April of last year marked a new era for public sector services in the UK as the government seeks to address the deficit and reduce the cost of its public sector workforce. Traditional entitlements for public servants have been heavily scrutinised in a way not seen in the last decade with the announcements of job losses, pay freezes and reduced pension provision.
The traditional lure of job and financial security within the civil service is a focal point of public sector worker discontent and is at the heart of what is known as the psychological contract. This is best explained as a series of unwritten and unconscious reciprocal expectations that the employee and employer have of each other.
For example, an implied (though unofficial) agreement may exist whereby in exchange for diligence and loyalty, an employee may feel assured in his or her job and financial security. It has been suggested that public sector workers often have stronger psychological contracts, placing greater emphasis on long-term involvement and fair treatment, than their private sector counterparts.
But what happens when the employer does not fulfil its end of the bargain? If an employee recognises that the employer’s actions are inconsistent with its obligations, then this breach of the psychological contract has a severely detrimental effect on the employee’s attitudes and behaviour. Research has shown that violating the psychological contract can lead to a lack of trust in the employer, lower performance levels, reduced desire to remain in the organisation and decreased employee satisfaction.
These types of reactions, however, can be moderated by how much procedural justice employees perceive there to be in the organisational restructuring. That is to say, they will be less likely to react negatively to changes in psychological contracts if they are able to attribute the breach to a legitimate need and that the process of implementing the changes was fair. So, the extent to which employers consult with their staff and not simply communicate the changes in employment arrangements will, in large part, influence their employees’ morale and behaviour following any restructuring process.
Unfortunately, of the 330,000 jobs expected to be cut in the public sector, one key area of staff reductions is likely to be managerial posts and in particular senior managers. Potentially it could be an over-stretched and under-qualified pool of public service managers, with little experience dealing with the costs of cuts and redundancies that will be left with the task of delivering to a high standard, whist morale is low.
It will be vital for public service employers to effectively manage change within their organisations. In the long term, reduced commitment to the employer, resulting from a breach of the psychological contract, could lead to difficulty in retaining skilled employees internally. Further difficulties will lie in recruiting talented individuals externally. Bear in mind, these changes are occurring within a wider series of austerity measures such as the substantial increases in university tuition fees. I suspect young people’s career intentions to be further shaped unfavourably against opting for work in the civil service as graduates abstain from low paying public service jobs for higher paying positions in the private sector.
Today, along with millions of others, I have listened to the news that two of the murderers of Stephen Lawrence have finally been convicted of his death, more than 18 years after the unprovoked racist attack in south-east London.
Stephen Lawrence’s murder has brought about some fundamental changes in our understanding, reaction to, and management of racism in our society.
Firstly, the Macpherson Inquiry into the handling of the initial investigation by the Metropolitan Police shone a spotlight on how prejudice can thrive in groups and how people in professional roles can turn a judicious blind eye when something is not particularly important to them. The term “institutional racism” used in the report of the Macpherson Inquiry has subsequently become a well recognised, if somewhat miss-used, term in today’s vernacular.
Secondly, the Race Equality Duty, was introduced in 2001 in direct response to the findings of the Macpherson Inquiry. Leading the introduction of these new legal duties on the public sector, Jack Straw indicated that his ambition was for public sector bodies such as the police to become the leading light on taking proactive, positive steps to foster good relations between different groups and tackle discrimination.
Thirdly, Recommendation 11 of the Macpherson Inquiry amplified the responsibility of race relations legislation, and in particular the responsibility of all police officers to uphold their legal duties. The fact that Chief Police Officers can be held vicariously liable for the acts and omissions of their officers relevant to the legislation is just one of the reasons that police forces and constabularies take issues of racism so much more seriously now than previously.
Fourthly, Stephen Lawrence’s murder played a significant role in the ending the double jeopardy principle, whereby no one could be tried twice for the same crime. The abolition of this legal principle in 2005 meant that one of Stephen’s murderers could be successfully tried again.
So the death of Stephen Lawrence has brought about some fundamental changes in the way that racism is dealt with in this country. However, I realise with some resignation it is not Stephen’s death that has brought about these changes. It is not even the fact that the attack was racially motivated that brought about these changes. In fact, the thing that ensured Stephen’s murder did not simply go recorded as an unsolved crime was just how stupendously badly the Metropolitan Police bungled the initial investigation, combined with the tenacity of Stephen’s mother and other supporters.
So can individuals make a difference in tackling issues as big as racism? Without a doubt. I also strongly believe organisations can, and do, have a significant impact on cultural change, including on issues as significant as tackling racism in society. Hopefully your organisation will be doing this in a positive, proactive way, and not in the negative mishandling impact that the Met Police had.
One of the most common mistakes I come across in business today is people who try to manage their remote teams using pretty much the same tactics as they use for managing their face-to-face teams.
On the face of it, managing a remote team doesn't sound like it should be that much harder than managing a face-to-face team. After all, we have a whole industry of modern technology to assist us - mobile phones, teleconferencing, videoconferencing and webcams. Yet the very fact that we feel the need to create even more sophisticated technologies such as tele-presence (where you can almost believe you're in the same room as the person you're seeing) should tell us something about how strong our desire is to feel we're in the same vicinity as the other person.
Not surprising, then, that research has found that it takes something like four times as long to communicate a message electronically as it does to communicate it face-to-face. So every time you reach for your email, be prepared to wait a little longer and work a little harder before the message is accurately received the other end. And it's not just communication effectiveness that is impaired by remote working - it also takes a bit longer for us to establish trust with someone we can't see. This is OK in long-term teams, but when quick turn-around is needed in a new team, trust is a tricky issue. Not only does it take us two weeks longer to establish trust with someone we can't see, but that trust is also more fragile - we're more likely to lose our faith in remote team members than people we see in the flesh.
It's not all doom-and-gloom though. There are things that you can do in order to manage your remote team more effectively.
Our five top tips are:
1. Use the 'information-richest' form of media available to communicate - face-to-face where possible, followed by tele-presence or video conference, then telephone. Ideally, email should only be used to convey sizeable amounts of information, specific data, or as a last resort.
2. Encourage spontaneous, informal communication between your team members. The use of tools such as Skype helps people to feel more in touch with their colleagues and makes it easier for them to reach out to each other with quick questions.
3. Make time for socialising during remote discussions. Time for small talk becomes much more important when people don't get to catch up with each simply by wandering past the other person's desk.
4. Overtly discuss the skills a new member of the team is bringing, as well as the latest achievements and successes of current team members. This will help to strengthen trust between remote team members.
5. Avoid 'virtual silence'. Encourage the team to acknowledge messages they have received from one another when they don't have time to deal with it there and then. Misinterpretation of virtual silence can result in people assuming the other person isn't working as hard as they should or that they don't care about the message that has just been sent.
Globalisation. It's hard to pick up any business related-read nowadays
without being told how the workplace is increasingly globalised, how we are facing increased global competition or to read about people banging on about the global war for talent.
In fact, we've been talking about globalisation for some time now. Just flicking through some of the papers in my ever-increasing 'to read' pile, I see references to business globalisation as 21st Century
phenomenon; others describe it as a 20th Century invention; while some
refer to it as being introduced in the 19th Century along with the Gold
Standard.
In fact there are references to globalisation all the way back to
approximately 400 BC when Herodotus recorded the 'strangeness' of doing
business with the ancient Egyptians.
So we may not be able to agree when globalisation started, but started
it has. Yet despite having talked about globalisation for so long, it
seems to me that the vast majority of organisations, including those
that pride themselves on being 'genuinely' multinational and
multicultural, have not yet grappled with what this means for them in
reality.
What is cultural intelligence?
I am struck by how many leaders within multinational organisations are
embarrassed by how little their organisation does to ensure it is
operating with cultural intelligence. People shuffle their feet and talk
about cursory expat training, which might cover how to hand over a
business card without offence, but does little to equip expats with the
skills they genuinely need to work effectively in a different cultural
climate.
How many people in your company, for example, know when 'yes' means
'yes' in a different culture, and when it actually means 'no'? How many
people know in which cultures it is entirely expected to openly voice
either assent or dissent with what is being discussed?
If organisations are genuinely looking to do business in a culturally
intelligent way, then two levels of cultural intelligence need to be
examined. The first level is an individual level of cultural
intelligence. That is, helping the employees, managers and expats who
are at the coalface having to make globalisation work, to demonstrate
cultural intelligence. There are three key elements to individual
cultural intelligence:
1. Knowing the cultural values of the other party.
2. Being mindful of the impact of your own cultural values.
3. Adapting your behavior to demonstrate cultural intelligence.
Cultural faux pas
Sadly, many organisations simply put their employees through cultural
training programmes that are supposed to increase the knowledge element
of cultural intelligence, but instead simply reinforce stereotypes and
assumptions, and can be wildly inaccurate. According to one of these
programmes, for example, men should never wear striped ties to do
business in the UK.
The second level of cultural intelligence concerns the amount of
cultural intelligence embedded within the organisational processes
themselves. For example, expatriate failure rates vary between 20 and
75% yet organisations often do very little to select the right people
for an expatriate role or provide the appropriate support when people
are in these roles. Or think about those organisations that only equip
their teams with basic communication media - and then wonder why their
global teams seem to experience communication and trust issues.
So, the question is, how culturally intelligent is your organisation?
How many cultural faux pas are committed each day in your offices? The
conclusion that I have come to is that while our economies may be in a
state of globalisation, all too often, our businesses and people are
not. What do you think?
For the last eight weeks - and come to think of it, for the last several years - I have been watching the Apprentice and getting increasingly irritated with the prevailing view amongst the potential apprentices that it is "OK to be a git/b*****d/asshole...it's only business". Why?! Why is it seemingly acceptable to step on the throat of those around you as long as it is in the name of business success (and by "business success", read "making a quick profit")?
Well, paradoxically it seems as though we like them. Despite being self absorbed, arrogant, manipulative and having a grandiose sense of entitlement, we seem programmed to find such people fascinating - but only for a short time. Even though we know that they are self-centred, excessively dominant and potentially hostile, we are drawn to them like moths to a flame.
Psychological research in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (Jan 2010) backs this up with some interesting findings. It seems as though those individuals with narcissistic traits (ego, vanity, conceit and selfishness - i.e. your archetypal apprentice wannabe) make excellent first impressions. Their sense of entitlement is admired and their charm, confidence, verbal fluency and ruthlessness win people over.
However, such traits will eventually be uncovered for what they are - style over substance. The power to influence, inspire and motivate others to follow your lead is a far more powerful trait and one that leads to lasting success. Consider the new slant to The Apprentice this year in which Lord Sugar is seeking a partner to start up a new business venture. Being nasty, selfish and manipulative may be the norm in larger corporations but they will certainly not help smaller businesses to grow. In fact, building close, caring relationships with your colleagues and customer base can be the deciding factor between long-term success and failure.
Lord Sugar would do well to consider whether he is in it for the 'quick buck' - in which case his narcissistic cronies will probably be ideal; or whether he wants to employ a leader who can win the hearts and minds of customers and staff alike. Time will tell, I guess.
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Time for a rant...