Editors Blog

Welcome to the Editors’ Blog, brought to you by the award-winning editorial team behind PersonnelToday.com.

The blog aims to bring you news, commentary and analysis on issues affecting the HR sector, as well as the fields of employee relations, industrial relations and politics.

Let me use my first post on the Editors' Blog to announce some good news.

Personneltoday.com has been shortlisted as Best Business Website 2007 at the AOP (Association of Online Publishers) Awards.

The nominations are a double whammy for the human resources media, and indeed for our publisher Reed Business Information (RBI) as our sister brand XpertHR will be competing with us for the honour on 3 October.

Personnel Today was also named Interactive Magazine of the Year at the PPA 2006 (Periodical Publishers Association) Awards (pictured) and has been an ever-present on that shortlist for half a decade, while our journalists scooped Editorial Team of the Year 2007 at our internal RBI Awards.

It's great to get this kind of independent recognition (though always more important to please our readers), which is something we understand well through our organisation of the Personnel Today Awards.

This years premier HR awards event (on 22 November at London's Grosvenor House) boasts a particularly strong shortlist in each of 13 categories. As we always say, nominees have done well even to make the cut, but winning still tastes a whole lot sweeter!

At the time of writing, there are just three tables remaining. Book you place at the Personnel Today Awards now to avoid disappointment!

The news that basic human resources failings in government departments are costing the taxpayer hundreds of thousands of pounds is shocking but perhaps should come as no surprise.

As Personnel Today magazine reports this week, one in four civil servant sackings was found to be unlawful in 2005-06, according to the annual report of the Civil Service Appeal Board (CSAB).

Board chairman John Davies said HR professionals in government departments were still not following standard dismissal procedures - a year after he orginally warned of the problem.

With all the talk about the UK skills shortage, and the need to smarten up this country's front-line staff in time for the London Olympics 2012, it's good to see the government might finally do about unwelcoming airport border staff.

There's nothing worse than getting off a knackering flight, having passed through long and tedious security controls, to be greeted by a rude and sarcastic immigration official. Surely it can't be that much to ask for a cheeky smile when they stamp your passport?

That's why Margaret Hodge, the tourism minister at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, is to offer immigration and border staff to charm lessons, according to yesterday's Sunday Times.

The training will tell officials to basically cheer up - to be more welcoming to visiting foreigners whilst drawing the balance between security and friendliness.

Apart from concept of training people to be simply be more friendly being a little odd, the move is part of a new Welcome to Britain campaign, and closely echoes tactics used by Germany in the run up to the 2006 football World Cup.

As well as more welcoming staff, airports will be equipped with posters and films all about Britain's heritage and culture - to make it more obvious to the tourist exactly where they are when they get off their planes (rather than being stranded in some grey, drabby airport).

Although of course you could go too far. When I went to America one year the chirpy official drew a moustache in black marker pen on my passport picture, laughing raucously before wiping it off. Hmm... that's exactly what I needed after a ten hour flight.

An unseemly row erupted yesterday when the CBI and British Medical Association (BMA) clashed over GP services.

The employers group said restricted opening hours, difficulty in booking appointments and the limited range of services on offer in many surgeries was resulting in millions of lost working days and affecting people's health.

The CBI want patients to be able to register at more than one practice, allowing working people to access GP services near work.

This week's Personnel Today is a special issue focusing on "Oomph", whether human resources professionals have enough of it and what they can do to have more.

Delegates at the CIPD conference and exhibition in Harrogate this week talked to Personnel Today's editor Karen Dempsey about what they think HR with Oomph is...

Crowds of HR folk piled into a packed auditorium at the CIPD conference last night to witness two of the UK’s most succesful business leaders get a grilling from Newsnight anchorman Jeremy Paxman.

Gerry Robinson – labelled a ‘turnaround expert’ after hugely successful revivals of Coca Cola UK and Granada – and former director-general Greg Dyke (pushed out of the beeb after the controversial Hutton Inquiry) were interviewed at the CIPD conference on the topic of world-class business.

How to engage staff, exercise leadership and give organisations’ personality were up for discussion – with a load of banter and laughs thrown in to please the eager audience.

But the ironic thing (and somewhat amusing experience for me), was that while HR was slated by the two business icons (it doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do, it gets too bogged down in policy, it doesn’t understand business needs etc), the HR audience lapped it up, with clapping outbursts galore.

Say the word HR out loud 10 times on a crowded train on the way to work and you will end up getting that elusive seat and probably a few other empty ones around you.

Repeat the act in a crowded hall at the CIPD annual conference and exhibition in Harrogate and you become a chorus.

The chorus transforms into a hymn when words like “clarity” “culture change” and “engage” and many others, are added into the mix time and again and which make up Human Resources jargon, jargon, jargon, etc.

Hats off to Dr Lynda Gratton, who managed to wow the audience at last night’s keynote conference speech despite her burnt orange outfit clashing remarkably with the bright orange stage behind her.

The professor of management practice at London Business School described to an audience of hundreds of HR professionals how they can go about creating ‘hot spots’ in their organisations – epicentres of debates, thought and imagination so that anyone within the company can come up with solutions to problems.

To run that past you again: basically, a management technique which captures feedback from staff across the company so they feel included in corporate decisions, and so management teams can understand their staff better.

My immediate assumption was to think 'hot-spots' thinking may be a little too far fetched for the practically minded managers and directors watching her for an hour and half, pacing up and down the stage talking about, well, hot spots – and ‘the big freeze’ (the opposite of hot spots) and many other jargony terms in between.

But how wrong I was.

The title of the seminar read: The Future of People at Work. Excellent, I thought, strapping myself into an imaginary silver De Lorean, and giving a pre Parkinsons Michael J. Fox and the evergreen Doc Brown a quick glance before screeching off into time.

I have to say that I was a little disappointed when I got there. In fact I felt like we never arrived, the future we were promised by futurist Anne Lisa Kjaer, of Kjaer Global was really only a look at where the global workforce is already heading and probably more than half way there.

One of the easiest ways to fill up a conference centre with human resources people is to advertise one on the topic of talent management. I know this because I organised the last two annual IRS talent events (OK, plug over, but you can see video of the talent management conference).

This week saw Madison Square Garden (MSG), parent company of basketball franchise the New York Knicks', ordered to pay $11.6m (£5.7m) in damages to a female senior executive.

Anucha Browne Sanders, head of marketing for the Knicks, filed charges of sexual harassment against Isiah Thomas, team coach and an NBA legend.

I've made my merry way up to Birmingham to join hundreds of health service human resources professionals at the NHS Employers annual conference.

The line up over the next three days is pretty impressive, with workforce director-general Clare Chapman addressing the troops, along with NHS chief executive David Nicholson and the new-ish health secretary Alan Johnson.

Plenty for delegates to absorb in the coming days, especially in the current political climate and the government's Comprehensive Spending Review scheduled for today (Tuesday) that will set the health service's budget for the next few years.

NHS HR chief Clare Chapman gave a keynote speech to health service professionals at the conference yesterday.

She dispensed with the lectern straight away and strode confidently around the stage, setting out her vision and priorities for the NHS workforce to a packed auditorium at the ICC in Birmingham.

Key messages were to do with improving services for patients, connecting more with staff and personal leadership - what Chapman called being "internally coherent".

A survey out today has confirmed what those of us with the current two-week long head cold already know, which is that people are coming into work when they're sick. The 'Quality of Working Life' report from the Chartered Management Institute and Simplyhealth shows that half of staff with stomach bugs have gone to work in the last year, which at least explains why there is never a spare cubicle in the gents these days. And apparently 93 per cent of people suffering from stress bravely drag themselves into the office, although as 'stress' isn't actually an illness I think this is fair enough.

A survey out today has confirmed what those of us with the current two-week long head cold already know, which is that people are coming into work when they're sick. The 'Quality of Working Life' report from the Chartered Management Institute and Simplyhealth shows that half of staff with stomach bugs have gone to work in the last year, which at least explains why there is never a spare cubicle in the gents these days. And apparently 93 per cent of people suffering from stress bravely drag themselves into the office, although as 'stress' isn't actually an illness I think this is fair enough.

Personnel Today has received two emails of complaint following our decision to publish an image of actress Billie Piper on the front page of the 9 October issue.

(The image on the Daily Mail website is exactly what the magazine printed).

The image shows Piper in her underwear holding a riding crop portraying London prostitute Belle de Jour in the ITV drama Secret Diary of a Call Girl.

The image was illustrating a story about a debate on organising sex workers into trade unions, held at a GMB women's conference.

I was lucky enough to dine at the beautiful and rather exclusive Raymond Blanc's Le Manoir restaurant earlier this week, as part of Personnel Today's latest HR Directors Club.

In the heart of the Oxfordshire countryside, I tucked into delightful posh nosh (pork belly like I've never tasted before and dont get me started on the caramel désert) and let the afternoon pass by as the rain thundered down outside.

But of course, there was business to attend to. And the topic up for discussion among the fifty-odd HR directors in the room was HR Room 101 - based on the BBC TV show of the same name and the torture chamber from George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.

As people tucked into their meals they wasted no time in ranting about what frustrates them the most - about their peers, colleagues, organisations and the HR profession itself.

And here's the top ten most-hated things dumped in room 101:

Thank you for your comments posted on my previous blog entry about complaints we had received regarding the image of Billie Piper in the 9 October issue.

It's interesting to note that of the complainants, four were female, two were anonymous and the male comment we had backed the decision to publish the image.

It baffles me that people can be so easily offended by the female form. I wonder if we would have as many complaints if we had printed a picture of a good-looking man stripped to the waist?

My guess is probably not.

So the idea of favouring black and ethnic minorities when recruiting for the police force has been dismissed by Metropolitan Police chief Sir Ian Blair.

Blair rejected the debate, sparked on at National Black Police Association (NBPA) conference on Thursday, which argued that affirmative action (openly favouring non-white applicants in the recruitment process) would improve relations between police and minority communities.

Keith Jarrett, the outgoing president of the NBPA said communities want to see faces in the police force which “look like them” and debated with delegates how the police can recruit and retain more black and minority ethnic police officers.

The debate as to what human resources practitioners should call themselves has raged for some time. HR or personnel?

Should the function's job titles rebrand as talent officers, business partners or something else? Does it really matter?

Personnel Today's Editor Karen Dempsey even wrote a feature earlier this year examining the issue and gathering feedback from the profession.

Pressure seems to be growing that the right to request flexible working should be extended to all employees, not just those with children or caring responsiblities.

Ever since the government announced it's review of the current right to request flexible working (which will extend the right to request for parents of older children - not just parents with young children), I've had floods of emails saying the review should go one step further.

The Trades Union Congress (TUC), Working Families charity and academic institution the Institute of Employment Studies (IES) have all argued the case that every employee, regardless of their reasons, should at least have the right to request.

And I have to agree. Do you?

The big industry news this week, and at long last, is the appointment of Tony McCarthy as the new human resources chief at British Airways, vacated by Neil Robertson in January this year.

It must have been some interview, as the post went unfilled for a whopping 11 months before McCarthy stepped into the breach.

Perhaps a call from Personnel Today last week to BA reminded them that the post was still vacant. After all Robertson quit the £200,000-a-year post at the end of January 2007 after 30 years with the company. Part of the furniture and all that, or perhaps it has been a good money saving exercise?

The great and good of the human resources profession enjoyed a fantasic night last week at the 2007 Personnel Today Awards.

Congratulations must go to the winners of all 12 categories and Vodafone, who scooped the overall prize at London's Grosvenor House Hotel. A full list of winners and photos of the night can be seen on the awards website.

The audience was royally entertained by top comedian and impressionist Rory Bremner, with Strictly Come Dancing stars Lilia and Darren adding a touch of glitz and glamour.

It seems that coaching is the next best profession to get into: we've got reports that some senior position coaches earn £1,000,000 a year by working with big firms in the City (listen to this week's podcast where we're joined by Training and Coaching Today editor John Charlton who explains more).

But seriously... a million quid? To ask some questions and enable the employee to come up with their own answers and solutions to development? John says that some charge £5,000 a session (an hour) and the large City firms tend to pay it as long as they get results.

Two things collided for me recently. I was organising a conference about employee engagement and I happened to read an article by psychologist Oliver James in The Guardian arguing that we could 'halve the prevalence of mental illness within a generation' by reducing consumerism and increasing wage equality. Stick with me, the two things are connected.

As one year ends, and another begins, the temptation to predict what will happen during the next 12 months is hard to resist. And plenty of people are already hypothesising over the future for 2008.

New Year predictions for a tough year ahead and economic uncertainties abound in the world of work - with the increased prospect of job cuts and outsourcing and offshoring HR among them.

A poll by the Chartered Management Institute found that managers believe 2008 will be tougher than 2007 - with only 40% confident about the year ahead.

The tributes have poured in for Sir John Harvey-Jones, who died this week at the age of 83 following a long illness.

Sir John, best known for his 1990s TV show Troubleshooter, was famous for his no-nonsense approach to business.

Perhaps today HR professionals could pay tribute to Sir John by trying their very best to get through a working day without resorting to waffle and jargon.

Employee opinion surveys are big business for big consultancies. Organisations can spend a fortune on measuring staff opinions, often only to do very little with the results.

So, like a white knight, Personnel Today is riding to the rescue of all those organisations that are big enough to want to measure their employees' opinions, but not wasteful enough to want the exercise to hurt their bottom line.

The Personnel Today Employee Opinion Survey is a partnership with employee engagement experts Tracom, and is specifically designed for organisations with up to 2,000 employees.

It will enable smart organisations to capture staff attitudes and then help them devise action plans to improve business performance in line with the findings.

Key features of the Personnel Today employee opinion survey include:

• Different levels of service and pricing depending on the size, budget and needs of your organisation
• Prices start from just £3,995
• Easy-to-use web-based surveys, requiring minimum upfront investment in time from the HR team
• Communication templates to explain the process to your staff and maximise participation
• Standardised questionnaires based on Tracom's decades of experience in employee
engagement and staff surveys worldwide, ensuring that the most important elements of employee engagement are measured
• An element of customisation to allow your organisation to measure issues that are important to you
• Flexible reporting with data segmented by demographics such as staff location, function, seniority, length of service
• An interpretation guide that helps your HR team make sense of the results and produce an action plan
• Expert telephone consultancy, if required, providing advice and help with next steps

Sign up here for more information about the Personnel Today Employee Opinion Survey (EOS) service, call Tracom on 0208 652 8760 or email performanceconsulting@tracom.com.

Luke Johnson's rant against HR in yesterday's Financial Times set all the work HR has done around improving its reputation back by several years.
In his column, he claims that "Human resources is a management term that should strike fear into the heart of every self-respecting entrepreneur", boasting that he has radically downsized HR in companies he has run and "business has gone so much the better for it".
This viewpoint is perhaps not surprising from a private equity investor, whose core mission is to buy up ailing companies, strip them of all their assets and reap the profits...

Is there a profession in the UK more consistently maligned than human resources? Those of you busy getting on with the day-to-day business of working in HR could be forgiven for burying your head in your hands and wondering why you bother.

It seems doing down the profession is in vogue, as reported in last week’s Personnel Today, and now business leaders are queuing up to have a pop.

Whilst there is nothing wrong with some constructive criticism – I’m sure those working in HR would be the first to admit that sometimes the profession doesn’t cover itself in glory – an out-and-out assault seems a tad unnecessary.

US human resources blog Bootstrapper has posted what it calls 100 Articles Every Human Resources Pro Should Read.

To help the overworked HR professional through the maze that is working life, our blogging cousins Stateside have put together the holy grail of resources. Packed full of helpful guides, posts and more, you’ll find tips on everything from recruiting and interviewing to developing your own career.

A lot of the material is US-focused, but valuable nonetheless. There are also a few contributions from the UK's finest - Personnel Today - to look out for.

For many of us, the 1980s were the decade that style forgot. But it was also the era in which personnel managers were first given the exotic title of 'human resources' professionals. In Personnel Today's first issue, back in February 1988, the news pages were dominated by stories of organisations introducing new working practices and bargaining with unions.

We'd like to think that over the past 20 years we've been at the heart of the profession as it has moved away from its 'personnel' label and become more strategic.

So in our 26 Feb issue, we kick off our 20th anniversary coverage with a look at how HR has changed over the past 20 years and some cautious predictions about what the future holds. But we need your help...