Leadership

Savvy businesses understand this (maybe due to the recent data that says that "the cost of a bad hiring decision can be as much as 2.5 times the employee’s annual salary"), often investing heavily into their recruitment strategy to ensure the right culture fit is established early on. This can be from simple behaviour-based competency interviewing - all the way to employing tech platforms that align corporate and personal value systems at the attraction stage.

Unfortunately, this myopic view of the recruitment function assumes that their role is to simply get the 'right' person on the boat; often forgetting that the expectation and psychological contract goes both ways - and lasts a long time!

The reason? Authenticity.

I’ve watched countless short values videos with professional voice-overs; or ‘fun’ ones where the board is forced to mime along to the company song whilst dressed in silly outfits. I’ve heard organisations shout about highly undeserved awards and I’ve read stiff, PR-agency-run Twitter feeds. I’ve seen many, many eloquently written and aspirational values statements, or the ‘about us’ page on the company website that reads like Donald Trump’s self-congratulating resumé.

Now don’t get me wrong: There’s nothing wrong with either having a clear Employer Value Proposition, or having a large budget. It’s the lack of authenticity! Spin, bluster and PR will only do damage to your chances of retaining quality people.

If you sold me a car, promising it was the most economical, stylish, fastest, easiest-driving vehicle the world has ever seen - I can only be disappointed when a few weeks later I notice that these facts start to unravel.

And the solution? Much the same with all honest relationships, admit your failings. Explain what you’re good at, and what you’re working on. Don’t swear blind that you’re true to your values when you’re not.   

Anyone can create the impression of your organisation being a great place to work. But often, it’s in the post honeymoon period where the new recruit realises that they might not have been the only one telling half-truths in the interview…

During the First World War, the Army replaced all the soldiers’ cloth caps with tin helmets.  The injury rate of those soldiers actually went up by quite a long way…  What was the reason?

What we measure

Statistics may be one of our most effective and efficient vehicles for communicating information.  It is natural for people to trust numbers over words, because statistics present numbers in an attractive format that everyone can follow.  In addition, numbers represent a wide variety of information – including election poll numbers, service level agreements & KPIs, net promoter scores, football results, engagement surveys, the retail price index …or of course profit.

This perception of reliability in the data is risky.  Looking at our children’s school grades to the cost of the Tokyo Olympics to the percentage of trains that run on time - what that data doesn’t tell us is how much our children are learning, how good the Olympics will be, or the quality of the customer's journey on those trains!

The problem with the numbers

The problems come when the data used to represent the outcome, becomes the outcome.  The numbers are not the means to the end.  Happy customers are the means to the end – the customer feedback scores are a representation of that means!  It drives me nuts that organisations focus so much time and effort on getting good feedback scores, rather than focusing that effort on just making them happy.

Another story is that of our old favourites – traffic wardens. For many years now, local press around the UK has been reporting that traffic wardens have been giving out bogus tickets because they have to fulfil a certain quota of tickets per hour.  Anything from buses, police cars and even tow trucks have been ticketed – but I don’t believe that it’s the traffic warden’s fault… If you were working in a culture that actually defined your success in your job by the amount of tickets you gave (and docked your wages if you didn’t meet that target), what would you do? 

What difference would it make to the traffic wardens if their success was defined as the lowest number of disputes?  What if success was defined by the greatest number of people re-educated with not having to give a ticket?  What if a traffic warden was rewarded for having to give out the least number of tickets (because people in their 'patch' parked properly?) How would that change their approach?

The trouble with focussing on the numbers is not the numbers. It’s the focus. In the gym you can focus on the number of calories you burn, or you can focus on your quality of health.  On Twitter, you can focus on the number of followers you have, or on the quality of those relationships.  At work, you can focus on your call abandon rate, meeting room utilisation, profitability or KPI adherence.  Or you can focus on delivering an awesome service for each and every person and let the numbers take care of themselves!

And the solution to my riddle? The number of injuries of those soldiers did indeed go up – but the number of deaths from head injuries went right down, saving thousands of lives. The piece of shrapnel would have previously killed them outright.

Having read my two previous posts, you'll now know that the workplace industry is very focused on productivity at the moment. Well, I say "productivity", but that's a trap... So substitute that word with creative, or collaborate, or innovative, or awesomely smiley (delete as applicable).  We also know that a sense of purpose is the biggest factor to make them productive/collaborative/innovative/smiley. But how do we get there?   How can the Workplace industry go about creating exceptional workplaces?

Well, I'll give you a clue - the biggest effects are not in the design. Creating an amazing place to work equally does not come about because you've got ergonomic seating, a concierge service, good air and noise quality, an Italian marble reception, a fantastic coffee machine, efficient chillers, or an above-the-recommended-minimum square foot of office space per person. These certainly contribute, but I think that these are hugely over-inflated causes of workplace productivity.

For me, there's a bit missing in the middle. The pink, squidgy bit in the middle. That's right, the thinking, feeling human being... I believe that the physical workplace should be far more focused on driving the thing that's right in front of its nose - and that's human behaviour. A recent Forbes article has done some research into "The Top 15 traits in business" - the likes of autonomy, passion, hard work, cultural fit, presentation and collaboration. So - the big question - can the workplace industry help to engender the those behaviours in the people who work there - making them more collaborative, autonomous, passionate and hard-working?

According to the CIPD, "Nearly 50% of employees describe the culture of their organisation as a ‘formalised and structured place to work, where procedures govern what people do and hold people together’. 55% specified that they would prefer to work in ‘an organisation with a family feel, held together by loyalty and tradition’"  

Additionally, ClearCompany say that "39% of surveyed employees believe that people in their own organisation don’t collaborate enough", and an Ipsos Mori poll concludes that only "a fifth of people are proud of their employer's behaviour". So what part does the workplace play in making people more passionate, collaborative and engaged? I've recently seen a few excellent examples of organisations that have understood this sociological link.

• Sky's campus in Livingston have an area where you walk into the call centre that's decorated to look like a customer's front door - so they are literally 'walking into the customer's world' before they speak to them. Rackspace have gone one step further, theming their entire office like a customer's home
• Sea Containers House residents Ogilvy & Mather have deliberately removed power sockets from secluded areas, to discourage lone working and force people to work in shared spaces and collaborate more
• Red Bull Racing and Mitie have introduced technology which drives hundreds of tiny, incremental improvements that mirrors the needs of the drivers on the track
• Receptionists at Coutts do guest profiling for the VIPs, to make sure the welcome is personalised, making sure the visitors feel more important and prestige
• Lego have introduced 'activity based working' to their London HQ, which has flexible working spaces and no offices. This 'reflects the diversity of the company', and encourages people to learn from each other

There are also many, many other good examples of workplaces that not only understand and adapt to the humans that use them - but also that are able to actively drive the behaviours that the organisation is looking for. There's still plenty of work to be done in the interconnected worlds of FM, HR, Communications and Leadership - but I for one would welcome more cultural alignment between all parts of the organisation, with all parties trying to engender the behaviours that will make them succeed.

Could there be a good shout for reversing this trend? Should we be promoting that instead of the company interviewing the candidate – that the candidate interviews their prospective manager in equal measure?

I’d love to see a candidate grill a potential new supervisor on his/her ability to delegate, how many of their team have been promoted, and how often they dole out reward and recognition. Managers could be given a similar amount of time in an interview to explain why they are the right manager for the new recruit, explaining how they plan to develop and mentor their team, and how much time they regularly dedicate to 1-to-1s and feedback. Perhaps the manager’s CV should also be included with the job description?

Staff are effectively paid less than the minimum wage, because they are required to undertake security checks (read: they’re vigorously searched) in their own time. Conversely, if people are just one minute late, Sports Direct will dock their pay.  They also operate a “six strikes and you’re out” rule, for a range of ‘offences’.  This includes a December 2015 occurrence of someone giving birth in the toilets, along with four other “miscarriage or pregnancy related complications”, which came about because their staff feared disciplinary action. There were 72 other ambulance call-outs, including 36 of which were “life-threatening”. Apparently, it’s fine for staff to stay behind after work in their own time to be searched, but any other absences (even life threatening ones) could be punishable with losing your job. And Mike Ashley’s reply? “I’m not Father Christmas”.

These practices, with the review of any decent HR or Talent professional that I know of, would most likely be dismissed as unfair and over-the-top. These draconian policies were most likely dreamed up as a response to some perceived threat, and I’d like to think that no forward-thinking professional would consider them.

The effects of this “culture of fear” are certainly shocking, but I believe this is only the symptom of something much more insidious and disturbing. The thing that shocks me the most is how the mind-set of some organisations still exists in the industrial revolution. From the 1750s right up until the 1970s & 1980s, the ‘factory-line’ mentality worked very well, scaling down huge operations into bite-size, manageable, simple tasks. It was great for menial tasks that only required a human being to show up for work, on time, or the production line would stop. 

But nowadays in the post-machine, digital age, the means of production has shifted from employer to employee. If you want people to act like people (in other words to think, collaborate, use their initiative and solve problems), they you need to treat them like a human being and not a slightly better-smelling machine. 

Trust them implicitly; even if one or two of them might steal from you. Take care of their wellbeing and treat them like individuals; even if there’s hundreds or even thousands of them. Communicate with them, ask them what they think and then listen to the replies; even if some don’t want to talk. Develop them and grow them; even if some of them end up leaving the business. And recognise them, thank them and praise them; even if they’re only doing their job. 

In summary, I think leaders have a moral, ethical and legal obligation to treat people like people. The definition and concept of leadership has shifted in recent years, and I hope it continues to shift.

Profit is not the be-all-and-end-all, to be obtained at all (human) costs. Profit is a by-product of treating your people well. And for those people that dispute the connection between people-centric businesses and bottom line profit? Well, Sports Direct has just had an estimated £600m wiped off the company’s value, with untold more damage in reputation and brand. Imagine if just a fraction of that had been invested in developing a people-centred organisation.