Sense and nonsense

My Uncommon Sense column in Human Resources Magazine is to become highly uncommon after next month as it's had the chop. This is one very good reason why I would never advise anyone to give up their day job without some deep thinking.

Charles Handy's freelance portfolio lifestyle can be an excellent way of making a living when times are good. But when budgets get squeezed as they are just now it is the outsiders whose bum cheeks are closest to those who wield the boot.

My own bum cheeks haven't stopped smarting for more than a year as a once healthy portfolio has been whittled away to a single monthly column in the FT, and who knows how long that might last? The wolf is not at the door anymore, he's making himself comfortable in my favourite armchair, pouring himself a gin and tonic and watching repeats of three little piggies - apart from the ending; he doesn't watch the last bit.

Meanwhile I have started a new book, not about work this time, but about the shape of things to come, although it will not be forecasting the end of the job, a theme I once explored in this old column. Funnily enough one of my sons is inventing computer games these days. Yes, times are hard in the Donkin household. I hope I'll be able to write a happy ending.

The greatest asset

As a columnist with fairly strong views on things I'm used to criticism. But on this occasion I can only assume that it is because my argument has been misunderstood and that's irritating because it means I have not expressed myself well enough.

I was writing in Human Resources Magazine about the lessons that human resources professionals might draw from the bail out of the Royal Bank of Scotland which, without that bail out, would have suffered the fate of the Monty Python Norwegian Blue - it would have ceased to exist.

One of the things I said, and which I continue to say because I think the expression is dishonest, is that it is wrong for a company boss or a head of HR to declare that "our people are our greatest asset."

I say this because of the accounting convention to declare assets on one side of the balance sheet and employers on the other under costs. This also puts employment costs under the heading of liabilities. While I'm sure no-one would declare "our people are our greatest liability," I think few company bosses would demure from considering employees as their greatest cost.

For this reason I don't think it is helpful to use such accounting terms as assets and liabilities when considering the value of a workforce. Of course people are valuable. In some cases they are the only real value a business has apart from other fragile intangibles such as goodwill. It explains why I prefer to think of people as the living, breathing investment capital of a business. When a company recruits someone it is investing hard cash and not a little faith in the ability of the individual to add value to the balance sheet.

Training, promoting and rewarding that individual might well increase their capital worth. That is what investing is all about. But thinking of people in terms of asset values is less helpful since people can never be described as fixed assets. They can improve their value for a business or their value might depreciate.

It is why companies must think of inputs, outputs and value when looking at employees. Nor should they use such assessments purely with internal employees. External skills have a value too. Some companies prosper by outsourcing almost all of their talent. In fact some ventures, such as a West End musical, rely entirely on assemblies of talent. In such productions it is probably better to think of "we" in a collective sense than in the ownership sense of "our people."

Even companies with employees on their payroll should beware the "our people" claim and certainly any boss should be careful about talking about "my people." It is a highly presumptive phrase. People can never be owned. For that reason they should never be regarded as assets, not as long as they have legs to walk away.

You may, of course, believe this to be "tosh" but I don't know how to express my thoughts on this issue any other way. People are our greatest investment - now I can go along with that.

And the winner is......

Yes it’s that time of year when people and companies get awards. I hate awards. You don’t say no to one and it’s always nice to get one, but they are so subjective and many of them are not fully representative of their industries.

Frankly if you can’t put “award winning” before whatever piece of self-marketing you are preparing these days you might as well go home. Award winning has become so ubiquitous that it is losing its meaning as a result.

In my own case you might as well talk about Richard Donkin, the “air breathing” journalist. The awards I won were such a long time ago, reflecting a time of my life when I was slightly less cynical. I’m still proud of them, but they sit there on the CV like old medals that are rarely taken out of the drawer.

These days I get to sample the other side of the process as a judge in both The Work Foundation's Workworld Awards for journalists and the Confederation of British Industry’s Human Capital Awards.

Why do I do it? Two reasons: Firstly, it’s nice that someone thinks you are experienced enough to recognise quality when you see it; secondly, it helps to keep you in touch with who is doing good stuff.

I know from experience, then, how much of a lottery they are. I have seen how a seemingly runaway winner can be overtaken on the rails by a back marker whipped to the front by a powerful advocate among the judges.

Another thing I don’t like about most of the awards is that you are required to enter them. Many people and companies simply don’t bother. Either they are too busy to enter, they’re fed up of losing or they won last year and are suffering from “award fatigue.” This means that a lot of good people and companies are overlooked.

Then there are awards themselves. How many of them exist as a genuine form of recognition and how many are inspired by the marketing department of a particular organisation? Let’s not kid ourselves. The main reason there are so many awards is that they are about marketing and promotion.

In human resources there are so many. Personnel Today magazine has them. Human Resources Magazine has them and the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) and People Management has its People Management Award. Then there’s the CBI awards that I have already mentioned.

There ought to be an awards bunker for those who want to avoid all those dickie-bow events at Grosvenor House in London. At least the HR people maintain a reasonable sense of decorum, unlike a minority who attend journalists’ awards that often degenerate in to a bun fight among the tabloids.

Perhaps there should be an award for the most professional awards ceremony.