Earlier this week, Labour leadership candidate Diane Abbott is quoted as saying public sector cuts have the "potential to set back race relations and black and ethnic minority communities by a generation." Specifically, she warned that a "last in, first out" approach to redundancies would hit black and female workers particularly hard, presumably given the nature of positive action in recent years. Aside from the "doom and gloom" feel to her statement, I broadly agree; accurate, objective and transparent assessment regardless of time in post is essential to ensuring fair and unbiased selection decisions.
The sad irony is that cutbacks are just as likely
to affect HR budgets as they will headcount and money available for objective assessment will be first to go.
So, where does this leave us?
Employee's perceptions of fairness at the current time will be particularly important. As companies look to reduce headcount, the process by which decisions are made over an individual's future with the organisation will have a significant impact on the subsequent performance of such individuals.
It is critical that organisations employ objective, valid, fair, inclusive and most importantly transparent selection procedures when looking at who is to stay and who, unfortunately, is to go.
Whether the approach is based on appraisal data, competency-based interviewing, assessment centres, or the like, organisations are morally obliged to ensure the process is objective, robust, based on justifiable criteria, inclusive of all groups, and above all cost effective.
Clearly, it is this last point that will resonate with most organisations feeling the pinch of recent governmental cuts. The knee-jerk reaction will be to cut all selection processes and go with a "last in, first out" approach. Unfortunately, by using such an approach, there is a significant risk of injecting bias associated with ill-defined criteria, inconsistent assessment processes and subjective interpretation of performance.
By extension, the apparent cost-saving of "streamlined" assessment is far outweighed by the longer term costs of unfair selection.
As my mum used to say, "do it right, or don't do it at all".
My word, what a furore over John Sergeant resigning from Strictly. I couldn't believe how much press coverage that got, and how passionate people seemed to get about it. I think he was right to resign - he was an awful dancer!
Then I started to think about this from a psychology perspective and the parallels between what went on in a public TV programme and what occurs in organisations. As a psychologist I spend much of my time working with organisations to introduce accurate, fair and valid processes in terms of measuring people performance, so that personal preference, biases or likes and dislikes are removed. Here people are trained to provide accurate assessments of individual's performance. In Strictly, we have a group of expert judges who know and understand dancing. They consistently rated John as a poor dancer, and yet, the public voted for him to stay in. The public however exercised their personal preferences and biases because these were all they had to go by - the majority being incapable of assessing whether or not he was a good dancer. For John this probably created mixed feelings. He had repeatedly heard that he was no good, and yet the public voted to keep him in, until ultimately, he felt that he had to quit. Hopefully now the best person will win.
In business we can often observe similar situations. Individuals may progress in their career because they are popular and not because they are good. Some will eventually quit because they get the message, but many will not. If they are to remain successful, organisations need trained, expert assessors who can make a proper judgment of the people they are selecting or promoting and not gifted amateurs who provide a populist vote.
Selection of staff is an imperfect and pressurised practice. You get a few hours at best to assess your candidates before having to make a decision. How much better if we could evaluate each person over several months, having them perform tasks that we have set them, observed by our most trusted aides. At the end of such a thorough and intensive selection process I think we'd all be confident about getting the right person wouldn't we? Not if you're Sir Alan Sugar you wouldn't. I have been following the latest series of the Apprentice eagerly. Last week saw the last five candidates being interviewed by Sir Alan's cronies. The conclusion of the programme saw the great man not being able to identify the two best people for the final, opting to choose four instead.
To say I was disappointed would be putting it mildly. How can you have that amount of information on each person and still be unable to make a decision?
Over and above that exactly what is he looking for? It seems clear that he wants someone who can buy and sell, is entrepreneurial, can lead a team and be led. He also wants someone he can mould. He seems to focus on those characteristics to such an extent that he seems extremely unconcerned about lying, cheating, bullying, bribing, scapegoating, scheming, conning and sheer uselessness. He prevaricates whilst the rest of the country is shouting at their TV screens "Fire them!"
One of the main reasons why I watch the series is because of Sir Alan himself. He has shown himself to be tough, astute, witty. Now though, whilst still tough and witty, his judgement should seriously be called into question.
Regardless of whoever wins the final I think the producers ought to say "With regret, Sir Alan, you're fired!"
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Earlier this week, Labour leadership candidate Diane Abbott is quoted as saying public sector cuts have the "potential to set back race relations and black and ethnic minority communities by a generation." Specifically, she warned that a "last in, first out" approach to redundancies would hit black and female workers particularly hard, presumably given the nature of positive action in recent years. Aside from the "doom and gloom" feel to her statement, I broadly agree; accurate, objective and transparent assessment regardless of time in post is essential to ensuring fair and unbiased selection decisions.