Landfill tax and the CRC will soon come knocking

Tim Smedley | 15 Mar 2010 | 10:42

Last November, just as winter was turning up late for its shift (blimey did it go on to make up for lost time), I attended Wrap’s annual conference. For the uninitiated, Wrap was, at the time, one of several government-funded bodies in the recycling and waste reduction field.

Dr Liz Goodwin, the chief executive, told the conference how the agenda has moved on in recent years. It used to be all about waste paper bins and food packaging. Now the focus is very much about the waste hierarchy. And while the domestic arena has been bombarded with educational campaigns, followed by kerb-side collection green bins, brown bins and everything in-between, the focus was now on businesses, she said. Then up stepped Marc Bolland, CEO of Morrisons. He regaled us with how his supermarket’s integrated supply chain reduces waste at every level; 72 per cent of any waste got recycled.

Cut to the present day, and it’s still very cold and wintery. But Marc Bolland is running M&S, and Wrap is soon to take control of all Defra-funded resource efficiency bodies. The worlds of business and waste reduction, it seems, move at an equally fast pace. And, as if to prove the point, a particularly harsh shock lurks around the corner.

1 April 2010 ushers in the following: first, the opening salvos of the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC). As reported by PM in December, the UK’s first domestic cap and trade scheme requires organisations with annual electricity bills of approximately £500,000 or above to measure and report their energy usage. It’s not voluntary, it’s a legal obligation. Vincent Neate, KPMG's UK head of sustainability, has recently warned that “many of the scheme's participants are not yet fully prepared for the CRC”. Some, he believes, are clinging on to the vain hope that the scheme will be cancelled at the last minute. It won’t.

Second, landfill tax will also be increased on 1 April – to £40 a tonne. As reported in PM last week, it will be going up every April from now until 2013, making it more and more cost-effective to reduce, reuse, and recycle, rather than throwing waste away.

The message from government, in case you haven’t got it already, is that business is not to be trusted to do the right thing. A green world is one where legislation rules. If you want to be wasteful, you’ll have to positively hold it as a business priority to do so. And, in more ways than one, pay the consequences.

BBC is playing politics with proposed cuts

Tim Smedley | 2 Mar 2010 | 15:53

I hope I’m wrong, but the latest set of cuts proposed by the BBC seem simply another act of self-flagellation enacted to keep the current licence fee arrangement in place.

First there was Jonathan Ross, arguably its biggest star, banned for several months for an ill-judged telephone prank, then finally hounded out of the corporation. He became too big for the Beeb, which prefers its stars be bland and inoffensive, not Brand and offensive.

Now director-general Mark Thompson has today announced plans to close the 6 Music and Asian Network radio stations, halve (halve!) its web output, curb spending on foreign shows such as Mad Men by 20 per cent, as well as capping investment in sports coverage. This, Thompson says, will free up £600 million a year to be reinvested into programme making. It will also, suggests the Guardian, affect up to 600 staff and freelancers.

Now, I must come clean in saying I’m a big fan of 6 Music – in fact, it’s one of the reasons I bought a digital radio in the first place. Surely the interests of a large percentage of the population are covered by Mad Men/Heroes/any quality US show/BBC websites/sports/6 Music… you see where I’m going with this. Thompson talks about “the interests of the licence payer”, but I’m not entirely convinced.

This seems more a case of being seen to be doing something drastic for the sake of being seen to be doing something drastic. This can then be served up on a plate, with a side serving of humble pie, the next time the government – whoever that may be – looks at the licence fee tender and thinks, “Gosh, this is a rather eccentric arrangement.” Eccentric it may be, but how else could such a wonderfully eclectic, inclusive and truly representative output be created? That is the BBC’s strength.

I, for one, would happily sacrifice an Eastenders special or two for the sake of having a wide array of high-quality, multi-media coverage at my fingertips. And, if we want to be emotive about it, for the sake of those 600 staff and freelancers’ jobs too. But, as I said earlier, I hope I’m wrong.

What did you do on Valentine’s Day?

Tim Smedley | 15 Feb 2010 | 15:55

So another Valentine’s Day has been and gone. But Sunday night wasn’t the greatest night for it, was it? Not many people feel like wining and dining until the early hours when they’ve got a meeting first thing on Monday morning. Unless, of course, if you’re in the HR and IT departments – but more of that later.

Cuddling up in front of the telly last night seemed the least worst option. And that actually revealed an unexpected romantic gem in the previously unimaginable guise of Gordon Brown. Yes, that Gordon Brown.

The prime minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland poured his heart out to Piers Morgan, the former tabloid editor and Britain’s Got Talent judge, on the latter’s chat show. It was unprecedented insight into Brown’s private life. Of course, the timing was convenient with a general election just round the corner. And it’s nice, but naive, to think it was a coincidence that the programme was aired on Valentine’s Day, when we’re feeling a bit warm and lovey (for those who weren’t, there was Mel Gibson’s gore-fest Apocalypto on the other side). But the stand-out part of the interview was not his relationship with Tony Blair – they didn’t always get on, quelle surprise – but his relationship with his wife Sarah, which he described as “a great love story”. Although it was the desired outcome of the programme makers and his private advisers, we saw a side of him that all too often gets missed out in the ongoing debate among politicians, their parties and the public.

And what was that about HR and IT? Well, if love is hard for the prime minister to talk about, it’s nothing compared with how difficult employers and employees find it to communicate on the subject. Are companies better off sidestepping the tricky legal implications by banning relationships between colleagues, or fostering a thriving employer brand by being open-minded about the issue? It’s a question that’s remained unanswered for many a year. To try to help you solve the issue in your workplace, I’ve looked at both sides of the argument in my latest feature. And, in asking for insights on the CIPD community pages, I have also uncovered a previously unknown alliance between the HR and IT departments. IT turns you on, but not off again, it seems.

Relationships developed in secrecy outside the assumed knowledge of manager and colleagues often tend to end badly. In Brown’s case, though, a little secrecy didn’t hurt. He proposed on a beach in Scotland, without a ring. He joked with Morgan: “If I’d have walked into a jeweller’s as the chancellor of the Exchequer and asked for a wedding ring, I think that might have made the papers.”

Shock - snow in winter!

Tim Smedley | 6 Jan 2010 | 15:21

After watching the news last night you’d be forgiven for thinking the onset of Armageddon is upon us. Journalists in helicopters reported swirling masses of clouds heaping their icy misery upon Britain’s timid terrain. Meanwhile, brave vigilantes battle the vengeful gods with shovels and grit, praying for an end to this unforeseen, unjust plight.

Erm, hang on – this is mid-winter, isn’t it? Cold and icy weather does have a bit of a habit of appearing at this time of year. And, yes, it’s a lot of snow – in some parts of Britain it has very much brought things to a standstill. But, again, I would argue that snow comes as little surprise to even the most junior weather enthusiast who has noticed that with each of the four seasons comes a change in the skies, and subsequently one on the ground too.

Adverse seasonal weather, once put through the mincers of some newscasters, becomes evil hordes from above shelling us with their flakes of fear. The problem being that this then scares some people into not even venturing out of the house to try to go to work. If even bothering to ring the office (it being a fair assumption that the office has collapsed under the weight of white gloom), the call would simply be to say: “It’s ok, I’m safe – we’ve locked ourselves in and have enough tinned food to last us for two weeks… Now go, save yourselves!” Or, for the more cunning out there, the hyperbole becomes a good excuse to not even try to go to work: “Come in? Are you mad? Have you not seen the news? There’s a ton of frozen water falling from the sky! My sofa seems the safest place, thanks.”

Now, before anyone complains, I do acknowledge that some parts of the country really are in dire straights. And we are not Canada or Finland, or any other country that has a whole infrastructure tailored to extreme winters. Our seasons rarely become so severe. We’re mostly happy if it doesn’t rain too much during Wimbledon fortnight, and our children grow up having known the sight of their local lake/canal/puddle fully frozen over. But my point is that the current weather is not that shocking. And in cities, especially, where there is public transport aplenty, it’s a pretty poor excuse not to make it to work. It was certainly noted in London that while the underground and buses were mostly running fine this morning, many were strangely more empty than usual…

How to cope with Copenhagen

Tim Smedley | 7 Dec 2009 | 10:15

It’s finally arrived. After many months of hype and hyperbole, the 15th UN climate change conference began in Copenhagen today.

And you’d be forgiven if you already feel exhausted by the coverage. The media, bloggers and online forums have been frenzied to the point of delirium. We are, apparently, now divided into two camps: the “believers” and the “deniers”. The former are those who choose to believe the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence that supports the argument that mans’ actions are causing an increase in greenhouse gases, thus warming the Earth. And the latter are those who deny that mans’ post-industrial expansion, and in particular the mass extraction and burning of fossil fuels, has any negative consequences.

But no matter which camp you are in, it’s undeniable that the days of this issue being the sole domain of Greenpeace activists and the odd renegade politician are firmly behind us. The fight against climate change is now mainstream. And this is what the Copenhagen conference is emblematic of. No matter how much mud-slinging and squabbling occurs (or sweeteners offered and bullets bitten) in the next two weeks, it is a significant historical moment – the time that the world’s leaders came together with the serious intention of working towards a man-made solution to a man-made problem.

But ultimately it’s not emblems or “staging posts” that really matter – it’s actions and solutions. And, from a business perspective, the importance of this conference all comes down to how actions taken by politicians will affect the business community.

To help you make sense of it all for your business, away from all the hubris of denial and belief, we’ve lined up a team of experts to keep you up-to-date with the goings-on in Copenhagen and consider the consequences of upcoming regulations. So to keep abreast of the issues that effect you and your employees, keep http://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/copenhagen your one-stop-shop for the next two weeks.

Why CIPD annual conference in Manchester means business

Tim Smedley | 19 Nov 2009 | 16:03

Out has gone the relaxed small-town, tea-and-scones charm of Harrogate and in has stepped the large-city, latte-and-croissant cosmopolitan bustle of Manchester.

Some might have feared that such a move could have been at the expense of intimacy for the annual gathering of CIPD members. It hasn’t felt that way to me. The venue, a winning mix of Victorian brick and 21st century glass and steel, is right in the beating heart of central Manchester, and has a sense of vibrancy about it. The exhibition hall is suitably massive, but with seminar rooms clustered together and a small central hallway always bustling with people, there has been a definite feeling of community here.

The nature of the change in location also seemed in keeping with the changing nature of HR – the theme that linked many of the sessions I attended. The CIPD’s flagship Next Generation HR project was the vanguard of this. It showed how far HR had moved on from the transactional, past hand-wringing over the “top table” (although that was still lurking in the shadows of some sessions) – even past partnering – towards a pure business model.

It’s not HR hanging around and asking what it can do to help, handing out the cream teas. Rather it’s HR being so attuned to the business that it knows the strategy and priorities inside out, knows what it needs to do and gets on with it. In that sense, this year’s conference felt more like an urgent gathering, a priority meeting, before delegates rushed off to do the job in hand – and perhaps grabbed a latte and croissant if there was time.

But just a quick caveat. This is not to say that HR has become so business-like or focused on the senior team that it’s lost its connection with people. More than once I came across delegates and speakers rubbishing the term “human resources”, as indeed Deborah Baker from Sky recently did when I talked to her. The preferred term is fast becoming “people”, not “HR” – and the concept of being a bridge between the senior team and employees, not an island which neither side visits all that regularly, came across strongly. The message seemed to be that being astute number crunchers and strategic planners does not mean forgetting the people – rather it’s that very knowledge of people that makes HR unique among business functions.

So, here’s to a successful Manchester conference. Now, back to work for all of us.

The curious case of Grainger plc v Nicholson

Tim Smedley | 17 Nov 2009 | 14:53

The case of Grainger plc v Nicholson has already received a hell of a lot of coverage for extending the religion or belief discrimination regulations to cover belief in climate change. To summarise: the head of sustainability (Nicholson) was made redundant from property company (Grainger), and claims he was unfairly dismissed because of his belief in climate change.

But what really interests me is this – why does a company have a head of sustainability if it’s going to baulk over the incumbent’s belief that climate change is, you know, a bit bad, and that the firm should maybe try to do something to help the cause? We must, of course, point out that Grainger disputes this issue – its corporate affairs director Dave Butler told the Independent: "Grainger absolutely maintains that Mr Nicholson's redundancy was driven solely by the operational needs of the company during a period of extraordinary market turbulence.”

Some rather illuminating points, however, did come out of the mud-slinging. John Bowers QC, arguing on behalf of the company, said: “What Mr Nicholson asserts is a scientific claim – that if we don't urgently cut carbon emissions we will not avoid catastrophic climate change. There is nothing philosophical about that.” Well, OK, but it pretty much sums up what you’d want your head of sustainability to believe, doesn’t it?

So let’s assume that Grainger is as green as the Jolly Green Giant, and that Nicholson was merely another victim of the recession. Even then, the case does raise the spectre that there may be one or two companies with sustainability or CR professionals, environmental plans, campaigns entitled “Let’s Go Green”, etc, that are, in fact, merely paying lip service for the sake of good PR. That, perhaps, such companies don’t fully believe the hype but are happy to let people with token job titles make it look like they do. The problem is, once you allow those token professionals to look into the issue, they will soon realise the scale of the problem, the paucity of the employer’s actions to tackle it and the urgent need for wide-scale change.

With the UN conference on climate change fast approaching, all these issues will soon be brought into sharp relief. Those companies who truly are green can add their signature to the Copenhagen Communiqué – a call from businesses for an international climate deal to be signed in Copenhagen this December. I’ve just checked – Grainger isn’t one of the signatories. Yet.

New paternity rights are all right

Tim Smedley | 30 Oct 2009 | 12:22

When I started this blog 18 months ago, the first topic I discussed was parental leave and the role it played in sex discrimination. And back in those halcyon carefree days of spring 2008, it was easy to call for paternity leave to be increased. Then the recession hit, and things looked rather different. The prospect of allowing a recent father up to 26 weeks to be out of the office seems terrifying in more streamlined, do-more-with-less times. But I for one am in favour of the government’s proposals to do just that.

Here’s why. I still agree with my younger self – equality in the workplace cannot be achieved unless the issue of parental leave is truly sorted out. Evidence crops up all the time to support this. At a recent commons select committee hearing on sexism in the City , Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), said there were too many “unfair” examples in the financial sector of women who took maternity leave and came back to find their jobs changed or clients reallocated. At the same hearing, Baroness Prosser agreed that sharing out maternity and paternity leave more equally between parents would help assuage employers’ fears and boost women’s career prospects.

Parental leave should, and could, mean just that – not ‘maternity’ or ‘paternity’, but the leave taken by a recent parent to care full time for their newborn in its first year of life. The EHRC has recently set out its proposals to achieve that . But I prefer the government’s, as described in our Law at work section . These key proposals, if passed, could apply to babies born after 2011:

- Fathers able to take from two to 26 weeks’ leave.
- Mothers have to return to work before fathers can take the leave.
- Fathers paid for leave only when it falls within the 39-week SMP period.
- Fathers must have 26 weeks’ continuous service at 15 weeks prior to the child’s birth to be eligible.

The CIPD’s Mike Emmott rightly points out that “the administrative burdens involved could cause a real headache for employers”. He also comments that the new proposals are based on the same statutory paternity pay (currently £123.06 a week) that only half of fathers are currently willing to take anyway. Research has also found many men unwilling to take paternity leave or ask for subsequent flexible working for fear of harming their career prospects.

Which brings me back to my main point. As long as there is a great discrepancy between maternity and paternity leave, and subsequent flexible working patterns, then there will be a great discrepancy in the career trajectories of men and women who choose to have children. If these new rights are granted, the confidence and support they will give to young fathers to enable them to take additional leave will be increased. At the moment, the message is clear: two weeks is all you get. If the message is that you can get 26 weeks as a parent, irrespective of your sex, then I would suggest – and I admit, this is a fairly bold suggestion – that within a generation we would see much improved gender equality in the workplace and beyond. So some administrative burdens are worth having.

Does a dream job equal happiness?

Tim Smedley | 25 Sep 2009 | 15:11

A conversation over lunch got me wondering. Which of the two groups are the happier in their jobs: those who knew from a young age what they wanted to be when they grew up, and then promptly became it (group one); or those who through several muddled attempts at various types of qualifications and/or career paths, eventually fell into the particular career that suited them (group two)?

First, it must be pointed out that I’m not assuming that everyone fits into one of these two groups. There are plenty of grey areas. But for the purpose of this particular mental wandering, let’s stick with the two. Initially, it seems easy to answer – surely group one, with their achievement of goals and worry-free vision of where they fit into the world, is the happier? However, wouldn’t boredom set in at some point? Along the straight road of wanting to do and then doing, the only possible end destination is then not doing. Doesn’t seem like a life full of spice.

As is generally the case with a mental meander, the internet soon played a part. A quick search found this little gem of insight from celebrity tearaway Lindsay Lohan: “I think I always kind of aspired to be like Britney Spears. I wanted to be in the tabloids when I was in middle school.” So there you go. Lifelong ambitions can sometimes be disappointing from the very outset.

So does this mean that group two is the happier? Well, again it’s easy to argue both cases. Yes, because they know the delight of accidentally happening upon their true path, and so will relish every moment. No, because they are always playing catch-up against the group one-ers they work with, and are all too mindful of opportunities wasted before they arrived at their chosen job.

Without wanting to delve too deeply into the aforementioned grey areas, perhaps it doesn’t matter at all. No matter how we find ourselves in our current line of work, isn’t it largely the nature of the particular organisation and profession, the quality of manager and learning and development opportunities, that retain our interest or keep us happy?

I’d be interested to know what group you think you fall into, and whether it’s had any effect on you. And – perhaps more importantly – whether (assuming both were equally keen on the job offer and company, and equally qualified) you’d be more impressed with a group one or a group two candidate at a job interview.

The perfect storm of 2009 – the type of year businesses dread

Tim Smedley | 10 Aug 2009 | 15:45

It’s not often you can confidently write a review (you could almost call it an obituary) of a year while it’s still mid-summer, but 2009 will be many people’s annus horribilis.

It made me laugh when reading this in the Wikipedia entry on the phrase “perfect storm”: “The phrase was awarded the top prize by Lake Superior State University in their 2007 list of words that deserve to be banned for overuse.” Because, like an errant child drawn to a big red button that says “do not press”, I can’t quite resist using the phrase to describe the current situation.

Depending on your economist of choice (ours is John Philpott, obviously), this is the worst recession since the 1930s/since the second world war/since the 1970s/since the 1990s (delete accordingly). It’s a very bad time economically.

As if that wasn’t enough, in recent years we’ve become quite used to global health scares that fizzle out. First there was the SARS coronavirus; cue one or two images from south-east Asia of public health officials dressed a bit like Dustin Hoffman in the film Outbreak. The media finds the nearest scientist willing to predict global extinction, and so global panic ensues.

It was much the same with bird flu. One dead swan in Scotland allowed us Brits to entertain our darkest notions of epidemics. And then nothing much happened. So when swine flu came along this year like the boy crying “wolf”, initially we weren’t too concerned. It then spread at such an alarming rate around the world, and through the UK, that the Health Protection Agency could only estimate the numbers infected. At the time of writing this, 36 people in the UK have died from it and more than 1,150 people worldwide. It’s a very bad time health-wise.

And so the phrase “perfect storm” seems apt. But if there is any cause for optimism it is possibly this – perhaps we are close to the bottom of this particular downward curve, and the only way will soon be up. The government advice page on swine flu believes that current statistics give “a clear indication that the rate of infection is slowing”. And although most economists are still wary of talk about so-called “green shoots”, the latest CIPD Labour Market Outlook survey finds far fewer employers expecting to make staff redundant, with the scale of planned redundancies also reduced. While Philpott keeps us all firmly grounded by reading those tea leaves to spell “things are getting worse more slowly”, at the very least things aren’t plummeting - things are beginning to plateau. Even house prices are looking more positive, from the homeowners’ point of view.

So in 2009 a storm was whipped up by the simultaneous occurrence of events that, on their own, may have been more bearable - but, in a way, perhaps it’s best to get all the bad stuff out the way all at once. Things can only get better. Hang on, wasn’t that someone’s election campaign song…?