Associated Press
Photos/AP Photo/Matt Dunham - BBC head of Human Resources Lucy
Adams arrives at Portcullis House in London, Monday, Sept. 9,
2013.
Lucy Adams:
Outgoing BBC HR director on Byford pay-off
ITN 3:30
Mark Thompson:
Move to axe senior executives saved money
ITN 1:52
It's official:
Lucy Adams has managed to kill off the HR profession once and for
all. For years now the Human Resources profession has been
navel-gazing about its own status: whether it should or shouldn't
deserve a seat on the board of a company; whether it should or
shouldn't be called HR (should it, perhaps, be called Human Capital
Management, Personnel, or my personal favourite, Human Remains) -
you know, all those really pressing questions that determine the
success of a business.
Finally, Adams has
managed to confirm our suspicions about HR all along: it is a
pointless department that does little for the bottom line of a
business. In the case of unnecessarily huge pay offs at the BBC, HR
has actually helped to take away from the bottom line. As well as,
let's not forget, failing miserably to uphold the kind of
integrity, respect and transparency we could be forgiven to expect
from the self-declared "people people". Nice one.
Unfortunately, in
showing us quite just how pointless HR is, Adams has just dented
the dreams of thousands of career-happy girls who go into HR to
"prove their worth" and secure their path to the top. (Or hang on,
let's mull over this again: is that, near the top, in a committee
that sits just underneath the board, or at the top, actually on the
board. Debate #pointlessHR).
Seven in 10
members of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development,
the HR trade body, are female. HR has always been and is still an
unashamedly female-dominated profession. So girls, it's time to
pick another profession if you want to make something of your life.
After the BBC human resources director was accused of presiding
over “corporate fraud and cronyism” over huge pay-offs to former
executives - with HR coming out badly - why would anyone,
especially women, want to work in HR anymore?
I've come across
plenty of HR chiefs in my time who openly admit the reason they got
into HR is because they are "no good with numbers". How can anyone
honestly expect to get on in business without being good at
numbers? This is HR's problem - plenty in the profession have told
me so over the years.
Nobody quite knows
what 'HR' does anyway. I used to think it was 'hiring and firing'
people - that seems like a reasonable definition, doesn't it? But
most HR chiefs I've ever met tell me they simply hate that label,
that's degrading, they instead prefer to 'outsource' hiring and
firing. No, HR is instead obsessed with things like performance
management and thought leadership. Come again?
If HR insists on
using jargon and carrying on 'not being any good with numbers', is
it any wonder Adams has got such a bad rap for her actions? For
it's not just her as an individual that people are having a go at:
it's the entire HR profession. HR directors are fast becoming the
new 'estate agents' hated by everybody. So much so that the whole
sorry saga has turned into somewhat of a BBC pantomime; an early
Christmas special with us as the free spectators.
Adams, who's
reportedly been booed in the BBC newsroom twice in recent days, has
been subject to hissing before; when she presided over the
thousands of job cuts at the BBC a few years ago. She's earned her
new nickname of the "wicked witch"; the whole thing has become a
spectacle. But it's a spectacle in which the ' wicked witch ' has
changed the face of HR forever: its doubtless demise.
Having said that,
an HR chief is damned if they do and damned if they don't. In
Adams' case, her remit was near-on impossible. She either had to
reduce the BBC headcount by persuading managers to leave, hence
awarding pay offs, or she would miss her targets and be criticised
by bosses. Either way she's between a rock and a hard place. The
bigger problem here is why companies (public or private) can't ask
or expect people to leave their jobs when the boss wants them
to.
The 'compensation
culture' that we live in has made it normal for staff being made
redundant to expect to get an extra pay off, on the understanding
they won't sue the firm for unfair dismissal. The BBC is in many
respects no different: the pay offs could well have been 'deals' to
avoid costly tribunals and save taxpayers' money in the long run.
But we should really question why this is 'normal'; it is this
unwritten understanding that makes it a huge risk for firms to take
on staff in the first place.
On the other hand,
this is the BBC and that's our money, making its use of pay offs
entirely different to the private sector. Again, as an HR person,
you're damned if you do, damned if you don't. Again, why would you
want to enter the HR profession?
Official figures
today show the jobs market is on the up again: private sector
employers have begun hiring tens of thousands of full-time workers.
Perhaps it's time for all those women rising up the ranks of HR to
use their job interviewing and application knowledge to good use
and change careers now before it's too late. Save their own
careers, before meddling with everyone else's.
As for Adams, we
probably haven't seen the end of her at the BBC. It's been reported
that she loves salsa and ballroom dancing : perhaps she'll be on
the Strictly Come Dancing Christmas special? I for one will be
watching.
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