Five topics today to briefly comment on...
(i) Awards and the trouble for HR......
Congratulations to Personnel Today for their recent awards spectacular - a truly outstanding event. I was trying to locate this morning something that I recently read regarding an innocent comment from a winner about awards to HR. The comment went along the lines of "my CEO has certainly taken an interest since we won an award in.........".
Now I don't want to take the gloss off any award-winning PR (and be accused of being a bah-humbug - by the way you can get this phrase in christmas lights!!!) but that comment crystallises the very problem for the HR community. Why?
Well - do you read any Finance Director (or marketing Director for that matter) saying we've won an award and my CEO now takes an interest in what we do? No - you don't.
So what is the issue. The issue is that I have many times argued that human capital management and the HR function value proposition are still sadly missing in too many organisations and until we correct this no award scheme is ultimately going to make any difference............
(ii) HR jobs
News this morning that HR jobs may bear the brunt of efficiency savings in the public sector does not surprise me and sadly it is only bearing out what I stated some months ago - see 100,000 HR jobs to go . Reading various comments, once again, wrongly IT is driving the HR debate and the function is being shepherded into the box labelled 'shared services'. Very, very, very sad and very avoidable. But as long as HR functions continue to do the 'do' and not explicitise their value proposition and thus contribution, the more likely the 'boxing' into a nice small but perfectly rounded nothing the function becomes.........don't say I didn't warn you.........
(iii) Public sector pensions
This hasn't taken long to surface since our economy has hit the buffers. Having commented on this previously last year it would seem that unfortunately this will become a new battleground going forward.
The issue is the growing inequity between public and private sector pension provision (as already been referred to as the 'pensions apartheid') and of future tax liabilities. What one has also to remember is that the UK is already 'hard up' in that of the six main final salary pension pots only one (Local Government) is actually funded, i.e. has assets invested. The rest, Teachers, Police, Armed forces, Civil service and the NHS are all unfunded pay-as-you-go and therefore put pressure on annual operating budgets for provision.
The growth in public sector jobs particularly over the past decade will mean that the bill for final salary pensions, which is currently around £20 billion per annum, will spiral towards £90 billion by 2045.
Expect the unions to (rightly) fight their members' corner. But money sadly does not grow on trees. Of course this presumes that the country is still solvent by then anyway. Expect a private versus public 'civil war' on the 'some are more equal than others' topic to take place against whichever incumbent government.....
(iv) BNP debate & (v) The Damian Green affair
I've lumped these two together because they are connected. I'll come to that later.
First - the BNP debate. Quite a few pages, particularly in HR, have been devoted to the recent publication of members which included a cross-section of society. The debate has become more acute with apparently a CIPD member being a BNP member (whoopee-doo).
Some observational facts. The BNP is an apparently legitimate and legal party (despite what you may think of their policies/hidden agenda). The BNP is not extremist because it has a significant percentage of society supporting it (I'm not getting into political science theory here). The BNP's policies do appear to have reasonable logic. If there is any subtext 'racism' the furthering debate will out it and it will suffer the consequences accordingly (i.e. lose support).
However a number in society, and it would seem a number in the HR community, are it would appear committing the very 'crime' of discrimination that they accuse the BNP of. I cannot see how it is justifiable to bar people from jobs on the basis of a legal political affiliation without exposing prejudice itself.
Thus it would appear that anything to do with the BNP is basically a 'thoughtcrime'. Truly chilling by those who purport it.
The Damian Green affair links because if ever there was a sign to say 'Totalitarian state' this way, it couldn't have been more illuminated last week. Damian Green's admission to Room 101 for about 8 hours over leaking of information is just what those concerned have been talking about. Very very 'Big Brother' and very chilling also. By coincidence I am currently reading a fascinating book entitled 'Stasiland' - an analysis of East Germany through personal recollections. Truly - very chilling indeed about the distortion and denigration of human capital.
For those keen-eyed amongst you, you may have spotted several references to George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm. And you'd be right.
I would urge all to (re)read this classic novel (er.....becoming a national biography currently).
(vi) One final sad but celebratory note
Douglas Keen may not be a name that people associate with. Sadly at the age of 95 he passed away last week. Who is Douglas Keen? Well if I mention 'ladybird books' or 'Peter and Jane' - I'm sure many out there will have fond memories as I do in my early school years of the bright coloured series which helped in educating millions of children.
Apparently over 85 million copies were sold of the series of 36 books. Truly 'awesome'. Just an ordinary guy with an extraordinary ideal and vision. His family should be very proud.......
