Uncategorized

Purposeful leadership is increasingly in the spotlight across all sectors of economic, social and political life as people grow disenchanted, and even angry, about the perceived errors, failings and shortcomings of those in positions of power.

However, despite the hype, what is less clear is exactly what a purposeful leader is: what do they do that is different from a leader who lacks purpose? Do they in fact make any difference? And how can we get more leaders with purpose?

To shed some light on these issues, recent research sponsored by the CIPD and conducted by the IPA together with the Universities of Sussex and Greenwich, has explored purposeful leadership in depth in a series of case study organisations (in retail, charity, government and the police), as well as surveying the views of the wider working population.

First, we wanted to be sure that had a clear understanding of what we mean by ‘purposeful leadership’. Although much has been written about the topic among the practitioner community, there has in fact been no academic research.  After considering the most important factors that mark out a purposeful leader from one lacking in purpose, we defined purposeful leadership as:

‘the extent to which a leader has a strong moral self, a vision for his or her team, and takes an ethical approach to leadership marked by a commitment to stakeholders’.

In other words, leaders who are purposeful set out a clear and aspirational vision for their team. They demonstrate a commitment to a wide range of stakeholders, rather than just taking into account short-term financial performance and, finally, their personal moral code matters a great deal to them.

One of our first findings was that just 21% of managers in the UK rate themselves highly as purposeful leaders, and the proportion does not vary depending on organisational size, sector or location.  The figures were somewhat higher in our case study organisations, but the overall percentage is a cause for concern, particularly given we found evidence in the retailer of a link between purposeful leadership and performance. We also found that 40% of employees believe that their line manager behaves ethically at work.  This again is a cause for concern, given the strong associations we found between ethical leadership and important outcomes for leaders’ direct reports such as higher levels of job satisfaction and meaningful work, and lower levels of intent to quit.

The importance of working for an organisation which fosters a purposeful approach to leadership was evident when we talked to employees about their own experiences.  Employees in organisations with high levels of purposeful leadership talked very positively about their ‘visionary’ leaders who had steered them through difficult situations and acted as strong role models ensuring that these positive approaches were cascaded through the organisation.  Conversely, employees conveyed a strong sense of disappointment and frustration with leaders who they felt failed to share a purposeful vision, leading to muddle and confusion over where they should be focusing their efforts.

It is important for employees to believe that they ‘fit in’ with their organisation if they are to experience high levels of engagement and satisfaction.  When we talked to both employees and line managers, we found that people’s ethical values are very important to their self-image, and several told us about times when they had left previous employers because they did not agree with the way that things were done. Looking at our findings, just over one-quarter of employees in our case study organisations, 27%, rate their leaders’ ethical behaviour highly and say that they feel their values fit with those of their employer. Conversely, we found that 32% of employees are operating in an ‘ethical void’ where they rate both their leader’s ethical behaviour and the alignment of their personal values with those of the organisation as low. In these cases, there is a risk of employees experiencing significant disenchantment and quitting their employer.

The fact that the proportion of purposeful and ethical leaders varies so widely across the wider working population and the case study organisations suggests that there is a great deal that employers can do to raise levels of purposefulness, to the benefit of individual employees and organisations, as well as wider society.

Bailey, C., Shantz, A., Brione, P., Yarlagadda, R. and Zheltoukhova, K. (2017) Purposeful Leadership: What is it, What Causes it and Where can we Find it? Technical Report. Wimbledon: Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

 

https://www.cipd.co.uk/knowledge/strategy/leadership/purposeful-leadership-report

 

The Tory election manifesto promised “the greatest expansion in workers’ rights by any Conservative government in history”. The Queens Speech, however, was notable for the absence of a number of key pledges. In the context of the political reality of a minority government and the priority of legislating for Brexit, a more modest reform agenda was not unexpected but it still represents a missed opportunity to greatly improve the strength of the employee voice and its representation at the highest level of organisations.

Despite the pledge that employees should be represented on company boards, it would seem that employee representation is no longer a key legislative priority. The Conservative manifesto had indicated that the law would be changed to require listed companies to nominate a director from the workforce, create a formal employee advisory council or assign responsibility for employee representation to a designated non-executive director.

There are some who would not have supported this innovation but the potential for worker strategic participation was clear.  Workers can bring with them in-depth knowledge of how their company operates and are also well-placed to contribute to a range of strategic and operational discussions that are central to board decision-making. As well as bringing the voice of workers to influence company decision-making, their experience of working for the company was likely to give them understanding of the need to foster positive relationships with other stakeholders. Employee representatives would have been more likely than shareholder representatives to take broader stakeholder interests into account, not just the interests of workers but also environmental impacts and community interests.

In particular, two potentially significant benefits have moved to the back burner. The first would have seen representatives asking the right questions of the executive team. By doing this, workers can lend an independent and objective perspective to the board’s decision making. Sometimes the key strategic, most obvious questions or most pertinent questions are missed when Executives are absorbed in the day to day high-level running of the business.

The second would have seen representatives acting as the Board’s “critical friend”. This form of challenge can be a positive force, aiding the performance of the executive directors and the board as a whole. With a clear strategy and the right training worker voices on the board can help to protect and enhance the governance and performance of the organisation.

There was also nothing in the Queen’s Speech to indicate that the Government will press ahead with reforms of boardroom remuneration – including, for example, promised legislation to make executive pay packages subject to strict annual votes by shareholders and requiring listed companies to publish the ratio of executive pay to the broader workforce pay.

The Speech did, however, indicate that the Government “will seek to enhance rights and protections in the modern workplace”. This refers to the review of employment practices by Mathew Taylor (Chief Executive of the Royal Society of the Arts) that has been commissioned and is expected to report shortly. The Conservative manifesto promised to “act to ensure that the interests of employees on traditional contracts, the self-employed and those people working in the ‘gig’ economy are all properly protected”.

The commitment to increase the National Living Wage, essentially a premium on top of the national minimum wage for workers aged 25 or over, was confirmed. This will be increased to 60% of median income by 2020 and then subsequently raised in line with median earnings. There was, however, no mention of equivalent increases for the other rates of the national minimum wage.

In the end it was, understandably, all about Brexit.  The Speech confirmed plans to enact a “Repeal Bill” to convert EU law into UK law at the point of departure. This will include all EU-derived rights and protections for workers, but any of these could subsequently be amended or repealed. There have not yet been any indications as to what employment reforms of this nature might be pursued post-Brexit and any repeal of, for example, the Information & Consultation Regulations does not seem to figure in the government’s current thinking. 

While it was reasonable in the circumstances to prune back legislative commitments made in the manifesto to make time for the eight major Bills needed to pave the way for Brexit, the prevailing uncertainty may continue to affect longer term strategic business planning around vital measures to increase involvement and engagement. The cost of employee disengagement still stands at around £26 billion in terms of loss per Gross Domestic Product to the UK economy – if organisations de-prioritise addressing whatever portion of that figure they lose, it may not be long before that overall figure starts moving back towards the 2008 figure of £60 billion.    

If you are interested in learning more about the IPA training programme, “How to deal with the effects of Brexit”, please contact Derek Luckhurst, IPA Training & Development Director – ([email protected] or 07780 697024)

It’s amazing how intolerant we are of any delay in the reaction times of the technology we use. We complain about our phones or computers being ‘laggy’. And there’s nothing more annoying than being timed out from a server or getting the ‘not responding’ message. New research by the IPA, commissioned by Acas, reveals that there are in fact two time lags when it comes to the use of technology at work:

1. The natural lag between the development of technology and take up by organisations, and

• The ‘human lag’ between the introduction of new technology at work and the way management practices respond

The technology lag

In recent months there have been a lot of media stories along the lines of ‘the robots are coming’ which predict that the fourth industrial revolution will put a large number of jobs at risk. However, a growing consensus seems to suggest that, in the words of LSE’s Leslie Willcocks, “there are a lot of opportunities to compliment human skills rather than replace them”. In other words, we may be facing a period of very challenging adaptation rather than outright revolution.

When I was starting out in my working life, people came to work to use the latest technology, such as computers and mobile phones. Today most people have better equipment at home than at work. This technological lag between cutting edge and organisational take-up can be frustrating at times but it does, in theory, give us a breathing space to adapt our management practices to suit new working practices. But do we make best use of this breathing space?

In one of the case studies in the new research, district nurses at an NHS Trust were given iPads to help speed up administrative duties and spend more time with patients. The iPad project had been running for several years and by the time distribution was under way, some new starters were impatient to get their hands on the labour saving devices. But although the technology had definite benefits, such as doing away with unnecessary paperwork, it also presented new challenges, for example, restricting the amount of time for social interaction with colleagues.

Of particular interest to Acas, of course, is the impact new technology is having and is likely to have on employment relations. Our analysis shows that there is a ‘human lag’ as well as a technology lag and that this is one that needs to be significantly narrowed in order to avoid unnecessary problems at work.

 

The human lag       

So what should managers be looking out for when it comes to planning for and adapting to new technology? The new research highlight some key themes. For example:

 

• Technology can give people more autonomy – a perquisite of good work that fosters wellbeing – but it can also lead to more management monitoring and surveillance. If tasks are driven by technology, as on the shop floor at Jaguar Land Rover, then it’s very easy to collect data on exactly how each individual is performing.

 

• Technology can simplify tasks but also fuel work intensification as labour saving devices can lead to increased productivity targets. There may also be a blurring of the boundaries between work and home with workers unable to switch off.

 

• Technology often changes the way we communicate. Some commentators are worried about an over-reliance on email, for example, and a loss of one-to-one interpersonal skills. Where machinery takes a more leading role there is also the impact of having less people around – as marked by the ‘growing silence’ on some parts of Jaguar’s production line.

 

• Technology can challenge and re-enforce cultural and normative value There is some evidence of algorithms being used to manage tasks rather than relying on line managers. In theory, this has advantages – for example, unconscious bias in recruitment processes can be ironed out. However, the algorithms may only be as free of bias as the people who program them

• Technology is changing the impact work has on our physical and mental health. The general view seems to be that technology is helping our physical health, by making it safer, but potentially damaging our mental health. Professor Veronica Hope-Hailey says this is because “the employer has in effect invaded the psychological space that used to be your own”.

There are clearly real advantages to introducing new ways of working – such as the ‘virtual reality cave’ at Siemens that helps improve product design by envisaging how they will look in 3D or the robots used by Jaguar to create their car frames. However, there are also drawbacks and employers may need to think these through a little more. For example, the iPads at the NHS Trust were popular with the nurses but being able to process more patients was always likely to mean more ambitious targets which, if unchecked, can lead to greater work intensification and stress.       

As the report concludes, bridging the human lag is not unsurmountable. It requires us to rediscover and reimagine many of the key building blocks of good work and good workplace relations, such as forward planning, employee involvement and a deeper understanding of the wellbeing of the whole person.    

Government stops short of new legislation; requirement for ‘equivalent level of smartness’ between sexes remains in place. Women can be required to wear high heels or other specific items of clothing in the workplace provided men are subject to equivalent rules, according to the government, which has rejected the opportunity to introduce new legislation on dress codes.

Despite recommendations from parliamentary committees that had called for stronger laws, the government said it planned only to issue guidelines that would help employers manage issues arising from workplace dress codes.

That means businesses can continue to make it a requirement for female employees wear heels, for example, providing it is considered a job requirement and men are made to dress to an “equivalent level of smartness”.

The new guidance comes in the wake of a petition signed by more than 152,000 people to ban compulsory high heels at work. It will consider controversial dress code requirements, including: footwear, hair styles, skirt length, hosiery, make-up, low-fronted or unbuttoned tops, and manicures.

There will not, however, be any changes to the law on the matter as the government believes existing legislation is “adequate” and already prevents companies from gender-based discrimination.

That news dismayed campaigners who felt that the requirement for ‘equivalent smartness’ was too vague and did not reflect the lack of genuine equivalence between male and female attire.

The issue came to the fore when PwC receptionist Nicola Thorp, who was employed through agency Portio, was sent home from work without pay for refusing to wear high heels in May 2016.

Thorp was later called to present evidence before the women and equalities committee, during which the government acknowledged that awareness among workers and bosses of the law was patchy, adding that some employers “knowingly flout the law”.

The committee later released a report saying that “discriminatory dress codes remain widespread”, and that “the existing law is not yet fully effective in protecting employees from discrimination at work”.

In response, the government has confirmed that it will be working on new guidelines in conjunction with the Government Equalities Office, Acas, the Equality and Human Rights Commission and the Health and Safety Executive.

Sophie Whitbread, senior associate at Penningtons Manches, agreed that current laws were adequate, but said employers remained unlikely to actively consider whether their dress code was discriminatory.

“What is needed is increased awareness in the workplace and in society as a whole. That is not necessarily achieved by more legislation and is likely to require a sustained period of re-educating society and employers. Whether the new government guidance is a good first step in the right direction remains to be seen,” Whitbread said.

Employers should have clear but not too detailed dress codes setting out their expectations, said Sarah Ozanne, employment lawyer at CMS Cameron McKenna, who suggested that organisations consult with staff so that they “feel involved in the development of the company policy, and keep the policy under review over time to make sure it is still relevant”.

Dr Vandana Nath, lecturer in organisational behaviour and human resource management at King’s College London, said balance was key when it came to enforcing workplace dress codes: “While organisational attitudes in relation to dress and appearance should reflect ongoing changes in society, it is important for employers to also maintain appropriate standards of behaviour in the workplace. 

“The adoption of a laissez-faire attitude to dress might be perceived as adopting a more enlightened approach. However, an ‘anything goes’ policy could be too radical and present a variety of unintended problems. Organisations need to strike a balance between allowing workers freedom of expression and protecting the wellbeing and dignity of others.”

Employers should review dress code provisions with discrimination in mind. Alan Delaney, director of employment, pensions and immigration at Maclay Murray & Spens, said it is was advisable to “consult with employees or their representatives on any requirements before implementing new policies” to help minimise any legal and reputational risks.

A version of this article previously appeared on People Management. For more the latest HR news please go to their website

Events have certainly moved at a rapid pace since the letter notifying the European Commission that the UK is invoking its right under Article 50 to withdraw from the European Union, signed by our Prime Minister, was hand delivered to Donald Tusk, President of the European Council on 29 March.

Ironically, the letter was taken via Eurostar and the channel tunnel, a mighty symbol of Britain’s fundamental ties with Europe, and a joint venture built by the British and French, opened by HM Queen and President Mitterand.  Given the hostilities that are likely to ensue, as one commentator remarked, perhaps it would have been more appropriate to send it by gun-boat.

Huge issues remain unclear, as the country steps off the cliff – the fate of the millions of EU citizens working in the UK and UK citizens working in the EU, how to square the circle of reducing immigration and ensuring sufficient staff in hospitality, agriculture, the NHS and major scientific and academic professions; how our major companies cope as the single market closes.

The Election may shed some light on these and other key issues, but if the Prime Minister’s underlying aim is to give herself a massive mandate through a huge increase in the Tory vote and the number of Tory MPs in order to strengthen her freedom of manoeuvre, we may still be waiting for answers on 9 June: hard, soft or somewhere –in-between Brexit, and over what time scale?

Triggering Article 50 was followed in close order by the publication of the White Paper on how the government intends to transpose all the acquis of accumulated European law into UK law.  And herein lies the great danger for workplace rights. For the government’s intention is to use the so-called Henry 8th powers,  to change primary legislation – the Repeal Act once it is passed by Parliament –  using secondary legislation (orders through parliament without scrutiny). That means that rights acquired through Europe – while they will be automatically transposed into UK law through the misleadingly named Great Repeal Bill – will then be subject to amendment or abolition through ministerial fiat.

Given that the real, underlying target of many of the champions of Brexit has always been the directives which have given working people extensive rights, you don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to think that it will not be laws on bendy bananas the Conservative hard-liners have in their sights.

Remember, the EU has played a fundamental role in extending and expanding rights at work in the UK. Among the key benefits delivered by EU Directives:

• Women’s rights, with a European Court of Justice judgment toughening up pre-existing UK law on equal pay.
• Strengthened maternity leave and pay and protection from dismissal for pregnant workers.
• Protection from discrimination on the grounds of age, sexual orientation, religion and belief.
• Rights to paid holidays for all employees.
• Right to a maximum working week of 48 hours averaged over 17 weeks (although the UK retains an opt out from this provision).
• Part-time, fixed-term and agency workers entitled to equal treatment, on issues such as pay, leave and working conditions.
• Strengthened rights for collective voice at work through the right to European Works Councils in multinationals.
• The statutory right for employees to be informed and consulted on a range of key issues relating to the business, to their employment and to restructuring under the 2002 information and consultation directive.
• Protection for employees whose employer’s business is being sold;  under the 1982 Transfer of Undertakings Regulations (TUPE) employees must be consulted about the transfer, and their employment and terms and conditions are protected to a certain extent.
• Through the Collective Redundancies Directive, employers are also required to consult with recognised trade unions on collective redundancies.
• Extending and enshrining health and safety regulations in the UK including regulations on asbestos and to protect whistle blowers who highlight health and safety issues from being dismissed.

Our Prime Minister has repeatedly gone on record as saying that she has no desire for any diminution of workplace rights; indeed the Corporate Governance Green Paper raised the possibility of extending rights to ensure that employees’ voices are heard at work. And she has acknowledged the potentially damaging effects of an unrestricted growth of the gig economy, setting up the Taylor Review.

Unfortunately, other top voices in the government are not singing from the same hymn sheet.  Liam Fox MP, Secretary of State for International Trade made his intentions very clear to the Financial Times: ‘To restore Britain’s competitiveness we must begin by deregulating the labour market.  Political objections must be overcome. It is too difficult to hire and fire and too expensive to take on new employees. ‘ And this despite incontrovertible evidence that the UK labour market remains one of the most lightly regulated among our economic competitors – and the fact that having a regulated labour market does not seem to have done the German economy a great deal of harm.

As TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady has said: ‘the Great Repeal Bill is the PM’s chance to make good on her promise to fully protect and maintain all workers’ rights that come from the EU.’

This battle over the shape of Britain post-Brexit – an offshore, deregulated tax haven, trying to force other advanced economies into a race to the bottom, or a country that responds to the concerns of those who feel left behind by improving their access to skills and their opportunities to work in a high skill, high productivity economy – is the defining issue of our time and will impact directly on the lives of every UK citizen – leavers and remainers alike.

1. To what extent are service automation tools driving improvements in the businesses and how they operate?

We have been studying robotic process automation (RPA) through 2015-16 and see this as having massive take up in 2017/18. RPA involves configuring software robots to carry out standardized, routine tasks using structured data. The software is now mature enough to be easily and cheaply adopted. It needs no great special technical skill to configure, run and manage. RPA can scale to become a virtual workforce. One company we studied runs 35% of its back office processes with RPA.  We have also been finding multiple business benefits including significant cost savings, much faster processing (in one example in the London  insurance market, what previously took 2 days to process needed 30 minutes using RPA); higher quality, lower error rates, higher regulatory compliance, more satisfied customers and employees.

Our studies suggest that more advanced forms of service automation through software moving into more cognitive non-routine work are less advanced than the hype suggest and will be mostly be small scale, discrete projects within businesses until the back end of 2018. But physical robots, into which a lot of big companies have invested heavily, are seeing some very interesting developments, especially in Japan, Germany, USA and China.

 

2. How is this impacting the workforce itself? Does it mean job losses, or is it the case that talent can be redeployed to other roles or have more time to focus on work playing to human strengths?

There are optimists and pessimists on this. The most alarming studies (e.g. Frey and Osborne, 2014) suggest that on a 10-20 year horizon, 30-35% of current UK occupations are under high threat from automation. The converse point is that 65% are not, and 25% of UK occupations have a creativity component too high to be automated. But studies that look at work activities as a better unit of analysis than whole jobs suggest job restructuring will be the more normal pattern. Mckinsey in 2017 estimated that only 5% of jobs could be completely displaced by automation tools currently available. Certainly our own organizational-level research suggests every person’s job is likely to be changed by at least 25% on a 5-10 year time horizon, as technology increasingly permeates task performance.

However, all too few studies focus on job creation from new technology, though this has invariably happened in the past. The pattern has been that process innovation enabled by technology has seen jobs lost, while product and business innovation has seen jobs gained. The studies we have done with corporations seeking to digitize suggest that for every 20 jobs lost from the combinatorial impact of new technologies, 13 will be gained.

Our own research finds that all studies have a black hole in their analysis when it comes to not allowing for two obvious developments with massive implications for increases in the amount of work. The first is the exponential data explosion. On one estimate 90% of data that has existed was created in the last two years. That trend can only increase and will create a lot of work as well as need much heavier technology deployment. The second is the huge growth in audit, regulation and bureaucracy. When you factor in how far new technologies can create problems as well as solutions – think cybersecurity for example – then a huge, if under-analysed, work creation scheme may be underway.

Two other dimensions are worth mentioning. Ageing populations in the G19 (plus Nigeria) suggest significant global shortfalls in labour and skills over the next thirty years. Second, major economies are going to experience large productivity shortfalls even to attain their present projected economic growth targets over the next twenty years. Automation and its productivity contribution may turn out to be a coping, rather than a massively displacing phenomenon.

3. How can technology be used positively to enhance the workforce and its role in the business? Is there an ideal mix of the two?

By adopting a strategy that sees technology augmenting, complementing and amplifying human skills rather than being seen as a replacement technology. The ideal mix depends on the job level and type. Technology will need skilled technical people to work on current technologies and make them function, but also technologists focused on designing tomorrow’s technologies.

Automation technologies will enable jobs to be assembled that play to the strengths of humans supported by machines. These may be at higher levels – big picture analysis and judgmental work – or involve knowledge specialization, or may well involve doing tasks requiring a combination of skills that really only humans have. In our current studies of robotic process automation we are finding software robots across sectors taking over the processing of structured, standardized routine data, enabling the workers to take on all these kinds of different roles, and also experiencing more satisfying and challenging work.

We keep hearing and seeing examples where human capability is being eroded by automation but human capabilities like empathy, creativity, intuition, judgement, tacit knowing and social interaction are not all that easy to replicate in specific contexts. Humans also have a facility to combine any or all of these in ways that machines are unlikely to master. In studying service automation we found these skills were frequently vital – in health care, insurance, utilities, service providers, and legal services, as just some examples.

 

4. Should governments and businesses be pushing for long term adjustment measures on automation?

 

Businesses should certainly be much more willing to invest in their workforces and in the skills needed to work in the coming digital businesses that most organizations will increasingly become. Governments are alarmingly behind the curve on the societal impacts and work implications. As an insurance policy, therefore, today’s potential employees needs to identify the relevant skills bases and make their own investments, if they are to ensure they are always employable. There will be work. One major issue is the speed of technology deployment. Our research suggests that even major organizations struggle to deploy new technologies quickly, and that the technology is rarely perfectible and hardly plug and play, especially when you move into cognitive automation.  The second major issue is the readiness of the workforce. The UK’s past record is not good on this, but here is an opportunity to get it right this time.

Leslie Willcocks is Professor of Technology Work and Globalisation at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is co-author of Service Automation, Robots and The Future of Work and Robotic Process Automation. Available from April 2017 is Robotic Process Automation and Risk Mitigation: The Definitive Guide. Both are available from www.sbpublishing.org.

The IPA launched its new Hub for representatives on 29 September 2016. Since then we have held two further meetings in London and Edinburgh involving many organisations including Standard Life, United Welsh, HFT, B&Q, Stonewater, Bank of Ireland, CSEP, Victrex, Royal College of Physicians and Prudential. This eclectic group have discussed a number of key themes facing representatives and employee relations professionals as diverse as engaging line managers and mental health. The latter will be addressed in more detail in a later Bulletin.

The issue of how representatives deal with and engage with line managers is, in the view of the Hub, one of the most important. As long ago as 2004, “A Practitioner’s Guide to Sustaining Industrial Partnership” identified line managers as one of the key barriers to embedding partnership working throughout an organisation who adopted the strategy. That had not changed when the study was updated and re-published in 2011. By this time, however, the strong view was forming that this was not an ideological problem amongst line managers generally, but was more to do with a lack of evidence that trade unions or staff forums helped them rather than hindered them.

At the latest Hub meeting held on 28 March 2017, it was identified that representatives had to become more proactive in proving their worth to the line managers they reported to in their day jobs and to the wider group of managers in their organisation. It was also identified as an important part of moving employee engagement from transactional to transformational.  

We know that all representative structures have to be based on a strategic on-going agenda involving the major changes that are affecting the organisation. However, the operational aspect of representation often plays a more marginal role leading to a lack of information at middle-manager levels resulting in misunderstandings about general time off for representative duties, attending meetings, travel and about whose budget the activity should be charged to.

The Hub has identified a number of strategies that representatives can use to engage their line managers. It is important to stress, however, that the engagement of senior managers is critical in creating the foundation for line managers to buy-in to what the representatives are trying to achieve. It is perceived that this is less of a problem despite an acknowledgment amongst representatives that there is more work to be done in this area as well.

For line manager engagement, it is crucial that the representatives are not seen in a negative light and this means that they cannot simply concentrate on the concerns of staff – they have to represent the people who like their jobs, people who are ambitious and those who do not see conspiracy theories behind everything that senior managers do. The accurate temperature check is an important first step to building credibility and trust.

Line managers also need to see “what’s in it for me?” Referral of issues that representatives identify will allow line managers to potentially address problems early. Some representatives pose the question, “What happens if the manager doesn’t address the issue?” – that becomes a judgement as to whether it has been addressed but not to the conclusion sought by the individual. This does not constitute a reason not to involve the line manager. Representatives need to build relationships with line managers where open conversations become the norm where two potentially different perspectives can be mutually understood.

Representatives can play an important role in filling the information gaps for line managers. This is not about breaking confidentiality but many line managers have valued the context to decision-making provided by representatives that they may not get from their senior managers or when they do not have the confidence to seek clarification.

If these positive approaches fail to engage the line managers, there is nothing wrong in trying to convince them by quoting senior managers who do value the representative structure. This, however, requires a discipline for representatives to seek those quotes by asking the right questions. I have noticed either a reluctance amongst representatives to do this or they simply forget. My own experience as a full time trade union representative was made a great deal easier when the chief executive stated to me that “the partnership results in change with assistance and not resistance” and this quote must have resonated with line managers as their engagement noticeably increased throughout the organisation when it was publicised. His other quote, “you keep my managers honest” was slightly misunderstood so you do have to be careful!

VIVO, the staff forum at Standard Life use a number of methods to engage with line managers including their proposition document, an annual review, “VIVO Connect”, pie-charts to illustrate areas of benefit and a series of videos to raise awareness. The Bank of Ireland use their Barometer and, in HFT, managers are trained to improve their understanding of what their Partnership Forum can do to help the business. Michelle Simpson, in her role as the Partnership Forum Lead at HFT recently answered questions at a Parliamentary Select Committee meeting alongside her chief executive – I suspect that this did no harm to the Forum’s credibility amongst the line managers there.

 

If you want more information about our new Hub for Representatives, please contact me:

[email protected]

07780 697024

I recently had the pleasure of presenting at a Co-operative Party conference, where the topic was responsible business.

Obviously, this is something which is close to my heart and is a phrase frequently used to describe businesses that the EOA represents, those that are employee owned.

The  sector, which employs over 300k people, and contributes around £30bn to the economy each year, that’s about 4% of GDP,  is growing at pace – at about 10% per annum, as entrepreneurs use the model to attract the best talent at start up, business owners adopt it as they plan their succession, owners with growth ambitions use the model to incentivise their staff during scale up, and public service leaders adopt it as part of the new mutuals that are spinning out of local and central government and the NHS.

As was described by the Ownership Commission and Nuttall Reviews of 2012, the employee owned business model is an essential addition to the mainstream business environment, and it is now established and recognised as helping to provide the plurality needed to deliver a balanced, more productive and resilient economy, better stewardship of companies, and greater engagement of employees and shareholders.

And now with the Government’s renewed drive for better corporate behaviours, it is important that we understand and appreciate fully the role of employee ownership in delivering more responsible business.

Many of you will be familiar with the ‘Ikea effect’ – that enormous pride most of us have felt, having managed to successfully assemble a piece of flat pack furniture, often without reference to the instructions, and usually after having realised that various screws and small fittings are missing! The effort, concentration, sweat and tears that we have invested in building the piece of furniture makes it something we are immensely proud of.  And we can’t wait to show it off to our family and friends!

There are other obvious examples of where having ownership in something leads to different behaviours – think about owning a car rather than hiring one, or owning your home rather than renting it.  The commitment involved in ownership unleashes an entirely new relationship by the individual.

And I rather think that there is a similar effect created by ownership of a business by its employees.

There is normally more pride in the work undertaken and a heightened sense of responsibility to the organisation and to colleagues.  Hence these businesses experience less lost days through sickness, higher levels of staff satisfaction and better retention and more affable employment relations.  This is illustrated very well through the latest survey conducted by the EOA and its partner CIPFA, where 53% of 30 public service mutuals reported lower levels of staff absences after becoming employee owned mutuals.

This heightened responsibility then often leads to greater productivity, driven by a desire by all employees to play their part more fully and going the extra mile.  A great example of this is engineering firm, Union Industries based in Leeds who saw their turnover increase by an amazing 30% the year after becoming employee owned, when as they say quite clearly, everyone is an owner, therefore everyone shares in the responsibility of lowering costs and increasing revenues.

And the personal stake present by the employees also leads to more empowerment, employees having a voice and feeling like they are able to provide more constructive challenge – often leading to these businesses being more innovative and creative.

Whilst businesses with employee ownership are often organisationally structured very similar to any other business, the way in which they behave is often dramatically different;

Firstly, there is a greater shared sense of purpose, with greater transparency and sharing of information, both operational and financial.  This is often accompanied by supporting staff so that their business and financial literacy is developed such as in engineering firm Gripple, where all new employees must buy shares in the business but the business shares its quarterly performance figures with everyone at the same time, using simple infographics to ensure they are relevant and meaningful to all.

Secondly there are formal mechanisms to allow for employee representation – often at Board level, and always in some form of employee council or forum.

Our most recent survey in this regards shows that of a survey of 116 EOA members, 45 per cent have 1 or more employee directors drawn from the workforce on the main company board.

Thirdly, and most importantly, these businesses are operating with the long-term interest of the employees, customers and communities in which they operate, meaning they are able to invest for the long term making them more resilient during the downturn.

And finally, these are businesses that deal fairly and equally with all shareholders – hence there is a likelihood that they also share financial rewards more fairly.  Bonuses are often standard across the entire workforce.

This ‘ownership effect’ is therefore a powerful driver for more responsible, fair, businesses, which share their rewards more widely, operate more transparently, and which are more engaging of all shareholders, that all political parties must support as we continue to work hard to ensure employee ownership becomes part of the mainstream.

In 1979, 13  million people belonged to a trade union. Today there are just 6.4 million union members. According to research published by Acas in 2014, “trade unions have weathered the storm of the great recession better than in the recessions of the early 1980s and 1990s” The research, conducted by Charlwood and Angrave, examined what happened to workplace union organisation between 2004 and 2011 based on their analysis of the authoritative Workplace Employment Relations Study. They concluded that previous recessions had dramatically speeded up the processes of the decline in union membership.

Overall, the picture that emerged from the study is that unions continued to struggle in the most internationally competitive sectors of the economy, with the result that a long run shift in who unions represent, from being a broad based movement to a movement composed predominantly of public sector workers continued.

The IPA has observed this trend at close quarters. Whereas trade unions are trying to address the decline in membership, more work clearly needs to be done to identify an effective offer and recruitment techniques that can help boost membership, particularly among younger workers and those in the private sector.

The barriers to doing so are both real and perceived. The former includes a younger workforce who do not regard collective representation as advantageous to their own personal aspirations. This is not helped by a political rhetoric that comes from senior officials of trade unions that many workers cannot relate to their own workplaces. The idea of trade union membership as an “insurance policy” does not seem to resonate. Workplace trade union representatives have mentioned that responses such as “If I get into trouble, I’ll get my parents to sort it out” are becoming more common when trying to recruit on this basis. WERS, in 2011, stated that even employees who are union members are more likely to go to their manager than the union if they have a problem at work.

Another real barrier is the low level of knowledge amongst managers in the UK about unions. Whereas the IPA still run a number of joint development workshops with senior managers and trade union representatives, the trend is towards us training and advising senior managers on how to negotiate effectively in order to bring about more positive industrial relations.

A perceived barrier is the rise of non-union representation. Charlwood and Angrave found evidence that the introduction of the ICE regulations was associated with a formalisation of the role of non-union worker representatives but these did not lead to any increase in non-union worker representation, with around 45,000 non-union worker representatives in 2011, a similar number to 2004. This was because, although a significant proportion of workplaces affected by the ICE regulations introduced systems of non-union worker representation between 2004 and 2011, a similar proportion that had had representatives in 2004 no longer had representatives in 2011.

Trade unions have largely ignored the ICE regulations. The IPA has documented a number of forums that have displayed good practice and have become central to an organisation’s strategic decision-making process but the majority of these representative structures have failed to deliver tangible benefits.

The reasons for this include a prevalence of individual wish-lists dominating agendas and a failure by representatives to engage with staff other than those who have a grievance. Despite this, the legislation still provides a great opportunity to influence an organisation’s thinking and it remains difficult to understand why trade unions have not applied used them to gain a platform, in organisations that would never consider a formal recognition agreement.

The second perception is that the pursuit of high levels of employee engagement in some organisations has marginalised collective structures in favour of direct communication and consultation with staff. In 2009 Engaging for Success was published.  This report has become the cornerstone of thinking on engagement and identified four key enablers of employee engagement:

• Visible, empowering leadership providing a strong strategic narrative
• Engaging managerswho treat their people as individuals and coach and stretch them
• Informed employee voicethroughout the organisation
• Organisational integrity– the values are reflected in day to day behaviours.                            

 

Trade unions and ICE forums have failed to seize the opportunities presented by this progressive thinking by being too focused on the staff “wish-list” and not focused enough on high quality discussions that tell staff what is really going on and invite their informed input into critical issues. Some organisations are already developing Employee Engagement Forums with no connection to the ICE Regulations. This is understandable if no collective structures exist but Engagement Forums are being introduced alongside existing ICE Forums or trade unions. This clearly indicates a problem of perception for both types of representation.

Trade unions can play a central role in driving up productivity in the UK and can certainly be part of the solution to the productivity puzzle. Some of our most productive industries are among the most heavily unionised but the trend in workplace representation does not appear to be towards trade unions. It might not be towards ICE Forum representatives either but rather towards representative bodies that are established simply to achieve higher levels of engagement. Without high quality training and development around the four enablers of employee engagement, it is easy to see these new forums falling into exactly the same traps as other representatives have fallen into. 

Derek Luckhurst.

 

A combination of fear and unconditional support can lead to high-status managers delivering less successful projects than lower-ranking managers because colleagues are less willing to critique their ideas and management, a new workplace management study has found.

Balazs Szatmari, who conducted the PhD thesis research at the Rotterdam School of Management in 2016, found that middle managers typically produced the best results as they received the critical feedback that allowed them to perform better than their high-status counterparts.

The research, which focused on project managers in the gaming industry, selected 349 projects from an online database that documents the development of video games since 1972, and for which a single project leader  – or producer – could be identified.

Szatmari’s study revealed that projects from project leaders with very high organisational status are typically of the same quality as projects run by low status producers, but the variation in in the quality of the overall project is much bigger.

On average, middle-ranking status project leaders deliver projects with the highest quality, the report found.

The quality of the video game projects was calculated based on a number of factors including customer reviews, the project’s budget, how innovative it was and whether it surpassed expectations.

While the status of high-profile managers often allows them to get the benefit of the doubt as to the way they implement their strategies, Szatmari found that medium-status managers had the advantage as they received significantly more feedback on the weaknesses and limitations of their project, and more time than a high-status project manager to work on any issues.

CMI heard of research and communications Patrick Woodman said: “This research highlights the importance of senior leaders creating an environment where challenge and constructive criticism is not only possible, but is welcomed.

“Teams with rigid hierarchies and too much emphasis on who has formal authority face the risk of stifling debate and discussion, which can result in mistakes, misjudgements and lead to worse outcomes.”

CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM = PERFORMANCE OPTIMISATION

Constructive criticism is a crucial tool for top managers and companies to boost communication, performance and results throughout their business, but was often found to be lacking in the projects led by more senior leaders.

Szatmari, now at the University of Amsterdam, says managers who can effectively ‘skip’ the evaluation processes based on their reputation alone can get away with bad ideas or poor execution, causing longer term problems for their employers. .

“Companies should really bear this issue in mind when deciding who should lead projects,” he said. “Just as subordinates are careful not to beat the boss at golf, middle-managers are less likely to call their superior’s judgment into question on projects they are leading.

“When evaluating projects early on, managers should make sure that they like the project itself and not just the individual that is leading it.”

Szatmari’s findings add further weight to CMI’s own The Middle Manager Lifeline report, which identified a clear issue with the communication styles of business leaders and the widespread mistrust of senior managers.

With only 36% of the 1,456 middle managers surveyed fully trusting their senior leaders, the findings suggest a significant breakdown in communication that is also corroding wider employee trust in organisations, with four in five middle managers believing that staff lack full trust in their CEO.

The CMI report showed that fast-growing organisations are four-and-a-half times more likely to report a high degree of trust between middle and senior management, while 85% of business leaders and managers agree trust is critical to business performance.

Organisations need to have open channels of communication where constructive thought and questioning is encouraged and ideas and proposals are freely discussed.

Rather than more traditional command and control structures, which rely on all of the decisions in a company to be made from the top, an accountability and authority management framework is typically more suitable for maintaining cohesion and trust within an organisation.

This requires each manager in the organisation to have appropriately delegated accountability and authority, and the context to make decisions and take initiatives in ways that are consistent with the wider business strategy.

Jermaine Haughton

In our increasingly flexible labour market, the notion of a job for life and the concept of a consistent 9–5 workday is diminishing. In its place, the idea of ‘gig working’ is rapidly gaining ground. Gig working is when people opt to assume temporary, often ad hoc, work contracts (or ‘gigs’) sourced online through digital, cloud-based marketplaces.  The recent growth of platforms such as Uber and Airbnb has given rise to a global sharing economy – also dubbed the ‘gig economy’ – in which it is becoming ever more commonplace to buy and sell jobs and services online around the world. Digital work platforms allow businesses to contract workers for short-term engagements, or specific projects, for a defined period of time.

These platforms can come in the form of errand-based marketplaces, such as TaskRabbit or Upwork or they can link customers with a particular need to independent workers, such as Freelancer.com or PeoplePerHour. Platforms offer help find someone to conduct simple tasks such as making a delivery, packing boxes or cleaning, to more highly-skilled work such as creating a logo, building a website or authoring important reports.

These digital marketplaces should not be confused with online jobs boards, such as Monster.com which aggregates CVs with job postings from established companies to facilitate traditional ‘employee–employer’ relationships. Nor are they providing the same service as professional social networking sites such as LinkedIn.

What is common to all gig working platforms is that the economic ‘transaction’ – namely the buying and selling of goods and services for an agreed price and for a set period of time – takes place through the online intermediary. Joe Griston of Freelancer.com refers to their service as ‘ebay for jobs’.

In our report last year, Gig economy – the Uberisation of work, we found that while only six per cent of employers we surveyed are currently using these platforms to recruit, 29 per cent say they will become important to their business in the next five years. That suggests a significant increase in usage; almost a third of businesses could be using digital platforms to access skills and talent in 2021.

However employers are split as to whether they think the use of digital work platforms as part of their hiring strategies brings more benefits than risks. One in five (20 per cent) perceive the use of online talent marketplaces as being more risky than beneficial for their businesses, against 17 per cent who say the benefits are greater than the risks. The rest remain neutral or undecided.

The key things to consider for both employers and candidates before deciding to operate via these platforms can be summarised as follows:

Employers

• Opportunities
  • It speeds up the recruitment process
  • It reduces the cost of permanent hires
  • It offers access to a global candidate base

• Risks
  • It still requires an element of screening
  • It may require new protocols and structures
  • It risks workers’ loyalty to the employer brand

Work seekers

• Opportunities
  • It gives them flexibility
  • It allows them to set their own price
  • It opens them up to a global market place

• Risks
  • It is an insecure way of working
  • It risks devaluing their worth
  • It lacks traditional employment protections

Our survey also revealed that 23 per cent of respondents recognised that digital work platforms can be quicker than traditional recruitment channels. Twenty-two per cent realised that digital work platforms allow companies to fill short-term business needs and 20 per cent think they can be more cost-effective than traditional recruitment channels. Another benefit included the fact that they allow employers to try out a range of different candidates on a non-committal basis (16 per cent).

Employer concerns focused around how to assess whether workers’ abilities would live up to their claims, losing money by paying for poor or incomplete assignments or getting embroiled in potential disputes about their responsibility to a gig worker as legal and regulatory requirements in this area remain hazy.

So that do good employers need to do in order to make effective use of digital platforms to source high-quality people to work on specific tasks or projects? We drew up a few pointers as to how to get started:

• Define work opportunities that can be fulfilled on a freelance basis.
• Define measurable work outcomes so that freelance performance can be judged.
• Provide effective coaching and feedback by line managers so gig workers can provide the value intended.
• Ensure that the contractual process is robust and your organisation is not increasing risk from non-compliance.
• Explore how each platform verifies, vets and provides feedback on candidates’ qualifications, experience and capability.

There is always a certain resistance to new technologies and healthy scepticism about the unknown is not necessarily a bad thing.  But with more and more people from the millennial to the baby boomer generations looking for ways to find a good work-life balance, gig work is likely to increase rather than decrease. Smart employers will already be thinking about ways to incorporate it into their workforce strategies.

To find out more about our research and insights into good recruitment practices visit www.rec.uk.com/Goodrecruitment