Professional HR. Evidence-Based People Management & Development

Posted on July 9, 2012 by Paul Kearns

Evidence-Based HR is now incorporated into my latest book “Professional HR. Evidence-Based People Management & Development” and you can now join IHRM, the new Professional Institute of HR Maturity.

BUY THE BOOK NOW

“That’s the state of play in human resources today mindless imitation of what others are doing, little to no systematic evaluation of the effectiveness of management practices and programs, infrequent data-driven diagnoses of the problems HR is expected to address, in short, little of the professionalism now almost taken for granted in medicine, to take just one example.”

From the Foreword to the book by Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer, Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, co-author of ‘Hard Facts‘ and a leading advocate of evidence-based management.

Reviews

‘This is an important book that provides a positive road map for the future of the H.R. profession. Its importance lies in its willingness to address the big questions: why has Human Resources been at the crossroads for over a decade? What does it mean to operate as an H.R. professional? How can H.R. apply evidence based practice to be more systematic in its priorities and evaluate the business impact of its activities?

The book, a combination of analysis, argument and anecdote, check-lists and case studies, ranges far and wide in exploring the debate about the role of Human Resources, the nature of professionalism and the utilisation of evidence based practice.

Professional HR is also a refreshingly authentic book that provides a candid insight into the connections between academic research, consultancy activity and H.R. practice. Paul Kearns takes on with insight and courage: snake-oil consultancies selling solutions of dubious value; the academics that gave their blessing to any number of flawed research wheezes; those H.R. practitioners who valued prize winning more than the implementation of processes that “worked”; and the various professional bodies that stood on the side-lines rather than a take a lead in raising and reinforcing standards.

For some, this book – with its willingness to “name and shame” several of the players who contributed to H.R.’s current reputation – will be an awkward reminder of a past that missed opportunities to establish Human Resources as a critical component of organisational success. For the emerging H.R. practitioner who wants to make a positive impact through a combination of a professional ethos and evidence based practice, Professional HR will be indispensable reading.’

Andrew Munro, Director of AM Azure Consulting

‘Kearns’ book is a timely reminder that neither precise, legally enforceable regulations nor reliance on human moral points of failure can address the paucity of moral courage and deliberate systemic myopia of our political and corporate leaders, or of academic experts. What he is seeking is a widening of the purpose of management to include value to society, humanity and stewardship and to resist the corrosive effects of relying on narrow performance measures like profit. Kearns is advocating that his brand of professionalism be central to organisational life. He asks the right questions, itself doubtless a process of testing hypotheses and paying attention to the quality and relevance of data, blending critique of methodology with topical examples and practical checklists. Kearns’ Professional HR, to be sure, is worthy of a wide managerial readership.’

Dr Wilson Wong, Academic Fellow CIPD

‘Professional HR is every bit as ground breaking as his previous book HR Strategy: Creating Business Strategy with Human Capital. Kearns’ new work points out clearly that the lack of professionalism and standards are destroying the public’s faith in business, and in many cases, businesses themselves. He makes it clear that evidence-based professional HR management is the way to stem the tide. This book is a blueprint for training a new generation of true HR professionals.’

Patricia Turnham, Kaplan University, USA

‘Amidst the fallout of a deep economic depression, the malaise organisations find themselves operating within affords a very real opportunity for HR professionals. HR has the chance to become what it has failed to do since its strategic aspirations were first voiced in the 1990′s; the chance to become a value proposition for organisations. This value proposition is about demonstrating that the very best people management is a route to healthy, vibrant and sustainable organisations that produce real value for all stakeholders. Paul Kearns’ book shows how and why HR professionals should take this opportunity and reposition both themselves and their own organisations to succeed in the 21st Century.’

Stuart Woollard, Kings College London, UK

‘In this book Paul Kearns provides a compelling vision for the future of the HR professional and the HR profession. This vision challenges the HR professional to approach their role in a far more reflective and evidence based way. Kearns provides a convincing prescription for how a more professional and mature HR practitioner can deliver on the potential and value of human capital which remains untapped in many organisations.’

Prof. David Collings, Professor of HRM, Dublin City University, Editor, Human Resource Management Journal.

Keeping HR on the critical path

Posted on June 13, 2012 by Paul Kearns

Most of the important management problem-solving tools are essentially common sense but the actual discipline of using a tool, as opposed to relying on innate intelligence, has several advantages:

using a specific tool helps you to clarify your own thinking and spot any omissions or errors
a graphic enables you to share your thinking with others in a structured and systematic way
a common tool means a common language and common understanding

All of this should be part of the basic training for an EB-HR practitioner (see ‘EBM Lessons’ category) but there is one tool that is particularly useful at several levels in HR – Critical Path Analysis (CPA). The critical path is the one that dictates the minimum time it takes for a process to be completed. In the illustrative diagram shown, where the times taken for each step or event are shown above the boxes (say in days), the red path dictates it will take at least 10 days for the entire process to be completed (Events 3, 5, 8 and 11 take 3, 1, 3 and 3 days respectively).

Most of us automatically think like this and apply it quite naturally to our daily lives. We organise our errands by starting with the longest task first (e.g. taking the car in for a repair) before shopping and visiting the bank and then returning to pick up the car. The car repair dictates how long we will have to be out.

Critical path charts or diagrams are very closely related to the technique of process mapping (they look almost identical) so when we consider an HR process, such as hiring someone, we can draw a critical path chart that shows the CRB check (Criminal Records Bureau), or some other event outside our control, might be the longest event. However, the real benefit of disciplined and highly skilled critical path thinking, and adopting a habit of physically drawing the chart, comes into its own at a much more strategic level in HR; especially when attempting significant organisational change.

Take issues such as improving diversity, changing culture or enhancing organisational learning capability – what would be the complete series of events that would be required to take you from A to B and which of those events is going to take the longest (in years?). Who would have to leave if you are to be able to change the mix of people at the top and how long would you have to wait? How much effort would you have to put into dealing with resistance to change and can you afford the time? If you need to speed up organisational maturity how long does it currently take to share important knowledge and how much shorter could you make that critical path?

Of course if you get the right people around the table and involve them in drawing the chart you might find it automatically speeds up change by revealing to them how they need to help you clear the way of the critical path.

Measuring the organisational fear factor

Posted on June 6, 2012 by Paul Kearns

If you want to read a detailed case study on how not to run a company, especially a very large bank, I can firmly recommend a 450-page report entitled “The failure of the Royal Bank of Scotland” by the UK’s FSA (Financial Services Authority). No one comes out of this story with any credit – literally – hahaha.

RBS has already had several mentions on this site because it was once held up as a great example of HR by many less-discerning HR publications. Its HR team still persists with failed HR practices today, despite one revealing statistic from the FSA report which showed that in 2007, the year before RBS collapsed -

“66% of employees were recorded as agreeing with the statement – the ‘Group Executive Management Committee (GEMC) provides good leadership’”

This neatly disproves the latest theory in leadership development that says great leaders are defined by their followers. What really comes across in the report though, loudly and clearly, is the opposite of employee engagement. There was an insidious, underlying fear culture that completely contradicted RBS’s ‘Lemming Survey’ produced by its HR team. The report is particularly damning of CEO Fred Goodwin’s management style and devoted a whole section to something HR strategists should know all about -

“The importance of management, governance and culture”

remarking that

“During 2003 and 2004, …. the FSA had identified a risk created by the perceived dominance of RBS’s CEO. While it was recognised that the CEOs of large firms tended to be assertive, robust individuals, the FSA’s view was that, in the case of RBS, the ‘challenging management culture led by the CEO raised particular risks that had to be addressed. ….‘Most of the members of GEMC we met with criticised the way the Committee operates. …. GEMC members also described dysfunctional working in relation to:

GEMC are not operating as a team.
Conversations are typically bilateral.
Performance targets consume too much of the agenda.
Discussions often seem bullying in nature.
The atmosphere is often negative and is at a low point currently.”

Fred Goodwin has undoubted talents but his management style is not one of them and it was the culture he created, above everything else, that ultimately condemned RBS to its inevitable fate. This is the best possible argument for having an independent and effective HR director (rather than the one they had) reporting directly to the Board, with a specific remit to develop the right organisational culture whilst balancing the drive of “assertive, robust” executives with the need to maintain continuity and consistency; especially when your average FTSE 100 and Fortune 500 CEO lasts less than 5 years.

Another practical suggestion I would like to offer in response to the FSA report is to counterbalance the Q12 nonsense, that has prevailed in HR circles for far too long, with a Fear Factor Quotient (pat. pending). I’m thinking along the lines of a questionnaire where the highest Fear Factor (i.e. the worst case) would be linked to statements such as: -

‘I am a complete nervous wreck, having lived in fear of my life every waking second that I am at work’

using the usual Likert-type response options ranging from ‘strongly disagree’ to ‘strongly agree’ with an additional box for those on medication to provide details.

At the other (best) end of the scale a typical statement might be –

‘I am encouraged to say exactly what I think to who the hell I like. I could walk into the CEO’s office tomorrow, call him a complete tosser, not bother to dress it up as constructive criticism and he would thank me for it. Hey, I would even be offered a coffee!’

I was thinking we could also invent a new unit of measurement – the ‘Goodwin’ – although you could adapt this to your own organization by just inserting the name of your most feared executive. The ‘Goodwin Scale’, as with the logarithmic Richter Scale, would range from 1 to 10 with the difference between say a 5 Goodwin and a 6 Goodwin being the equivalent, in order of business disaster magnitude, of an increase from say $10 million to $300 million.

Alongside this I think we would also need to design in a specific ‘Whistleblower Propensity Rating’ where all employees were asked to state what would have to happen for them to blow the whistle. These could be on a separate, sensitivity scale ranging from “I would blow the whistle on my own mother if she so much as borrowed my company pen” to “I would have to witness my boss murdering someone with their bare hands, in front of my very own eyes, before I would feel inclined to blow the whistle on them.” (we might also have to insert a witness protection scheme clause in there somewhere).

I believe there is already a ‘Group Executive Management Committee Members’ Courage’ seismometer gathering dust somewhere in the bowels of RBS but it was never used because the bank was already registering an 8 on the Goodwin Scale and this meant there was nothing in the boardroom to be measured on it .

Track records of the 5 management talents

Posted on May 31, 2012 by Paul Kearns

Oakland Athletics Josh Reddick watches his home run off Minnesota Twins

Michael Lewis’s book Moneyball stopped me in my tracks as soon as I read about the ’5 talents’ of baseball. It forced me to ask myself two very important questions. One, did we ever get to grips with what the ‘5 talents’ of management might be? Two, has conventional management been made worse by traditional talent selection and management development? To answer these questions I decided to have a stab at what the equivalent, minimum, complete set of ’5 talents’ might be for a manager?

Here’s the list I came up with, in sequential order: -

Analytical objective setting
Decision making
Planning and organising
Delegating
Monitoring, checking, feedback, listening

Now, before anyone jumps down my throat and says these are not ‘talents’ or I seem to have combined several different skills into one, or whatever other criticism you might want to throw at me, let me just make a very simple point. Whatever 5 you choose as your minimum the reason we are doing this is to go and check how good our managers are. If they do not have the ‘minimum’, or have a reasonable prospect of getting there sometime soon, they should not be a manager. If you do not accept this then the whole exercise is a waste of time anyway, regardless of which ones we choose or whether we call them skills, talents or competencies.

To answer my own question I will start with number 1 on my list – we can always change or adapt it can’t we? Isn’t this better than a dictionary of 4 zillion competence statements with different descriptors and different levels for each? Hasn’t conventional management development and ‘talent management’ completely bamboozled everyone by over-complicating what is essentially a simple set of disciplines? Should management be any more complicated than running a baseball team? Shouldn’t we just manage people according to what they are particularly good at but, when it comes to the role of ‘manager’, accept it is a bit of an all-rounder that requires an all-round combination?

If we consider the management sequence should it not always follow the one above? From analysis, to objective, to decision, to planning, to delegation, to action and finally through feedback (and learning) all the way back to the beginning again? Apply it to any managerial position you like. Managing does not start with a decision or an objective; it starts with an active mind being analytical. Whatever a manager is told to do by their boss, whatever task they have been set, whatever performance targets they have to meet, they should use their analytical power to check that what they are being asked to do is not only plausible and viable but of the right priority? An unthinking manager is an oxymoron (so is a non-evidence-based manager). Only when their own analysis of their task makes sense to them can they explain the sense of it to the people they manage. That is why analysis is always first on the minimum list but so often skipped altogether in practice.

Only from there can the other talents come into play. Managers should not dither or prevaricate, even though the majority of managers are afflicted by that ailment at some time or another. A point is always reached where a decisive action has to be taken (someone should remind EU ministers and bureaucrats of this). Only when a decision has been taken can planning and organising begin. This will require the delegation of tasks and responsibilities to the most appropriately skilled people. Then by monitoring, listening and taking feedback they can check what progress is being made and manage accordingly.

We could still debate whether these are skills or talents if you want to. Pragmatically though, if they are genuinely talents, then they cannot be taught, just as I could never be taught how to pitch a baseball to the standard required of the Oakland A’s. So let’s not pretend otherwise. If they are skills then rather than focus on developing a skill (or competence) let’s just concentrate on some stats, over time, and the more stats the better. As long as they produce a meaningful track record to distinguish between those who give an impression of a being a manager and those where supporting evidence starts to stack up. Regardless of the talents or skills that any individual might possess, Billy Beane’s experience should teach us that the only track record evidence worth looking at is what ends up on the score sheet.

Trainers who rely on happy sheets should at least learn to use them properly

Posted on May 22, 2012 by Paul Kearns

The level of ignorance about evaluation amongst the training community is alarming and it is actually getting worse, rather than better, as more and more self-proclaimed experts come onto the scene offering unhelpful and unnecessary ‘new’ models that just add further confusion. Evaluation is a very simple subject if you keep it simple. It is not about ‘proving’ that training works or justifying training spend but it plays a crucial part in the learning cycle; providing that all-important feedback loop. However, because most trainers misunderstand its role they either over-complicate it or under-estimate its importance.

You don’t need to know much about training evaluation to know what happy (or smile) sheets are – they are the most simplistic and rudimentary form of evaluation and are very unreliable – but if you persist then you really need to know what you are doing if you are to produce any meaningful evidence from them or learn anything in the process. Strictly speaking, happy sheets are not evaluation* at all but let’s keep things simple for now. To illustrate my point I am going to bear my soul – or at least share with you some painfully honest ‘happy sheet’ feedback from a very short, mini-workshop I ran recently; although it wasn’t me who chose to hand out happy sheets. Funnily enough, the subject was evaluation, for a group of trainers who should already have known how to use evaluation if they had received the right professional development; but that is another story as well.

Now, like any ordinary, sentient, human being it is very easy to be flattered by positive responses and not to want to pay too much attention to negative feedback. These are very natural, understandable reactions but there is not much point handing out happy sheets unless you are prepared to follow through on both the good and the bad. If happy sheets have any use at all they have to be part of an evidence-based, highly professional learning methodology: so how would that be different to a conventional approach?

First, the evidence-based trainer would not bother handing out happy sheets unless they had already gauged, before the event, the learner’s own baseline – how much do they already know and what else do they need to know? They would also need to establish the potential value of the learning experience (in $’s) beforehand because that will significantly influence the trainee’s motivation to learn. Without adopting this Baseline step there is no evidence base for the training and no way to gauge the trainee’s expectations.

Two, having ‘happy’ trainees at the end of a training session is not evidence of success, or value in $’s, which is why* happy sheets are not evaluation: no professional trainer would ever pretend otherwise.

Three, a professional trainer does not regard having ‘unhappy’ trainees at the end of a training session as failure. Any ‘session’ is only one step along the learning process. The unhappy sheet only reveals one thing (assuming they needed training in the first place) and that is their ‘problem’, which is the organisation’s problem, is still to be resolved. If the trainer cannot deal with it someone else will have to.

Now for the painful bit. In my session the feedback ranged from “excellent” to “really poor”, with one participant feeling it was “nothing new” – a criticism that was unintentionally a great compliment. So what does an evidence-based trainer make of that? How can the same session, from the trainer’s perspective, be both excellent and really poor at the same time? There is a very simple and extremely old answer to that one: as Ralph Waldo Emerson would say – “Tis the good reader that makes the good book” and only the receptive learner can make the good training session.

Organisation Development – OD’s time will come when it has better definition and evidence

Posted on April 17, 2012 by Paul Kearns

Back in 2003 I was invited, by an alumni group from Roffey Park’s Masters in Organisation Development, to run a session on organisation design. I was told at the time that the Roffey programme specifically excluded organisation design. Roffey was always at the feely end of touchy (or should that be the touchy end of feely?) and took the view that the two are completely separate subjects. That might explain why there is still something missing in their current mission statement “We develop people who develop organisations” – develop for what?

In November 2009, at a Leadership Foundation in Higher Education Conference (LFHE), while one keynote speaker was asking the question “What makes an effective Organisational Development Practitioner?” I was trying to answer it with my keynote on “Evidence-Based Learning & Development – The Real Purpose of Evaluation and ROI”. I asked one of the academics hosting the event whether she took the view that ODevt and ODesign were different subjects? My enquiry apparently did not warrant a serious answer – maybe it’s because I am not an academic?

Of all the disciplines that I have had to master to become an HR Professional the one that stands out for its lack of definition, purpose and workable methodology is ODevt. There are plenty of definitions available but here is one from the OD Network that I actually like -

“Organization Development is a body of knowledge and practice that enhances organizational performance and individual development, viewing the organization as a complex system of systems that exist within a larger system, each of which has its own attributes and degrees of alignment. OD interventions in these systems are inclusive methodologies and approaches to strategic planning, organization design, leadership development, change management, performance management, coaching, diversity, and work/life balance.” Matt Minahan, MM & Associates, Silver Spring, Maryland

Matt has restored my faith in ODevt because he relates it to performance and incorporates organization design; as it always should have been. Now all we have to do is produce some evidence that ODevt actually makes a difference. In that respect OD is no different from any other management discipline and the guiding principle, as always with evidence-based management, is to agree the evidence at the beginning. In practice this means that OD specialists need to demonstrate, up front, how their “interventions” are going to add some value: otherwise OD is just more vapourware.

One sector that is seriously in need of OD is the higher education sector. Universities and business schools are becoming more and more market-driven and this is already starting to put pressure on the quality of research and teaching. Some of the immediate OD challenges in academic institutions are to find Deans (or equivalent) who can show true leadership in maintaining standards, at a time of significant transition, in the face of fierce competition. They need to re-design their institutions with a whole new generation of academics who live in the real world and are evidence-based themselves; that means being prepared to have their performance managed. The real art in the design and development will come from doing all of this without losing any of the strengths of academia (its previous rigour?) whilst maintaining a collegiate culture: that’s quite a task for OD but it is long overdue. Most of all though, before any OD effort starts, someone needs to agree what type of evidence will demonstrate that these ‘developments’ have been a success and higher education has changed for the better.

EB-HR is designed to manage the illogical behaviour of rational people

Posted on April 3, 2012 by Paul Kearns

News of the UK’s recent experience of the panic-buying of petrol (gas) by motorists will probably be of little interest to anyone outside of the UK but for students of organisational behaviour and EB-HR there is a very important lesson here. It is usually assumed, especially by economists, that most individual human beings of reasonable intelligence will act rationally but, collectively, they often act illogically.

The rational motorist who fears that there will be a shortage of fuel will want to fill up their tank; encouraged to do so by the sight of very long petrol station queues. The same rational being will equally realise that this is a self-fulfilling prophecy; if everyone follows suit the fuel will run out much sooner and some motorists will have to go without. This subjects all of us to that classic dilemma of personal survival: weighing our selfish interests against the common good.

The same dilemma faces many employees on a regular basis. When a rational employee makes a mistake they know they should let everyone know and try to ensure it does not happen again. The same rational employee will take into consideration the behaviour of everyone else in the organisation. If admitting your mistakes is generally regarded as career-limiting the same, rational employee will reason that it is not in their interests to own up, knowing that if everyone does the same this will inevitably lead to disaster, either for the individual concerned or the organisation as a whole.

Anyone wanting to be an HR director that actually makes a significant difference will have to have a strategic solution to this dilemma. If they don’t there is plenty of evidence to show that the survival instinct is always going to triumph over the greater good. So it might be instructive, if only from a risk management perspective, to consider collecting evidence of how individual rationality is being crushed by collective illogicality. How about trying to measure how many employees -

fiddle their expenses
are afraid to voice what they believe are great ideas
turn a blind eye to bullying, harassment etc.
accept poor performance
buy toxic mortgages books to make their bonus

… actually this could turn out to be an extremely long list.

Those bloody “Meetings Bloody Meetings” videos

Posted on March 28, 2012 by Paul Kearns

The whole point of EBM is the facilitation of learning – both individually and organisationally. It requires a culture of learning from evidence of both success and failure, in equal measure. Yet many learning and development professionals are the worst culprits for ignoring evidence of training failure. They persist in putting people on courses where training is not the problem or where the ‘trainees’ just do not want to learn. It does not matter as long as they get paid for delivery, not outcome. This phenomenon is best exemplified by one of the oldest video training products on the market – ‘Meetings Bloody Meetings’.

I still remember, when I was a very young and naive training manager, watching the original John Cleese video for the first time. Cleese was better known as an actor who had a silly walk, complained about dead parrots and offered a dire customer experience to the unfortunate residents of a third-rate hotel in Torquay. Nevertheless, I thought his video was humorous and made some telling points about how meetings go wrong. So I hired it – once. Never again: not because it had solved my problem, but because it hadn’t.

So I cannot believe that the producers have the nerve to issue a 2012 version; when the evidence is so plain that meetings have not improved. They are more prevalent, more time wasting, more ill-conceived, more hastily convened and managed just as badly today as they were over 30 years ago. So if you were just about to run this video on a management course I thought I might suggest a few evidence-based questions before you inflict it on yet another, unsuspecting generation?

Question 1. Why do you think there is a need for this video?

Answer. Probably because you still hear the same refrain that I heard – ‘there’s too many bloody meetings in this place!’ or ‘when is anyone expected to get any bloody work done around here?!’ If you took that to mean your organisation has a problem with ‘meetings’ then I’m afraid your analysis and diagnosis might be inaccurate.

Question 2. Have you measured this apparent problem?

Answer. That was my mistake when I did not know any better. I reacted to an apparent problem rather than a real one. An evidence-based management problem is one that has been accurately identified and measured. So has anyone ever measured how many meetings take place in your organisation? If they have, did they also distinguish between the good meetings and the bad ones? I guess not; because that would mean you have to tell some very senior people they could not run a third-rate hotel – I mean meeting.

In fact, your job might be on the line if you so much as hint that maybe, just maybe, it might be a good idea to start assessing the performance of the people who run meetings? It is a lot easier for those in authority to presume they are skilled in managing meetings and not give a second thought to those whose time they waste or even consider whether they might be dragging others away from more relevant, pressing matters.

Question 3. Even if you identify and solve the problem – what could it be worth?

Answer. Obviously the first benefits would be fewer meetings, less wasted time, more efficiency and lower costs. Meetings should also be managed better with clear objectives and a minimum of unexpected AOB. They should only take as long as necessary and ensure the right actions are agreed and responsibilities allocated. They will also check progress.

Probably much more valuable though would be a different culture altogether. Really great meetings are those where you are allowed to voice your most honest thoughts without fear of retribution: where expertise is respected and evidence-based recommendations given much more weight than rank or gut feel. One of my own favourite indicators of effective meetings is simply to ask how many attendees would just walk out if given the freedom to choose?

You know what? Those bloody training videos are not solving problems they are bloody well perpetuating them.

NHS – A terminal case of management cancer – Part 3

Posted on March 1, 2012 by Paul Kearns

Click here for Part 1 and Part 2

Andrew Lansley was interviewed by the BBC’s Nick Robinson just 2 days ago about changing the NHS. Lansley says that introducing competition into the state-run, taxpayer-funded NHS is about “competition for quality not competition for price”. What Lansley should be saying is competition for value, which is an indivisible combination of price and quality. If anything, the NHS should determine quality standards and allow competition on price. This would be entirely consistent and coherent with what they already do with drugs companies and any other organisation wanting to supply health services; who cannot compromise on quality and so have to compete on price,

Lansley further declares that the NHS is “driven by evidence” and that it “establishes an NHS price”. Economists, competitive capitalists and even the ordinary ‘man’ in the street know that when price is determined by a politicised bureaucracy, rather than a free market, poor societal value is likely to be the outcome.

There is still, of course, a serious question here about the most appropriate economic philosophy, organisational entity and HR strategy for running the NHS but Lansley has obviously not come up with the answer yet. So, rather than resuscitating the NHS, when a Health Secretary utters such nonsense we are more likely witnessing its final death throes.

So how would EB-HR apply to …. ?

Posted on February 22, 2012 by Paul Kearns

If you somehow stumbled across this blog-book because you heard some oblique reference somewhere to the words ‘evidence’ and ‘HR’ being used in the same sentence by someone whose name you cannot quite remember saying something that you may or may not have mis-heard then you have come to the right place to clear the matter up once and for all.

The something you need to know about, if you are a manager, is evidence-based management (EBM) and the HR bit is the application of EBM to managing people. So far so simple. Unfortunately, what you think you heard and where you heard it could make all the difference to whether you understand it or not and, depending on who you ask, you could get some very different answers. So if you are a conventional HR person doing conventional HR-type things (see the list below) and are asking yourself what all this hoo-ha is about and how it might upset your cosy little world then please read on.

Leaving aside those in the HR and learning field who don’t know what EB-HR is, don’t want to know and have as much interest in evidence as they do in English translations of the national anthem of Nepal you could possibly chance your arm with the academic community first? They may well tell you that EBM is all about getting the best research studies before you try to manage anything. Well the academics would say that wouldn’t they – that’s why they became academics – if they wanted to actually do management they would have become managers themselves.

The trouble with academia is they talk about evidence-based management but what they mean is conventional management research. They will only be able to give you the research findings from evidence-based management when they have already studied some evidence-based managers but until ordinary managers are taught how to become evidence-based that is unlikely to happen. So you will be forgiven if you decide not to take part in this game called chasing your tail. OK? Shall we move on then?

Another alternative would be to call any of the growing band of ‘HR analytics’ ‘experts’ who will try to convince you that EB-HR is really all about data gathering and detailed analysis using very complicated algorithms and other obscure techniques favoured by the actuarial industry. You know what they say about actuaries don’t you – they make accountants look interesting. They will not define what analytics are or what they reveal about value but they will keep you busy. If you do pay them a visit I strongly recommend you have your early exit strategy worked out first.

EB-HR is much simpler and easier to demonstrate than either of these ‘schools of thought’ would have you believe but it does require going back to first principles. Let’s try it out. Have you recently found yourself asking a question that goes something like this – “So how would I apply this EB-HR stuff to our ….”

360 feedback efforts?
Leadership development programmes?
Talent development?
Diversity policy?
Employer branding initiative?
Employee engagement survey?

If you have then you have got completely the wrong end of the stick. EB-HR always, always, always (is that enough emphasis) starts from a business need, not from an existing HR process. As an illustration let us take a look at a current article on engagement at Tesco in today’s Personnel Today* from their international HR director, Judith Nelson, and compare how they are doing with how they might have done if they had understood the simple principles of EB-HR?

How could Tesco gain from EB-HR?

Quoting directly from the article -

“Employee engagement is a key tool for employers that want to attract and retain staff”

Is it? Where is the evidence to back that assertion up and even if another company has managed to do so is Tesco sure it could do the same in its own context?

“Judith Nelson, Tesco’s international HR director, reveals the steps the company has taken to boost its employee engagement”

The article does not show that it has boosted employee engagement. Even if it did – so what – is employee engagement an end in itself? Where is Tesco’s own baseline data (a core concept in EB-HR) on attraction and retention? More importantly – shouldn’t the focus in some way be connected to Tesco’s recently subdued sales?

“Listen and Fix is the biggest listening exercise Tesco has ever undertaken.”

Really? If only “7% of staff – more than 40,000” have been listened to through Listen & Fix what about the other 255,000 (sorry to be picky Judith but your analytics don’t seem to add up – 40k ÷ 255k is not 7%?). Why aren’t Tesco’s managers listening to all of their staff every day? Are they so busy and disinterested that they would rather get an outside body to listen for them? Which engagement hypothesis are you working to here Judith? Is this evidence of successful engagement or the very opposite, an admission of failure to communicate with employees on a grand scale?

“Our objectives in undertaking it were to make Tesco a better place to shop and work via a more engaged workforce, and to gain a deeper understanding of what really mattered in all areas of the business: in our stores and distribution; at Tesco.com and Tesco Bank; and at our head office.”

OK so you asked the question “What gets in the way of you doing a great job for our customers?” – that at least sounds like a simple hypothesis that is focused on the customer but you end up by identifying -

“… a need for new checkout headsets; now we can be sure all checkout staff are properly equipped in this area. We also ordered 250 coffee machines and 42 dishwashers for staff areas in the stores that needed them most.”

Ah, I see, new coffee machines and staff dishwashers will make Tesco a “better place to shop” …. how exactly?

So, there you have it. EB-HR just asks the very simple questions that HR doesn’t but should.

*Personnel Today picks up the story

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