Man (Utd) Flu

I support Manchester United, and watched the game vs Chelsea this week. United had striker problems, and it was reported we were short because Rooney and Martial were injured, Ibrahimovic was suspended and Rashford was ill. 

But then Rashford made some kind of recovery during the day, made it from Manchester to London, and played (and played OK too). So was he ill in the first place or was it mind games from Jose Mourinho? Let's assume he WAS ill and let's explore the implications of this. 

So he's ill and notifies his employer that he can't come to work that day. One of two things has then happened. Either a) during the day he has recovered sufficiently to come into work later on or b) his employer has got back in touch, explained how desperate they are, and asked him to come in despite being ill. 

If the former happened, then this shows great flexibility on the part of both employer and employee. 

Or does it?

You'd have to question whether Rashford was, initially, really as ill as he reported if later on he could feel better enough to work. Did he overreact initially? Was this a case of the Man Flu? Or Man Utd Flu?

But also, just as illness can come on one suddenly, it can also lift suddenly, and both sides can be applauded for having the flexibility to review the original "off sick today" decision. This is something I think all employers should do. 

My own approach, based on a total of zero sick days across my entire working life, is that there shouldn't be an approach of all or nothing when a person is ill. If someone is not going to be able to do 100% of their duties, then it's preferable, in my view, if they do even 10% as that's better than 0%. 

Of course there are complications in that some illnesses are best kept out of the workplace for fear of spreading to healthy workers, but assuming the individual can work remotely or across a different timespan then this kind of flexibility should be encouraged. So if an individual like Rashford has been ill over the weekend and needs a few extra hours to sleep it off before coming into work, but is willing to work later on and do less than 100% of his normal duties, then I say that's a good thing and better than him taking the whole day off sick and doing 0%. 

Recently someone I know was quite ill and could potentially have worked from home but would have had to go into the office to collect something first, and didn't want to do that because of how it would have looked. That says there's something about a culture of presenteeism that still needs to be tackled. The same person also felt that they COULD work in between bouts of being ill and confined to the bathroom, but felt that this sporadic approach to working was not helpful to the organisation and chose to take the entire day off sick as a result. Again, this says something about individual and organisational approaches to work that only working 7-8 hours/day in one go is considered "work". 

Here's the thing. It's not the only way. 

And what if the latter scenario about Rashford is true, in that he was pressured by his employer to come in because they were desperate?

If the employer did ask Rashford to reconsider his "off sick" stance, which he obviously did, then this may be considered bullying and potentially something that could contribute to a deterioration in Rashford's health in that he was asked to come in and perform at a very high level despite feeling ill which could have made him much worse. 

But, possibly, it also says something about employee engagement and openness in the workplace in that the employer and employee could have adult-adult conversations about choices and flexibility, and the employee felt passionate enough and connected enough to his organisations goals that he could be persuaded to come in despite feeling ill. 

Perhaps we will never know the full story. 

I do think that organisations should be able to have grown up conversations with their staff without that being considered undue pressure or bullying, but also that both sides should build in enough flexibility and understanding in their relationship that occasional illnesses, and different ideas on what constitutes work under "normal" and "unusual" circumstances. 

Ultimately, Rashford reconsidered his decision, played, but United lost, so perhaps all this is for naught if the organisation doesn't achieve its specific goals from asking the employee to reconsider…

Something to think about. 

Oh and another thing. If you are ill, talk about it in grown up terms. You are not "an ickle bit poorly".  Small children get "an ickle bit poorly". Adults do not. Adults get ill. Sorry to rant but one manager I used to work with would regularly use this phrase to describe themselves and their team when unwell. 

Till next time…

Gary

Ps in other news, my PT course is going well. I passed the L2 Gym Instructing course and am halfway through the L3 Personal Trainer element now. It is really brilliant and I'm learning loads about nutrition, anatomy and physiology and how to structure a training programme. I've got great people who've volunteered to help me throughout and I'm able to apply my learning on both their and my own training. Watch this space for further developments.

#hrevent16 blog #6 of many

Rather frustratingly I'd typed out most of this but upon clicking Save, the app crashed and I lost it all. So I'm having to recreate this from memory. 

Day two of the event. It appears many people had a blast staying over last night, but for me after a long day all I wanted to do was get home to my kids, have a dance, a story, and then shower and I was in bed by 10pm. Worlds apart. 

So here we are listening to Dame Stephanie Shirley, whose story had such humble beginnings but which was both inspirational and interesting. Hard to believe that the things she experienced, the barriers she faced, were only 50 years ago. Our age is more enlightened, but how will we and our ways be viewed in another 50 years time?

She talked a lot about equality, citing the lessons she learnt and the ways in which she structured her company so that jobs were fitted around people and not the other way around. How many companies still struggle with this concept? Listening to the barriers she ran into as the first female IT entrepeneur in the UK was both frustrating and inspiring. 

She raised some interesting points about legislation potentially hampering equality in the workplace. Here she was talking specifically about the National Minimum Wage and its potential to create barriers for disabled people obtaining entry level jobs. This was a perspective I'd not encountered before and it certainly made me think what the purpose and impact of employment legislation may be. 

She also talked about the rise of robots doing HR work, and gave some examples. She questioned whether, if this continues, "human" resources needs to expand to include how robots are managed as part of the workforce. This made me laugh initially, then it sank in and I think she's right. Robot Resources?

Much of my other reflections on her talk are now lost unfortunately. 

Next up was Hollie Delaney from Zappos. The Zappos story is one I had read about before but hearing about it in person was really good. 

Hollie explained how the Zappos culture came about, and how it influences all aspects of the company. Recruitment at Zappos is heavily weighted by cultural fit, and the induction period focuses on cultural integration and fit, rather than technical ability. 

She explained the concept of holocracy, designed to eliminate bureaucracy, rules and hierarchy, and gave examples of how it works. I can see that it does for Zappos and it would in many organisations too, but I wonder how many organisations are too entrenched in their own histories and origins to fully embrace this style of working, no matter how innovative or successful? 

Hollie's enthusiasm was infectious, and her style seems perfectly suited to the culture at Zappos so it's easy to imagine how happy a workplace this is. I do wonder though if the cultural fit assessment prevents the development and evolution of the culture by preventing the entry of new and different ideas and ways of working, that most organisations get from an influx of different people from time to time. Perhaps their way is the better way, but sometimes organisations need people to act and behave in different ways in order to evolve. 

Maybe. It's something I'd be interested to discuss and research further anyway. 

A quick jaunt downstairs and now I'm listening to Eric Tyree from Capita talk about the increasing use of analytics and big data in the workplace. Now, this is something I have blogged about on more than one occasion so it's of interest to me. 

Eric challenged organisations to "be more retail". He cited examples from Amazon, Tesco (etc) who personalise and customise the shopper experience to an individual level. His assertion is that the information is out there for employers to use, so we need to overcome our fears about using it and start to customise the employee experience to an individual level. 

Increasingly, he says, employees will be expecting this and if you as an employer can't, you risk them taking their labour elsewhere. In particular he recommended that we do this in employee benefits, but this advice came with a warning not to listen to employee surveys on benefits as people will often say yes to benefits without thinking through whether they really want or need them. 

So segment your employees. Look at their career stage, income band, gender, age, marital status, dependent or not etc. And then put the benefits in front of them based on this analysis and let them choose whether to take them. 

This is a challenge because in my current role I've been looking at benefits, but not really considered segmenting employees to look at what they might need. It's been an organisation wide choice but not personalised, and maybe it could be. I wonder though how easy this would be for smaller organisations? All his examples were organisations employing 1000+ staff, and I can see how it works very well in that size of company. 

He went on to talk about using big data in talent management, eg using data to analyse attrition rates and segment accordingly to manage talent and reduce turnover and absenteeism. 

Thankfully he also talked about correlations in data, which is something I think is critical to data use. So he asked us to link things like employee relations data to recruitment data and so on. I think this is where organisations can make HUGE leaps forward in understanding their workforce and in making changes to how they engage with their staff. 

A big piece of advice about correlation from Eric though was that if you present any correlated data, you must be able to explain WHY and HOW there is a correlation, otherwise it's worthless. 

And now it's coffee time. Loooooonnnnngggg overdue. 

Gary