Remember that embarrassing moment?

Apologies for the delay, however, Blogger now seems to be back in working order, so here we are again with another Discuss HR.  The excellent guest spot by Wendy Mason touched upon a very topical point about the transition from public to private sector.  This week regular columnist Jill Hart-Sanderson discuss another, potentially even more relevant topic, namely the use and misuse of social media in the work place. (Ed Scrivener)

Remember that drunken embarrassing moment?

Remember that drunken, embarrassing moment when you were 19 that someone captured on camera? Well your friends might, and they may think it’s hilarious to post it on their Facebook page and tag you. Which means the photo will then appear on your Facebook profile page. Now is that something you want your important business contacts to see?

More and more organisations recognise that social networking is changing the way in which people do business. Love them or hate them, the rise and rise of Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter cannot be ignored. Companies can no longer afford to blanket-ban any kind of social networking interaction: by embracing it they can engage with their customers in a way never possible in the past as well as build the trust of their employees.

So what can HR teams do to support their organisations during this era of rapid change? One of the first steps should be to check there are clear guidelines and expectations and that they are effectively communicated by managers to their teams.  Once it’s been established who should be using networking sites and for what purpose, communications should be consistent with the overall values of the company.

In most cases it would be impossible to ‘vet’ all blogs, comments and tweets, therefore the individual employees must know that they are ultimately responsible for the content they publish online, whether on a social site or any other form of user-generated media. They should: be mindful that what they publish will be public for a long time; be reminded to protect their privacy; and make sure they understand a site's terms of service.

Here’s what a guideline for employees might include:

·         Is it in the right tone and does it reflect our company values and beliefs?

·         Would you be happy for any of our current or potential customers to read it?

·         Make it your own: include your name and be clear whether you are speaking for yourself or on behalf of the organisation (if on behalf of the organisation, get agreement to the content)

·         Remember customer confidentiality is essential unless the customer has made it clear they’re happy for the content to appear

·         Respect copyright, data protection and financial disclosure laws

·         Never discuss our or anyone else’s business performance or other sensitive matters publicly

·         Don't publish anything that might allow inferences to be drawn that could embarrass or damage a customer or colleague

·         Respect your audience and show proper consideration for others' privacy and for topics that may be considered objectionable or inflammatory, such as politics and religion

·         Ensure your profile and related content is consistent with how you wish to present yourself with colleagues and customers

·         Don't pick fights; be the first to correct your own mistakes

·         Once you start a discussion/blog follow the comments and reply when appropriate; remember comments may be left months after your initial post

·         Regard what you post as a document: sense-check and proof-read it

·         Keep your profile up to date and consistent with the rest of your team

·         Remember you’re reaching an international audience

·         Try to add value, provide worthwhile information and perspective

·         Clearly understand the site’s privacy settings and use them to protect the business as well as yourself

Profiles are also something that will need to be considered if you are drawing up guidance for your organisation. They need to have personality, but be aware the details are in the public domain and could be linked to the business.

Social media can be fantastic tools, but organisations need to be clear about how they’re to be used and help all employees appreciate the pitfalls and benefits of this global phenomenon.

What’s your organisation’s social networking policy? Has it been clearly communicated to all employees? What impact has it had?

For further reading, including legal implications when using social media have a look at this CIPD webpage

About the author

Jill loves working with the team at Rambutan helping people to think, lead and communicate brilliantly in order to achieve business, team or personal goals. Before joining the Rambutan bunch, Jill was part of the HR Consultancy Team at University College London. Her previous management experience in both the public and private sector means she has seen how great HR support can make a real difference to individual managers and organisations as a whole

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Discuss HR is the blog for Human Resources UK, the leading LinkedIn group for those involved with HR in the UK.  Next week’s Discuss HR will be published on Thursday 2^nd June and will be written by HR recruitment specialist Ed Scrivener. 

Help! I'm leaving the Public Sector!

Good morning and welcome to this week’s Discuss HR.

After a number of years absence BBCs The Apprentice has an HR professional amongst its contestants.  Whether she will be successful remains to be seen.  What is interesting is that once again we have no professionals from the Public Sector.  Last year’s show included a number of unemployed people to reflect the state of the economy, yet this year Public Sector employees have been overlooked.  Could this be to a perceived idea that they lack commercial understanding of the private sector?

It is on that note I am delighted to welcome our next guest writer. Wendy Mason is a performance and change specialist who has been doing sterling work helping Public Sector employees break into the private sector. (Ed Scrivener)

Help! I’m leaving the Public Sector!

Outplacement support has changed

I’ve been blogging for a few years now mainly on leadership and change. But recently I’ve established a new blog especially for people leaving the UK public service under the latest round of government “cuts”. 

As often happens, one key event triggered me to take action. 

I was at an event in one of the central government departments when I came across an old colleague; someone I liked and respected very much. Let us call him John.  John joined the Civil Service straight from university.  He is both middle aged (50) and middle class and he wouldn’t mind me using those terms.  For me, he represents much that is good about public servants!  He is hard working and committed to delivering his best; he is kind and has an unshakeable sense of fairness. 

Having survived several earlier rounds of cuts, he has chosen to put hard work, energy and emotion into staying in the Civil Service until the age of sixty.  Among other things he has a young child from a late second marriage who will need to be supported for at least the next ten years and possibly longer!  So above all John craves security!

He has managed to survive efficiency drives and re-organizations, sometimes by the skin of his teeth. But he has managed it.  This time he knows there is something different and he will have to go!

Having spent the last thirty years around the Whitehall village, the prospect of life outside is daunting and he is very nervous! 

We chatted and I gave him my card, offering to share my own experience of going.  We arranged to have coffee.

When I got home, I started to think about John and all the others like him there in Whitehall, plus those out in local offices.  It has been estimated that at least 100,000 Civil Service posts will disappear.  In addition there those in the wider public sector - local authorities and the NHS!   

I wondered how I could help the many who have stayed put, not out of lethargy in the past, but from an active choice. I have coached a number of such individuals making the transition but I wanted to reach a wider audience.  So I decided to start the new blog to share my experience and that of others in moving out of the public sector and into something else, whatever that may be.

When I left the Civil Service four years ago there was a completely different economic climate with a reasonably healthy job market.

I had been part of a group of directly employed management consultants charged out to other government departments by the Office of Government Commerce.  When the government changed its mind about employing us, my whole group faced moving from their chosen work or leaving the Civil Service.  Several of us were reasonably content to try our luck in the private sector. 

Some found employment almost immediately on the same or better terms.  Those of us who decided to take our chance as free lancers generally found a market for our services.

But we had advantages as experienced management consultants over the “average” Whitehall Civil Servant. 

• Within the bounds of confidentiality it was relatively easy for the private sector to understand what we had been doing. 
• We had skills the private market could recognise. 
• We were used to producing and tailoring CVs
• We had stood on our feet and told our Civil Service clients what we could deliver for them.
• We were also used to dealing with rejection when a particular department made up its mind to use private sector consultancy rather than the services we offered. 
• We were used to working with people from the private sector a daily basis and we had had an opportunity to learn about their values.
• We were expected to network to find opportunities for us to make our mark.
• Some of us had had portfolio careers and understood the job market

Most people leaving the public sector will not be able to put a tick against all 1 to 8 above.  A good number may be able to tick only a few.   Sadly, a number will not be able to tick any boxes at all. 

That is the reality and in these economic conditions and this job market that is disastrous.

Yes, some government departments will spend money on out placement services and the good ones will fund coaching support for a period.  They have done that in the past but this time I believe the money is very short and need is very great.  Plus the support often ends just at the point when you need it most. 

Where do I start?

Three months after you have gone, there is unlikely to be any continuing support from your ex-employer.  But at three months you probably need it most.  You need encouragement when you are becoming truly despondent about your lack of success.  You need guidance in finding the widest possible job market. 

If you ever imagined private sector employers were going to welcome you, at the three month point you know much better!

Let me share with you some of the comments I’ve had since I started the blog. When you have read them I think you will understand why I’m now on a mission.

“I done lots of different jobs since I’ve been in the Civil Service from Personnel to Finance and but I’ve never produced a CV for myself in my life.  How do I start?”  (I’ve promised guidance and a template)

“I didn’t know the private sector doesn’t have to advertise all its jobs – that isn’t fair - what about equal opportunities?” (What indeed, but this shows how the walls of the Ivory Tower can fall down and bury you.)

“I don’t think networking is for me, I only know other Civil Servants and I wouldn’t want to embarrass them” (Accompanied by real anxiety and a sense of humiliation – how can this proud man beg?)

“I know there are people who do what I do in the private sector but I wouldn’t know how to describe it so they would understand” (It takes quite a lot of work to get them to put down on paper just what they have been doing in simple words that others can understand )

“But I’m a graduate; you don’t find jobs for graduates by networking locally or looking in the local paper.” (This is when young graduates are working locally in MacDonald’s)

“Why would the private sector want us, when the government keep telling them what a load of rubbish we are” (Realistic because we all know recruitment agencies that are facing requests not to send public sector client along for interview)

So now I’m a woman on a mission. 

I know from my own experience that a number leaving have the delivery skills the private sector and the third sector looks for!   Some of them have delivered large and complex programmes. Many of them will have managed direct delivery of services to customers.  

But they do come from a different culture and sometimes speak a different language. They have some learning to do! 

Even those who will not find paid work again need to be supported into re-establishing a fulfilling life. 

My new blog is one way of helping.  Perhaps you can think of others and your ideas and suggestions will be very much welcomed.  Are you encountering ex-public sector workers in your own work? It would be really good to hear something of their stories both positive and negative.  And if you would like contribute a piece for Leaving the Public Sector that would be very welcome.

About the author

Wendy Mason is a performance, programme, and contract management and change specialist. She works as a consultant, business coach and blogger.  You can find her business blog on leadership, management and change at www.wisewolftalking.com and her blog those leaving the public sector at www.leavingthepublicsector.net.  You can follow her on Twitter as @WWisewolf 

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Discuss HR is the blog for Human Resources UK, the leading LinkedIn group for those involved with HR in the UK.  Next week’s Discuss HR will be published on Thursday 26^th May and will be written by Jill Hart-Sanderson. 

We don't have the power?

Welcome to this week’s Discuss HR.

So it’s the first full week for some time and I’m in real need of another Bank Holiday weekend to rest!  Pretty much the main topic on everyone’s lips this week is the return of The Apprentice.  We’ve already seen Lord Sugar wield his pointed finger twice and utter the words “you’re fired”, but as this week’s Discuss HR illustrates, it’s not Lord Sugar who holds the power, but in fact his employees. (Ed Scrivener)

We don’t have the power?

I have been looking at the responses to the government’s ‘red tape’ consultation on employment law, particularly those from employer’s organisations (though the individual ones make fascinating reading).

Q. Why do employers feel that employment law gives all the rights to employees?

A.  Because it does.

Parliament and the EU tend to give obligations to employers, and corresponding rights to employees.  It’s true.   What’s going on?

Network Rail in 1873

If you go back to the early 19^th century, employers in the UK could contract their workers in any way they wanted.   Children and pregnant women worked through the night, in mines, with no leisure time, no breaks, not even any decent toilet facilities.   The employers had the power to contract for what they wanted.  If you didn’t like it, the theory was you could work elsewhere.

Since then, the law has progressively chipped away at employers’ freedom to do whatever they wanted.   It has rarely created new rights for employers in the process.    

Employers’ rights derive from two main sources:

·         Common law

·         Contract law

The ability to use these rights in any practical way is fundamentally affected by:

·         Psychological contract (motivations and relationships, reputation)

·         Economic power in the market place

It is really for the employer to assess what they need, what they are prepared to pay for it, and to contract to get it.   Employment law moderates that contract by overwriting clauses to pay less than minimum wage, less than statutory minimum holiday.  It will not write into a contract a right the employer meant to obtain but forgot.  There are provisions for reading into a contract terms that aren’t there, these are generally:

·         Custom and practice

·         Business efficacy test

However, the business efficacy test is there to enable terms to go into a contract to make it work (at all) not to make it work profitably or well for the employer.

So, why is it that we see so many employers who fail to contract for the rights they need to run their business?   Employers and HR need to understand that the government is not, and never has been in the business of giving them rights.  It is their job to do that within the broad limits of the law.

The latest T&Cs took some reading

More often than not we see contracts where organisations have contracted to do far more than they are legally required to do, without taking any useful corresponding rights for themselves.  It is no wonder the executives start to feel ‘employment law’ is against employers.  If you do it this way, it is bound to have this result.

A typical purchasing manager will develop strategic and long term relationships to ensure quality and continuity within the supply chain, but not at the expense of making a contract in the organisation’s interests.  Yet HR people do not think this way about employment contracts.

HR can be pretty smart about what to put in a contract – but not always.  We have to start with the idea that it is legitimate (and necessary) for the organisation to contract for the rights it needs and move on from there.  We have to bring the commercial needs into the contract drafting process, as we do with every other kind of contract drafting process. 

About the author

Annabel Kaye has been specialising in employment law since the seventies.  She founded Irenicon in 1980 and has spent the last thirty years helping HR, line managers and everyone else look at employment law in a way that gets some organisational gain. She likes to think about things from a different angle and making the complex simple – despite the government’s best efforts.   She has traded through three recessions and advised clients from multi-national corporations to the smallest organisation. The toughest thing has always been to balance the competing needs of staff and organisation and that never goes away whatever the legal details.

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Discuss HR is the blog for Human Resources UK, the leading LinkedIn group for those involved with HR in the UK.  Next week’s Discuss HR will be published on Thursday 19^th March and will be written by our next guest writer, Wendy Mason.  Wendy will be writing about the barriers public sector employees find when trying to move into the private sector.