Character

A successful head teacher says that character is the defining element of a child's upbringing. With a good character a child will do better than merely his IQ suggests and I agree. The two things that come out of a proper university education is learning how to learn and character. Most students go to university to doss around though. It is why Tony Blair wanted more poorly educated people to go there; it wouldn't make any difference but it sounded good.

The problem is this though; the people who run the country don't respect good character. Tony Blair as Prime Minister? Ian Blair as Met police commissioner? Any number of bank executives? Virtually every HR person?

These days, companies hire based on tick boxes. I know of a case where an employee was asked to stand in for a manager in a branch of a big company. He did well; the unit made more money, had more clients, the staff got a bonus for the first time ever. His boss was very pleased and asked for him to be confirmed in the position. HR however, checked his personal file and said he couldn't possibly do the job, he hadn't been on the relevant training course. Oh dear, a box un-ticked.

In fact, the HR department is like a fifth column, forcing decisions on employment and company direction that has no bearing on the well being and performance of the company (or the employees) but on maintaining and increasing their power and enacting the ever increasing raft of rules and regulations. They are dependent on Political Correctness for their power and so are an unwitting Left wing invasion of business.

For HR, finding the right candidate for a department head is tiresome and boring. They therefore require these Managers to fill out a standardised form, that they can then use as the basis of their tickbox recruitment effort. Any candidate failing to meet every aspect of the 'specification' is discarded. Good judgement and an understanding of the actual requirement is anathema to them.

You can see this in the breaking into two of HR and recruitment within many companies and when they hire the services of recruitment consultancies they require compliance. No more the passionate advance from a recruiter of substance who, understanding the real needs of the business and having taken the time to get to know the qualities a candidate can bring. HR will not accept the approach unless all the boxes are ticked/

And one of the boxes is a Degree. Often, it doesn't matter what the qualification is; a 2:2 in Social Work is fine to work in a bank, or an engineering plant. It reaffirms the 'hard work' put in by the HR person in their own development including the largely pointless CIPD 'qualification'. Here it is more appropriate to read that it should be a sign of 'qualified approval' rather than achievement.

It is part of a vogue for sham qualifications and 'standards'. When you see a company boasting that it has achieved 'Quality status' such as BS5750 (or EN29000 or ISO9000) it doesn't mean the firm or it's products are of a definable quality. It means their paperwork systems tracked what happens, checked every so often by people with a vested interest in making sure as many companies have the rating as possible, to encourage acceptance of the standard and hence more sales.

In days of yore, a help desk used to be good at its job or it wasn't. You could tell by the response of those with which it interacted. It isn't rocket science. But then came ITIL. Another pile of nonsense for someone to make money out of. So now a company can boast that all of the idiots you have to talk to, who have no idea or care what your problem is, are ITIL certified.

You want to inject some dynamism into our economy? Go back to letting department Managers hire the talent they need. It is out there and it probably cannot get a job if it doesn't meet the enforced criteria of HR.