If you could use Aladdin’s lamp to change just one thing what would that be? Annual appraisals, Trade Unions, macho managers, over ambitious senior managers, the biannual employee survey, vacancy freezes. Recruitment targets, redeployment, non disclosure agreements, performance related pay for senior managers, zero contracts, corner offices/ reserved parking spaces/ executive wash rooms,executive dinning room (anything that smacks of status and elitism).

 It’s a long list. Some are perhaps more obvious than others. Annual appraisals are universally unpopular, HR spends a disproportionate amount of time chasing managers to complete them and then dealing with the complaints arising from them and at the end of the day most managers just opt for a safe ,”satisfactory” rating ignoring the incompetent because they don’t want the hassle and failing to reward the exceptional because they don’t want the hassle when other team members find out.

You might expect HR to put getting ride of TU’s  high on the list but I take the view that organisations get the TU they deserve. Most HR problems are caused by managers and the biggest offenders are those that think management involves nothing more than telling people what to do. Over ambitious and over confident senior managers are the ones who want to make a name for themselves by  over delivering on their budget cuts and efficiency initiatives to impress the chief executive  and board and causing industrial strife in the process.

The biannual employee survey is a good way of helping senior management stay in touch with the mood of the organisation but all too often they dismiss the results with a , “ they would say that wouldn’t they” to feedback they don’t want to hear. They have also been known to shoot the messenger, HR.

Whenever there is a panic on a projected budget overspend across the organisation a vacancy freeze is suggested as an effective and quick way to get the budget back on course. There is nothing wrong with the idea the problem is the implementation which comes down to HR. The zealots want all posts frozen, no exceptions,” to prove we are serious and to make a quick impact on the over spend”. They then spend the next 6 /12 weeks developing and imposing an increasingly complex and time consuming bureaucratic process on HR for delaying appointments.

 Recruitment targets, what’s the point, are they a stick to beat managers with, do they influence managers decisions on appointments or are they just aspirational?

 If there in one thing guaranteed to upset managers in the recruitment process more than a vacancy freeze it is HR telling them they need to have a very good reason for not accepting an individual on redeployment. And the individual doesn’t want to join that team anyway.

Non disclosure Agreements and Zero hours contracts just encourage bad practice. And how can anyone justify these senior management performance related pay deals. They along side those old school perks and status symbols are an anachronism.

Difficult to choose one thing to change but in view of the above I think it would have to be the status of HR.