Category: Uncategorized

MIND’S EYE – Please Support Simon’s Initiative

Merv pointing

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The above is a piece of artwork that the wonderful Simon Heath created for me. I’ve been lucky enough to have recently been the subject of 3 pieces created by him…the other two are below. It was created in response to some joshing on Twitter between myself and Perry Timms about my ‘pointing’ avatars and Rodin’s The Thinker.

The three pieces I’m using here just scratch the surface of the range of artwork he can produce – you can see a lot more of his work, both the professional and the fun reactive pieces, on his blog Work Musing.

He is a very talented illustrator, animator and cartoonist who works with businesses on communications artworking. I have met him once and found him to be warm, considerate, intelligent and very giving of his time, and I want to bring to your attention something that he is doing to help raise money for the mental health charity MIND.

You can read the full background on his own blog here – inspired by Jon Bartlett he is going to create a piece of unique artwork for a blind auction. Jon has recently blogged for MIND and his January post for Alison Chisnell’s guest blog series started the HR for Mental Health initiative.

Here is Simon’s offer, in his own words…

“I have been inspired by Jon to create something unique to raise money for this wonderful charity and I want someone to have the chance to determine what that is and to own the result. You can find examples of my cartoon work elsewhere on this blog. The premise is simple. If you would like a bespoke cartoon (no larger than A4 in size) created to your specification, you should email me at sjheath@live.co.uk with your bid. The auction is blind so you will not be aware of the value of other bids. The bidding period will last from the moment this post is published until midnight (British Summer Time) on Friday 14th June 2013. On Saturday 15th June, I will contact the highest bidder to notify them that they have submitted the winning bid and to find out what subject matter they would like the cartoon to cover. With their permission I will announce their name and chosen topic both here and on Twitter on the same day and also to publish the final artwork here for you all to see. I will of course need to see proof of donation”

I urge all regular readers to get involved with this initiative.

I’m not joining the auction as Simon has kindly already created these pieces of bespoke artwork about me…in recognition of which I will make my own donation to MIND.

Can’t wait to seeing the winning artwork in a couple of weeks!

Evolution

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Merv Recruiting poster

The Bank That Doesn’t Like to Say NatYes

You may have picked up some of the online chatter around the new NatWest advert. If you’ve not seen it then it’s quite a nice ad, you can watch it here…and it ends with the call to action

NatYes2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The main message is that they say yes to 9 out of 10 mortgage applications (based on applications submitted over the last 15 months and excluding buy to let). And if you want to find out more you just ‘Search NatYes’

Clever, huh! Simple and punchy.

Except in 2013 if you tell people to search NatYes that’s exactly what they’ll do. On Google, Bing or whatever their search engine of choice is. And when you do you get…

NatYes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That’s right, one paid adwords ad. Try the domain names natyes.com and natyes.co.uk – and they’re available! D’oh! So no real further information. Nothing in the general listings.

At this stage I refer you to Gary Robinson’s excellent blog NatYes or NatLess: NatWest Campaign Lacking TV & Digital Integration – a great analysis from an experienced digital marketer on the missed opportunities.

I noticed something else about it too. The print ads show a graphic of a mouse with NatYes next to it….so they are telling you to search it from a computer as a way of connecting with the campaign. Except that all you’ll get is a Google ad, which I suspect is quite expensive. No other form of digital or social engagement to back up the campaign.

When I blogged about HMV earlier this year it was to highlight their failure to grasp the evolving digital and social landscape, and tellingly the failure to understand changes in consumer behaviours, and with NatWest here’s another case of a large brand failing to do the same. Or maybe it’s their advisers who are being remiss. I’m sure NatWest have a digital marketing team…were they consulted?

You see, the image of the mouse gave the game away for me…they are thinking of office desktop computers. How many people will ‘search NatYes’ using a mouse? Very few I would think.

If the call to action is at the end of a TV ad, and on newspaper ads, then the device for doing the searching is likely to be a smartphone, tablet or laptop. In fact they didn’t need a symbol at all! Merely the word ‘Search’ tells people what they want to know. The ad is aimed at a demographic that don’t need to be told to search.

Mouse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So is the mouse a giveaway? Millions spent on a campaign, but a telling failure to understand consumer behaviour in the most important call to action.

The message is you’ve got a 90% chance of getting your mortgage approved…the call to action of ‘Search NatYes’ appears a gratuitous, or ill thought out and planned, one.

In the way that ‘Go to work on an egg’ was probably pitched with the sentiment ‘Look, no-one is literally going to believe you can travel to work on an egg’ maybe ‘Search NatYes’ was pitched with ‘Look, very few are literally going to do a search for it’

Be Social to Get Your People Social – The 3 E’s and Pizza

Clearly the readers of this blog like social media – my last post became my most viewed of the year within 48 hours, and the second most viewed is this one on social media judging.

I did get messages from those who wanted to agree with me but couldn’t publicly, and I also had some DM conversations with people who felt that it was the C-suite who were the barrier in their organisations – again they were unable to say so publicly. If anyone is up for it, I would be really keen to publish anonymously from any guest who wanted to write about their experiences.

One question that I’m often asked at conferences and events is how to get employees using social channels for business. It’s one thing getting buy in at either C or management level and sometimes another to get people using it effectively.

I gave a presentation at the recent Social Media Results Conference on some of the ways to get user generated content, with a particular emphasis on internal involvement.

My advice is to keep it simple and keep to the 3 E’s…Empower, Enable and Encourage.

Empower

Pretty much everyone in your organisation has some kind of digital footprint. Without going generationalisationist I think you can pretty much guarantee that any Millenial, Gen Y, Gen X type (and older ones too, now) will have a Facebook page as a minimum. Anyone in a client facing role or a specialist area – sales, marketing, finance, technology, HR, customer service – will almost certainly have a LinkedIn profile too. So don’t tell me that there’s no social capability in the company!

They know the tools to use; they just need the green light to use them. So let them! Remember its guidelines not policies, and conversations not targeted conversions.  And make twitter accessible too.

Enable

Of course, there’s a big difference between posting a picture from this morning’s dog walk, or adding something to your key skills section, and sharing something about what your company does. So in addition to giving people the green light to use social channels you need to up-skill them too. In a way that makes it easy and fun, not a chore.

The last thing you want is for people to get the impression you’re increasing their workload so this has to be natural, let them have the tools and have some fun with it.

Encourage

It’s not a test with a right and wrong answer. People won’t always get it right at first, which is why you need to encourage. Most early tweets can be embarrassing, so let people develop their own voice and style. Nothing will turn someone off quicker than being told they’re not doing it right…immediately it will feel like a measurable task , and if it isn’t in their job description then they won’t want to do it!

And, finally…

Be social to get social

I hold a monthly lunch – the Social Lunch – and get a group of colleagues together who want to find out more about social networks and how they can use them. I get some pizzas in and we talk about social, particularly how the can use it for themselves. Everyone is keen to know more about Twitter, so that’s where much of the focus has been. Some months we get someone else along from the business to talk about how they use the networks. We’re creating a blog too that everyone will contribute to.

It’s been going for a year and we have a loyal group that, crucially, keeps getting added to. People are talking about being the twitter champions for their teams, and more people from their teams want to find out what’s happening.

The pizza element is important. It needs to be fun and social, and there needs to be something in it for them, else it becomes a missable training session. Remember…

‘Is that cheese, tomato and lettuce on malted brown? I’ll have one of those please’. Said. No-one. Ever.

‘Is that a Chicken Supreme with extra mushrooms? I’ve never tried that before, I must have a slice’. Says. Everyone.

So make it fun and sociable and everyone will be keen to help share your message.

After all, your employer brand is what your past and present employees say about you, so why give them a bad experience of using the channels through which you need them to communicate it?

SMR2

SMR1

Hey Gurus, Leave those C – Suites Alone

Evolution

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(many thanks to the wonderful illustrator, animator and cartoonist Simon Heath for this graphic)

Q: What’s the biggest barrier to embedding social media in your business
A: Getting buy in from the C Level

How many times have you heard that over the last 3 or 4 years? Loads of times, and it’s still being trotted out. Last week I was at a Digital Shoreditch event where a distinguished panel (of suppliers who also happen to be industry commentators) said much the same thing.

You need to get buy in from the C Level. Make the business case. Show them ROI. They sign the cheques and need to see proof.

I call bullsh*t!

In my experience most of the C suite are just fine with this. A lot of them like the online celebrity status it brings them, the opportunity to talk about their business (and have it talked about) and they place trust in the managers they appoint to make the right calls on usage, content and guidelines. Social networking platforms are conversation channels – no-one ever called the C suite a barrier to putting in a phone system, did they?

Middle managers are another thing entirely. In common with a number of owner managers in smaller businesses, many that I have met see it as a hindrance. They don’t like the transparency and immediacy it brings, the hierarchical flattening that comes with it, and the fact that those they manage know more about it (and are more adept at it) than they are.

They often have no time and little inclination and wrongly fear that their charges will spend too much time on it and will therefore fail to deliver the outcomes for which the manager is accountable.

So what’s the main barrier then?

It’s the structure. If you’ve got a traditional post-industrial age corporate structure of owners/directors supported by the usual hierarchies of management (senior managers, middle managers, junior managers) then the line managers who have the responsibility and accountability for ensuring things get done inevitably like to manage processes. That’s why e-mail is so prevalent… it’s all about managing activity and giving direction, with its cc capability giving visibility to the managing and direction.

Not everyone likes to learn new tricks that take them out of their comfort zone, especially when they have a position of responsibility.

So if you want to influence them here are three points to take into account next time you need to jump the barrier.

If you make people use it they’ll use it badly. You can’t force it, mandate it or set KPIs for it else they will do it wrong. Its conversation and you want online conversationalists. Broadcast messages are the preserve of those who don’t understand conversation.

You can train people in how to best use the platforms but if they don’t naturally get it then it won’t happen for them. It starts with hiring people who are comfortable using them.

It’s evolution not revolution. From letter to phone to telegraph to fax to e-mail to mobile, business always adapts to shifting ways of communicating…particularly when their customers and clients start communicating with them using those ways.

What’s the cost of NOT doing it? How many times do you hear ‘we’re not ready for that?’ or ‘it’s a fad that won’t take off’? Most businesses learn the lesson when it hits them in the pocket…the question isn’t why should you use the platforms but what are you missing by not using them.

If you think you’re not ready then don’t bury your head in the sand, because I’ll tell you who are ready…current, former and lapsed customers/clients, and current, past and future employees. And no doubt a lot of your competitors too.

And remember, anyone who says ‘we pay people to work, not to play around on social media’ has little understanding of how the platforms work, how people use them, and how they can be used to positive effect in the business…so show them.

There’s no better way than to start with the following slides from Paul Taylor at Bromford Group, a business in the social housing sector that gets it. Maybe because they have a CEO who favours hiring people with a digital footprint because ‘all future leaders will need a positive digital footprint…without the ability to communicate across all platforms they won’t survive as credible leaders’

As Paul says in his latest blog ‘The medium is irrelevant. The conversation is everything’

Cries for Help from the Boomer Organisations

Regular readers will know that there are certain things that raise the hackles here at T Recs, amongst them are:

Hence it will come as no surprise that HR Magazine’s ‘Global war for talent will intensify as baby boomer leaders retire’ scored a complete full house on Merv’s bullshit bingo scorecard.

Not sure what’s more frustrating…that an executive search firm felt the need to release this self-serving guff or that a respected online news resource felt obliged to re-print the press release in the name of ‘journalism’.

So we have a search firm commissioning a report – the grandly titled ‘After the baby boomers; The next generation of leadership’ – which was conducted through telephone interviews with 100 senior executives between 2010 and 2012. I’m guessing that some of the 2010 conversations may be a little out of date now.

There is an executive summary of findings which contains sections with titles like:

  • The war for talent will intensify
  • Most organisations underserve female markets
  • The feminisation of leadership
  • Organisations need to ease the intergenerational transition

The opening statement is:

Should it matter to our future leadership that the world is undergoing unprecedented demographic, gender and cultural change? Or that a whole cohort of leadership, characterised by the baby boomer era, is about to step down? Is it possible for organisations to be ‘prepared’ for such fundamental changes and adapt to a different style f management? Or, as one respondent said about the next generation of leaders, “They may think about the world in a different way but that doesn’t make them poor leaders.”

And the conclusion is:

To continue to thrive, organisations must:

  • Transfer knowledge, by coaching, mentoring and codification.
  • Re-evaluate their organisational structure, including their incentive philosophy, and how they recruit and retain talent.
  • Build cultural awareness, designing leadership programmes that develop cultural diversity, flexibility and people skills.

I’m sure it’s a comfort to have Odgers around to help out, given that the next few years will clearly be the first time since before the industrial revolution that business leaders come up to retirement age and hand over to younger leaders. I’ll bet they’re glad that it’s been pointed out to them that they need to be grooming their new leaders, no doubt an easy thing to overlook when you’re running a large organisation.

Apparently only 41% of those interviewed thought their organisations ready ‘for the changing workplace demographics of age, gender and diversity’ but then a closer examination of the report shows only 9% believing their businesses to be not ready. (More scaremongering).

Now if you’ll allow me some generational stereotyping of my own, firms like Odgers and Deloittes (who authored the Gen Y research written about in my last blog) are, shall we say, Boomer organisations. They seem to have an unhealthy obsession with how different young people are.

And if the earlier section headings are anything to go by, women too. They even make a point in the introduction of mentioning that 30% of the leaders spoken to were women, whilst the use of the word ‘feminisation‘ to describe emotional intelligence and people skills is telling.

The generation of 45+year old business leaders have been well served by these Boomer organisations. They’ve found staff for them, helped them in their own careers, come in to do consulting around new projects and structures, and maybe, just maybe, those Boomer organisations are beginning to feel the winds of change themselves.

The next generation of business leaders may well have found shiny new ways to source talented staff, promote their own careers, and check the viability and feasibility of new projects and structures.

So maybe these attempts at creating a perceived problem for their core markets, that requires a solution that they can then help provide, are really just cries for help?

Here’s the blueprint – identify a problem with the young, developing workforce. Legitimise and amplify it by dressing the problem up as research or with a white paper (involving an academic or another Boomer organisation for extra effect) then offer simple solutions worded in a complex, serious way so that only by using your services will they be able to fully grasp and implement what needs to be done.

Well, you know something… I’m guessing most successful business leaders know this stuff already and know what needs to be done… and the younger, emerging leaders have a fairly good idea where to start cutting the budgets.

Generationalisationism

As a regular attendee and blogger at CIPD events I like the way they have got involved in, and tried to shape, conversations around youth unemployment and opportunities for tomorrow’s workforce.

In their centenary year it seems fitting that an organisation that came in to being with an aim to get children out of the workplace should now be spearheading efforts to get them in to work. I wrote about the Our Young People project last year and have written elsewhere about their newly launched research ‘Employers are from Mars, Young people are from Venus’.

However, mixed in between the learning and networking at the recent CIPD HRD conference were presentations of a different type that I could have done without…the dreaded ‘How to get the best out of/understand/manage/up-skill Gen Y’ bilge.

Generalisations about generations are nothing new (cap doffed to Gareth Jones for the inspiration behind the blog title btw) and I’ve written about it several times.

One speaker, a senior HR/Learning person from a major UK plc, hid behind the Deloitte Gen Y research with the usual generalisations – sense of entitlement, used to being placed on pedestals, lack of proactivity, dreamers, unrealistic – and even gave us an interesting conundrum. They don’t get information from people but prefer to source it online. This was seen as a problem as decisions are usually made in meetings. Yet barely two minutes later the presenter told us how difficult it was to organise internal meetings, problems over aligning diaries etc, whilst her 19 year old son can arrange a get together within a couple of minutes online. Opportunity or threat?

CIPD Gen

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Further comments such as ‘They’ve grown up in times of an economic boom’ are clearly nonsense as anyone born ‘93 onwards has hit adolescence in a time of global recession, but that doesn’t stop them being presented as perceived wisdom. We were also told they are the most researched generation, with more data existing on them than any other…I quite liked Matt Charney’s observation…

CIPDtweet4

 

 

 

 

 

In all honesty, I’m getting more and more uneasy with this type of conversation, not just because there’s so much of it and its nonsense anyway, but because it’s really just stereotyping whole groups of people by certain perceived traits, somehow to imply that they are inferior, different or require special treatment. Yes, I do find it worryingly close to racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, homophobia and the rest by a different name.

The casualness of the way stereotypes are bandied around makes me particularly uneasy. The ‘I know about this because I have a teenage child’ line is really just ‘some of my best friends are’ using other words. People who spout generationalisationisms don’t really mean it, they love them really, they’re important because they can use social networking etc…just like casual racism and sexism.

I don’t think this has any place at an HR conference, either here on in the US – check out Laurie Ruettimann’s blog on this subject, written after her experiences at a US HR conference the same week as the CIPD event.

Different people bring different skills to the workplace, and different ages bring different perspectives. An understanding of the different social, cultural, economic and academic influences that shape these perspective and values is one thing.

But discrimination is discrimination, and age discrimination works two ways. HR above all people should not have these crass, and untrue, generalisations anywhere near their mind-set…

A Passion for Learning

Some readers may remember a TV ad campaign a few years ago aimed at getting more people interested in teaching as a career. Most scenes showed a child engaged with learning in school and the strap line was…

You never forget a good teacher

It came to mind during a fairly dull session at last week’s CIPD HRD 2013 conference when an L&D professional was running through some, quite frankly, very dull content. He talked tools, measurement and the like but it was done in such a listless manner that it moved me to tweet…

CIPDtweet1

 

 

 

 

I’m lucky enough to be connected to a number of inspiring and creative learning types (check out #ldconnect) so I know that people with a real passion for learning are out there. (Some were in attendance, sadly not on stage but in the audience as guest bloggers). Some tweeted back straight away…

CIPDtweet2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I couldn’t help but reminisce on several previously overheard workplace conversations over the years. You know the ones…I’m sure we’ve all heard them…

‘Two day training course next week’
‘Poor you’
‘I know. There’s a new system they want us to learn about/supposedly they’re going to help me be a better manager/they’re bringing in some new performance review thing/seems our engagement scores are too low’ (delete where appropriate)
‘Sounds like a yawn’
‘Well at least it gets me away from the desk’
‘Yeah, but think of all the e-mails you’ll go back to’
‘Actually you’re right about that. I may cry off the course. Pressure of work ‘n all that’

Too many L&D sessions at the conference seemed to follow the route of programmes, metrics and ROI, tools and feedback scores. Perspiration instead of inspiration. Ticking boxes not engaging hearts and minds.

Then I went to a session that was different. Neil Morrison and Jo Mallia of Random House were talking about ‘Transition of Leaders – Applying a Cultural Mind-shift Change’. Here was a different vision of L&D, more along the inspiration lines, making learning sound fun, enlightening and vital Their people were ‘like sponges’ eager to learn more and improve. OK Neil did explain that publishing tends to attract people with curious minds, but still I felt in little doubt that having the right approach, with passionate and creative people, created a learning culture.

Their industry needed it too. Publishing is facing many challenges and needs new ways of thinking and a new mind-set. Jo fosters collaboration and group thinking, setting free the ‘pink elephants’ (mavericks)

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It wasn’t surprising that in the final questions one delegate called the session, to much applause, the best thing they had seen over the 2 day conference. You can read more on Mr Airmiles’ blog.

I’m sure there were many worthy presentations over the 2 day CIPD HRD Conference from L&D professionals who have a real belief in what they do, the importance and value of it. Too many that I went to sounded bland, delivered in front of busy, indecipherable power point slides. Whether this is down to the people who gave them, or the way that their work is perceived in their organisations I’m not sure. Many were from large organisations with programmes, so perhaps it’s telling that the two presentations that seemed to most engage the audience, and the assembled bloggers, were…

  • Random House – the one from Neil and Jo where heads of HR and L&D stood together, an aligned approach
  • Hanover Housing – a small business doing interesting things

The words that kept cropping up to describe both sessions were passion, inspiration, belief and purpose – maybe the benchmark words for Learning & Development (or People Development) that leaders should use when choosing their specialists…and conferences their presenters.

Social Media, Judging Others and The 5 Year Rule

The guy who first managed me in recruitment, the owner of the small agency I had joined, had a way of dealing with some of the slightly more overconfident outpourings of the younger, cockier me. He said…

“Write down what you just said.
Put it away.
Look at it again in 5 years’ time.
You’ll never believe you ever said that.”

It was a put down, deliberately aimed at making me feel immature with a lot to learn about the business world. Probably something I needed at the time, and certainly something that stayed with me. The 5 Year Rule. As individuals we do evolve, we learn, we gain experience and confidence. I had views, perspectives and opinions then that I didn’t have 5 years later. Probably not even 2 years later.

When it comes to social media I do wonder sometimes what to tell the kids. I see them using the platforms to communicate in their own way, in their own language and syntax, with their own friends and peers…trying to make their few followers laugh and trying to be more outrageous than each other.

Of course, at some stage they will be entering the workforce and all these old tweets, updates and snaps will be judged by an older generation who never said inappropriate things, made risqué jokes, swore and got drunk. Well, they did but only their close friends knew. Now they’re able to judge another generation by their own standards.

I expect stories of people in trouble for Twitter and Facebook updates to become so commonplace that we stop feeling the need to talk about them. But until then you will get storms like the hounding and eventual resignation of Paris Brown.

As Andy Hyatt from Hodes Group says in this blog:

“You see, part of being young is making mistakes. Saying and doing dumb things and learning from them.

As adults, we are supposed to understand this. We are supposed to provide the right environment to ensure that young people can grow into socially responsible adults. A positive learning environment. Teach them right from wrong. Ensure that children have access to facilities so they can maintain their physical, as well as intellectual wellbeing.

As adults, we are also supposed to recognise that sometimes, children can be childish: selfish, thoughtless, horrible and stupid. And more importantly, we are supposed to understand that this behaviour is only ‘acceptable’ (and again, I use the word loosely) until someone is deemed an adult. And this definition varies between the ages of 16 and 21 depending on where you are in the world”

I’m sure Paris Brown wasn’t the first and won’t be the last. Right now the next generation of public servants, low skilled service workers, MPs, doctors, journalists and bankers are saying what they damn well like on social media platforms. They’re dating on them, partying and sexting on them, and making people laugh on them.

I see them when I monitor mentions as part of the day job. I see more of the teen users now that I’ve got a search running for comments on the advert that my son is in. Often they have about 100 followers who they constantly try to amuse and/or shock. Sometimes they’ve got thousands of followers, and a level of interaction that some social media gurus can only dream of.

It’s no different whatever your generation. The humour, the insults, the in-speak are always different. The tone and content, the syntax and swear words look very different to an older person trying to judge out of context.

No-one thinks about the 5 year rule while they’re tweeting. Continue reading “Social Media, Judging Others and The 5 Year Rule” →

Pity the Child Who Has Ambition…

“Pity the child who has ambition, knows what he wants to do
Knows that he’ll never fit the system others expect him to” (Chess)

When I blogged about youth unemployment just over a year ago I pointed out that many of the traditional lower skilled entry level jobs within the economy were now being done by unemployed graduates. The level of youth unemployment had been rising since 2001 and the level attributable to 16-18 year olds (ie those leaving school at 16) was close to 50%, with the very real possibility that many of those would never know permanent, full time work.

And when I blogged about the future organisation I drew attention to the fact that the UK is a world leader in underutilising the skills of its graduates.

Well, another week another group of articles appear in my timeline all with views on what tomorrow’s workforce need to do to be ready for work. You know tomorrow’s workforce… the one whose hard work and taxes will pay for our pensions, healthcare and the like.

First up was Allister Heath suggesting that we stop encouraging kids to go to university.  He tells us that only 5 of the 30 fastest growing professions in 2020 will require a university degree and 10 will require no qualification at all. The first three he mentions are retail sales staff, food preparation (including fast-food restaurant jobs) and customer service reps…all roles that graduates currently do. I’m guessing that business to business sales people don’t really need a degree either but having one has largely been a pre-requisite for these roles for years.

Unsurprisingly for a right of centre commentator, especially one who also speaks for the Taxpayers Alliance, it’s the State’s fault that graduates end up as baristas…as if the private sector never wanted better educated trainees. They don’t need further education, they need work experience and traineeships which the State has to enable and guarantee. So having got the kids to largely fund their own further education it now needs to be replaced by state/taxpayer funded work experience. “To many employers, university education has become little more than a signalling device, a means to filter out potential staff” he identifies.

And there’s also a strong recommendation for Gove’s sepia tinged longing for applied maths, Latin and cold showers…whereas I would have thought programming and communication would be much more important. Soft skills for a social world.

The view from the US was more optimistic and creative. Children shouldn’t be college ready but innovation ready – “We can teach new hires the content, and we will have to because it continues to change, but we can’t teach them how to think — to ask the right questions — and to take initiative”.

No longer will they be able to ‘find’ a job as previous generations have, but instead will need to ‘invent’ a job.  As Harvard education specialist Tony Wagner says:

“Every young person will continue to need basic knowledge, but they will need skills and motivation even more. Of these three education goals, motivation is the most critical. Young people who are intrinsically motivated — curious, persistent, and willing to take risks — will learn new knowledge and skills continuously. They will be able to find new opportunities or create their own — a disposition that will be increasingly important as many traditional careers disappear.

We teach and test things most students have no interest in and will never need and facts that they can Google and will forget as soon as the test is over. We need to focus more on teaching the skill and will to learn and to make a difference and bring the three most powerful ingredients of intrinsic motivation into the classroom: play, passion and purpose”

Clearly the view here is one of optimism and opportunity. Instead of relegating much of the future workforce to a life of shifting low paid work, and turning the clock back for education, as Heath seems to suggest, in the US article they look to Finland’s innovative economy “They learn concepts and creativity more than facts, and have a choice of many electives — all with a shorter school day, little homework, and almost no testing”

Back to corporate UK and we had the Homebase example. Here you had a major company recommending that store managers make use of the free labour available through workfare to do the work that may otherwise require paid employees – with an internal document bearing the message:

How the work experience program can benefit your store.
Would 750 hours with no payroll costs help YOUR store?

So is this the ultimate future for the lower skilled workforce? A variable cost, paid by the taxpayer to provide free labour to the private sector in the hope that this may help them secure a paid assignment elsewhere?

And finally we square the circle with the latest research from the New Employment Foundation. A perfect conundrum:

“Those with good graduate degrees are facing months of unemployment or free interning in order to gain access to paid work. Those with no or few qualifications are being left out in the cold”

Whilst

“Graduates who “dumb down” their employment aspirations can find themselves stuck in low-skilled jobs for years”

So there we have it. You don’t need a degree because most future jobs don’t need one…but then if you haven’t got a degree you may not be considered for the jobs that don’t need one.

And if you take any job, because work must pay…then you risk not being considered for a job that really pays.

But ultimately…it’s down to you to create your own job anyway…

Confused?

Generational Reductionism

Generation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today is Mark’s birthday, he turned 52. He shares his birthday with his Uncle Peter who turns 70, a cause for much family celebration.

Peter has been retired for 5 years. He was a partner in an accountancy firm and is enjoying a relaxing retirement thanks to a generous pension – splitting his time between his London mews home and his beachfront villa in the Algarve. As a baby boomer he has benefitted from unprecedented property price inflation, and also from the fact that his children all went to university before tuition fees became payable. He was able to downsize his property a few years ago and give his two children a very handsome deposit for their first homes. He has little time for computers, having been lucky enough to have had someone to ‘do all that computer stuff’ for him when his accountancy practice felt the need to fully embrace technology.

Mark is also a baby boomer and also an accountant. He has worked for different companies, but has been restructured out of his last two roles. After each redundancy he’s had periods of unemployment followed by day rate contracts. His ‘pension pot’ is shrinking and this, along with the need to keep his skills up to date and worries about financing his children’s university education, help to keep him awake most nights. He happens to be pretty good with computers, something that helps keep him employable.

Mark’s wife Jane is luckier. She is a year younger than him so is a Generation X type. Not for her the riches of the baby boomers, but being born into the digital revolution age means she has a greater understanding of digital concepts. She was allegedly part of the ‘me generation’ of the 80s (although she was already in her 20s), something she shares with her 34 year old niece, Joanna. Although 17 years apart, their adolescent years clearly shared similar ‘slacker’ style influences. However without Mark’s computer skills she wouldn’t have any idea how to pay a bill or send an e-mail.

Their 14 year old son Paul is in Year 9 and has just had a ‘business’ day at school. A number of large organisations sent their graduate recruiters in to educate the boys and girls in employability. He was intrigued by the one of the presentations from a woman who said she was 31 but then also said ‘I can help you, after all I’m a Gen Y’er just like you so I know what it’s like’. He thought it was particularly funny when she said that Facebook wouldn’t be allowed in the workplace because it was just for silly pictures of babies, weddings, parties and pets, when all Paul’s classmates use it to keep in touch with each other, to find out what has been missed at school and to help each other out with homework and research.

Paul found it even funnier when he heard that the lady had spoken very differently to Year 8 (his sister Lucy’s year) by telling them that their lifelong use of digital communication, social networking and mobile sets them apart. When Lucy got home she teased Paul about how she was a digital native and he was just part of the ‘boomerang generation’. She found it odd because without Paul she wouldn’t have the first idea how to use her iPhone or iPad nor how to download or connect…

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Barely an hour goes by without a link appearing in my Twitter timeline to an article that goes something like ‘6 things you need to do if you want to hire Gen Y’ or ’10 reasons Gen Y don’t want to work for you’ or a personal real favourite ‘Why Every Social Media Manager Should be Under 25’.

Of course it’s largely tosh. To draw uniformity of influences for people born in a 17 year timespan and then turn that in to some kind of HR or workplace wisdom is foolish. But people do it. People seem to make some kind of living out of packaging it up as consultancy.

The demographists, pollsters, and social and cultural historians know differently of course. They like to draw conclusions from the social, economic, cultural and parental influences that someone is exposed to in adolescence, particularly between 13 and 18, and I can understand this. Experiences within this 5 year age span tend to shape expectations, values, ambitions and aspirations that we carry forward in to adult life. My sons are bound to be different to mine, as will be those between someone who grew up in the 80s and the 90s.

They  have different generational classifications in recognition of the fact that influences change every few years – for example Generation Jones are the ones who grew up in the 70s…though I still think Generation Bowie is better 😉 They are currently the key demographic targeted by pollsters and marketers.

One of the best research presentations I’ve seen on this came from Decode. They didn’t see age as the signifier of attitudes but life stages. Within the ‘traditional’ Gen Y age demographic they found a variety of attitudes dictated by life stage.

Taking work/life balance as an example (something that older generations think is of great importance to Gen Y) they found that it was a number one priority for students just entering the workplace. For the young independents it was of very low priority, whilst for young families its importance had increased, but not to the level of students. All of these attitudes from a sample group in the age range 21-29.

As Pew Research Center recently concluded

“Generational analysis has a long and distinguished place in social science, and we cast our lot with those scholars who believe it is not only possible, but often highly illuminating, to search for the unique and distinctive characteristics of any given age group of Americans.

But we also know this is not an exact science. We are mindful that there are as many differences in attitudes, values, behaviours and lifestyles within a generation as there are between generations.”

Just ask Peter, Mark, Jane, Joanna, Paul and Lucy…