Pay transparency– in the news (and on cHRchat)

 

   Sir David Walker never actually suggested publishing details on each individual bankers’ pay, fearing that this would jeopardise their privacy (ah, poor dears!).  And he’s since pulled back from his milder suggestion that banks publish ‘bands’ showing the pay and bonuses of all employees earning over £1m while hiding individual employees’ names.  It seems this can’t be done unless all countries do the same thing (which was never going to happen anyway).

But the topic of pay transparency has not gone away.

 

Hutton Review (and the CIPD)

Today’s interim report from the Hutton Fair Pay Review (which I’m still reading) suggests that no civil servant should get paid more than twenty times the lowest paid worker in that organisation.

As the name of the review suggests, this focuses on fairness.  But most of the reporting of the review, if not so much the review itself, seems to interpret fairness as showing tax payers that their investments are being protected, and that the 20,000 public servants who earn more than £117k per year (including heads of Universities on £200k and CEOs of NHS trusts on £150k) deserve their salaries.  This is about managing perception – about ensuring everyone seems to be sharing the effects of austerity.  And it’s why Hutton recommends setting principles and greater transparency in what people get paid.

I’m more interested in the effect of internal pay differentials.  I think John Humphrys got it right on the Today programme this morning (as he usually does), quoting Peter Drucker’s concerns that differentials over 20 x can lead to resentment, falling morale and could become socially corrosive.

I think socially corrosive organisations is exactly what we’ve got – in the private as well as the public sector, and steep pay differentials have had their role to play in this.

But the issue is particularly significant in the public sector – particularly because, as I was discussing with Bruce Warman at the Personnel Today Awards last night, the ‘profit motive’ doesn’t really exist there.   These organisations aren’t going to go to the wall, so the role of the strategist (part of the role of a business leader) is a less fundamental one.  This means that there’s less of a need for high differentials than there is in the private sector.

And the issue is even more significant in the voluntary sector.  Here, it’s about sense of mission, rather than high pay, being even more of a focus (or should be being more of a focus) than high pay.  That’s why Jackie Orme is getting some rightly deserved stick (eg from Donald Clark: 1 and 2) for her £400k salary at the CIPD.

But for me, the whole debate has echoes of Denise Kingsmill’s Accounting for People review.  Kingsmill was focused on providing information on human capital for investors, whereas in truth, the people who really need better information on HCM are business leaders.

Same again here.  I personally believe Hutton’s suggestions are entirely reasonable.  But they also miss the point.  The real need is to educate remuneration committee members and other business leaders, as well as compensation consultants and their like about the impact of such a big divide.

It’s why my bigger worry about Orme’s salary is how are the CIPD going to support Hutton’s proposals when they must have a pay differential of around 20x themselves.

 

cHRchat

Anyway, if you’re interested in pay transparency we’ll be talking about this during #cHRchat on Twitter tonight (7.00pm GMT).  I’m not going to pretend that we’ve deliberately set out to be responsive to current topics – it’s just that, by accident, the subject came up in a tweet of mine during last week’s chat:

1:41 pm	joningham:	Big opportunities throughout HR for more social (thinking) approaches eg pay transparency in Reward #chrchat
1:43 pm	dougshaw1:	RT @joningham: Big opportunities throughout HR for more social (thinking) approaches eg pay transparency in Reward #chrchat >like it yes pls
1:43 pm	ALISONCHISNELL:	RT @joningham: Big opportunities throughout HR for more social (thinking) approaches eg pay transparency in Reward - Yikes no!! #cHRchat
1:45 pm	joningham:	AlisonChisnell Why not? (if the culture's right) RT @joningham: Big opportunities eg pay transparency - Yikes no!! #cHRchat
1:46 pm	ALISONCHISNELL:	@joningham depends what you mean by transparent but if you mean everyone sees everybody elses then would be a nightmare #cHRchat
1:48 pm	joningham:	Don't see why - just different (& more social!) RT@AlisonChisnell @joningham if you mean everyone sees everybodys then nightmare #cHRchat
1:50 pm	ALISONCHISNELL:	@joningham Large org, legacy issues, people chage roles...we don't operate a fixed pay structure enables us to be pragmatic #cHRchat
1:51 pm	ALISONCHISNELL:	@joningham would lead to massive increase in salary benchmarking requests & deep unhappiness, Union would have field day. More? #cHRchat
1:54 pm	gmcglyne:	@alisonchisnell i know a company that had it's payroll posted online - the issues were re discrepancies that COULD be justified #chrchat
1:54 pm	ALISONCHISNELL:	@joningham Just not keen. Would work with very structured pay scales and progression but not in our org. #cHRchat
1:57 pm	ALISONCHISNELL:	@gmcglyne brave move, that's for sure. We have made so many acquisitions over the years we real mix of legacy & new arrangements #cHRchat
1:58 pm	gmcglyne:	@ALISONCHISNELL not brave - disgruntled employee posted it #chrchat
1:58 pm	ALISONCHISNELL:	@gmcglyne oh blimey! Cat, pigeons....! #cHRchat
2:04 pm	olliegardener:	RT @ALISONCHISNELL @joningham Looking for salary transparancy: http://ow.ly/3eRht All norwegians' salaries online. #chrchat
2:05 pm	garelaos:	@ALISONCHISNELL @joningham Pay transparency can work - check out Semco. #chrchat
2:05 pm	joningham:	RT @olliegardener: RT @ALISONCHISNELL @joningham Looking for salary transparancy: http://ow.ly/3eRht All norwegians' salaries online. #chrchat
2:06 pm	joningham:	Would love someone to do a #chrchat on pay transparency sometime....
2:06 pm	olliegardener:	@ALISONCHISNELL @joningham PS: as an entrepreneur, mine is decisively borning :) #chrchat
2:08 pm	garelaos:	@joningham How about i do the one on pay transparency? #chrchat
2:08 pm	dougshaw1:	RT @joningham: Would love someone to do a #chrchat on pay transparency sometime....me too wrote about that recently http://bit.ly/dMsG9L
2:09 pm	joningham:	Up to you but I'd be on for it - might engage @thehrd back again too? RT @garelaos How about i do the one on pay transparency? #chrchat
2:12 pm	garelaos:	@AlisonChisnell @joningham @thehrd i find pay transparency is only a problem when there are differences that cant be justified! #chrchat
2:14 pm	joningham:	Can you be totally social unless you do? If not, there's always going to be something in the way. #paytransparency #chrchat
2:16 pm	joningham:	Lynda Gratton on pay transparency http://bit.ly/gYelyM #socialbusiness #chrchat (probably enough till next week)
4:07 pm	AilsaSuttie:	@garelaos would interest me! #chrchat

 

Join us if you can. 

 

Technorati Tags: Will Hutton,review,fair,pay,transparency,Jackie Orme,CIPD10,Donald Clark,Connecting HR

 

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G4Social

 

  The last presentation today (just before a Bill Boorman panel) is with Colin Minto, Global Head of Resourcing at G4S.  I’ve been following the progress of G4S’ new system since meeting Colin at a Connecting HR tweet-up earlier this year.  And the system’s now been live for one week and one day.

For G4S, social recruiting is an aspect of their direct resourcing strategy which supports their EVP / employer brand (on the slide).  It has the widest reach for the biggest gains – but also the biggest threats – in terms of perception, bad behaviour and bad experience.  They therefore have developed a strategic, managed and engaged approach – moving slowly and communicating to the business.  They’ve seen some of their competitors engage in discussions and leave them open – Colin wanted to avoid this at G4S.

So they’re on Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook but the key thing they’re doing is listening. 

They’re looking at social media to solve some major challenges – one is scale – as the world’s second largest private sector employer.  The division of the organisation into businesses, countries, divisions etc doesn’t make things any easier, particularly in a decentralised organisation.  And its multilingual – including 30 different languages across their recruitment site properties.

So they needed technologies to be able to handle all this complexity.  To do this , they got their A team of technology vendors in the same room to design an approach

• Talent on View providing the front end / gateway
• Kaonix / Burning Glass providing CV parsing technology to ensure the best candidate experience, even across different ATS’s
• One of preferred the preferred ATS’s, RecruitActive
• Monster TMS

 

  So the new careers site includes video, pictures, tweets etc all integrated in the same place and based as much as possible on user generated content.

It’s supported by AI and semantic matching for job seekers and hiring managers.  Behavioural matching from Talent on View’s community technology enables some behavioural sorting as well.

 

  And a dashboard to catch metrics about candidates.  However, a lot of the benefits are qualitative (from comments).  Eg they feel they have more control because the fact users are job seekers limits bad behaviour on the site.

During 2011 they’re looking at

• Crowdsourcing developments through user suggestions
• Creating a separate environment with clients and peer group companies which they can use to assist job seekers even if the job isn’t with them.

 

Neat.  Well done, Colin and Matt.

 

Please note, this was a live blog, so apologies if it’s a bit ropey!

Technorati Tags: Colin Minto,global,resourcing,G4S,integrated,social,technologies

 

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Relationships in social recruiting

 

  There have been some fairly consistent views about social recruiting expressed this morning at Alan Whitford and Vic Okezie’s social recruiting conference…  Views which I think contrast to the way many if not most organisations looking at social recruiting are trying to do it, and to those expressed in a few different articles recently, eg this one from John Sumser.

Basically, it IS all about relationships.

The first presentation which reinforced this fact was given by Matthew Jeffery at Electronics Arts (pictured rather fuzzily above).  Matthew emphasised the need for recruiters to move from a 1.0, post and pay approach to one based on 2.0, social media and relationships.

 

  But we had more detail provided a bit later from Jennifer Candee from SABMiller.

Jennifer spends 50% of her time on ‘talent interviews’ with future talent who are top notch, usually senior level, people but for whom SABMiller don’t have a current position (sort of like an agency meeting someone of the side when they’ve not got a role).  But often she’s kept up a conversation and two, three or four years later she’s placed them.  Job postings are still a part of the mix but Jennifer’s not hired from them for the last four years.  As a result of this, the company has saved between £1.2-£1.8m.

One of the interesting things SABMiller is looking at is a CRM type tool to manage the relationships with their future talent (Avature CRM).

 

I’ve posted before about the head farming (vs head hunting) approach used by Ernst & Young while I was an HR Director there.  This was in 2000 and no other organisations seemed interested in this approach at the time.

And I wrote about this too in my book during 2005.  And when this was published, the approach still didn’t resonate that well.

Moving ahead to 2010, and as shown by the two case studies above, it’s become an increasingly popular strategy.  The difference of course is social media and perhaps also recruiting CRM.

So I still maintain social recruiting is about relationships, not about technology, but the technology certainly does help!

 

Online CRM from Sherweb

 

Technorati Tags: Matthew Jeffery,Electronic Arts,Jennifer Candee,SABMiller,social,recruiting,talent,conference,November,2010

 

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People first, social second

 

  So I’m at another social recruiting conference today where I was chairing a panel on engaging employees through and with social media, with Charlie Elise, Heather Taylor and Doug Shaw.

I was trying to keep an eye on the twitter stream behind me (and on my iphone), but didn’t manage to catch them all.  Eg this tweet from Peter Massey:

#SRConf Do u think companies' values more impt than social media? If they are transparent and open, social media will work in rec 4 them

 

This is the key point to me.  Social businesses, social recruiting, whatever you want to add here, and whether you’re thinking about social media or broader use of social approaches, aren’t going to work unless you’ve got the right values (or mojo) too.

You need to trust your people, and assume they’re not going to abuse your brand.  Yes, there’ll be a penalty if they do, but it’ll be no worse than the penalty of not trusting them, and not enabling them to communicate or collaborate etc.

You need to invest in your human capital – which is about helping your people be everything they can be – before you’re able to maximise your social capital – ie the relationships between them.

Strategic HCM – then Social Advantage.  And values / mojo underpin them both.

 

Also see the live stream.

 

Photo credit: Lucian Tarnowski

Technorati Tags: Charlie Elise,Heather Taylor,giffgaff,Doug Shaw,social,recruiting,conference,November,2010,employee,enagagement,values

 

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Thoughts on the HRO Europe Summit: Social Outsourcing?

 

  So as I wrote on Friday, last week I was in Amsterdam for the HR Outsourcing (HRO) Europe conference.

I was there mainly to catch up with people and see how the outsourcing market had changed since my last involvement in it (working on GSK’s HR outsourcing to ACS).

But I also caught some of the sessions, and was on a panel together with:

• Consultants Andy Spence and Jane Owen Jones
• Nigel Perks from one of my old clients, BT Global Services
• Peter Cappelli from Wharton.

 

I’ll come back and write this up later on.

But next week I’m chairing another panel, this time at Social Recruiting, talking about social media and employee engagement.

So I had social recruiting in the back of mind when attending the Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) summit within a summit at HRO.  After all, if you believe, as I do, that social recruiting, as just about the most significant new driver changing the recruitment industry right now, then one of the key questions must be is how is it changing RPO.

What then did I hear about it at the RPO Summit? Largely, nothing. The chair talked about it a few times, and encouraged people to tweet, but none of them did, even though I was challenging them to do so via my tweets displayed on the backchannel projected behind the speakers.

For example, Zurich Insurance did a presentation about their outsourcing deal with Alexander Mann Solution, and showed us some slick videos, but didn’t mention social once. Now I know AMS do have an angle in this area (they were down to speak at the other Social Media conference I was due to chair next week). But for whatever reason, it didn’t feature in this case study.

And I started to think further about the impact of social on outsourcing (and in learning, if not in payroll too). Is there such a thing as social outsourcing, or are social sourcing and out sourcing two different and exclusive things? How does an outsourcing provider participate in, contribute to, and even facilitate a conversation between internal employees and external targets and candidates, when they’re not within the conversation – ie not part of the organisation (other than providing the technology). Can they do this? And if they can’t, does it reduce the organisation’s incentive to be social?

Perhaps a topic for HRO next year… And before then, your comments please…

 

Technorati Tags: Outsourcing,RPO,social,recruiting,Alexander Mann,AMS,April Samulewicz,Talent Acquisition,Zurich Financial Services,HRO,Europe,conference

 

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A Royal Revolution

 

  No, I’m not quite proposing that!

But Will and Kate haven’t left me much time to escape from the UK before the royal wedding!

So, either I just try to bring forward my plans (a bit of pressure can be a good thing, after all).  Or perhaps I just try to arrange a short project or speaking engagement at the time the wedding’s on.

One option is HRevolution on 29-30 April (tickets here).  Now I only normally attend conferences when I’m being paid to speak; or I can arrange some paid work around the conference, or it’s just really easy to do (like Social Recruiting in London next week).

Unconferences like Connecting HR and HRevolution are an exception, but as an independent consultant working in a difficult economy, I still need to be careful about expenses.  So – anyone have work in the US for me around then?  Or would like to sponsor me my flights (I’m sure we could work out a good deal)?

 

Picture credit: Rioters Attack the Royal Palace during the French Revolution (unknown artist)

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cHRchat

 

  Spurred on from successes with our tweet-ups and unconference, Connecting HR has now launched a series of weekly Twitter chats when we tweet about a particular topic linked to the key themes we identified at the unconference, ie:

• General HR Knowledge Share
• HR in the Age of Austerity
• HR in the Social World
• HR supporting the Social Business (enterprise 2.0)
• HR 2.0 (web 2.0 / social media within HR)
• Use of social media.

 

So far, we’ve had three very successful chats on:

• HR’s role supporting social media in the business (supporting our ‘Social Business’ theme) – hosted by me
• Getting other HR people involved in social media (under the ‘use of social media’ theme) – hosted by Charlie Elise at HR Zone, live from the CIPD annual conference tweet-up
• Developments in HR transformation and outsourcing (under the ‘general HR knowledge share’ theme) – hosted by Andy Spence, live from HRO Europe.

 

Tomorrow’s chat (at 1.00pm GMT) takes up back to the Social Business theme, noting that if organisations are to capitalise on Social Media they must first be social entities by habit.  So how do they do this?

For answers, look up the hashtag #cHRchat (Connecting HR chat) at or after 1.00 today.  The chat is going to be hosted by Will Cleare, HR Business Partner at figleaves.com:

 

  WillCleare Will Cleare

6/6 #cHRchat 24/11 1300h GMT Q4 Who currently drives collaboration in your organisation & why? #hr #cipd#connectinghr

5/6 #cHRchat 24/11 0800h EST Q3. What are the benefits to other areas of HR to HR championing a collaborative approach?#connectinghr #hcm

4/6 #cHRchat 24/11 0800h EST Q2. How can HR generate a true culture of collaboration "within" their organisation? #hr #cipd

3/6 #cHRchat 24/11 1400h CET Q1. What are the best strategies for helping organisations become more social?#in #hr#cipd

2/6 #cHRchat 24/11 1300h GMT If organisations are to capitalise on Social Media they must first be social entities by habit.#in #hr #cipd

1/6 This week's #cHRchat "#In Pursuit of the Social Organisation" 24/11 1400h CET; 1300h GMT; 0800h EST #hr#ConnectingHR #cipd

 

For more answers, see on this blog (eg my posts on Enterprise 2.0), or over at Social Advantage (or contact me!).

 

If you want to know more about the Connecting HR community, see over at the website, or request an invite to join our Yammer group.

Or just look out for our Yammer chat every Wednesday (times and possibly days of the week may vary – check on twitter first).

 

Technorati Tags: Connecting HR,HR,twitter,chat,social media,social business,community,UK,Will Cleare,figleaves

 

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Catch-up with Workday

w

  I’ve had a couple of interesting conversations about developments in HR technologies recently.

For example, at one of the panels at Enterprise 2.0, I was asked about to what extent HR systems limit HR’s ability to rise above compliance activities.  I suggested that this was largely an echo of the past – that technology shouldn’t be a a barrier to performance as it was maybe just ten years ago.

And then last week in Amsterdam, one of the other speakers suggested new technologies are forming one of the key new inputs in the outsourcing sector.  And in the Connecting HR twitter chat later that day, when the conversation moved on to the inability of HR technology to inform broader transformation, I referred to some examples where I thought it was having this sort of impact.

Lastly, I’m working with a client which is thinking about making some major investments in technology during the new year.  And I’ve been helping them think through some options for this.

All of these conversations have included a reference to Workday.  So I was pleased on Friday to have a call with some of their staff (following my recent attendance at Workday Rising) to discuss the recently released version 12.  And I was even more pleased to see that the updates to the system support the points I’ve been making.

Firstly, there are some great features under talent management – see for example what Steve Boese (who was also on the call) has posted about their faceted search.  And I also like the various ways that the system allow businesses to analyse work, and to link talent to work.

There’s so much here that for most businesses, there’s going to be more opportunity here than they currently allow their people.  The issue is no longer just about technology catching up with business needs.  It’s also increasingly going to be about businesses given the freedom to their people to take advantage of the technology.

There are going to be some exciting times ahead.

 

Technorati Tags: Workday,12,talent,work,management,faceted search

 

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I’m an HR Consultant, get me out of here!

 

  I’ve been feeling a bit down in the dumps after returning from my second trip to California in one month and with no other trips to sunnier climes coming up till next year. 

The rain and fog in Amsterdam over the last couple of days hasn’t really helped – just another case of seasonal affective disorder I guess.

I’m also not a supporter of the Age or Austerity.  What we Brits need right now is a bit of optimism to stimulate more investment.

And I don’t think the prospect of a royal wedding next year is going to make up for the general slash and burn of the economy.  In fact, it’s probably the wedding that’s got me feeling most fed up.

To an extent, my irritation with this about having to fork out for the costs of the Windsor’s security.  But it’s also the expectation of ever greater toadiness from the BBC right through to the wedding, and the prospect of more general Dianamania too.

I also can’t see how the selling of more crappy plates and other chintz (the production of which obviously isn’t going to be done in the UK) is going to stimulate the economy.

So I really don’t understand the delight that some of the queen’s subjects clearly feel.  And I’m not a naturally grumpy or cynical person.  But I don’t like the monarchy.  And I definitely don’t like being a subject of it.  (“long to reign over us”?  Humbug!).

It’s probably time to make a move.  I think I’ve probably posted this before as well.  But if I’m still living in the UK next July (or whenever the wedding is) I’m going to be even grouchier than I am now.

What I’d really like is a long-term consulting project, doing what I’m doing now (ie working with organisations to create new capabilities through their people – whether these are based on individual employees [human capital] – or the connections and relationships between them [ie social capital] – or simply working with them find more innovative and value-creating ways of doing HR), but:

• longer-term, eg around 18 months – 2 years minimum, which is what my projects really need to be in any case in order to make real change
• not in the UK!

 

Any offers?

 

(Of course, what I also really need to do is to emigrate, but for now, I’ll just make do with joining Republic!)

 

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HR and Enterprise 2.0 Happy Hour

 

  I also managed to speak about HR’s role in Enterprise 2.0 on last week’s HR Happy Hour with Steve Boese, Shaua Moerke and Matt Wilkinson from Socialcast.

Do take a listen – and it’s well worth paying particular attention to the part where Matt describes the Socialcast product – I do think this systems’ security and integration features does generally make it a more compelling proposition for intra-organisational use than Yammer (which we’re using inter-organisationally for Connecting HR).

As well as the technologies and processes aspect of Enterprise 2.0, we also talked about the culture component – which was the subject of my presentation with Margaret Schweer, and which I still need to review on my Social Advantage blog…

I will just say that I thought Matt and I were talking about two slightly different things – ie his interactions vs my relationships, his talking to staff about how they connect today, my focus on supporting strategic objectives etc.  I’m going to come back to this on Social Advantage too.

 

Also see:

• Andrew McAfee on HR Happy Hour: close but no dice
• CHROs and Collaboration

 

Technorati Tags: Matt Wilkinson,Socialcast,Steve Boese,HR Happy Hour,Andrew McAfee,Enterprise 2.0,conference,Santa Clara

 

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