Wednesday 8 May 2013

Yours Sincerely, A Jobseeker

By Peter Whitehead
Editor of Financial Times Executive Appointments and the FT Non-Executive Directors' Club



My creative side as a child sometimes worried and sometimes amused my parents. But at first they were simply bemused when one day I stuck a strip of card across the bottom of our television screen upon which was written: “This man is sincere”.


It meant little with the TV switched off. But when up and running, any news programme watched with this ever-present caption was elevated to a higher plane: the motivation and credibility of every talking head (pretty much exclusively male in the 1970s) was held up to question, scrutiny and ridicule. Today, it would have the same effect beneath images of a business leader complaining about the damaging effects of a UK “talent shortage”.


Businesses, apparently, cannot find the skilled individuals they need, particularly in such fields as science, technology and engineering. What, then, are they doing about it? Mostly, it seems, they are appealing to government to serve them up a ready supply of perfect job candidates – they want well-rounded people who are fully trained in all the relevant skills they require.


A PwC global survey of more than 1,300 chief executives, for example, recently found three-quarters of UK chief executives want the government to make creating and encouraging a skilled workforce its highest priority for business. Yet when asked where skills came on its own to-do list, only a third of UK business leaders made filling talent gaps an immediate investment priority. Either things are not as bad as they claim, or businesses no longer see training and development of skills as their responsibility. I suspect the latter.


There was a time when companies would accept training and developing its people as a responsibility and duty. Perhaps this was in a day when employees moved less, before transport improvements brought the side-effect of a less rooted and loyal workforce. In this light, businesses’ reduced willingness to invest in staff development might be understandable.


It could also be that employers’ expectations have risen as the numbers attending university have been forced up. Certainly, the expectations of the massed ranks of students have been raised, making the realities of employment uninspiring. The primacy given to wealth and celebrity in society serves to complicate motivations further and lead some to get-rich-quick careers in financial services, for example.


Business has been happy to see this set of priorities develop. Now, it is unhappy that individuals are losing interest in immersing themselves in a job and are finding other priorities beyond work. But rather than offering improved rewards – whether it be salary, perks, flexibility, excitement, inspiration or fulfilment – and seeking to address the issues that affect them by investing in people, employers seem to feel let down. They almost display an equivalent sense of “rights”, entitlement and dependency as some identify in those alleged to be taking advantage of the UK’s state benefits system.  


And when government fails to deliver, business representatives commission research, issue statements and appear on telly complaining of a talent shortage. They do, of course, believe it and mean it. That’s the most worrying thing of all – they are indeed sincere.




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2 comments:

  1. A very interesting angle Peter thank you - I love the line about company's sense of 'rights'. Do you think that large corporates have woken up to the frustration if not anger in the general public as a result of corporate insensitivity and excesses?

    How come there has been so much progress on the one hand on longer term sustainability and CSR approaches, with some excellent initiatives, and yet at the same time on the other so much short term greed and in some cases abuse? A paradox indeed, but highly worrying when the consequences are being felt by the young.

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  2. I think your questions raise big issues. I don't think ANYONE has woken up to a full understanding of how business has taken such a suffocating stranglehold over society. And the "CSR paradox" arises because no one believes themselves to be doing wrong. It comes back to the executive pay question - a CEO is unlikely to feel he (yes - nearly always a he) is being greedy when every incentive is geared towards enriching them. Believing their own PR in this respect does not make them bad people per se - and so a bit of CSR fits in nicely. And the question of how corporate practices affect the young and their view of the world of work is becoming a very serious issue. Students working in short-term hospitality at big events can be treated abysmally: management is a shambles and zero-hours contracts mean the youngsters spend their days in terror of being "sacked".

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