I dutifully followed the instruction contained in the first sentence of Workforce of One: “Imagine for a moment that the organisation you work for today is designed to fit you, rather than you fit it.” Soon my imagination was in fifth gear, picturing myself in unshaven deshabille, hard at work photographing nubile nudes, with a G&T in hand and baryton trios by the Kapellmeister of Eszterházy playing loudly in the background — and getting paid gazillions for it. At the end of the book I was not the slightest bit closer to realising this vision — except for the unshaven part but that’s because I already have a beard!
The vision of corporate paradise promised by Susan Cantrell and David Smith may be more sober than mine but it demands no less a stretch of the imagination. Higher performance, attraction, retention, productivity, engagement, flexibility, diversity are all on offer if only we adopt the miraculous mantra of creating customised experiences for employees.
We have always known flexibility is good when it helps us capitalise on individual differences. We are also aware that technology makes it increasingly possible to tailor-make employee experiences in a cost-effective way. If Ms Cantrell and Mr Smith had stopped at those conclusions we would have no argument with them. Unfortunately, for 200+ pages, they don’t.
The three fundamental reasons why organisations have found more or less universal rules essential are Equity, Expectations and Efficiency. Even in modern organisations, it is the acceptance of certain uniform codes and policies that delivers fairness and equal opportunity in the face of ad-hocism, favouritism and the Hari Sadus of the world. Secondly, employees expect a certain degree of structure from the organisations they work for and, particularly those who come from the more regimented channels of our education system, are likely to experience paralysing anomie when faced with untrammelled choice. Lastly, any service that is delivered person-to-person is extremely expensive and likely to become more so. It is these three overarching constraints that limit the extent to which people-experiences can be customised within organisations. Ms Cantrell and Mr Smith struggle bravely throughout the book but ultimately manage to provide no convincing answers permitting us to move these limits substantively.
It is true that technology has the potential to shift the efficiency curve but this is mainly for the transactional and programmable parts of HR. The heart of talent management is the hard (but innately satisfying) slog of face-to-face, individual-by-individual, interaction, influence, development and coaching. Ms Cantrell and Mr Smith glibly predict “– in the future that ‘coach’ may be your mobile phone or any other electronic device”. I don’t know how to break this gently to them but HR is not all about mouse clicks and data analytics. It is more likely to follow Murphy’s Law than Moore’s law. Wishing different is as futile and frustrating as substituting test-tube babies for the alternative inter-personal process we all love to use.
Workforce of One expands on four approaches to customisation. These are Segmenting the Workforce, Offering Modular Choices, Defining Broad and Simple Rules and, lastly, Fostering Employee-Defined Personalisation. “But isn’t this what all progressive HR practitioners have been doing?” you ask. Hole in one. Doff your (old) hat and take a bow if you had already heard of broad-banding, cafeteria-style compensation and flexi-time. What makes the prescriptions of these consultants (both Ms Cantrell and Mr Smith are associated with Accenture) particularly ironic is that several of the sensible practices they recommend were dismantled by bean-counting cost-slashers from firms just like theirs. Numerous Indian companies were asked to do away with the practice of leave accumulation for employees – now Accenture boasts of a “Future leave Program”. Zillions of hours were spent on role definitions and job descriptions — only to have the basic Druckerian wisdom of defining jobs broadly in terms of results now confirmed (after futuristic re-badging). HR was prodded to get involved in the performance review and reward-normalisation process — recommended best practice has at last come full circle and performance discussions are to be left to the employee and the supervisor while department managers are to be empowered to control their own reward budgets.
Admittedly, there are some new ideas interspersed through the text. But, like some of the unusual hats we saw at Prince William’s wedding, not all of them are practical. For instance, I am not inclined to base a selection decision on what, we are informed, is one of the questions Google asks candidates: “If you were a flower, what kind would you be?” — though I promise not to discriminate against those who declare themselves to be pansies! I also find myself at a loss segmenting employees by their mental health. How did an entire segment of mentally unhealthy employees creep in to start with?
For all the earnest sermons from anointed HR managers who practise the rites of customisation and a rousing chapter proclaiming A Call to Action for HR, self-respecting HR professionals are likely to find Workforce of One a depressing read. HR doesn’t even deserve a theory of its own but has to be content with a 20-year-old hand-me-down from marketing (a function HR is advised to sedulously imitate).
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Perhaps it’s only fitting that we conclude with the famous opening sentence from another book (Samuel Beckett’s Murphy): “The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.”
The reviewer is CEO, Banner Global Consulting
WORKFORCE OF ONE
Revolutionising Talent Management Through Customisation
Susan M Cantrell & David Smith
Harvard Business Press 2010
268 pages; $35