Give wellbeing a board seat: Prof Sir Cary Cooper talks to Oven-Ready HR

In this episode of Oven-Ready HR, Chris Taylor talks to organisational culture and employee wellbeing expert Professor Sir Cary Cooper about hybrid working and how the ‘great resignation’ has a lot to do with poor leadership.

Professor Sir Cary Cooper CBE is the 50th anniversary professor of organisational psychology at Manchester Business School. He is a founding president of the British Academy of Management, immediate past president of the CIPD, and chair of the National Forum for Health and Wellbeing at Work.

Episode highlights

I don’t like my boss [04:17]
Professor Cooper remarks that a significant driver of the so called ‘great resignation’ was in part employees’ dissatisfaction with their boss. He thinks this has led some in HR to think about whether they have managers with the right skills in place.

Hybrid working another way [9:20]
What is HR’s obsession with numbers of days at home or spent in the office? Prof Cooper takes us back to the psychological contract and tells us to look at hybrid in a different way.

Employee wellbeing is not about bean bags [15:33]
Bean bags, sushi and ping pong is not employee wellbeing. Prof Cooper highlights how every NHS trust now has a non-executive director responsible for health and wellbeing.

Why don’t business schools teach soft skills? [26:26]
Business schools concentrate far too much on teaching technical skills and key theories in HR, marketing and accountancy, but in the main ignore more experiential learning that encourages individuals to understand their own personalities and the effect they have on others.

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Recruiting on the wrong skills [29:04]
Attending a top business school isn’t a guarantee an individual is going to be any good at managing others. Organisations need to look beyond technical skills and assess an individual’s interpersonal or soft skills.

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