Early Risers.

[Simon G]

Didnt want to insult the planks. another insult- if he had another brain cell he would be an amoeba. Morning from (not) sunny Newhall.

Laurence

Another variation on the brain cell insult - what did his/her last brain cell die of - loneliness?

[Two_sugars]

A phrase used locally is "He's not very bright  but can lift heavy things."

[Happy Hippo]

I have followed the varying level of insults to the HR dept in the Aditi saga.

 

'Couldn't fight their way out of a wet paper bag' springs to mind.

 

I look forward, rather maliciously, to hearing about them trying to climb out of the rather deep pit they are digging for themselves.

[Happy Hippo]

A phrase used locally is "He's not very bright  but can lift heavy things."

Surely that was the motto of the 'Chunkies':  aka The Royal Pioneer Corps (now a whole formed subsidiary of the Royal Logistic Corps plc)

[Shedman5]

 As SM Mike has already said, we are used to HR being a support function. So the HR manager might sit in on interviews, but these would always be conducted by the Line Manager.

 

 

Morning,  Our interviews were conducted in conjunction with HR, which was a pain cos I couldn't  always ask the questions I wanted to. Assessment centres are almost standard with blue chip companies these days which weeds out a lot of people with interviews being held after the assessment day.

I always used to feel a bit sorry for the candidates attending the assessment day, quite stressful for some people.

 

Well its cooler here today but still pleasant which is good.

 

Enjoy your day

[beast66606]

Morning all,

 

Dull but mild at the moment, the birdies have been fed - I had to, several of them were on the window knocking !

 

I've been putting out some mealworm and the starlings love it, I've limited the amount as I'm not too keen on starlings but they are birds and so I do my bit to support their struggle.

 

http://www.britainfromabove.org.uk - if you haven't seen it then go and browse, it's heaven, latest batch includes several of the Harrow disaster but if that's not of interest to you then plenty of other stuff, register to allow zooming. I could spend hours with my sectional appendices, labelling all the signal boxes !

[Smiffy2]

One of my favourites - "I've seen more brains on a butcher's apron..."

[petethemole]

From an old drinking buddy from Middlesborough: "Is that your brain or are you running it in for an idiot?"

[The Stationmaster]

Morning,  Our interviews were conducted in conjunction with HR, which was a pain cos I couldn't  always ask the questions I wanted to. Assessment centres are almost standard with blue chip companies these days which weeds out a lot of people with interviews being held after the assessment day.

I always used to feel a bit sorry for the candidates attending the assessment day, quite stressful for some people.

 

Well its cooler here today but still pleasant which is good.

 

Enjoy your day

At my final big railway concern it was mandatory for an HR person to take part in interviews so on those infrequent occasions when I needed to interview for appointments I followed two basic principles - firstly I had to see all the applications and it was my responsibility to select who I would interview, and secondly I made it clear to the HR person that their presence at the interview was to answer questions about such things as pay and conditions although they could ask about ease of travelling to work etc.  

 

The reason for all of that was very simple - the person selected would be my responsibility, not HR's, and needed to have the various skills and knowledge to fit our team, not HR's. HR understood sweet f.a. about our work so they could hardly meaningfully interview anybody for a job doing such work but they did (or should) know about 'pay & rations' type things.  This must surely apply in any sort of job - HR are simply a service department there to serve management and if managers let an HR person start to do the managing they are abrogating their own responsibilities (and should also be heading for the nearest job centre queue).

 

In my post big railway employment the only personnel type person I have ever met was the very nice young lady who went through my pension options and got it all set up, and that was with a very well known and widely respected concern.

[shortliner]

Re the HR insults - a couple I remember from the RAF - "This officer is not fit to take charge of himself, never mind a body of men" - and " His men would follow him anywhere, if only to see what f***ing stupid thing he is going to do next"

[Tony_S]

Aditi wanted to pass on all the documentation she has received to send to the nice union lady and I took the opportunity to read the severance v redundancy offers more closely while I was scanning to pdf. HR clearly don't even read the document provided by the college's finance dept. The enhanced offer is about £1000 more than the minimum. The severance settlement is mainly made up of pay in lieu of notice. At least one month of that period Aditi is on leave anyway. I can imagine the chaos if the college has an inspection during 80ish staff's notice period. I suspect they might pay in lieu of notice anyway. The HR person kept on about the tax free payment and didn't make it clear that most of what was being offered anyway was taxable. Aditi said so far she hasn't been concerned about the money, she is just "cross" that she is seen as disposable and even "very cross" that anyone can comment that how she feels is a "serious allegation".

She was laughing last night that she should write this up for THE (Times Higher Education) and suggested a title of "A Foucauldian Discourse Analysis of the Redundancy Process" and cite her own doctoral thesis (which is all about management in colleges).  She has been too busy to publish anything since qualifying. 

Tony

[Tony_S]

Surely that was the motto of the 'Chunkies':  aka The Royal Pioneer Corps (now a whole formed subsidiary of the Royal Logistic Corps plc)

My Uncle John (Mum's evil stepbrother) was in the Pioneers at the end of WW2 and he only had one eye and one lung! 

[The Stationmaster]

Aditi wanted to pass on all the documentation she has received to send to the nice union lady and I took the opportunity to read the severance v redundancy offers more closely while I was scanning to pdf. HR clearly don't even read the document provided by the college's finance dept. The enhanced offer is about £1000 more than the minimum. The severance settlement is mainly made up of pay in lieu of notice. At least one month of that period Aditi is on leave anyway. I can imagine the chaos if the college has an inspection during 80ish staff's notice period. I suspect they might pay in lieu of notice anyway. The HR person kept on about the tax free payment and didn't make it clear that most of what was being offered anyway was taxable. Aditi said so far she hasn't been concerned about the money, she is just "cross" that she is seen as disposable and even "very cross" that anyone can comment that how she feels is a "serious allegation".

She was laughing last night that she should write this up for THE (Times Higher Education) and suggested a title of "A Foucauldian Discourse Analysis of the Redundancy Process" and cite her own doctoral thesis (which is all about management in colleges).  She has been too busy to publish anything since qualifying. 

Tony

Interesting - and even more telling of their abysmal state of non-management.  What the HR dumbo would in fact appear to have been offering is a sort of  (extremely) cut-price compromise agreement without them even understanding what they are doing.  While it is both shocking and in ways amusing for us it can obviously be extremely worrying and a rather harrowing experience for the victims, such as Aditi, of this atrocious mismanagement and bullying; a decent trade union organiser would have a  field day with it and leave the management with little option but to dismiss the utterly useless and bullying HR non-person.

 

I do indeed hope that Aditi will write it up once she finally does retire.

[station cat]

Re the HR insults - a couple I remember from the RAF - "This officer is not fit to take charge of himself, never mind a body of men" - and " His men would follow him anywhere, if only to see what f***ing stupid thing he is going to do next"

 

 

I often say i'd follow my boss anywhere - but at a safe distance and purely for the entertainment value.

[Simon G]

Re the HR insults - a couple I remember from the RAF - "This officer is not fit to take charge of himself, never mind a body of men" - and " His men would follow him anywhere, if only to see what f***ing stupid thing he is going to do next"

Another variation on this - the unpopular officer says to his men "I bet you wish I were dead, so that you could stamp on my grave" to which the reply comes "Not me sir, I dont like standing in queues"

[New Haven Neil]

Morning,  Our interviews were conducted in conjunction with HR, which was a pain cos I couldn't  always ask the questions I wanted to. snip<

 

Enjoy your day

 

My bold.  One I have to take slight issue with.

 

That is a good reason why HR ARE there......sexist and inappropriate questions used to abound - 'are you going to have any babies my dear?'...etc.  Bad old days stuff.  Not everything HR do is pants you know!

[The Stationmaster]

My bold.  One I have to take slight issue with.

 

That is a good reason why HR ARE there......sexist and inappropriate questions used to abound - 'are you going to have any babies my dear?'...etc.  Bad old days stuff.  Not everything HR do is pants you know!

That's down to educating those doing interviews I reckon Neil - not having someone riding shotgun alongside you on the day and ticking you off halfway through your dumb*rse question. Another thing I would never allow was someone from HR telling me what questions I could or couldn't ask as we waited for candidates to enter, but I would quite happily understand and follow sensible advice given to me on a training course.   The odd thing was that I found in many respects I knew far more about various personnel related legislation than many of our so called 'personnel professionals'  - for example they, and the company's solicitor, always consulted me about the Working Time Directive!   And one personnel chap and I were the company's real experts on most of our employment conditions for traincrews, although that was increasingly the case because I was the responsible manager when it came to agreeing the detail of any changes.

[AndyB]

Afternoon all! 

The sun continues to shine. 

An interesting day so far as I plough through various numeracy and literacy tests as pre-qualification for teacher training. 

One suspects it may be necessary to brush up on mental arithmetic - too much Excel / too little sleep! 

As far as the literacy test is concerned I suggest that the person who set the questions may have mastered the split infinitive. 

Nevertheless it is difficult to argue effectively with a computer!

Andy

[Barry O]

Some of my cricketing "acquaintances"  have been described as..

 

"not the sharpest knife in the box"

"one fish finger short of a pack"

"if he had a brain he would be dangerous"

and

"when they were passing out brains he wasn't there.. he was too busy eating..."

 

- strangely enough I used my assessor skills in my last redundancy interview.... I got a result and the poor HR person didn't as they were new in the job. At the end of discussions they asked if I could do some coaching before I left...erm  really...

[Ian Abel]

Bin day, all out and accounted for in their correct positions...

 

Right now (9AM) it's 19 and it's about as dark as 9:30PM, we've rolling thunderstorms crossing the area and heavy rains with .5 inches already overnight! Having to work with the lights on in my office this time of day/year is definately "odd"!

Barely 100 miles south/southwest of us in Southern Minnesota, they've had 6 inches of rain since Sunday and expecting another 4+ over the next two days!

Looks like we're in for a very wet day today and tomorrow before it clears up - and there were tornado warnings about 50 miles south west of us late last night, that's part of what's moving this way, but no tornado watch/warnings in effect at present, that is GOOD!

 

Yikes, and as I'm writing this the rain has gotten so hard I can barely see across the street - good thing I am staying in until midday - although Mrs has to head for work in about an hour!

 

Looking forward to the latest installment for Aditi - and my contribution to the cliches related to HR folks, et al "incompetents" - "not the sharpest knives in the drawer", and the perennial "if they had a brain they'd be dangerous"...

 

I better think about working on the ARK again and we may need to launch her by noon if this weather keeps up!     

 

Sieze the day and be sure to have a raincoat ready 

 

EDIT: Rats, "BO" (snigger) beat me to it with my cliches, I was composing as he was posting <sigh>

Edited June 19, 2014 by Ian Abel

[Barry O]

Ian

Well thats always the trouble with being in America.. you are behind the times GMT!

 

I can send you an Ark I have a spare one.....

 

baz

[Shedman5]

My bold.  One I have to take slight issue with.

 

That is a good reason why HR ARE there......sexist and inappropriate questions used to abound - 'are you going to have any babies my dear?'...etc.  Bad old days stuff.  Not everything HR do is pants you know!

 

What I meant was having to stick to competency interview questions not asking questions to really find out about the individual.

 

Reading all these posts says to me that the HR function is seen differently across companies. Our HR was very involved with 4monthly line manager/hr meetings to discuss staff /performance issues.

 

In 11 years we went to a tribunal 8 times and we won 8 times simply because HR were in on it right from the beginning giving the correct advice and ensuring procedures were properly followed and documented.

 

The emphasis being on documentation.

 

 

On to banks, hmm my wife put through a power of attorney for her father recently which was confirmed by the bank, so off she went today to sort out a cheque book and debit card with her name on so she can run the account and sort internet banking out.

Bright spark at the desk said you cant do that, its one card per account maybe you can share? my father in law is 87 nearly blind and has numerous ailments. Only your father can register for on line banking madam.

My wife stood there and asked  Do you actually know what your doing in your job? How come other banks such as HSBC do this? ( me with my parents) in the end the manager was summoned.

In 8 mins a cheque  book/bank card and internet banking were all sorted out however they had run out of debit card application forms so a member of staff was summoned to run across to the other branch in town to get one.

No wonder said bank is in trouble and features in the press on an almost daily basis!

 

In terms of sayings my mother who was not really religious used to say If God doesn't catch you on the way out he will on the way back. In other words tell the truth and behave because you will always be found out.

 Off for a G&T

[Tony_S]

I think there are plenty of good HR professionals in the world. However in some institutions people seem to move sideways into the job from some general admin position and would appear not to have a grasp of appropriate legislation and behave a bit like the bank person in Alan's (Shedman) post.

It can be the same in teaching, it was quite interesting which staff needed "minders" due to their problems at parent consultation evenings (or afternoons at the school Matthew went to). I can't say I was particularly impressed with the majority of the people in my former profession who taught Matthew at junior or secondary school. Infant and sixth form were superb. 

Tony

[The Stationmaster]

When I worked for XXXX we had a very keen lady as head of personnel and she introduced various innovations 'to help us manage'.  Thus on one occasion she wrote personally to draw attention to the very poor sickness record of a member of my staff and asking how I was doing to deal with it and improve his attendance record.  I replied, by 'phone,  that I was neither an onchologist or a neuro surgeon and even if I happened to be a combination of the two there would be nothing I could do to either shrink his brain tumour to an operable size or extend his life by any more that what was by then promised as likely to be no more than a few months.

 

I also pointed out that he and I had known each other and had worked together, off & on, for over 10 years and that he was still doing his level best to get to work whenever he could.  I concluded by pointing out that I had ripped her letter to shreds before throwing it into the bin and that I would be reporting to my Director her belated attempt to draw something to my attention which I had known about before she even got her job.   I understand the tongue lashing she got from me was exceeded only in its force by the one she got from my Director, and it was probably just as well that he was in York and not based near her office in London.

 

Now as far as many personnel matters were concerned she and her department worked well but they seemed not to understand that their files were about people and that in many cases some of us managers worked very closely with those people and knew them well - in that particular job I had known some of my staff for almost as long as I had worked on the railway - and that people came before systems.

Edited June 19, 2014 by The Stationmaster

[Tony_S]

When I worked for XXXX we had a very keen lady as head of personnel  

 

Now as far as many personnel matters were concerned she and her department worked well but they seemed not to understand that their files were about people and that in many cases some of us managers worked very closely with those people and knew them well - in that particular job I had known some of my staff for almost as long as I had worked on the railway - and that people came before systems.

My brother has said that all the personnel "problems" started when the multinational he worked for brought in management from the US and renamed "Personnel" to "Human Resources".