IPG Personnel

THE RIGHT BALANCE

It's a funny old world, not least if you're in Human Resources (HR).

As an HR specialist, or indeed a recruiter for the HR sector, there are often more pressing (and, of course, much less important) things to consider than a lacklustre world economy and a surfeit of redundancies at some of the larger global firms, which have been widely reported of late. Things like how to explain what an HR person does. Accountants, architects or doctors will be proffered an approving nod of the head after replying to the question: "So, what do you do for a living?" Mention HR and you are likely to be faced with a quizzical stare.

Recruiters are sometimes viewed with particular puzzlement, perhaps not without good cause. To a vast majority of people whose only contact with a human resources department has been a rosy interview and a potentially orchid-bound exit, the field is certainly not without its detractors. But times change. And so the industry's profile has changed. You'll find one of the best illustrations of just how far things have moved forward in what used to be called 'Personnel and Training' by noting the rise of the industry's official body, the Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development (CIPD). The CIPD's original incarnation, the Welfare Workers' Association, couldn't have had humbler beginnings. Founded at a conference in York over 90 years ago, its aim was to, in its own words, 'foster harmonious relations between masters and men'. Now, as one of the largest institutes of its kind in Europe with around 100,000 members, the CIPD is committed to ensuring work is more effective for organisations and more satisfying for the people they employ. Recent Chartered status recognises the business impact that personnel professionals can propagate. And, for a whole host of reasons, HR, or Personnel and Training, is very much in the public eye.

Work-life
The wonderful world of work is more of a hot topic than ever before. Take the BBC's award-winning programme, The Office, for example. The comedy of management errors and human pitfalls has transcended the usual niche occupied by other great documentaries to become a television classic. You probably know who Dilbert is, and his feline, bespectacled HR nemesis. Since personnel moved out of the shadows of payroll and facilities to become the leading exponent of people power and boardroom moving and shaking, its buzzwords have become staples of our modern vocabulary.

One such high-scoring phrase, the 'work-life balance' is perhaps the most telling of our attitude to working life in the 21st century. It has led HR to delve into the uncharted territory of 'the real nuts and bolts' that make people what they are. Feeling the work-life squeeze is a polite and boardroom-friendly way of defining the lack of motivation we all suffer from at some stage, given our time-pressured, information-overloaded way of life. But it also highlights, despite being shrouded in the kind of cliché that management-speak notoriously evokes, how attitudes to the people process have changed.

As I write, the organisation Employers for Work-Life Balance is in the process of pulling down the shutters, after spending the last three years promoting the business case for personal and professional balance and offering advice on best practice. Championed three years ago by some 20 employers, following consultation with a senior member of the government, its raison d'être was simple: organisations are improved considerably by offering new ways of working that not only meet the business needs but allow people the flexibility to fulfil their responsibilities and aspirations outside the office. It set about extending the reach of its campaign by highlighting companies that were already benefiting from it. Business-to-business initiatives complemented the governmental objectives, including regional seminars and small business workshops. You could say that it's a case of 'job done, pats on the back'. After all, one could conclude that the term is now firmly accepted in the business world as an invaluable case for subjective approaches to employee satisfaction. On the flipside, one could argue that it has failed to convince the business world of the benefits.

Have a think about the issue of working from home, one of the practical applications of work-life balance. Aside from the ability to discuss the imminent merger in the acquisitions department whilst tackling a bowl of cornflakes, feeding the cat and keeping one eye on the impending fracas between an irate mother-of-three and Robert Kilroy-Silk on television, where does the jury sit on its validity? Well, research suggests that benefits remain ambiguous (as most research invariably tends to do!). Choosing where to work simply represents another perk for those who already have an advantaged position in the job market, a reward given only to those who can be trusted to deliver, wherever they decide to work. Those who have the option to work at home tend to be amongst the highly educated. They also appear to sit at or near the top of the occupational hierarchy. No prizes for guessing that they are invariably better paid.

Moving forward
Of course, such initiatives are steeped in marketing hype. In fact, HR has its own particular public-relations angle nowadays - that of marketing itself and its initiatives to the people within the organisation. Over the last couple of years, the term 'employee communications' has cropped up. Happy, informed people must be more productive. The correlation between employee attitudes and financial performance has been subject to much debate, not least in the HR press. Those small to medium-sized enterprises with managers who set high standards for themselves and their teams invariably come out on top. After all, they're living the business culture, which is often small enough to maintain a high level of integrity, rather than reading it from an internal communication strategy document. But, as corporate cultures develop, HR practitioners are always on the lookout for ways to maintain the integrity of the 'people brand'. Thus, yet another complex strategy may become distilled into a buzzword and find its way into the corporate dictionary.

These are just two examples of much-fêted 'people angles' where the problem in implementation may seem simple. But there is still a divide between what an organisation says and what an organisation does when it comes to its staff. Fortunately, one of the most contentious debates ranging through HR right now is whether strategies penned by leading 'experts' have become too far removed from the issues facing those in the operational frontline. The suspicion is that such strategies can simply do more harm than good.

The fact that HR initiatives like work-life balance and employee communications are a little nearer the tips of the public tongues than ever before is positive. Also, it's intriguing that the business press has cottoned on to people management as a worthwhile editorial cause. Why? Because it shows that people managers seem to be visibly breaking fresh ground, trying out fresh angles to solve age-old problems. People management, in turn, is becoming more visible and is seen to be more valuable as a business discipline. And this must be a good thing.

For further information, please call +44 (0) 20 8877 1777, send a fax to +44 (0) 20 8874 3181 or e-mail (mail@ipgpersonnel.com). Our website is located at (www.ipgpersonnel.com).

Supplied by courtesy of Irving Gordon, Managing Director, IPG Personnel Consultants Ltd