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A former colleague once said to me: “I’m not a completer-finisher, I’m afraid”. I heard an echo of it the other day when I heard someone else described as “not a completer-finisher”. Well, I’m not naturally a completer-finisher either, but I’ve managed to learn some completer-finisher skills and I’m impatient with those who use such labels as excuses.

The various “team wheel” approaches available – including Belbin, Myers-Briggs, Margerison-McCann and maybe others I don’t know – are useful tools that help us all to understand the complex variety our colleagues present to us, and use that variety to help us to do things better.

I’ve often said that every group tackling a new challenge needs a bloke in a leather jacket in the team who’ll come at the problem from a fresh angle and open up new opportunities. These various team wheels take my informal language and offer a structured tool (and a tool which includes the female equivalent of “a bloke in a leather jacket” of course!).

But it doesn’t work if people are allowed to believe (or kid themselves) that these behaviours are fixed for all time. I’m naturally an ideas man - keen to learn, pass on what I know and to solve problems – but I can’t run my business, or do the other things I do, unless I dot some ‘i’s and cross some ‘t’s. I hate chasing people but it has to be done sometimes. From being ticked off for lack of attention to detail when I was young, I now find myself doing the same to others! I have changed. I can’t change my personality, but I know what I’m good at and I’ve learned to get much better at the rest. Knowing the difference between these two is crucial to good people management.

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“The dog that didn’t bark” is an over-used phrase, but it is instructive just how often the most interesting thing about a report is what it doesn’t say.

It’s in that spirit that I read the government’s newly published response to MP Alan Milburn’s report on fair access to the professions. My own recent experience of this is as a parent, forking out a five-figure sum for a mandatory course so that my daughter could become a barrister. I don’t begrudge her a penny, of course, and I can afford it – but many others can’t. No wonder so few junior barristers come from outside the middle classes.

So I looked to see whether the government is minded to tackle the high costs associated with entry to so many professions, especially the “old professions” such as medicine and law. Two of Milburn’s recommendations touch on “addressing financial fears” and a further nine on “removing financial constraints”, but all are about helping students to pay the bills, and none explore how those bills might be cut. The question isn’t even asked.

I doubt if the professions will ever be ready for the sort of holy cow-slaughtering zeal of Ryanair’s cost-cutting chief executive Michael O’Leary, but the approach of one of his less flamboyant competitors may be more to their taste. Jim French, chairman and chief executive of Flybe, was quoted recently as saying that, though he hated cutting staff, he “loved” cutting costs. Flybe is a successful low-cost airline but, unlike others, the company has been keen to retain a customer service culture. And the airline combines cost-cutting with serious investment in training: its £24-million training academy opens this autumn.

That sounds to me like the sort of approach we need to education in the professions (and, indeed, more generally): no compromise on quality, but a passion for cutting costs where they can be cut. Professional education will never be cheap, but we do potential students a disservice if we don’t work hard to keep costs down for them.

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How long should a job description be? Daft question, I hear you say: “It depends.” OK, let’s turn the question round. I often find that while people can’t readily agree what a “good answer” might look like, they find it much easier to identify a bad one.

So, would 10 pages be too long? Surely 20 would? How about 41?

I’m serious. That’s the length of a job description a colleague came across the other day in the course of work we’re carrying out in the health sector to identify possible “nationally transferable roles” (a rather helpful concept for tidying up the best of local initiatives and making them interchangeably available to all).

And I’m not cheating: this is a description of a serious job (a specialist nurse) working for a serious employer (a primary care trust). The only thing not serious about it is that it is labelled a “post outline”. Credit where credit’s due – I can only presume that’s a quiet joke from the bureaucrat responsible, who knows that this is nonsense and who is fighting back in the only way he can.

I am confident that not even the author has read this monster all the way through. I am confident because it is clearly the result of a cut-and-paste exercise, lifting section after section from the NHS’s Knowledge and Skills Framework. To be fair, there is a clear 43-word statement defining the job purpose, but that’s the only indication that the author has given any thought to whether all these words might be helpful to a post holder.

It reminded me of the last time I had a job description. As I run my own small consultancy, I think even the most ardent advocate of job descriptions would think it rather over the top for me to write one for myself, but the last time I had one – as chief executive of a training and enterprise council in the early 1990s – it was 12 pages long. I’m a conscientious chap, so I did start reading it. But I never finished.

I never finished because I realised that while it might possibly be serving someone else’s interests (though I doubted that too), it most certainly wasn’t serving mine. It was an unprioritised list of all the things that I might just be expected to do, but it gave me no useful guidance on what my board wanted me to do, about what mattered more and what mattered less, or about how my performance might be judged. It was an irrelevance.

My simple conclusion is that if a job description does not help a post holder to do a better job, even one page is too long.

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I was fascinated to see in the CIPD’s annual pay survey that 57 per cent of public-sector workers still expect a pay rise in 2010 despite the overwhelmingly gloomy signals about the state of the nation’s finances.

This expectation is linked to our recent decision at Ealing, Hammersmith and West London College (where I chair the governing body) to tell staff that we have not yet decided whether we can afford to make a pay rise for this academic year. One response to the principal contained these words:

“This information came as something of a surprise and, like many staff on moderate incomes, I will now have to readjust to having less money than I was ‘sure’ that I had.”

I think the implied rebuke that we might have communicated our thoughts a little earlier is fair, but the response confirms my belief that we were right to upset any lingering expectations that there would certainly be a pay rise. There may yet be a pay rise, but balancing our books this year is a real challenge and we fear more instability before the year is out, whoever wins the election, as the government struggles to manage its books and adjusts the college budget accordingly. I don’t want any of the college’s staff to build their plans on the expectation of a pay rise: we have a duty to be straight with them.

Helping staff to adapt to changing reality, especially when that new reality is less comfortable than the old one, is a key part of what we do as leaders and managers - and a key part of the job of HR.

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Do you treat any volunteers you “employ” the same as you do your paid employees (besides not paying them, that is)? I ask because of two news items I’ve seen in the past few days.

The first (from PM, naturally) was a law report. In X v Mid-Sussex Citizens Advice Bureau the Court of Appeal was forced to decide whether a volunteer has the same employment rights as a contracted, salaried member of staff – in this case, rights under the Disability Discrimination Act.

The court found against the claimant, but PM’s legal adviser urged those employers who use contracts with their volunteers to check that the wording about recruitment and dismissal was clear and free from misinterpretation. The same as you would for an employee.

The second was the report of a survey by the government’s Office of the Third Sector, which wanted to know why volunteers resign. Not surprisingly, personal reasons came top by a long way. But the second-largest reason was concerns about the work itself: stress and fear of liability – again, classic HR territory.

Not long ago my company completed a report for Skills for Health – the sector skills council for the health sector – exploring the workforce implications of the very large numbers of volunteers in the health sector (it will be published soon).

We were curious to think through exactly what is different about “employing” volunteers rather than paid employees, and we concluded that the differences are not as great as many think.

Volunteers need to be recruited, inducted and (commonly) trained. They need to be clear what they contribute; how, when and to what standards. They like a word of encouragement now and then, and some need more active managing. And so on. There’s no need to worry about pay, but the rest is pretty much as it is for paid employees.

There are differences, but they can be over-played. Volunteers typically come with strong values, for example, and don’t take well to being bossed about – but that’s increasingly the case with paid employees, isn’t it?

With public finances tight, and likely to remain so for many years, intelligent use of volunteers will be a big deal for much of the public and charitable sectors. And with so many out of work, there are plenty of people turning to volunteering to enhance their CVs, to keep their hand in, or simply to keep themselves from going round the bend with boredom.

So beyond keeping an eye on legal issues, here’s a great opportunity for HR to help get the most from a valuable and growing workforce – which just happens not to be paid.

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Cutting quangos down to size (or entirely) always makes good copy, so it’s no surprise that proposals for a “substantial reduction” in the number of sector skills bodies have dominated the coverage of Lord Mandelson’s skills white paper. But we shouldn’t miss the other messages that the government is sending us, some of them offering a radical (and welcome) shift in the skills agenda.

The white paper contains a lot to interest PM readers, but I want to pick out two aspects. First, it signals a major shift towards higher level skills:

“We will change the focus of our skills system so that a new premium is put on higher skills, especially the technician skills that are the foundation of high-tech, low-carbon industry.”

This is new thinking that marks a decisive move away from ensuring that everyone gets at least a Level 2 qualification and towards aligning the state’s massive investment in further education more closely with the requirements of the national economy.

There’s probably some politics in it as well: Labour sees an opportunity to show its commitment to vocational education and hopes to highlight any Tory ambivalence. I think David Willetts, the shadow minister for universities and skills, is quicker on his feet than that and I certainly hope so: a shared national commitment to vocational success is vital.

At this stage, however, we’re talking about a shift in emphasis. Although Mandelson calls it “a radical shift in our national priorities”, the commitment to those “first Level 2” qualifications is still there, as is the existing commitment to tackling literacy and numeracy needs.

Although there is no new money, there is ambition – and it’s a good one:

“Our ambition is that, thanks in large part to the innovations in this strategy, three-quarters of people should participate in higher education or complete an advanced apprenticeship or equivalent technician-level course by the age of 30.”

This doesn’t replace the existing aspiration that half the population should go to university, but it is a much more intelligent reworking of it.

Second note of interest for PM readers, there is a commitment to provide learners with “skills accounts”. I’ve always liked the idea of skills accounts because I’ve never forgotten something I heard early in my career, when a training instructor asked me: “Why do so many people use more skill driving to work than they do when they get there?”

There’s a great deal of talent locked away in Britain’s workforce, and with some imagination skills accounts can help to unlock it. Done badly, they are a threat to employers who fear that their employees are spending some of their best energies on improving themselves. Done well, they are a great opportunity for employers who know their employees are spending some of their best energies on improving themselves.

What’s missing from the white paper? Critics will shout “money!” That’s true but, frankly, it’s a lazy response. The public sector has done rather well in recent years, and when there’s money around people don’t ask the tough value for money questions with the same rigour.

Now’s the time to ask those questions. Culling quangos is the easy bit – what’s missing is a determined effort to get much better value from learning, not just from each institution. Why, for example, do so many courses last exactly a year? How do we use e-learning better to drive down costs while maintaining standards? And so on.

And let’s not forget, there will be a general election next year that might change everything.

PS. I asked in my previous blog how long it should take to develop a qualification. The white paper offers an answer: “We will work with the UK Commission, Sector Skills Councils, awarding organisations and Ofqual to reduce development times to an average of six months and maximum of 12 months.”Comments [0]
Here’s a question to chew over with your colleagues: how long should it take to create a new qualification from scratch?

It’s not an obscure pub quiz question answerable only by a select few (like naming the only US president not to speak English as his first language). And, to the best of my knowledge, there is no national standard defining what the answer should be. So what would you like the answer to be?

For example: a company spots a need not met by current qualifications and contacts its Sector Skills Council to get a new NVQ (or an SVQ in Scotland) designed and approved. How long would it be reasonable to expect that process to take? Six months? A year? More?

If you are the Ministry of Defence – with a need to take the long view as well as responding to today’s emergencies – you might think a year is reasonable. If you are a fast-moving start-up in a fast-changing sector, even six months will feel impossibly long.

I ask because the question has come up in the course of a conversation about the national reform programme for vocational qualifications, as we’re evaluating three of the strands. It seems self-evident that employers will be more likely to play an active role in changing qualifications to meet their needs better if the process can be done quickly, but who’s to say what “quickly” means?

In a different field, we see the otherwise rather peculiar world of Formula One setting a sparkling example by getting its pit-stops down to seven or eight seconds. Expectations are sky-high, and the teams involved have put a lot of effort into getting the time down.

But what’s a reasonable expectation when you want a new qualification? It is a complex business, of course, but so is refuelling a racing car (and, with Formula One, people get hurt if it goes wrong). Do we have high expectations that new qualifications can, and should, be developed quickly while still, of course, maintaining standards? Should we spend real effort polishing the process to get the time down, in the hope that others will join in, for the greater good?

Perhaps we should start by defining a standard for how long it should take. Suggestions?

PS. The president was Martin Van Buren.
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We Brits are a pragmatic lot, so when I see new principles set out in a new charter, I’m always keen to test them against the messy reality that I know. As it happens, I’m particularly well-placed to do so with the CIPD’s new charter for internships, as my son is just about to complete his. Let’s take each in turn.

Recruitment: “interns should be recruited in broadly the same way as regular employees of an organisation”. My son (graduating this summer) got to know about this opportunity because a friend of my daughter’s already works at the company. She’s met him, and when her colleagues were talking about the kind of person they wanted for an IT internship, she said she knew just the person. The techies took over, talked to him on the phone to establish that he had the right knowledge and skill, then met him, to check he would fit in, and that was that. Is this how the company normally recruits? (which is CIPD’s slightly surprising, but I presume carefully drafted, test). Yes: that’s exactly how my daughter’s friend got her job: through contacts. Tick.

Induction: “interns should receive a proper induction to the organisation…”. It sounded a bit informal, but he certainly got one, because the company was keen for him to get stuck into some work. Tick.

Supervision: “organisations should ensure there is a dedicated person(s) who has allowed time in their work schedule to supervise the intern and conduct regular performance reviews”. Well, it was a bit more informal than that, given high volumes of work all round, and especially with the second part (rather more a chat down the pub than is implied here, but the effect was the same). Taking the requirement in terms of outputs rather than process – ie, whether my son got appropriate guidance on what to do, and feedback – the test was met. Tick.

Treatment: “interns should be treated with exactly the same degree of professionalism and duty of care as regular employees. They should not be… automatically assigned routine tasks…” As soon as the company got the measure of what my son could do, they gave him real work, and work which mattered to them, at first relatively straightforward, then with real substance. He was unquestionably doing something of value to the company (and learning from it). Two ticks.

Payment and duration: “as a bare minimum the organisation should cover any necessary work-related expenses … “ My son was paid the minimum wage, as promised. He was told it would probably last up to three months, and it has done. Tick.

Certification/reference and feedback: “organisations should provide interns with a certificate/reference letter detailing the work they have undertaken…” My son’s company hasn’t met the letter of this requirement: it has gone much further. His boss said he was keen to offer him a job but unsure if he’d be able to - so he used his contacts and recommended my son to other firms with appropriate vacancies. The first firm he approached has offered him a job he’s really pleased with, which he starts in a couple of weeks, and which he wouldn’t have come across without the internship. That matters far more to him than a letter. It may not be exactly what CIPD had in mind, but I call that a result. Three ticks!

So, with my mildly pragmatic reading of it, I’d rate the CIPD’s charter highly, and recommend it. Tick!

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When I’m pricing a tender in my role as a consultant, I usually take a good deal of care to explain who in my team will do what when. I believe that such openness distinguishes my company from those consultants who feel the need to bolster their egos with obfuscation.

So I was a little taken aback the other day to hear a company which manages major training programmes for its business clients complain that the college it works with had provided a carefully detailed invoice instead of the usual thin summary. The problem was that their clients’ eagle-eyed accountants, relishing their chance in a recession to force everyone to tighten their belts, had pounced on a brief course, costing only £250, and claimed that it was an expendable luxury in straitened times.

All the trainers valued the course highly: though they readily agreed it wasn’t strictly necessary, it provided valuable breadth in the basic training of people going on to responsible careers in their field. And they cursed the college for its well-intentioned folly in providing a readily challengeable detailed invoice.

I’ve often thought that it’s only saints and madmen who really tell “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”. Perhaps the saints could be persuaded that some tactical sense need not be incompatible with the path of righteousness?

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Like Peter Honey, we’ve been recruiting. Unlike Peter, I do a good deal of recruiting, so long ago I decided that I should not reject out of hand an applicant who doesn’t know the difference between “licence” and “license”, or who is keen to tell me about their skill in “liaison” with a wide range of people but is less sure about how to spell the word.

As time has gone on I have got bolder about the process, and even offered feedback where it’s not requested. This time around I explained to one candidate for a trainee consultant post, whom we considered carefully but did not invite to interview, that we might have been more inclined to do so had she told us what class of degree she had (a question that surely the most ardent advocate of political correctness would agree is permissible in a consultancy requiring high-level analytical skills). I told her we assume that if no class of degree is stated, someone must have a 2:2, and recommended her to say so if she did actually have a 2:1 or better.

Trying to be helpful to applicants doesn’t always work and carries some risk – many HR colleagues will think me mad – but in this case it did work. The applicant mailed me back with her thanks, and gave me her marks so I could see that she’d just missed a first. She hasn’t got a job with us, but I think I’ve been helpful to her.

Why, then, will so many HR colleagues think I’ve taken a stupid risk? It’s fear, isn’t it? Fear that an annoyed applicant might take them to a tribunal over wrongful selection. I know my employment law so I don’t think I do anything reckless, but I have no patience with back-watching. But I also know that the chances of anyone bothering to challenge little old us are very small indeed, and that spurs me on. And, if I’m really honest, I’m much less bold when I interview for the college that I chair, not just because the personnel team will leap on me, but also because the chances of an aggrieved applicant making a fuss are much higher. The risk is greater and it’s shared, not mine alone.

It’s a pity. More people would benefit if more recruiters felt able to give honest, well intentioned feedback.

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