Elaine’s blog

It’s hard to know which areas of employment are going to get hit more than others in the period of “downturn”. That word seems inadequate to describe the cataclysmic events of the late 2008, but businesses  are now folding like cards at the rate of one famous name per week. I thought about which businesses will be the survivors and why. It may be as simple as those who ran their finances more prudently and were less exposed to major risks when it all went sideways. I think it is more than that. I was reading that the French bank BNP Paribas seems to have remained stable in these risky times, whilst as we know, even before the Leman crash, competitor Societe Generale ran into trouble, and the share price of Credit Agricole has now dropped 50% too.

Whilst the Woollies staff conga-ed their way out of the door, I have been watching local government workers quietly walking away with their redundancy notices. It’s hard to see if anyone is safe from this new peril of redundancy and suspension of work. That’s sobering……

I did pick up that the management of BNP Paribas is 39% female, and I am so tempted to extrapolate wildly from this one example to make a point I have for so long wanted to believe: that female management is generally sounder and more rational than that provided by the male. But then, I suppose that’s just hooey……

Or not. A French study called Global Financial Crisis: Are women the antidote? (natty title) published in October found that firms in the CAC40 (FTSE equivalent) with a higher proportion of women in management have indeed shown better resilience in time of financial crisis. I am sure there is a lot of PHD fertility in establishing the causes of such an assertion, as well as in disproving it. Still, I find it encouraging for all those aspiring women who have a permanent headache from banging on the glass ceiling.

Interestingly, Denise Kingsmill CBE, non-exec and board member extraordinaire, has posited another view about the demise of the arrogant and impatient, “you’re-fired” school of management.  Writing recently in a management magazine, she has expressed the view that the Alpha Chief Executive (ACE) is now an endangered species as the need for decency, integrity, openness, engagement and commitment come to the fore to steer businesses through tough times. What is interesting about the ACE is that he relies entirely on the command and control model of leadership, and in this century thus far, this has not proved to be successful. If he hasn’t noticed this outcome yet, I think Ms Kingmill has not exaggerated the rumours about his demise.

When I was working for the then Wolverhampton Polytechnic, I read a jolly book by Howard Jacobson called “Coming From Behind”. Mr Jacobson had been a lecturer at the Poly at one time and had based his book on a caricature of academic life. In the story, one lecturer left his coat on the back of the chair in the office and his room-mate periodically splashed water on it to give the more convincing impression that he had been in work and had indeed come in out of the rain only recently. Of course, the ruse was to veil that fact that he was hardly ever there, just didn’t want to get found out. Only yesterday on the radio, I heard a woman worker in Price Waterhouse Cooper make reference to the fact that this practice of leaving your jacket on the chair was once a more general office habit aimed at creating the illusion of “presentism”. If this practice was real, it was a symptom of a long-hours culture which must have developed in Britain sometime in the 1980s. It was the case that being seen at work for long hours , or at least as long as your boss, was a demonstration of commitment, hard work and toughness - all judged to be male attributes at the time, so women were expected to display the same behaviours if they wanted t be taken seriously for promotion.

Thankfully, taking too long over the job has more recently come to be seen as inefficient, not so clever, not so male. The new role model is of the super-mum, multi-tasking, juggling the school-run as well as the Board meetings, ministering to the measled child whilst emailing off the latest version of that key report on time, and taking a mobile call from the client in Seattle whilst whipping up a soufflé for the dinner party in an hour’s time. She doesn’t work long hours in the office - she works “flexibly” - flexi-day, flexi-week, flexi-year - and the hours she puts in are not measured, not seen.

The Working Time Regulations were introduced under a Health & Safety banner, and maybe for that reason are not really taken very seriously at all. In this country we have a confused relationship with H&S, in that we like to appear to adhere to the European rules religiously whilst laughing about them like giggly schoolchildren behind our hands. We pretend we adhere to the rules about safe working hours, yet we want to hang on to our British opt-out from the European Directive. What we are really doing as a nation is somehow convincing ourselves that it’s the individual’s right, nay privilege, to work long hours as well as be a multi-tasking super-hero - as though we still have to show those wimpish Europeans what True Grit looks like. As an aside, in no other circumstances have I ever thought of Germans as wimps, or inefficient, or not clever……….so I am not sure I can adopt that view over this issue either.

We have lost sight of what makes for a good quality of life, displaying a balanced and contented mind. We should strive in a more holistic way to produce good work, to time and to standard, in return for the wage or fee we receive. We should not wear tiredness as a badge of honour, and we should be bolder (and more grown-up) in exercising judgement about what makes for effective working and healthy living both in ourselves and others.

I heard a statistic on Radio 4 this morning that 47% of British citizens are completely disinterested in politics. That’s quite a scary feature of our democracy, and reflects an extraordinary confidence of the people in the system that they take for granted. By contrast, the US presidential election has triggered an astonishing display of active democracy - it has engaged the emotion and imagination of a vast nation, and the result, whichever way it goes, must be as good an example of democracy in action as we might ever see in a lifetime.

Sadly, the apathy of the Brits shows itself in the workplace too. I work largely in the public sector, where trade union membership is traditionally much stronger and better organised than in the private sector, yet even there, few turn up to routine union meetings, and only a minority show at meetings called to address specific topics or organisational crises. Redundancy threats have generally aroused interest in union membership, but  at these times, people draw on the insurance policy aspect of trade union organisation rather than any real sense of political loyalty or comradeship.

Some commentators say that Brits have become so obsessed with their celebrity culture that they have no sense any more of the less than trivial. This is clearly nonsense: Brits still worry about their mortgages, their jobs and their children, so why wouldn’t they be as engaged in political or social activity in exactly the same way as the meritocratic Americans are ?  

I don’t know why it is that workers no longer feel any empathy with their trade union activist colleagues, nor display any engagement with collective workplace causes. I do regret that there is something important being lost in a context where the employers have to consult  formally with a small group of, at worst dysfunctional non-representative representatives, or at best struggling representatives isolated from a non-communicative constituency. Good employers will find a way of consulting the wider workforce directly about proposals for change or potential job losses: this means twice the work for managers, not to mention the predictable tension between workforce and trade union feedback.

There’s nothing much that the legislature can do about this - trade union rights and obligations are essential in a rational democratic social structure, and increasingly, individual rights and opinions and preferences are valued and recognised. If only people would engage to make their opinion preferences known either through their trade unions, directly to management or at least through the ballot box. To fail to do this compromises our democratic system and forfeits our democratic control. Then we may get the government and  workplaces we deserve, but we can’t claim to have acted as responsible adults.

I am getting very exercised about some recent anxiety expressed about so-called “Generation Y”. It seems that anyone born after 1979 is different from the rest of us, in their aspirations, sense of social responsibility and level of commitment to work. Well, that was the “universal truth” presented to us a while ago, and HR people and their employers were urged to change the way they ran their businesses in order to attract and, against the odds, hold on to the services of this valuable asset, Generation Y, who would otherwise leave them and go off in a juvenile huff  to work for someone else. And then, presumably repeat the infidelity all over again - because they are young and foolish. Well, at the time when this supposed conventional wisdom was being expounded, I felt slightly uneasy about its seemingly wild generalisations about a whole generation of workers, with no reference  to background, education, health or culture, or indeed any number of other variables.

Now there is a new piece of work, conducted by Penna Consulting, in association with the CIPD and PeopleMetrics which draws up a new set of generalisations about Generation Y, which differ from the first set of generalisations. The original myths are now debunked, probably rightly so, and it seems that Generation Y  is, after all,  much more like the other generations at work than was originally suspected. Well, well, there’s a turn-up!  It seems they do stay longer in a job than was originally and prejudicially, in my view, supposed; they are not as interested in saving the world and social responsibility as was supposed; and they can concentrate!

I was intrigued by what the Penna report said about my own generation, the Baby Boomers - those born between 1948 and 1963. Apparently, we are the most dissatisfied generation at work. We want new challenges, want to feel engaged (hey, we all want to be loved…..) and we want to work for organisations that show some sense of social responsibility. Maybe.  It does make me wonder if being a Saggitarius holds as much insight for me.

The most significant observation and/or finding in the Penna report was that all generations look at the whole work package and what’s on offer for them as individuals: the job, the work context, the benefits, career opportunities. That of course points to the value of the Total Reward model of resource management, irrespective of the generation gaps - whatever they are. I am concerned that the contract of employment is an effective and honourable one; that people as individuals are treated with respect and encouraged to give their best in return. This has nothing to do with age - and ageism - but is more focussed on recruiting on the basis of matched interests and aspirations than inglorious assumptions and prejudices about  dates of birth.

My son, now studying for A levels, is apparently part of Generation Z. They are supposed to be the most technically “savvy”, but I am not sure what that will mean in terms of personal drive, commitment and ambition. I’d just like the social commentators and observers to leave him out of their generalisations, and for prospective employers to listen to what he has to say and identify with him their mutual interests.