Well, this has been a walking advert for the HR profession, hasn't it? Allegations of lying. A lack of transparency. Mistrust. Back-stabbing. Call the HR director! Oh, wait ...
It's official: Lucy Adams has managed to kill off the HR profession once and for all. For years now the Human Resources profession has been navel-gazing about its own status: whether it should or shouldn't deserve a seat on the board of a company; whether it should or shouldn't be called HR (should it, perhaps, be called Human Capital Management, Personnel, or my personal favourite, Human Remains) - you know, all those really pressing questions that determine the success of a business.
Finally, Adams has managed to confirm our suspicions about HR all along: it is a pointless department that does little for the bottom line of a business. In the case of unnecessarily huge pay offs at the BBC, HR has actually helped to take away from the bottom line. As well as, let's not forget, failing miserably to uphold the kind of integrity, respect and transparency we could be forgiven to expect from the self-declared "people people". Nice one.
Unfortunately, in showing us quite just how pointless HR is, Adams has just dented the dreams of thousands of career-happy girls who go into HR to "prove their worth" and secure their path to the top. (Or hang on, let's mull over this again: is that, near the top, in a committee that sits just underneath the board, or at the top, actually on the board. Debate #pointlessHR).
Seven in 10 members of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, the HR trade body, are female. HR has always been and is still an unashamedly female-dominated profession. So girls, it's time to pick another profession if you want to make something of your life. After the BBC human resources director was accused of presiding over “corporate fraud and cronyism” over huge pay-offs to former executives - with HR coming out badly - why would anyone, especially women, want to work in HR anymore?
I've come across plenty of HR chiefs in my time who openly admit the reason they got into HR is because they are "no good with numbers". How can anyone honestly expect to get on in business without being good at numbers? This is HR's problem - plenty in the profession have told me so over the years.
Nobody quite knows what 'HR' does anyway. I used to think it was 'hiring and firing' people - that seems like a reasonable definition, doesn't it? But most HR chiefs I've ever met tell me they simply hate that label, that's degrading, they instead prefer to 'outsource' hiring and firing. No, HR is instead obsessed with things like performance management and thought leadership. Come again?
If HR insists on using jargon and carrying on 'not being any good with numbers', is it any wonder Adams has got such a bad rap for her actions? For it's not just her as an individual that people are having a go at: it's the entire HR profession. HR directors are fast becoming the new 'estate agents' hated by everybody. So much so that the whole sorry saga has turned into somewhat of a BBC pantomime; an early Christmas special with us as the free spectators.
Adams, who's reportedly been booed in the BBC newsroom twice in recent days, has been subject to hissing before; when she presided over the thousands of job cuts at the BBC a few years ago. She's earned her new nickname of the "wicked witch"; the whole thing has become a spectacle. But it's a spectacle in which the ' wicked witch ' has changed the face of HR forever: its doubtless demise.
Having said that, an HR chief is damned if they do and damned if they don't. In Adams' case, her remit was near-on impossible. She either had to reduce the BBC headcount by persuading managers to leave, hence awarding pay offs, or she would miss her targets and be criticised by bosses. Either way she's between a rock and a hard place. The bigger problem here is why companies (public or private) can't ask or expect people to leave their jobs when the boss wants them to.
The 'compensation culture' that we live in has made it normal for staff being made redundant to expect to get an extra pay off, on the understanding they won't sue the firm for unfair dismissal. The BBC is in many respects no different: the pay offs could well have been 'deals' to avoid costly tribunals and save taxpayers' money in the long run. But we should really question why this is 'normal'; it is this unwritten understanding that makes it a huge risk for firms to take on staff in the first place.
On the other hand, this is the BBC and that's our money, making its use of pay offs entirely different to the private sector. Again, as an HR person, you're damned if you do, damned if you don't. Again, why would you want to enter the HR profession?
Official figures today show the jobs market is on the up again: private sector employers have begun hiring tens of thousands of full-time workers. Perhaps it's time for all those women rising up the ranks of HR to use their job interviewing and application knowledge to good use and change careers now before it's too late. Save their own careers, before meddling with everyone else's.
As for Adams, we probably haven't seen the end of her at the BBC. It's been reported that she loves salsa and ballroom dancing : perhaps she'll be on the Strictly Come Dancing Christmas special? I for one will be watching.
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