me know.

It s not that we lack big ideas in HR we just don't seem to know them and apply them in large numbers.

Enjoy...... 

Well - we've been plying our (predictive) analytics and evaluation based HR (aka Human Capital Management) with select clients for over 6 years now. A combination of the best of qualitative and quantitative approaches that yield management insight for decision-making and actioning.

In the meantime, the mainstream HR focus has been on the same old same old with scant media or Institute attention at the innovation that the HR community has at its feet (but to a large extent ignored).

So I was very interested to see an article apppearing in this week's Business Week entitled 'Data Mining Moves to Human Resources' which provides an insight into where the function of people management is headed.

Though I'm not that overly enamoured with the example (we passed the data-mining point some four years ago - see our latest on enterprise-wide HCM Intelligence) it is a sign that serious attention is being paid to the potential ways that HR functions can 'move up the curve' (and more pragmatically than the article example).

The bit about integrating data from across various areas of people management from performance, reward, engagement, talent management, retention, leadership, recruitment, job evaluation, behavioural modelling, legal/operating risk aspects (to name but a few) and evaluating/analysing them all to aid decision-making is a good move, even though in itself its not new.

I can say that UK leads the field. A pity that too many in HR don't see it.

But as long as we can tinker with HR function structure, talk endlessly about the HR function, recruitment, equality (at least diversity has died down a bit), and accept stuff that is neither intellectually robust nor practically useful bar being a PR illusion. Who cares, eh?

Well I do.......and gradually a small growing army. I just hope we reach crictical mass before I retire which is about thirty years away...........

Looking forward is where it's at.

We need to dispense with those rear-view mirrors. In recessionary times they tend to get snapped off.............

Some more light beginning to appear on why the FSA appeared to be 'comatose' (my words) at the wheel at the heart of the UK banking crisis.

A very interesting article published yesterday - 'Exposed: the banks cosy ties to watchdog' would seem to provide at least one contributing factor and what a whopper it is.

According to a whistleblower (yes another one.......and from the FSA!)  financial institutions were given a formal role in determining pay, bonuses (and by definition) career prospects of the very people who were supervising them.

Apparently banks etc provided 'feedback' on staff who were supervising them which effectively disincentivised them from challenging things like, for example, their business model amongst other things.

FSA staff were even warned 'not to frighten the horses' during visits. The staff assessment form includes 'positive feedback from firms'.

Now, I don't know about you but THERE IS A BIG CONFLICT OF INTEREST HERE............we're talking regulators of the banking industry.

And why I admit that regulators still need to show respect and courtesy like any super-audit team, this is way different to having banks providing formal input to an internal FSA staff appraisal.

Talk about bending the operating culture.......a question on this whole subject was asked at the recent Commons Treasury Committee.

So the big question was where was HR in all of this? Where was the due diligent process to state the inherent risks and unintended consequences of this flagrant design flaw? Or was HR just ticking process boxes and of course chasing incompleted 'feedback' in that bustling non-value activity so reminiscent of many HR functions?

Or did they internally report the dangers apparent from this type of 360 to senior management but were over-ruled or just plainly ignored? Or did they not see this as even their remit to?

The FSA was also apparently constantly under-resourced which was another factor. So what was HR in fact doing? Maybe HR at the FSA could throw some more light on the matter?

Bizarrely there is an interesting copy of the FSA staff consultative committee minutes available on the internet from early 2008 which is quite revealing. You read it and make your own mind up.

All's I will say it is enough is to say it's exactly what's wrong with too many HR functions.........

It's bitterly disappointing as a professional in this field to see this and not only that to see the potential unintended consequences (some conspiracy theorists out there may say intended) which has had such a devastating  effect.

I trust that the CIPD make a case study of this and insert into their syllabus for all as relevant learning. We certainly will be at the School once we have ascertained the 'evidence'.

Another day and another nail in the HR professional coffin......................

Comments welcome......

This of course also includes the workshy, the incapacity claimant benefits (both bona fide and otherwise), the in-betweens, the illegals etc.

I've just completed a review of the new report 'Tackling worklessness' mentioned in PT's article 'Council apprenticeships and 'taster' schemes proposed to tackle unemployment'.

The report pushes all the right buttons and ticks off all the words with buzzword management speak.

'Partnerships, neighbourhood, contribution, roles, sustainable, flexibility, delivery, framework, empowerment, commitment, coordination, radical measures, transparency, simpler, more frameworks, asessments, integrated budgets, engaging, good practice, working together, agencies, sharing information' and so on.

Though the authors have done a respectable job the one question you ask is what have local authorities and local agencies been doing for the past 20 years since the last time we as a nation were 'employment challenged'?

And I don't want to belittle the report since it makes some very good recommendations which will no doubt be superceded by some more perhaps in another few years time when these set of proposals have not been implemented or worse have made no difference (just being swallowed up in the current economic wave I fear).

But, for all of the focus at the moment on the 'input' side i.e. trying to get unemployment down or people into jobs, it's the wrong one.

Some weeks ago I blogged on the national scheme being introduced where effectively 'recruitment brokers' are going to be paid squillions targeting employers to take people on in a 'push-demand approach' in a simlar vein. Very good but very limited and arguably a mis-allocation of resource funds.

The point is the killer-one-line' in the 'Tackling Worklessness' report, namely 'ACTIVE ENGAGEMENT WITH EMPLOYERS - BEING DEMAND LED' (actually its a bullet-point on page 20). Amen to that.

You see in all of the excited agitated initaitives and fire-fighting by the national Government and it would seem in some circumstances local government, the problem is you can spend as much money as you want but if you can't get new employers, from two-man bands upwards to mega-corporations, hiring you're stuffed. Simply trying to stoking further demand from over-indebted consumers is a facile way of thinking. PERIOD.

For some impact you need to reduce business taxes and local contributions, boost R&D investment (but outside the university sector), ensure trade credit (I'm talking here of the invoice payment gap) is supplied.That's economics.

Yes - you can even get the local authority being the biggest employer and also procuring to all of the local companies to keep the local economy alive but in the end you'll go bankrupt because insufficient wealth is created to sustain it.

This basic grasp of economics seems to be above many. The government seems to think that offering SMEs loans will solve the problem. Pathetic.

Evidence: You only have to look at the localities where the local authority is the biggest employer to see that they suffer the worst in a downturn.  

I would sugggest that another report be commissioned that provides both strategic and tactical operations that defines the skills cluster a locality has and what it needs to sustain itself and which industries it can grow human capital and deliver value with - a kind of 'locality centre of excellence' if you like (once basics are covered) - we do have a few dotted around but far too few in number.

This report should also show how we can wean ourselves off the big local authority budget. For example, slashing business rates would be a good start.

But for that you need to cross power lines of political authority/mandate with vision and that's dangerous because ultimately it flies in the face of the big budget local authority.

Funny how we get our priorities wrong.............Because the problem is for all of the goodwill reporting such as the 'Tackling Worklessness' and similar reports/initiatives provide, the economic employer horse has already bolted and is dying from thirst........... 

Also recent research showed that students and the recent unemployed are more likely to seek employment in the public sector (where they can) which is entirely understandable but ultimately futile nationally.

And yes there's been a lot of people who have become self (un)employed. Apart from (irrelevant) training support there's little else. To survive you need to transact business - training and/or support groups will be of little use.

That's what the market teaches you.............. 

Am I the only one to notice this?

Just google CIPD KPMG and see what comes up.......never mind the recent press attention

Of course I've always thought that CIPD was an independent institution of a proud profession.

Instead we see prostitution...

Just what is going on?

With over 100,000 members paying £200 a year......

Of course not forgetting KPMG's long history of HR/HCM advisory...well the last couple of years anyway.........though I'm sure they're very pleased.....

I wouldn't mind so much if the surveys told us something we didn't already know.......

Also, CIPD sponsoring Best Companies nonsense?...just what is going on with our independent professional institute?

Answers on a postcard (apart from this blog) to Jackie Orme............ 

Some weeks ago I used the title to suggest that things could get a little ugly over the expansion of Heathrow.

However, I am now resigned to the fact that the march in Dublin at the weekend and various similar civil skirmishes around the world is just a foretaste of what is to come sadly in the UK and it is going to get ugly - of course we had a taster over the recent migrant labour issue which actually was a non-issue legally but that didn't suppress the feeling of anger nestling just below the surface and so effectively whipped up by the Unions.

As denial slowly turns to anger, a proportion of the people up and down the country are going to feel a growing inequity with regard to their circumstances. In fact coincidentally, there is a report this morning on this issue - see 'Police fear UK summer of rage' as an example.

Also stories like the 'expense issue' highlighted by Cabinet ministers such as Jacqui Smith (aka as 'taking the p****) will just add flame to the fire, as will the new revelations about the MEP gravy train ('How to make a million in five years') providing a 'stick' for any in Europe who want to sow discord or just feel aggrieved and rightly so.

Talent in the UK Government is sadly lacking which must be obvious even to those most myopic amongst us. There is a dearth of leadership and moral compass.

Human capital can be wonderfully creative and innovative, the most hearty resilient, the most loyal and productive, the most willing and the most successful at teamwork.

The flipside of human capital is the 'selfish, egotistical, greedy, 'in denial', overly-reliant, comfortable (against change), 'don't rock the boat' mentality - THE DARK SIDE. We've seen plenty of that from all sides in recent weeks.

And thus expect growing insurrection as people take to the streets whether for justifiable or other means.

An unfortunate growing of private vs public sector, haves vs have-nots, the unfunded vs the funded, middle/working class vs elite governing amongst others, etc. It's not good. There's also some real questions about the stability of the EU about to be asked.  We should never have got here......

And as a growing black hole emerges in taxation expect more to go underground as the black economy grows. The 'banker bonus issue' is really just a magician's misdirection. It's been interesting to read The Guardian's series on big companies legally avoiding taxation to a few billion.

I would have preferred them to have eagerly spent the same investigative time on where the £600 odd billion goes each year from the public coffers...........it's where the answer lies....

What the Stanford case message provides in human capital terms

On the subject of fakery. Ponzi schemes and hyper-egos, the current Stanford case is illuminating for HR as much as others:

Yet again, we see that 'warning signs' were ignored. One interesting insight was the now infamous meeting of Allen Stanford and the ECB at Lord's cricket ground.
For those of you who haven't followed this story Stanford last year touched down in a helicopter at Lords cricket ground in a huge fanfare touting the $20 million jackpot for the 'new cricket era'.

It turns out that the helicopter bearing the Stanford name was not owned but leased on an hourly basis. The gold Stanford logo had been applied by the leasing company. And the helicopter was only in flight for about 5 minutes.

Nor was there $20 million actually in the 'chest' that got so much media attention. It certainly fooled many.......

Truly style over substance which reminds me of a number of HR suppliers who we occasionally come up against, and come to think of it a few HR Directors and academics as well. I do hope the same fate awaits.

The fact that a staid governing body like the ECB got hoodwinked 'hook, line and sinker' also reminds me of another governing body closer to home -do you recognise it?

Bogus training

No, I don't mean generally(!) but actually the very sad fact of exploiting the unemployed or the fear of unemployment. A good article in yesterday's Observer on this topic.

Of course the Government is currently renegotiating hundreds of millions of pounds with suppliers in getting unemployed back to work. Am I the only one who questions this?

Rewarding middlemen (brokers if you like) to push into the market with various targets reeks of 'wasted money' or worse 'a playground for the unscrupulous or even the scrupulous to waste taxpayers money and pocket profits'.

Why not just give growing businesses (like ours, for example) a contract to take a number of people on (subject to various clauses) and cut out the middleman entirely - a market pull approach instead?

Why indeed?

That madman Colonel Gadaffi and the lesson he brings

I have known Colonel Gadaffi for over 30 years (not personally you understand).

I've always thought that he was several drills short of an oil platform. But here, now the man seems to be talking a lot of sense (it could be a ruse but so what?)

'CG' is advocating a dismantling of Government, ending corruption and giving it back to the people. He's quoted as saying "The administration has failed and the state economy has failed. Enough is enough'.

Gadaffi for Uk Prime Minister anybody? or failing that the EU presidency on a permanent basis?

As the banking crisis continues, more information is seeping out from various sources regarding reward, operating culture, ethics and corporate reputation.

And there's one question in all of this what was HR's role? There has been an acute silence....

Let's take reward (exclude executive board remuneration for the moment).

Is it or is it not under HR's remit?

Somewhere, reward-risk design got badly out of kilter with organisation performance or more appropriately risk and timelines - i.e. short term reward for longer term pay-off which was unquantified.

From a reward perspective, banking and in particular case loan granting is a complex area (never mind derivatives) of reward design and associated risk. (I should know from personal experience as a line manager way back - as an aside I was amazed to find I was more banking qualified than the various CEOs sitting at the MP committee's table last week!)

It is now clear that HR functions were not in control of this area for a number of reasons - see my previous blog - HR Puppet on a string.

Sadly it seems as though either HR was told what to do or not involved at all. This is particularly at odds with Banks having been at the forefront of employee engagement.

But as we have previously pointed out on more than one occasion, this type of engagement (like many) was/is rather 'individual input' focused as opposed to being both individual and organisation 'output/outcome' focused. 

It is no good scoring high benchmarks to various 'engagement' questions (and publishing them) if there is no connection to individual/organisational performance or operating culture or indeed any potential risks attached. It all smacks of too much PR. By the way banking isn't the only one. 

That's why we believe employee engagement should be related to individual/organisation performance and in that respect we are the odd ones out professionally.

When it comes to operating culture and ethics, the HR function again seems to have gone AWOL.

However, it did spend a lot of time on diversity initiatives, general CSR PR and a plethora of other well-meaning things but ultimately these were 'missing the obvious' - the basics of organisational performance linked from its organisation design. Think Lehmans as an obvious example. Think everybody else since.

Nobody seems to have held their hands up professionally and said there's something missing here - this is exactly the kind of thing those who care about the HR/HCM profession's standing have been on about for some time.

Where is the CIPD in all of this?

Nowhere. Given all of the reward/benefits conferences that take place giving CPD points like confetti one would have thought that a few questions may have been asked previously on this organisational issue and other related issues. I did notice that Jackie Orme, to her credit, at least commented on 'bonuses helping the business' - see PT's recent 'Bonus blame game' article.

However, the CIPD currently really prefers to continue to broadcast daily in the media the same old thing about the economy about '3 million unemployed' like a broken record - I expect to find John Philpott walking the streets with a billboard with 'the end is nigh' written on it (or maybe the next CIPD conference).

[I wouldn't mind so much if they had spotted the economic downturn first but they didn't they were late to the party and have been trying to make up for it ever since - they were at least three months behind our announcement of 100,000 HR jobs at risk back in July 2008 which also outlined the potential unemployment statistics.]

Anyway back to the main feature. There's an opportunity here for the HR/HCM profession to grasp.

The business case now exists for the function to be thrust forward and 'be responsible for organisation design and the likes of reward (amongst other things) on a professional basis'. And I apologise in advance to those organisations where the HR/OD function is.

I would prefer it if the CIPD launched an investigative review of the shortcomings of reward and the related failings in the banking crisis (never mind the failure of whistleblowing policies). If the HR profession is found culpable or just plain ignored on matters of such importance then at least we know where we're starting from.

And if the CIPD aren't then ISHCM/HCMI may well do. It's just a pity we don't have 100,000 members paying £200 a year yet.......

Today's blog focuses on the next volume of the Journal of Applied Human Capital Management -Volume 3 Number 1 2009 due out in March.

The article line-up is as follows with a brief narrative of the focus:

1. Performance based Engagement: Applying the new focus of employee engagement in organisations
   Employee engagement as a concept has been with us for some time and a number of organisations have created initiatives to improve 'engagement'. However, the industry is littered with well-meaning frameworks or implementation that have limitations. Too much focus has been on the input side of 'employee' and not enough on the 'organisation' side of collective performance or worse a negative impact of misaligned engagement. This article redresses the balance.
   
   
2. Brave New HR World Part III: Managing in a downturn
   This article follows the popularly read 'Brave New HR World' parts I and II from earlier journal volumes. Building on the concepts and practical applications of the first two articles, Part III shows how the HR/HCM function and practitioners can meet the challenges of organisation pressures in harsher economic times and to exploit opportunities to increase value contribution. 
    
3. Making sense of HR budgets: Applying value-based HR principles
   HR function budgets are notoriously messy, often lack a comparative framework and too often open to cost reduction without due diligence. What HR/HCM functions need is a structured framework following value-based HR principles which this article explains.
     
4. Evaluating the effectiveness of management of people: Observations from the frontline
   As evaluatiing people management effectiveness becomes more popular we look at the empirical evidence provided by the VB-HR(TM) Rating and what practitioners can glean from this.
    
5. Evidence based management: What it means for HR practitioners
   Evidence based Management (EbM) is a relatively new growing movement based on some old principles. This article explains its significance and what it means for HR/HCM practitioners 
    
6. Employee engagement: Key learnings from what organisations find and what they do about it
   Another article using empirical evidence to provide insight as to what organisations typically find when undertaking employee engagement assessments and what they do and don't do about it....
    
7. Human Capital Management versus Human Resource Management:
   The way forward?
   This article outlines the difference between HCM and HRM. It is becoming clear to a significant number of practitioners that there is a clear demarcation between the two and that HCM is the way forward...
    
8. Industry focus: People management in the NHS
   An inside look at the effectiveness of people management in NHS Trusts

A fairly interesting line-up as I am sure you will agree making the Journal fairly leading edge in its practical topics.

Previous journal volume and articles in the public domain can be downloaded from http://www.valuentis.com/Publications/Journal/index.htm and/or http://www.ishcm.com/publications.htm

REQUEST

The blog was originally designed to be interactive with the expectation that people would blog in about the concepts and articles in the Journal (amongst other debating topics of current interest).

We know form our records that the Journal articles have been downloaded in some quantity (I'm talking thousands per article here) so unless people like downloading pdfs but don't read them it would suggest quite a readership.

I'd like to think that regular PT/PT blog readers are amongst them.

So please send a comment or a question in (no monologues -we/you don't have the time). I am often disappointed that too much blog comment is on such small things.........let's balance it a bit...

Because it's called EVIDENCE-BASED MANAGEMENT whose ethos is the basis of HUMAN CAPITAL MANAGEMENT.

(also note: 'Evidence-based HR' is grammatically incorrect.)

EVIDENCE-BASED MANAGEMENT (EbM or EBMgt) has actually been around for some time and has its roots in Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) and also Evaluation theory (for those who know their social sciences). Evidence-Based Management is also what VaLUENTiS and ISHCM are founded upon. And because our special interest is people and organisations it's why it's called HUMAN CAPITAL MANAGEMENT.

As Head of our Healthcare Management Practice at VaLUENTiS I am surrounded by tomes such as the 'Evidence-Based Practice Manual' (1000+ pages!) for example.

EVIDENCE-BASED MANAGEMENT is a growing movement (acceptance) that proposes that management (i.e. people management) requires far more use of 'evidence' - use of science around decision making and 'informed' organisation practice, for example. The use of data. fact, analytics, scientific rigour, critical evaluation, critically evaluated research/case studies, indeed evidence of this nature is what it is about.

It's about the combination of qualitative and quantitative intelligence to provide establish intelligence/knowledge to apply.

IT'S NOT about anecdote, stories, ephemeral mini-case studies, 'just add water' mentalities, single-loop learning, causes, one-person experience or indeed anything beloved of so much in the 'HR field' of supposed learning and application for practitioners.

And it's time the 'HR community' got this.

It's about the use of critically-evaluated models and frameworks and research. I'm often disappointed with UK research in people management and HR functional stuff for example because it is often long on citation but short on practical understanding.

This also goes for the plethora of 'market research' masquerading as research in HR. It's essentially done for PR purposes more than 'the science' which is the real value. And there's too much research done for research sake in HR rather than for scientific advancement. (Associates on the ISHCM HCMI course see this BIG.........)

So why is it new?

Well it's not really new as a concept but it is new in terms of application. Those of you who have read my previous blogs know that I have been scathing on the 'amateur' status that pervades through the HR/management community.

Now before we start yet another fad/bandwagon of HR terminology we should really use what's already there. So the next time somebody says 'Evidence based HR' just ask them where did it emanate from - you will be able to distinguish between the charlatan and the practitioner pretty quickly. It's also a case of HRM/HCM practitioners being up with the curve (rather than erroneously thinking they're ahead of it when they're actually behind it).

If you want to read more on this subject try:

'Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths & Total Nonsense: Profiting from Evidence-Based Management' by Pfeffer and Sutton, Harvard Business School Press 2006

'Effective Organisation Leadership: A case of adopting Evidence-based Management' by me Journal of Applied Human Capital Management, Volume 2 Number 1 2008

'The Halo Effect' by Phil Rosenzweig, Free Press 2007

You heard it here first......