Compensation

It's coming up to three years since Lucy Adams left the employ of the BBC as HR Director. From her new world of consultancy, she continues to share insights that spring from, essentially, what she got wrong at the BBC. Yet she's oddly coy about saying it was the BBC. Take this bit from her most recent blog post. Can you imagine that one public media service organisation got all this wrong ? Oh yes you can...

"I struggle to think of a time when a new strategy or tactic I introduced as an HR Director wasn’t shaped by a desire to compensate for poor leaders. 

THEY won’t have conversations with their team members?
Let’s introduce a system that makes them sit down once a year to do it. 
THEY won’t tackle poor performance? 
Let’s make them allocate their performance ratings on the basis of a pre-determined distribution curve that forces them to put 10% at the bottom. 
THEY won’t reward their people fairly?
Let’s design a bonus formula that has a number of different measures so they won’t have much room for manoeuvre. 
THEY won’t tell their people what’s happening in the organisation?
Let’s produce a script and insist they cascade this through their teams by a certain date. 
THEY won’t onboard their people properly? 
Let’s take their new starters off them for a week and put them through a programme. 
THEY will hold onto their talented people? 
Let’s produce a 9 Box Grid so we know who they are and then make sure we’re tracking what happens to them. 
THEY won’t be able to recruit people without being discriminatory? 
Let’s have an HR person in every interview to stop it."