Why women mean business, why men don't get it

My latest FT column takes a look at some of the big changes in attitudes that are needed to pave the way for genuinely equal opportunities. I chose to focus on the car industry because this must remain one of the strongest bastions of male dominance.

If you don't believe me just take a look at this blog entry by the president of a Japanese car exporter. The blog sounds promising when you read the words but the picture says it all.

Snooping on Facebook - right or wrong?

As an employer should you be snooping in to the kind of things people are saying about themselves on social networking sites? As an employee, should you be worried about the things you put there?

My answer to the first question would be "no." Not that my views are going to influence either question because we know that employers are looking at these sites, often disapprovingly, and that employees, therefore, should be cautious about what they say there.

I don't thing it is any more of an employer's business wandering uninvited on to a social networking page as it is in to an employee's home. If I want to have a dartboard on my wall with a photograph of my boss attached to it, that should be my choice.

Wig and garters

Equally if I'm a high court Judge and I find that wearing my wig and garters enlivens the experience in my bedchamber then that too is my business.

Today, however, I am reading about a police officer who has been refused promotion because of the information he posted about his gay lifestyle on the Facebook social networking site.

The police officer, Inspector Chris Dreyfus (a little bit of irony here), was denied a promotion when it was discovered he had been warned about the Facebook content by his current bosses, the British Transport Police.

I noticed that the Daily Telegraph report mentioned that he said on the site he was interested in men and looking for "whatever I can get." To the dozing Telegraph reader, most of whom will have never been anywhere near Facebook, that revelation might sound alarming.

In fact the "looking for" item is a category in the profile section and "whatever I can get" is one option in a multiple choice although I notice that option seems to have been recently removed.

Multiple choice

Equally there is something there that allows you to mention your political persuasions. Oddly the multiple choice options do not include "socialist." So my political views are listed as "other." If you think that these revelations tell you anything about me, think again. I hate the idea of backing the party of government which is why I often vote Liberal although I have given advice to the Conservative Party and thought Gordon Brown was a good chancellor. If there was a box entitled "queer stick" I would probably tick that, and no, that does not mean "gay."

In the box marked religion I had nothing much to say and so much to say at the same time. Baptised C of E, married in church, didn't have kids Christened, blames religion for most of the problems in this world, thinks, however, there is much that is good in the teachings of Christ and in other religions. My Facebook entry on religion, therefore, was "Dudeist" for many months. Now it is: "Orthodox Dudeist." Thank God (whoever he or she may be) that I don't have an employer.

Should these ramblings, or those of Inspector Dreyfus, be presented as a reason for denying us the right to practice our professions? Does it say something about our professional judgement? Not one bit. Professional judgement has nothing to do with personal opinions.

Fluorescent pink jerkins

Were I the editor of the Daily Telegraph, for example, the readers would get all the right wing prejudice-filled coverage they needed and more. My journalists would be blasting away at the cabinet from every vantage point. Parish councils and women's institutes across the land would sleep safely in their shires.

I would campaign for civil liberties while offering my DNA for a voluntary register. I would stand up for rural plot-lines in the Archers, the Countryside Alliance, village post offices and Delia Smith. And I would defend the right of gay policemen to wear fluorescent pink jerkins if that is their want.

Snooping on employees in this way is tacky and discriminatory. Promote Inspector Dreyfus and judge him on his abilities to enforce the law as a senior policeman. That's what really matters.

For more on social networking sites and employment read this.

People and the bottom line

My FT column this week is highlighting a new report - People and the Bottom Line - that has been produced after more than a year of research. The Human Capital Standards Group, a group that I was instrumental in putting together and which met a number of times at the London offices of Investors in People, had some input in to the research, suggesting various areas that could be covered by human capital metrics.

The outcome of the research is interesting but I do think that employers should view the list of 12 metrics recommended in the report with some caution. The list reflects a series of measures that the researches are able to say with some confidence can make a difference to business performance.

This is not to say that there are not better measures available to companies. Some areas of measurement could not be tested because the surveyed companies were not undertaking such work. Other metrics were so ubiquitous that they could not be used to establish any potential performance advantage.

For this reason I believe some companies who may be approaching the use of HR metrics for the first time, should read this paper that I prepared some time ago but which has not been published hitherto outside the Human Capital Standards Group.

The suggested metrics in the paper owe their origins to various influences, including discussions among the group. The formulas for profit per employee and turnover per employee, for example, are measures used by Saratoga, part of PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Unlike the Gallup Q12 questionnaire , claimed by its originators to be protected by copyright, the engagement questions proposed here have not been subjected to rigorous testing. But there is no desire to impose copyright limitations. The rationale for this is spelled out in the paper.

I doubt very much that copyright could be attached to a single question since establishing the origins of that question would be extremely difficult. Besides, what is knowledge without questions? It may, on the other hand, be possible to pursue an action against anyone using a set a questions such as the Q12 without permission. Whether those who brought the action could make it stick is another matter. For this reason, however, I have avoided any organisation that seeks to secure ownership over their metrics.

The question asking how likely someone may be to recommend their employer to a potential recruit is one that was strongly advocated by Fred Reichheld and discussed within this column.

I think, incidentally, that proprietary thinking is misguided. Measurement should be boundaryless. It is too important to be in the perview of any particular organisation. Imagine if the French were to licence the use of the metric system, or if the British were to claim sovereignty over certain imperial measurements.

Measures find their own meaning through regular and widespread use. In that sense I would not wish to deter anyone from using the Gallup measures which I am sure are excellent. It is the proprietorial fences that some organisions try to draw around metrics that troubles me.

You will notice that quite a few measures in the paper are designed to establish people's attitudes or opinions. I believe that asking people to rate the quality of management (and leadership) in their organisation is an honest approach to measuring leadership and management effectiveness. Such an approach would build meaning if used consistently over time. Equally it would mean relatively little if the question were asked only once for the very reason that measurement must be related to something (as in the rule of thumb)to carry meaning.

You only know what cold is if you have experienced warmth. Equally what we might describe as "cold" in summer could pass for "mild" in winter. Context and comparison is vital for meaning in measurement.

As a rule I would say that no measure should be used alone, particularly when looking at people. As Gillian Stamp, director of the Bioss Foundation said in a presentation to the HR Society today, people are messy. I'm confident that human beings are far too complex animals to be perfectly measurable. That is as it ought to be. On the other hand, if measurement can be used as an aid to understanding, why should we avoid it?

It's difficult to make a case for sets of measures that are not widely used. If they have not been tested there can be no claim for their performance effectiveness. But the measures I have outlined in the paper represent the kind of focus I would adopt in my own business if I ran one.

I welcome the new report for taking us another step on the way to a better understanding of the principles of human capital discussed in this series of articles. But it is just one step and there is still a long way to go.

Temporary work - a rock and a hard place

There is trouble brewing for the Labour government in the widespread support - more than a 100 Labour MPs - gathered behind a private member's bill seeking to improve the employment rights for the UK's 1.4m temporary workers.

Gordon Brown, the prime minister, is trying to appease party members and trade unions by offering to set up a commission that will look in to the rights of temporary workers.

He is caught between a rock and a hard place. Lined up in favour of better conditions are the trade unions and many in his own party. But opposing the move is the Confederation of British Industry and most of the UK staffing industry.

Just to complicate the picture, whether or not the private member's bill of Andrew Miller, Labour MP for Ellesmere Port, succeeds, many of the same provisions in his bill are also included in the Agency Workers Directive that has been in and out of the European Council for a number of years.

The directive was back on the agenda last December but was not put to a vote. There are signs, however, that the opposing block of countries - the UK, Germany, Malta, Ireland, Poland and Denmark - could be crumbling.

The French are expected to make a renewed push to implement the directive when they get the presidency later this year, tying in a bit of horse trading involving the working time directive.

In some European employment sectors, it should be remembered, the directive will be establishing temporary working where it does not exist at present. But among UK agencies who are paid for providing temporary workers, the proposed legal change is seen as a step backwards.

What about the temporary workers themselves? My eldest son happens to be one. He was ill the other week and missed a day's work for which he was not paid. His full time colleagues, in similar circumstances get sick pay. That does not seem fair.

On the other hand I too am a kind of temporary worker with arrangements working for various clients. I charge them separately for each piece of work. If I don't work I don't get paid. Even worse, I could be sued for breach of contract. That's business. I don't have a problem with that.

Any legislation must balance the need for fairness - which is a real issue - with the desire of many people and employers to negotiate flexible working arrangements. An employee's rights sometimes equate to an employer's costs. It is not usually so black and white, however.

An employer who loses an employee through maternity leave, say, may be amply rewarded by that same employee over time. On the other hand the employer may sometimes be left in the lurch when a mother decides to leave for good after holding out the possibility of returning to her job for the full statutory term. Employers could be forgiven some bitterness when that happens.

There will need to be some give and take over this legislation. At present the directive envisages that full employment rights would come in to play after six weeks with any employer. That period may need to be extended.

Human Resources - a necessary evil?

People have been asking me if I have a view on the remarks made by Luke Johnson in the Financial Times over a week ago. He described human resources management as a "necessary evil" among other things.

I suppose his gratuitous one-sided views filled a few column inches and drew some praise and criticism in equal measure to the FT web site. It usually has that effect when you say something controversial. But it was a bit silly to use the kind of language that, if you were of a mind, you could apply to all kinds of business functions.

You could say that entrepreneurs were a necessary evil. The world might be a lot more pleasant without some of the misfits that start businesses. You could say employees were a necessary evil. Who wants to experience the pain of employing someone? Then you might have a rant about government, taxation or benefits culture and you could go on in the same ridiculous vein to moan about every difficult aspect of your business.

The problem with making things or providing services is that it involves work, often more work than can be achieved by a single individual. Once people are employed collectively in large numbers there is a need to administer a whole bundle of things: recruitment, pay, holidays, sickness, training, working conditions, health and safety, work space, equipment, discipline, employment law. The list gets longer. Entrepreneurs are not very good at this.

I can see why people such as Mr Johnson grow frustrated. But the answer is not to shoot the administrator. What really saddened me about this attack is that it is given house room in a newspaper that prides itself on providing balanced argument.

Mervyn Davies, chairman of Standard Chartered bank last week described the comments as "pathetic". "The guy doesn't know what he's talking about. The reality is that we're in a people industry where talent is an increasingly scarce commodity," he said.

I really do think there needs to be a debate about the role of HRM and its relationship with other management disciplines. But I don't plan to get my information from Mr Johnson's personal dragon's den. If anyone is looking for my support for this kind of narrow rant I will say no more than the TV entrepreneurs: "I'm out."

Ghost of a job

Talking to Kevin Kelly, chief executive of Heidrick & Struggles, the headhunters, before writing my column last week, I was wondering how he found the time to write within the busy daily schedule he had outlined in his new book, CEO, The Low-down on the Top Job.

"I didn't," he said very matter of factly, "He did," pointing across the room towards Stuart Crainer, one half of the management writing business Crainerdearlove. Stuart Crainer and Des Dearlove have been working together in a successful journalists' partnership for some years now.

Ghost writers are not given enough credit in writing management books. Yes, they are well paid, but I think that there should be a publishing convention of mentioning their name on the cover, not merely in the acknowledgements where typically they are thanked for their "help" often when they have written the whole book.

Writers like Crainer and Dearlove who have accumulated a good working knowledge of management theory are thin on the ground. It's much easier to find a chief executive.