Interview with Edgar Schein - Org Change Guru.

I came across an article this week posted on the the Booz & Company "Strategy + Business" website which includes a very good interview with Edgar Schein, MIT’s sage of organizational culture, explaining why the quest for accountability within an organisations culture should start with interdependence.  

Read the article <here>.

Govt Review of Sickness Absence

I join the CIPD in welcoming government’s major review of sickness absence as part of its shake-up of welfare reform.  See the CIPD's comments < here>.

Good control of attendance at work is critical on many fronts, not least the burden that long term sickness absence places upon the welfare state.  Form an organisation's perspective, ensuring that people have an attitude and culture of attendance is far easier to manage than attempting to manage absence issues.  It is also far more cost effective to keep and develop current employees than it is to recruit and train up new employees who have left on medical grounds.

Corporate Manslaughter laws finally show their teeth.

A jury at Winchester Crown Court this week found Cotswold Geotechnical Holdings guilty of the Corporate Manslaughter of en employee in September 2008.  The firm denied the charges, but a police investigation found that the company had a “cavalier attitude” to health and safety.  The company has been fined £385,000 to be paid over 10 years.

The introduction of Corporate Manslaughter laws has had a long and rocky history and I am sure that this case will get supporters of the legislation and those opposed to it re-join the debate on the pros and cons of the law.  

From the perspective of protecting the health and safety of employees it has to be a good thing as company executives can now be held to account in court for the failings of their company but the law falls short of holding them individually responsible.  

Personally, I do not think a fine of any size would ever remove the feelings of remorse and accountability from an executive or senior manager who is responsible for an organisation where a fatal workplace injury has occurred.  I believe most reasonable human beings will put the protection of the health and safety of their employees ahead of making business profit.....assuming that they are aware of what is going on in their organisation.

So hopefully, it will be this feature that gives the new law it's teeth.  Managers and Executives MUST know what is going on in their organisation and understand the culture that they are leading.

Further details on the case can be found here: 

http://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/pm/articles/2011/02/engineering-firm-first-to-be-guilty-of-corporate-manslaughter.htm?wa_src=email&wa_pub=cipd&wa_crt=news_3&wa_cmp=pmdaily_170211

Public Sector Change Management

I see that the government today announced plans to have local authorities wanting to pay their executives more than £100k will have to seek approval of the councillors. (See BBC report - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12473979)

Whilst I can understand the "populist" reasoning behind this, I am not convinced that the policy will actually help control costs in the public sector and help balance the budget deficit.  The public sector is facing immense challenges that will require very strong and committed leadership to overcome.  The changes will only be successful if the leadership can engage the workforce in the change process.  I see this new idea as not being helpful in bringing leaders and employees closer together.

Social Networking for Businesses

An interesting post on the Chemicals Northwest Blogsite today concerning the rise of "social networking" type tools in the business arena.

To quote:  "Focused internally these capabilities [social networking tools] produce great returns – 30% of companies report increased speed of access to knowledge or experts, while 20% report decreasing travel costs, increased employee satisfaction and reduced time to market for products/services.  If internal networking is powerful, the step change is to be found in combining both external and internal networking; using technology to build closer relationships with the supply chain, peers or partner organisations. Such organisations are in the top 3%, seeing greater benefits for employees, customers and partners."

These recently, use of these social networking tools has been limited outside of the "social" arena but it is clear that businesses both small and large are getting on the bandwagon and with the speed of change that we see in the IT development field, business leaders will ignore this at the peril.

Read more at:

http://www.chemicalsnorthwest.org.uk/blog/it_u2019s_time_for_the_enterprise_to_exploit_the_technology_behind_the_soci/

Who are the Best Companies for Leadership ?

Every year the Hay Group undertake a survey on who the best organisations are across the world for leadership.  The research asks employees to rank their own organisation and also indicate the organisations they admire for their approach to leadership.  The research also gives us an insight into the features that make these companies stand out as paragons of good practice.


So what defines good leadership in these companies.....the research work suggests the following are all features of good leadership:

• They encourage a good work-life balance in employees through, amongst other things, family friendly policies.
• They embrace change and use it to their advantage.
• They engage and involve their employees and have a collaborative approach to getting things done.
• They actively manage succession planning and not just for the elite high performers of 'critical' job stations.
• They celebrate diversity within the organisation and gain value from the difference of ideas and opinions that result from a broad diversity.
• They encourage people to learn from others inside and outside the organisation looking to share and utilise best practices.
• They do not work with complex organisation structures.  Everyone is expected to lead as required.

Full details of the research can be found here:  <best companies for leadership>

Easy isn't it ??? So why doesn't every organisation follow these examples ???

Welcome.

Welcome to the Beaufort Performance Management Blog....watch this space to see how it develops !