Category Archives: Auditing HR and L&D

Auditing is here to stay so Evidence-Based HR and L&D practitioners need to ensure they are being judged against the best evidence available. They should not hold their breath waiting for the auditing profession to come up with the answers for them.

A phenomenal shift in HR and L&D performance is coming

Posted on by
Share

Are you behind or ahead of the professional curve?

One of the earliest posts in this series laid down a fundamental tenet of evidence-based management (EBM) – the bell curve – and the need to show an improvement in performance. To justify our salaries HR and L&D professionals have to produce evidence that our work produces a positive shift in the performance curve of the human resource.  It should also be obvious, to any HR or L&D readers, that they themselves are already inhabitants of the bell curve for the entire profession.  Unfortunately the current version of that curve is a phenomenon, an aberration – it is in negative territory (see the curve on the left in the above chart).

The simplest employee performance curve – say from 1 to 10 with goalposts placed at 3 and 8 – will not normally have a minus scale because anyone performing that badly would have been fired.  Yes, we all know executives who seem to be exceptions to that rule but, leaving aside the issue of management failures, performance curves usually start on the right side of zero. In HR and L&D we should expect any practitioner to be getting no lower than the minimum acceptable score of 4 and this is exactly how we should be viewing SHRM’s current efforts. ASTD do not seem to be following SHRM’s lead and the CIPD is still looking for insights.  However, if we ever do set internationally recognised standards we will eventually start to see a normal curve form; as long as the standards are enforced.

In the absence of any international standards the only other standard that can be set is the simple question – where is your evidence?  Anyone in HR and L&D that does not have evidence of the performance benefits they bring to the organisation is, by definition, producing a negative ROI – their costs outweigh their benefits.  Measurement is the key to professionalism so the sooner we have some credible standards, against which HR and L&D professionals can be measured, the better.  SHRM’s first attempts at standards are misguided and wide of the mark because they are not measuring value and ASTD, who should know better, does not know how to evaluate, despite teaching every single one of its members that evaluation is a necessary and absolutely integral part of the learning cycle.

It is a strange phenomenon indeed that a global profession should still be searching for a solid foundation; so it will take an equally phenomenal shift in thinking if we are to put this situation right before our paymasters find us out.

Share

Would you pass the SHRM Standards test?

Posted on by
Share

Following the success of SHRM’s first ANSI standard I believe they are still looking for volunteers for its Taskforce.  If you were thinking of applying you might like to test your own standards first. Have a look at its latest efforts on “Investor Metrics” and then submit your answers to the questions below. Good luck!

 

PLEASE ONLY CIRCLE ONE ANSWER FOR EACH QUESTION

Question 1. Do you think the Earth is flat?

  • Yes
  • No
  • Well, I haven’t fallen off yet so I guess it must be round?

Question 2. Do you think employees would rather be referred to as -

a. people?
b. human beings?
c. human capital?

(Note. If you answered ‘c’ please state how it differs from ‘a’ and ‘b’.)

Question 3. Section ‘4.0.1 – Spending on human capital’ – do you know why they refer to ‘human capital’ rather than ‘employees’?

  • Yes
  • No
  • Presumably because they think it is what investors want to hear?

Question 4. ‘5.3 Objective’ – “The objective of the spending on human capital metric is to quantify an organization’s total expenditure on people, and look at that measure relative to other standard financial measures used in valuing an organization.” Do you think they really mean what they say?

  • Yes
  • No
  • I don’t know what they are saying so I don’t know if they mean it

Question 5. Section ‘6.0 Instructions for reporting on retaining talent’ – do you think it matters that there is no definition of talent here and they seem to be just referring to old fashioned staff turnover?

  • Yes it does matter
  • Errrm, not really sure
  • No it does not matter

Question 6. Do you think it would be a good idea to set global standards that are actually based on some evidence?

  • Yes
  • No
  • That might be nice.

Question 7. Section 9.6.1 – Do you think “Step 1” should be to -

a. (page 19) “… get employees to fill in a questionnaire, typically organizations hire a vendor who has expertise in employee questionnaires, but it is possible for an organization to develop their own questions. Good vendors will have tested their questions to prove there is a correlation with important business outcomes.”

b. Just give Gallup a call, again

c. Find out what the business priorities are.

Question 8. Do you think everyone hates HR because it ….

  • Wastes everyone’s time
  • Produces meaningless metrics
  • Avoids business accountability at all costs
  • All of the above

Question 9. Would you meet this standard?

  • Yes – I have been measuring this stuff for many years
  • No – but that does not worry me because no one outside HR is really interested anyway
  • I don’t want to – it would mean dropping my own standards

Question 10.  If you are not already a member of SHRM would this standard make you want to join?

  • Yes
  • No
  • Do I really look that stupid?

See also HR Standards

Share

American ‘HR metric mania’ is a concrete lifejacket

Posted on by
Share

Quality standards often get a deservedly bad press.  Tom Peters ridiculed ISO9000 by suggesting that a lifejacket made of concrete would satisfy the standard.  He was perfectly correct of course because the standard is more concerned with process than outcome or the functionality of the end product.  It is a pity no one on SHRM’s Taskforce for HR Standards had learned this lesson before it submitted its first attempt, Cost Per Hire (CPH), to the American National Standards Institute (ANSI).

We do not have to look very far for evidence of setting concrete.  Page 3 of this standard – the Executive Summary – tells us that:

“The CPH metric has been in use for decades, providing HR professionals and
managers with information to assist them in establishing budgets and also serving as a benchmark for recruiting effectiveness and the efficiency of staffing processes.”

CPH was just one of many ‘HR metrics’ promoted by the work of SHRM’s favourite, number-crunching, benchmarker Jac Fitz-Enz but neither he nor SHRM ever showed any understanding of the crucial distinctions that must be made between efficiency, effectiveness and value (that’s $’s to you and me).

Cost-per-hire is just the average cost of recruiting someone.  It does not tell you whether that person is of sufficient quality to do their job effectively.  Nor does it tell you anything about their subsequent performance.  So to claim that it can serve “as a benchmark for recruiting effectiveness” is actually a lie and to suggest it gauges “efficiency” is also nonsense until the outcome, the performance of the new hires, is established.  You could be hiring idiots at a very low cost and it would still satisfy this standard (sic). In short, this is not a standard at all.

In fairness, the standard acknowledges some of the “Known Limitations” of CPH (6.4) but then blithely carries on without resolving any of the complex issues inherent in the pursuit of value through strategic HR management.  This simplistic approach also ignores, or is unaware of, the paradigm shift required to move HR onto an evidence-based management footing.

As a lifelong campaigner for improving HR professionalism I should be welcoming the introduction of standards.  I was even a volunteer on SHRM’s Taskforce for six months before I realised that no one was listening to common sense or learning from their own mistakes.  History tells us that the use of such HR metrics never improved HR’s credibility or reputation in the US (or anywhere else for that matter).

What worries me more is that SHRM now wants to use its ANSI standards (there are more in the pipeline) as the basis for globally recognised, ISO standards in HR.  If it manages to do so there will be many HR departments, not just in America, who will be drowning under the immense weight of this misguided bureaucracy (all 50 pages of it).  As an adviser to the British Standards Institute (BSI) on the same ISO-HR standards effort I will certainly be doing my best to ensure that the UK does not get dragged down with them.

Update – 9th June 2012 – the Americans have now submitted the ANSI CPH standard to ISO for approval as an international standard. It will be put to the vote in September 2012. See also HR Standards

Share

That huge Black Hole they call HR outsourcing

Posted on by
Share

Having escaped the interminable drudgery of HR administration many years ago I had never heard of the HR Outsourcing Association  (HROA) until yesterday.  Not one single client has ever mentioned it to me and not once have I ever come across it amongst the vast array of reading material I encounter each year on important developments in HR (such as EB-HR).   So when I read that the HROA thinks it …

“… is for all those who purchase, provide, or participate in HR transformation and outsourcing.”

… I had to laugh because I seem to have been doing fine without it so far.

I never subscribed to the great lie at the heart of modern HR, which can be traced back to the model propounded by Dave Ulrich, that somehow ‘admin experts’ can be part of HR’s ‘transformation’: the HROA’s own “Service catalogue” for 2012 reveals all.  All 36 pages detail “a high level representation of Human Resources services activity” – pure activities with no value attached (except maybe the profits of the outsourcers).  On each page are about 30 separate activities that are deemed to be part of HR’s role.  Under generic headings such as –

“1. Organizational design and development” (page 1)

- HROA members identify who holds the responsibility for each activity – they as ‘provider’ or their HR ‘client’.  It should come as no surprise to find that when it comes to the difficult and highly problematic topics they are nowhere to be seen. Under –

“1. 1. 1 Determine organizational development strategy”

HROA providers are quite happy to leave that bit of ‘transformation’ to the ‘client’.  In fact they are happy to leave every single one of the 60-odd OD activities in this section to the client.  So why is OD in their catalogue at all if they don’t offer this service?

Organisation design and development is one of the toughest, most skilful jobs that any organisation will ever undertake and only the very best HR people will add some value; from the inside, not outside.  Neither the HR paper shufflers of yesteryear nor the HR electronic transactionalists of today have a clue how to do it, so the HROA does not want to know either.  This is the real irony of Ulrich’s model: it rightly identifies some of the really important, potentially high value, strategic HR stuff but it all gets sucked into the same black hole along with everything else.

Assuming there is an HR head out there dull enough to see this as the ultimate HR checklist (they are not too difficult to find – HR people lurve checklists – know what I mean?) will they have any time left for the strategic stuff if they feel bound to tick every item?  Plus, guess which type of activity will be their first priority under the pressure of day-to-day operations and which will be put off for that rainy day they hope will never happen?

The only reason I came across this document, after all these years, is that I am involved in trying to raise HR standards and someone thinks this list might help our efforts.  The worst things about the HROA’s list though (among the many) are not its inordinate length and unnecessary detail, nor even its highly debatable definitions and “taxonomy” – no, it is the complete failure to acknowledge the huge variation in $ values attaching to the different activities.  No value distinction is made, for example, between OD and the sort of responsibilities that HROA providers are happy to accept, such as –

13. Payroll. 13. 2. 1. 3 Update tax tables and processing calendars

HR outsourcing has nothing to do with strategic HR; I am not even convinced it has anything to do with efficiency or service levels.  It tells us nothing about the huge value that strategic HR can add and certainly has no place in any discussions about HR standards; except that whatever you outsource just shows how little you value it.

 

Share

Organisational Maturity 2 – HR is toddling around at Stage 2

Posted on by
Share

If you are interested in improving your HR maturity level visit IHRM -  The Institute of HR Maturity

In Part 1 of this 3-Part assessment of organisational maturity we considered to what extent organisations are designed to learn.  This can only ever happen as part of a wider HR strategy that aims to create a competitive advantage from managing human capital as effectively as possible.

Such a lofty ambition can only ever be achieved in an organisation that is grown up enough to take a realistic view of its situation: understanding and making the most of its strengths whilst acknowledging its failings and limited capabilities.  Maturity is not a rose-tinted view of the world but an acceptance of the truth.  The HR Maturity Scale reveals the HR function to be a toddler that has not quite dispensed with its comfort blanket and needs to hang onto something for support while it stumbles around at Stage 2.

HR people at Stage 2 like to call themselves ‘professional’ even though this is only about one third of the way along this continuum.  They use lots of professional support mechanisms (CIPD, job evaluation, psychometrics, competence frameworks) but they have not yet reached a Stage where their advice is really valued (Stage 3) because their systems have not grown sufficient teeth for them to add much value (e.g. competence frameworks that do not remove the incompetent).  Much of this immaturity is down to their deep-seated, lack of confidence in their own methods and capabilities.  However, organisational maturity does not come from any specific function changing, it is about the whole organisation growing up and developing together.

From an Executive perspective it starts with a full and open acknowledgement that they have no clear understanding of what managing human capital actually means (shown on the Scale as the Human Capital Barrier). There is no common language in the boardroom to discuss the value of people and no way of auditing the organisation’s human capital management.  Unless and until these issues are addressed the organisation is incapable of getting the best value out of its people.

Similarly, any employee (Generation Y or any other generation for that matter) who thinks the world owes them a living; or the organisation exists to further their career; or that somehow they are indispensable; needs to realise that however talented or important they might be the value of the organisation, long term, will be dependent on how they work together – systemically- holistically.

Of course, this all assumes that the organisation has an ambition to be as good as it can be and realises that the only forward is a more strategic approach to managing people – all of them.  As we will see in Part 3 though (‘Off the Scale’) to make such an assumption would be very simplistic, not to say immature.

You can find out more about the HR Maturity Scale and where you are along it by watching the explanatory video here, reading a short descriptive extract from HR Strategy or visiting the Consummate Professional Series for online tuition.

If you need help in assessing your organisation’s HR Maturity contact info@paulkearns.co.uk

 

Share

Why is HR so expensive?

Posted on by
Share

I bet that is a question that every CFO has asked themselves a million times and at a time when they would dearly love to decimate HR they are probably no nearer to finding an answer than they ever were.

Well, based on my own experience of measuring and assessing HR and L&D functions over the last 20 years, my rough estimate of how much could be saved in the majority of HR and L&D departments – and the bigger the organisation the larger the opportunity – is a straight 50%, with no loss in human capital management effectiveness.

For any CFO’s listening here is a list of some areas you might want to look at.

  • HR and L&D do not act like value adders – they only measure activity (vacancies filled) and inputs (people) not outputs (performance). Otherwise they are no different to anyone else (including accountants) and will want to preserve their jobs and empires by creating work for themselves. So it is worth checking how much of that work is absolutely necessary or adding value?  If it doesn’t fit neatly under one of those headings it has no purpose: so you can start your cost savings immediately without fear of doing any damage.
  • HR people generally tend to work to the letter rather than the spirit of the law because they are risk averse.  Others have a personal agenda that could be doing as much harm as good – dealing with symptoms rather than causes – namely, trying to smash the glass ceiling, stress management, counselling etc.  When they tell a line manager they can’t do something because of the law, or regulations or contractual terms ask them how many times their anticipated problem has ever arisen?  If they don’t have any relevant data they are replacing reasonable risk management with an unnecessarily expensive alternative – perfect legality.
  • Probably the most obvious place to start looking for unnecessary cost comes in the form of HR hand-holding line managers in grievance or disciplinary issues or, worse still, constantly chasing them to do what good managers should already be doing – decent performance reviews and personal development plans. There are two cost saving opportunities here.  First, fire HR people who design policies whose benefits are not obvious to the line and second, fire line managers who are not capable of holding down their job on their own.
  • Compensation and benefit schemes are generally over-complicated these days and have been heading in only one direction (until recently) and for what?  Is there any evidence that they achieved a higher level of performance or retention?  Either way, it is a no-brainer that the cost of complicated salary, reward and benefit schemes tends to rise faster than inflation and their administration is bound to be a relatively high cost operation.  Time to go back to simplicity and at least show some connection between reward and business return?

In short, HR is 50% more expensive than it needs to be simply because non-evidence based HR people cost twice what they are worth.

Share

How many Deloitte HR consultants have found their stapler in a jelly ……..?

Posted on by
Share

….. probably all of those who contributed to Deloitte’s “Human Capital Trends”.

Any fans of the TV sitcom ‘The Office’ (either the original UK or US versions) will know the key character is the office manager – David Brent/Michael Scott – (played by Ricky Gervais/Steve Carell) and if you had to sum up their characters in one word most Brits would probably say – complete pillocks – defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as “a stupid person”.

But this does not begin to capture the essence and richness of the word pillock, whose origin dates back to the ‘mid 16th century: variant of archaic pillicock – penis’.  Someone who, while trying to stand proud, becomes a parody of leadership and management.  Prime examples from real life include George W. Bush and Tony Blair;  both well known for their nonsensical, vacuous use of language.

But the real genius of Ricky Gervais’ creations is that they are characters of such sublime pillockry that they are beyond parody.  The authors of Deloitte’s “2011 Human Capital Trends” fall into the same category.

I recently had the misfortune of finding myself diverted by this report and my immediate reaction was to ridicule its pretensions and verbosity but words fail me – it is beyond ridicule.  As someone who is well-used to the rhetoric of large consultancies I still find it difficult to conceive how an organisation like Deloitte can employ so many supposedly intelligent people, who take themselves so seriously, and yet are happy to discharge such large volumes of untreated sewage into the HR ‘sea’.  Or perhaps I under-estimate Deloitte – maybe they know exactly what their HR clients like to wallow in?

Right from the opening paragraph Deloitte sets its course in a determined effort to  pervert the use of the English language – saying nothing in as many words as possible -

“Events of the past few years have brought sweeping changes to business and new challenges for the Human Resources (HR) leaders who support them. Two broad themes — innovation and global markets — have taken a front-row seat in human capital organizations around the world. From evolving technologies and process breakthroughs to new organizational models, new markets, new customers, and new approaches to talent, the power of fresh thinking runs deep and strong.”

… before leaping to recommend a peculiarly un-strategic and oxymoronic HR ‘strategy’* -

“Forward-thinking organizations should consider developing an explicit strategy in each area, even if that strategy is to wait and see.”

Let me detain you no longer on this journey to nowhere.  Suffice it to say that if you check the internal phone directory at Deloitte’s you may not find a David Brent or Michael Scott listed but if you drop in to see the authors of this report one day you should be able to spot them quite easily – they will be the ones with their staplers in jelly – or jello, for those of you who speak American.

*“Avoiding default mode

A strategy is a conscious decision to cope with whatever challenges you might face.  Therefore by publicly declaring your strategy you are acknowledging your determination to do everything possible to avoid being a victim of circumstance or slipping into the default modes of complacency and inertia.”

From HR Strategy (2nd Edition) p.47

Share

Audits of HR and L&D are illogical and inadequate

Posted on by
Share

HR and learning and development (L&D) have come in for some serious criticism over the years, in terms of value for money.  If I felt they needed defending I would suggest that managing people in organisations is a much more complex affair than most operational managers realise or are prepared to admit.  Certainly HR administration can become very costly if not managed well.

It is not just the constantly changing landscape of employment legislation and employee rights or the shifting expectations of new generations of employees that make it so difficult.  Managing human performance involves constantly re-tuning and re-balancing a problematic, employment relationship that comprises a complex mix of mutually-dependent, contractual rights, responsibilities and rewards.  Most line managers I have ever worked with would love to be able to just get on with the task in hand without having to worry about any HR implications but it’s about time they accepted that they can’t.  HR and L&D require careful thought and conventional auditing practice does not tell us whether they are managing people well.  Furthermore, the audit profession at large has failed to acknowledge that human capital management represents a new and special case requiring a fresh perspective.

To put this assertion to the test I wrote a letter to several international, auditing journals last year asking their readers how they audit training spend.  This elicited several replies, all of which took my enquiry seriously and offered very professional, considered and constructive suggestions but none of them acknowledged that the advent of human capital management poses a different set of questions.  Almost hidden within the detail of their answers though were two unshakeable principles of auditing philosophy.

  • All organisational objectives – that means HR and learning objectives as well – have to be seen to be contributing to the main corporate objectives and
  • All objectives have to be measured in terms of financial impact

Trying to apply these principles in a world where ‘intangibles’ are now accepted as having a significant, albeit indeterminate, value is proving to be a real auditing challenge.  This extract from one auditor’s response clearly illustrates how accountants themselves are struggling with this: -

“Unfortunately many accountants have not been trained in the setting of non-financial objectives and are used to defining objectives in qualitative rather than quantitative terms, e.g. the best xxx, the biggest yyy, more effective zzz, etc.  The setting of non-financial objectives can, despite the best of intentions, soon become a game in which the participants revert to the old practices at the first opportunity.  It can take several cycles of the planning process before the setting of quantitative objectives becomes the accepted norm.  The absence of objectives expressed in measurable terms is itself a significant audit finding and associated recommendations may have to be repeated over 3-5 years before they are fully implemented.”

This also describes perfectly what has been happening to HR and L&D practitioners who have yet to accept that they need better measures of what they do. Whereas evidence-based HR and L&D professionals have no problem adopting the auditors’ most cherished principles.  If we insert the words ‘human capital’ for ‘xxx’ and ‘zzz’ why shouldn’t we be asked whether we have evidence that we helped the organisation to acquire the ‘best’ human capital or managed it to ‘best effect’?  If we do not take this challenge on ourselves then we will have to suffer auditors judging us with their conventional methods.  Auditing bodies, such as the UK’s National Audit Office, still try to shoehorn HR ‘auditing’ into their traditional methods by measuring what they can, activity and inputs, rather than what matters – value added.

This inevitably produces meaningless numbers such as ‘the number of HR people per 100 FTE’s’, ‘the number of training days per year’ or ‘the average cost of training’.  The NAO might try to convince themselves that these are indicators of “the organisation’s commitment to enhancing its capacity to deliver and improve” but they know only too well that illogical thinking produces absurd conclusions.  If spending = commitment then why not seek 100% commitment by spending 100% of employee time on training?

Auditors are not stupid people, far from it, but when their tools are just not sophisticated enough for the modern job required we can only expect them to start hitting everything with the same hammer.  In doing so their legendary, sharp-eyed and equally sharp-pencilled cost-cutting logic becomes twisted and distorted under the strain imposed by trying to audit human beings.  This leads them to develop at once both a fallacious and contradictory view of HR and L&D – as a ‘necessary evil’ cost that is also a positive sign of commitment: they cannot be both at the same time.

Do finance and auditing departments have an equally fixed idea of the perfect ratio of accountants and auditors for each 100 FTE’s?  If so, do they automatically assume that a lower ratio is good news or can they for once allow their intelligence some room for manoeuvre and admit it really depends on how much value their auditing ability adds?  If Arthur Andersen auditors had spent more time using their brains and doing their job properly, instead of shredding evidence, maybe Enron and even Andersen would still be around today?

Perhaps those of us in EB-HR and EB-L&D, who base everything we do on evidence of organisational impact, could teach auditors a thing or two about what indicators are necessary to assess the real value of great human capital management?

Share

Judge HR by the ‘metrics’ they choose

Posted on by
Share

One of the most common HR ‘metrics’ cited by HR people is the number of HR people per 100 FTE’s (full time equivalents – employees) and this is used by HR itself and auditors (see “Primary Indicator 2″ on page 13) as a benchmark to suggest how well they are doing.  The perspective of an EB-HR manager would suggest the exact opposite.

The PwC/Saratoga/audit ‘school of thought’ – that’s being generous, it’s more a mentality – encourages HR departments to choose these ‘metrics’, presumably, in the belief that either: -

a. There is an ‘ideal’ ratio to aim for (based on what?) or
b. HR is a necessary evil that should aim to eliminate its cost (otherwise known as HR’s suicide note)

The thinking EB-HR manager does not adopt either of these views.  To them it is a meaningless ratio that tells them everything they need to know about HR teams whose primary focus is activity rather than value.  Such ratios can only have meaning when allied to indicators of output.  So the EB-HR Manager asks each member of the team what they are contributing?    Let us compare a couple of possible answers.

1. ‘I deal with 100 managers’ queries a day’

EB-HR manager’s response? - ‘Let’s seek to remove all of the causes of those queries’.

This does not endear them to the HR team, or their line managers, who have become ‘HR support junkies’.  However,  this will not deter the EB-HR manager from adopting a two-pronged approach in removing transactional inefficiencies whilst resolving the underlying, strategic causes.  For example, if one of the ‘queries’ is to do with union issues it is because the HR Strategy has failed in some way.

2. ‘I’ve been working on re-designing team roles to increase efficiency, improve customer service and save us about $100,000 a year’

EB-HR manager’s response? - ‘Great. Can I see some of the detail of how things are going? What other plans have you got and do you need more resources?’

The choices are that stark and that simple; regardless of how difficult it might be to gauge value added.  Now take another staple HR activity – hiring – and ask yourself three questions: -

a. Which ‘metrics’ should be at the very top of the priority list?
b. Which are the easiest to gauge?
c. Which would your CEO most like to know?

  • The average time it takes you to hire someone?
  • The average cost of hiring someone?
  • The industry benchmark?
  • The number of applicants per vacancy?
  • The performance of the new hires?
  • Job offers turned down?
  • How often you get the hiring decision ‘wrong’?
  • How much value they add?

The choice is yours.

Share

Is the BBC a stupid organisation?

Posted on by
Share

Update: December 2012 – The long term effects of dire leadership at the BBC

Original post: Not if we judge it by any conventional criteria.  It employs some of the brightest, most talented people in the media industry.  It makes many award winning programmes and films and you don’t do that with stupid people.  But then the question is not about the people at the BBC, per se, but the way the organisation behaves as a corporate entity – a very different question and one that can only be answered by looking at some less conventional evidence. It might help to define our terms first though.

We tend to call people ‘stupid’ if they do not have much in the way of mental faculties or they do not use their innate intelligence and yet perhaps a better definition of stupidity is when someone does not learn from very clear evidence placed in front of their eyes.  Based on this definition it appears that the BBC does indeed qualify as a stupid organisation. Perhaps a bit of background might help explain.

Back in 2002/3 the BBC, under the then Director General, Greg Dyke and Director People, Stephen Dando, decided to run a very costly Leadership Programme in conjunction with Ashridge management school. I was asked to advise on how this programme might be evaluated but very quickly it was obvious that no one at the BBC knew why they were running this programme. To cut a very long story short my views hit the headlines.

Jump ahead to 2010 and I obtained a copy of the ‘external’ evaluation report that was produced after the programme had been running for some time (extracts from which can be viewed here BBC Leadership Programme – Evaluation report extracts).  The discerning reader does not need to have this document spelled out, it speaks loudly and clearly for itself (a full version can be obtained from the BBC under the Freedom of Information Act).  However, the covering letter that came with this report BBC Final response to Leadership Evaluation request provides the most worrying evidence of all.

First, note the general resistance to measurement that still exists 4 years after the report was written and the comment that the BBC’s concern for ‘Public Value’ started in 2004 (during the leadership programme that wasn’t measured for value) and you can see how organisations refuse to learn from their own evidence.  This is a disturbing feature for an organisation spending £3.5 billion a year, where the bulk of the income comes from a compulsory licence fee.

When challenged to provide evidence of value many organisations, particularly in the public sector, resort to the type of ‘auditors report’ that Robert Johnston refers to as though the National Audit Office has answers to HR questions that no one else has managed to fathom. As we shall soon see, in associated articles in this series, we cannot rely on any auditing body to produce evidence of the value of HR but if Robert Johnson has great faith in the auditing profession then maybe he should move over and let one of them become Director People at the BBC?

As a footnote, before anyone thinks this is just about the public sector, it is worth noting that Stephen Dando worked for Diageo before joining the BBC where, presumably, the Chief Executive was quite happy with this non-evidence-based approach to leadership development? Moreover, he subsequently moved to Thomson Reuters where he has probably carried on with such practices? As for Greg Dyke – his success in leadership development at the BBC has earned him a seat on the NHS’s (National Health Service) Leadership Council which is trying to lead its 1.3 million employees – a topic that we will also cover in some detail.

For personal development linked to this topic visit the Consummate Professional Series

Share