Latest posting When I stood for election as a student representative on my faculty board, a central plank in my ‘manifesto’ was that examiners’ reports should be open to all students. I had discovered that they did a report every year and their comments included helpful advice on what candidates had misunderstood. Given that the university was in the learning business, I thought this was information that would be helpful to us all, students and teachers. (The faculty board chairman deftly pre-empted what he, no doubt, knew would be an unpredictable discussion and put the reports in the library anyway: very much a ‘quick win’ for me, and a lesson learned about managing change!)

It’s with the same logic that Ofqual, the examinations regulator, requires exam boards to run feedback events. It is in everyone’s interests for the system to be open and fair, and for everyone to have the chance to learn and improve.

So, I don’t read the recent allegations in the Daily Telegraph of malpractice in the exam system as evidence of collusion by examiners in nudging up standards. Feedback is not collusion. If some individuals have gone too far, broken their contractual obligations and given hints about future exams, that’s cheating, not feedback and they should be dealt with severely. I’m confident they will be.

I declare an interest as a non-executive director of Pearson Education, which runs the Edexcel exam board. In taking up my role, I attended a number of briefing sessions in which managers explained, in detail, how the board was run, and the processes in place to ensure that our exams are managed rigorously and fairly.

I think many commentators would be amazed at the trouble taken by Edexcel – and the cost incurred in doing so – to meet standards we set ourselves which comfortably exceed those required of us by the regulator. So, far from fearing the enquiry that Michael Gove has announced, I welcome it. An honest, open, enquiry will show the doubters just how impressively things are done.Comments [1] Recent postingsI’m intrigued by the idea of organising a conference that deliberately sets out to be boring. Apparently when James Ward staged his Boring 2011 conference in London recently, it was a sell-out. There were sessions on bar codes, electric hand dryers, the first ten years of Which? magazine and Budgens - Crouch End. However, according to the reports I have read, the conference was a failure because it wasn’t boring! However hard the speakers tried, the audience paid rapt attention to their every word and even laughed at their jokes.

Perhaps blatantly advertising in advance that something is going to be boring, is the way to ensure that it isn’t. If I had gone to James Ward’s conference, I’d be stubbornly determined not to be bored and, the harder someone tried to bore me, the more resistant I’d become. There must be a lesson here for every conference organiser; promise it’s going to be boring and it won’t be!

I wonder whether anything is inherently boring? When you feel bored does it mean that the subject or person (or both) is actually boring? Haven’t you noticed that things you don’t find interesting always, without exception, have devotees? For example, I’m not at all interested in German Lieder but Wigmore Hall is regularly packed with people who happily pay to listen to it and applaud each rendition with genuine enthusiasm (I know because my wife loves it).

I have been to plenty of meetings and conferences where I have succumbed to feelings of boredom (on occasions I have even fallen asleep!), but I have always assumed I brought this upon myself by lowering my guard and failing to be purposeful. When I attend a conference determined to learn something new and/or to identify a couple of useful actions, my resolve keeps any feelings of boredom at bay.

One of my grandchildren often says he’s bored, the implication being that I am to blame. What he is really saying is; ‘you are boring me’. This, of course, is regrettable; I would much prefer that he was fascinated by reminiscences about my schooldays in the 1950s, in the days of chalk and blackboards, where we learnt our times tables by heart and were caned if we were caught not wearing our school caps in town. Absolutely riveting stuff - as I’m sure you agree. Anyway, when my grandson tells me he is bored, I remind myself (not him, that would be too much!) that he has to learn to take responsibility for his feelings and that if he is bored it doesn’t follow that I am boring. So, I simply say, ‘Oh dear. What are you going to do about it?’. This, by the way, is such an infuriating thing to be asked, especially by the person you are convinced is boring you, that any feelings of boredom instantly evaporate. Works like a charm.

My conclusion is this; you might feel bored, but nothing is boring. Not even this blog! Fancy joining me to watch some paint dry?
Comments [3] There’s plenty of doom and gloom about. But it’s always this way in the eye of an economic storm. Yes, there’s a certain macabre fascination watching the car crash that is global finance play out before our eyes. But, as the ancient wisdom goes, the fast track to feeling more empowered is to focus on what you can personally influence. We all have some degree of empowerment in the workplace, whether we’re the CEO or a first-line manager.

If the barrage of statistics is to be believed (and it’s not fair just to trust the bad news), companies with high employee engagement levels grow on average 4.5 times faster than those with low levels (Hays 2010).

As I illustrate in Brand Champions, engaged employees are:
R- receptive
I - involved
P -  proactive
E - energised and energising

So, why not try these top tips to promote the engagement drive within your own organisation. Most of them are free:

1. Give recognition
If someone has done well, let them know you know it. A simple thank you goes a long way to increasing engagement, so catch them doing the right thing.

2. Give constructive feedback
Managers giving little or no feedback to their workers fail to engage 98 per cent of them, according to a 2009 study by Gallup. Let employees know how they are doing and what they can do to improve. It’s worth giving your first-line managers in particular training on how to do this.

3. Incentivise good work
Ensure that your HR processes are hard-wired to recognise objectives that are “on brand” and “on strategy”.

4. Create an engaging culture
An open door policy creates an approachable feel to the office, where employees feel comfortable. Ensure management have a physical presence in the office and are role models for your core values.

5. Involve people
Self-managing teams are engagement nirvana. Involving people in company decisions will make them feel part of the organisation and give them a real sense of ownership.

6.Keep people informed
Don’t assume that people don’t know or don’t need to know. They will appreciate being in the loop about any changes in the company. Internal communication must do more than SOS (send out stuff).

7. Encourage suggestions and input
Let them know their opinions count…. chances are the answers to your issues can be solved in-house.

8. Promote role models
Rather than favouring favourites look to unusual suspects for examples of great practice and celebrate them. This will engage more people than you can imagine.

9. Encourage training, development and a career path
Stress the benefits of working for your brand including developing new skills and having a career path in return for development. Relationships count but they need to be nurtured.

10. Focus on their talents
Get to know the “real people” who work for you. Play some games. Find out what talents they have or want to have. Use these when delegating projects to ensure they are using their talents and developing in the right areas.
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Most of you will have read a book or seen a film in which the same story is repeated a number of times but from the perspective of different characters. I was reminded of this earlier in the week when reading Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne’s, Autumn Statement report alongside the latest economic and fiscal forecast from the independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). Make sure you don’t read one without the other, since the OBR tome not only makes for much more sombre reading but also pours cold water on some of the policy measures outlined by Mr Osborne.

For all the talk about the UK being a safe haven in a difficult global economy, the OBR reckons that by 2013 we will have the worst fiscal deficit and debt situation in the world, a marked deterioration on the situation the government inherited last year. This is because flat-lining economic growth has more than wiped out the effect of cuts in public spending and tax hikes. Rather than being secure, the UK’s triple-A credit rating is now under serious threat of a downgrade, perhaps as soon as the end of this year.

When it comes to jobs, the OBR concludes that the UK has an underlying structural unemployment rate of 5.3 per cent (around 1.5 million) but will experience unemployment of 8.7 per cent (2.8 million) by the end of 2012. The jobless figure will stay above 6.2 per cent until 2016, it predicts, because the economy lacks the demand for goods and services necessary to offer work to all our idle hands.

The current jobs crisis is therefore due to a serious demand deficit – curbing workers employment rights in the hope of encouraging employers to hire staff they don’t need, as set out in the Autumn Statement, won’t make a blind bit of difference to this. And neither, as the OBR also notes, will the government’s plan to subsidise employers to recruit young jobless people. All this will do is give jobs to those young people helped by the subsidy at the expense of people who are not subsidised, young and old alike. The net impact on unemployment is zero.

Indeed the overall negative effect of government policy on the labour market is set to be even more depressing than previously thought, the OBR raising its estimate of public sector job losses as a result of cuts in public spending from 400,000 to over 700,000. And this is itself not the full story. While the latest OBR projection better reflects what public sector employers tell the CIPD they expect to happen to jobs in the coming years, the estimated cut of 710,000 excludes the effect of austerity measures introduced in 2010-11, particularly the freeze in public sector recruitment announced immediately after the 2010 general election by the Chancellor and his then lieutenant at HM Treasury the former Liberal Democrat minister David Laws. According to the Office for National Statistics the level of public sector employment fell by almost 140,000 in that period. Assuming the OBR projection proves correct, the total cull of public sector jobs by 2017 will thus be 850,000, almost 15 per cent of the public sector workforce at the start of 2010.

The loss of public sector jobs on such a mass scale in less than a decade is not unprecedented in UK economic history. A similar cull occurred in the 1990s and was easily absorbed without any associated rise in unemployment. At that time, net private sector job creation more than offset a loss of 800,000 public sector jobs and reduced the share of public sector employment in total employment from 23 per cent to 19 per cent.

Back then, however, the labour market was being boosted by a strongly rising economic tide. Alas there is little prospect of a similarly benign outcome in today’s far more straightened times. Even so, along with the OBR, I expect the private sector to eventually ride to the rescue. But it won’t do so in the next couple of years. At best we’re stuck with unemployment above 2 million for the next five years, with no hope of a return to the pre-crisis level of joblessness in this decade.

John Philpott is Chief Economic Adviser at the CIPD

Comments [0] The spotlight is on youth unemployment and it’s common to hear young people complaining that they don’t hear back, in any way, from most of the employers they apply to. It’s common, but is it right?

The latest contribution to an interesting discussion on PM’s LinkedIn group about apprenticeships is from Felicity, who says: “As a young person myself, I feel it's very important to give young people a foot on the ladder. Currently every job I apply for I'm not even getting a response, negative or otherwise.” She goes on: “I believe this is down to my lack of job experience”
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No, it’s not, Felicity: it’s plain bad manners. I also think it’s bad business.

They may well not be interested in your application because you lack experience but, if so, they should say so. Obviously there’s some cost to an employer in responding to every application, but businesses have used stock responses for decades and universal use of e-mail reduces the cost to almost nothing.

If whoever reviewed her application could simply note it ‘inexperienced’, the most junior person in the team could send her back the agreed form of words – and Felicity would know where she stood.

And is it really too much to ask that if the reason is not inexperience, the employer will have more than one stock response to hand? Felicity would not be left with a false assumption, and would gain some better information to use in her jobsearch.

I get quite a few ‘on spec’ applications to my company – and I make a point of responding to them all. I’m not recruiting and don’t expect to do so, so I say that, and I usually point people to the website of another professional body I’m a member of where they can find a good list of other consultancies. It takes a minute – and quite often I get a note back with what are obviously genuine thanks.

My business is tiny, so the same pressures don’t apply as in larger firms, but if you translate my behaviour (which I can’t help: it’s just the way I am) into business-speak, I’m protecting and enhancing my brand.

That’s why I think businesses make a mistake when they fail even to acknowledge an application. One day Felicity may well be in a position to make a business decision which will matter to your company, whether it’s buying your products or choosing a business partner when she’s reached the Board (go for it, Felicity!). Is it really such a bright idea to have brushed her off so carelessly?

People like Felicity are hungry for some clues to help them improve their chances in tough times. Simply acknowledging that’s she’s made an effort to make contact, costs you almost nothing. Giving her even a single line of explanation back along with the thumbs-down costs very little more, but it’s an important contribution that every business could, and should, make.Comments [1]

I have been reflecting on the impossibility of people in senior positions really knowing what is going on in their organisations. Apparently James Murdoch didn’t know the extent of phone hacking in News International and Teresa May didn’t know the extent to which immigration checks had been relaxed by the UK Border Agency. Clearly, there are people who doubt their claims that they weren’t told and, at the time of writing, it remains to be seen whether they are being economical with the truth – but I don’t find it in the least surprising.

Senior people are always vulnerable because they have to depend on other people to keep them in the picture. It is inevitable that the information they receive will be laundered and selective. This is even a hazard in small companies where it should be easier for the boss to know what is going on from first hand observation. I was once astonished when a member of my team handed in their notice claiming that the atmosphere in the office had become intolerable. I have two excuses for being blissfully unaware of any interpersonal problems. Firstly, I worked in a separate office and, secondly, whenever I mingled, everything was sweetness and light. Even the disgruntled employee put on an act. I realise my admission to have been taken by surprise by the sudden resignation leaves me open to accusations that I was distant, insensitive and easily hoodwinked. But that is the whole point. If I, the manager of an SME, could so easily be misled, how much more likely is it that the boss of a large enterprise will be out of touch with what is really going on?

I once knew a CEO of a large bank – let’s call him Alex – who, in common with many senior managers of his age and background, harboured a deep-seated dread of losing control. Of course, the bank was too big for Alex to be everywhere, keeping an eye on everything personally, so he invented ‘Skip Level Meetings’. Each week, Alex would visit a different part of the bank and hold an informal hour-long session with a group of staff a couple of levels below him in the hierarchy. The immediate managers of the selected group were excluded from the meeting to maximise uninhibited participation by their staff. There was no agenda – just an ‘anything goes’, off the record, question and answer session.

Alex was convinced these gatherings would, at least partially, solve the problem of how to keep in touch. However, once the staff had recovered from the initial shock of finding themselves face to face with the CEO, they soon cottoned on to the sort of things he wanted to hear; some relatively harmless examples about lack of attention to detail, some vague complaints about inadequate communications, some grumbling about poor response times from the IT department, and some mild criticisms of pay and conditions.

Alex, however, was very pleased with the process. As far as he was concerned, Skip Level Meetings were keeping him in touch and successfully circumventing the filters put in place by two or more levels of management. After each meeting, Alex summoned the relevant management team to feedback his findings and leave them in no doubt that things had to improve.

Predictably, managers in the bank below Alex (in other words, all the managers!) were very wary of Skip Level Meetings. They resented being excluded and dreaded the reprimands that inevitably followed in the wake of each meeting. Soon managers began to rehearse their staff, where questions and answers (particularly answers) were practised over and over until the manager was satisfied that the right ‘everything-is-under-control’ impression was being conveyed. Unbeknown to Alex, hours were spent in rehearsals – hours that could otherwise have been productive.

Alex, however, just like me, was convinced he was in touch!

Comments [1] One of my earliest duties as a college governor was to chair an appeal against redundancy by a senior lecturer. No doubt my enthusiasm for my new role made me an easy target: the Principal knew I’d say ‘yes’ - but I think he was less pleased when I upheld the appeal.

The format was a classic set piece: at-risk employee plus union representative, and three of us on the panel (all governors – in other words, lay volunteers). With his back against the wall, the lecturer made an excellent case to keep his job, setting out a credible and persuasive plan to put right things he accepted were going wrong in his team.

As a panel, we wondered why he hadn’t offered any of these ideas before, but we could see no reason not to let him have the chance to make it work: the college, and our students, would be better off if he succeeded.

That’s why I welcome the Government’s new consultation on “protected conversations” and reject the cynical responses of some that this is just another sop to employers from the Tories. A protected conversation in my example would have enabled this chap’s manager to say, “Look – cards on the table. Unless we get these problems sorted, I’m afraid you’ll have to go. What else can we do?”

Do we really need to make people go through the worry of redundancy or sacking – and put management to unnecessary cost? There may be hidden traps in this idea that others will see, but it seems to me that this could be a helpful step forward.Comments [3]

It was fascinating to read a recent study suggesting that as youth unemployment reaches a new high, 14-15 year old people’s career aspirations don’t match requirements for economic growth.
The survey claims that major British industries are facing a talent shortage unless they can shake off their unattractive images.

According to more than 1,000 young people surveyed by Magnified Learning, the jobs that are apparently essential for economic growth are “boring”. For example:
• less than 3 per cent of young people considered the environment sector – marked by David Cameron as a vital industry for economic growth
• least popular was public transport with less than 2 per cent of young people choosing a career in the sector
• just 3 per cent showed an interest in the energy sector.
Jobs in the media and creative industries may be the only sectors to score consistently well among young people approaching working age. But then I wanted to captain the England rugby team and drive for Ferrari when I was a teenager!

The director of Magnified Learning, Chris Horton, was quoted as saying: “The high levels of youth unemployment are alarming, but even more alarming is that our research shows that the industries in which there are likely to be jobs opening up for young people, are not even being considered by the vast majority of them.
“We believe tackling these negative perceptions is a two-way process, and it is important that industry leaders recognise their responsibility to engage with the next generation in order to foster new talent. It will be impossible for the UK economy to thrive if we can’t convince young Britons that such career paths are worth aspiring to.”

Of course, HR functions have a part to play on the demand side of the equation. But it isn’t necessarily the one hinted at by Chris Horton.

I’m less convinced by the traditional thinking that new talent equals young talent. The bad news for these young folk is that the biggest issues we see when working with organisations currently have little to do with solely attracting fresh talent. The greatest challenge by far is re-engaging, energising and making the most of largely disengaged existing talent, where investment will stay within the “family” and there will be no acquisition costs.

Once again, the call goes out to HR directors across sectors to open their eyes to the reality that the bulk of their employment brand efforts should be directed at developing truly sustainable performance cultures and liberating the potential of existing employees not just on attracting new. Much more effective to create attractive brands from within by developing an appropriate culture, and to influence perceptions of the next generation in that way, than to plug a leaking bucket with external PR when the words and figures differ for those who join.

As the old saying goes “if you build it (properly) they will come”!

Comments [0] I have been reading extracts from Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs. Jobs, generally credited with being a genius, sounds as if he was the boss from hell. Apparently he had unpredictable mood swings, a propensity for pinching other people’s ideas and claiming them as his own, and an unrelenting drive for perfectionism. I never met him (a narrow escape!) so I have to assume that what Apple employees told Isaacson is a fair reflection of what it was actually like to work with him on a daily basis. At the very least, Jobs was certainly an eccentric and I confess to having a soft spot for managers who are out of the ordinary (see my blog of 1 July 2008, ‘Where have all the eccentrics gone?’

And today I read Sir Jimmy Savile’s obituary; another eccentric bites the dust. Years ago, in his early days as a disc jockey with Radio Luxembourg, I interviewed him for a university magazine. Even then, in 1959, before Top of the Pops and long before Jim’ll Fix It, it was obvious that I was in the presence of an extraordinary man. Even though we had not met before, he treated me like a long lost friend, offered me a cigar, gave flippant answers to absolutely everything, sussed out that my name spelt ‘phoney’, was impossibly hyper-active and, when the interview was over, insisted on dropping me off at my hall of residence in his Rolls Royce.

I have encountered many eccentrics over the years:
• The senior manager who, when frustrated, would feed countless pencils, one after the other, into the jaws of a battery-driven pencil sharpener.
• The HR director who had - just had - to win every argument, however trivial and unnecessary, regardless of the consequences. He once got into an argument about the inventor of the trapless china water closet. He insisted it was Thomas Crapper when in fact it turned out to be Thomas Twyford in 1885 (I just thought you’d like to know, in case it ever comes up in a pub quiz).
• The entrepreneur who used to ban the use of words like ‘strategy’ and ‘vision’ when people couldn’t agree their precise meaning (which was surprisingly often).
• The general manager of a manufacturing plant who roamed the plant at night (he had an unhappy marriage) leaving post-it notes on everything that wasn’t to his liking (most things).

I remember them all rather fondly. Of course, they drove their colleagues mad but to me, an outside consultant who could come and go (especially go), they were a delight. But, bearing in mind these are senior people, often with handsome remuneration packages, and with considerable power to influence things for better or worse, should we turn a blind eye to their eccentricities? On balance, do you think eccentric bosses are harmful or harmless?
Comments [1] It’s just over a year since the Chancellor of the Exchequer outlined the detail of his Comprehensive Spending Review to Parliament. The impact of the spending squeeze following the review, and the tax increases that sit alongside it in the Coalition’s fiscal deficit reduction plan, is now being felt against the backdrop of mounting weakness in the global economy.

Those of you who follow my occasional musings on this subject will understand why I’m not surprised that an overly tight fiscal policy is having a serious negative impact on the labour market, as the recent horrific jobless figures showed. Consequently, I’m also not surprised that public debate is full of ideas for combating rising unemployment and boosting long-term job creation, with lobbyists and commentators keen to influence the Chancellor as he ponders the latest ‘plan for growth’, due to be announced next month.

Some suggestions have been sensible, others less so. But while all ideas deserve consideration, they should only be taken seriously if backed by clear supporting evidence or, at the very least, grounded in an empirically based theoretical framework. Worryingly, however, many of the ‘solutions’ on offer owe more to ideology than evidence, although this also comes as no surprise to me.

As I wrote in my new year PM blog last January, “I suspect that as 2011 unfolds there will be growing frustration that the rate of private sector job creation is inadequate to offset mounting public sector job cuts, and a related tendency for the business lobby to use this to support calls for a watering down of employment rights. Such calls should be resisted. If there is a jobs shortfall this year it will be the inevitable result of slow economic growth against a backdrop of reduced public spending and higher taxation. Any shortfall should not be attributed to structural problems in the labour market, including the impact of employment regulation. There may be legitimate arguments for or against improved rights for workers. But it would be opportunistic and unreasonable to use difficulties in the macro economy to justify reducing existing employment rights”.

Almost a year later, I am even more firmly of this belief. The vast weight of available evidence indicates that the UK has a well functioning labour market which is currently suffering from a serious, and worsening, level of demand. Our labour market is very lightly regulated by the standards of developed economies and the structural problems that do remain, especially those that stem from inadequate education and skills provision, are unlikely to be solved by a dose of employment de-regulation.

In particular, the argument that the way to get Britain back to work is to water down rights to maternity and paternity leave, to limit the right to request flexible working, and to make it easier to dismiss workers without good cause is highly questionable. None of these things will make any meaningful difference to unemployment in a demand-starved economy and could harm the long-term prospects of UK plc by fostering precisely the kind of harsh workplace conditions that deter staff from ‘going the extra mile’ for their employers.

What’s frustrating is that rationality is barely getting a look in on this subject at present. The smart money is on the government being heavily influenced by a yet unpublished report the Prime Minister has commissioned on employment regulation. The report’s author, venture capitalist Adrian Beecroft, is an Oxford-educated physicist and generous benefactor of the University’s Beecroft Institute of Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology. This proves that Beecroft knows a lot more about rocket science than I do, and offers hope that his review of the ostensibly easier subject of what to do about employment rights might be refreshingly scientific in tone. But, judging by media speculation about the content of Beecrofts’s report, I wouldn’t bet on it.

At the very least, those who continually make the case for employment deregulation should tell us exactly what this might achieve, over what time scale, and how it would avoid any negative economic and social side effects. I eagerly await the report’s conclusions – all Beecroft needs to do is apply sensible economics. It’s not rocket science.
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