Re-calc

Lucy Adams, former HR boss at the BBC, continues her soul-searching with a contribution to a forthcoming book "Trust Me, PR is Dead"

“At the BBC, we often tried to produce the same information in two different ways to try and appeal to internal and external audiences differently. For example, at pay review time, the line to the press would be  'look how tough and frugal we are – we are only paying 1%.' To the staff it would be: 'look how generous we are being, you can get a minimum of £400'. Neither worked and we lost ground with our staff as the two messages were being clearly spun.”

Meanwhile, at an HR conference last week, she opined that the way forward for personnel is to get inside employees' brains.

“I would like us to know more about neuroscience, to become experts. If you went to an engineer you’d expect them to have an absolute intimate working knowledge of that engine.

“Aren’t we the engineers of people? Isn’t that what we do? Aren’t we supposed to know this stuff rather than going on gut feel? Are we not actually better than that? I think we should be trained in at least some of the basics.”