CASE STUDIES: IMMATURITY, IGNORANCE, DEVALUING HUMAN CAPITAL AND GLIMPSES OF EXCELLENCE
Case Studies
"Workers walk away from bad bosses, March 29, 2007 01:29pm"
"EVERYONE'S worked for a bad boss at some point in their career, but it seems the tables are turning, with employees increasingly walking out on maddening managers.
A survey has found 82 per cent of office workers have quit a job rather than put up with an outrageous boss.
Chandler Macleod's Recruitment Solutions general manager Lorraine Christopher said with the unemployment rate at a 32-year low, companies needed to start training their managers.
Over 75 per cent of survey respondents claimed they'd knock back a job with better pay if the manager had a poor reputation.
Ms Christopher said the survey proved "people don't leave organisations, they leave bad bosses''.
”This study should serve as a timely wake-up call for organisations,'' she said. “Businesses simply can't afford to overlook any employee.''
The survey of 233 office workers found more than 26 per cent claimed their boss never facilitated career development, almost
20 per cent reported a complete lack of regular and honest feedback and more than half said their manger did not
always keep their word or provide leadership." (Source: News.com.au)
A large number of Australian employers seem to disregard, perhaps not know about or do not
understand the concept of
human capital.
"Over the years, the terms used to describe staff
and employees in businesses have changed. We have moved from "personnel" to "human resources" (HR) and now "human capital".
Other phrases, such as "talent management" have also emerged.
These terms can appear to be dehumanising. That is why some HR manager titles
include the word "people" in preference to "human resources".
The important point is the mindset behind the organisation’s operation....
The term human capital is recognition that people in organisations and businesses are an important and essential asset who contribute to development and growth, in a similar way as physical assets such as machines and money. The collective attitudes, skills and abilities of people contribute to organisational performance and productivity.
Any expenditure in training, development, health and support is an investment, not just an expense." (Source: Human capital concept - definition and explanation, Derek Stockley,
http://derekstockley.com.au/newsletters-05/018-human-capital.html)
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Australian unionism revitalised
The Australian government has passed a set of legislation euphemistically (spin) titled Work Choices.
These legislative provisions have exposed the core of vacuous rhetoric that employers around Australia use to describe their human resource practice.
The responsible Minister, Kevin Andrews has risked his political career on this legislation. He will lose it. Not only is his seat in parliament at risk, along with
many of his colleagues, so too is his personal integrity and reputation.
Kevin Andrews professes Catholic values. He will be judged accordingly and on
current assessment his Catholic peers seem not to be impressed with Cardinal Pell being a solid critic of the
Work Choices legislation. The legislation has exposed and unleashed the fools and
callous among Australian employers,
who were once kept in check by unions, state and federally regulated awards and laws.
The Minister heads up a Department which has been exposed by the
Australian Productivity Commission
and the Auditor General for its propensity to manipulate statistics. The Department of Workplace Relations
does not have a reputation for integrity or quality public sector management.
In amongst the myriad of convoluted, complicated and incomprehensible raft of regulations and cant,
are provisions aimed at neutering the Australian Trade Union movement.
The Australian government of John Howard, populated by Ministers of his choosing, does not have a strong record demonstrating an ability to read and predict the future. Far from neutering the union movement the legislation will actually lead to a reinvigoration of the membership. Women will join the unions because they are most at risk under the heavy handed approach engineered, and implemented, by Minister for Workplace Relations, Kevin Andrews. The government presumption is that the younger workforce of today is predisposed towards individualism, risk and adventurism. The problem is that they are not and the older members of society are returning to employment.
The government has a glaring hypocrisy. It claims that the changes will increase productivity and open up the
labour market to great expansion. Within its own public service agencies
there are hundreds of collective bargain employment
agreements in place with more being negotiated.
The public service is not rushing to test the new system.
The government also thought managers would like to oversee individual contracts rather than just have one document. That again is a miscalculation. The final miscalculation is that the Commonwealth legislation will withstand the High Court challenge being mounted by the states starting Thursday 3rd May, 2006. I think that the Work Choices legislation will not pass the constitutional test. Large segments of the act may be struck down by the High Court. The
Australian Constitution
specifies the Commonwealth government's powers under the corporation provisions. One might read the document as referring more to the regulatory regime of how corporations might behave and what "commercial" and "criminal" laws might be applicable rather than how they should employ people? The Constitution also sets a limitation in industrial relations powers to conciliation and arbitration. The High Court is actually the only defender the citizenry has left in Australia, against the excesses of the multiple political executives of the nation, particularly the executive cabinet of the Australian government.
Inflammatory language, rhetoric and adversarial behaviour that is destructive, ignorant
and debilitating
The Howard government has instituted a new set of Workplace laws, based on the federal government's constitutional powers. There is much debate and criticism regarding these laws. One perspective that has not been debated is level of maturity, and the characteristics, of Australia's employers. The reaction is many has been to interpret that they have open slather to sack employees or to rearrange their employment to less favourable conditions. The epitome of the lack of maturity, regard for talent and the methodology of valuing employee skill is the
Cowra Meatworks case.
In April 2006 twenty nine people were sacked and then offered their jobs back at $200.00 per week, lesser wages. This irrational action, in the face of laws that state this is illegal, arises due to the collective efforts of many people. Their individual contributions, during ten years of the Howard government, add up to a dysfunctional system of their direct making. It is an adversarial system of human resource policy and thinking that instead of adding value and enhancing the nation brings out the worst elements. These forces are in the ascendancy under John Howard's "Backward Australia" plan.
First, and foremost, it arises from the immaturity of Australia's senior political figures and their intemperate words and constant carping. For many years the conservative parties have shrilled about unfair dismissal laws and their impact on the economy. This has become the central theme. It is a constant whining. How the laws are limiting to small business and to productivity. Whining from people who have a constant need to blame someone or something. There is no research or evidence of this. Secondly the environment has been electrified by the zealous, and ill thought, out pursuit and persecution of unions, as the architects of evil. Interestingly politicians see no similar evil in their own political machinery.
At the forefront of the belittling, whining, and smart arsed insults, has been the former Minister for Workplace Relations, Mr. Tony Abbott. When he was in the portfolio he created the Australian Building and Construction Commission. Its primary function is to investigate, threaten and punish. It emulates its creator. It is a thuggish model of public policy, belligerent and of questionable worth. It entrenches an "adversarial cancer" in our approach to human resources management and employment issues. It exists to demonise, and to prosecute, and companies, who do things that the federal government does not like. The Commission is backed up by a policy that states companies will not be eligible for federal government contracts if they do not obey the federal government's view of how things should operate. True there is corruption and collusion in the building industry, thuggery and violence. True there is an ignorance in the building construction union leadership that has created the tension and hostility. This is largely due to their limited education and factional control where the not so articulate and reasoning in the industry, gain, and hang on to, union office. The federal government has fuelled this hostility. The approach of "political thuggery" is on both sides with wild cat behaviour on the part of the unions and blunt instruments of legislative power on the part of the government. This use of blunt instruments is one of the trademarks of the Howard government. Lacking the ability of persuasive argument, well researched and thought out debate, they resort to intimidation. This role model is adopted by quite a few people in Australian enterprises. Particularly those prone to exploitation.
Employer Associations' leadership has further entrenched the hostility, demarcation and
gladiatorial style
of the approach to human relations management in Australia.
Management is merely copying thes tyle of Australia's politicians.
Senior business figures have continually pushed the Australian government for
removal of
unfair dismissal
and the right to restructure (fire, downgrade or demote) for
operational reasons.
The federal government legislation does not define what "operational reasons" are.
The constant attacks on employment security and career prospects, and introduction of management decided employment flexibility, are aided, and abetted, by human resource practitioners in the larger companies, such as Telstra, the Commonwealth Bank, Australia Post, the National Australia Bank,
the Australian Wheat Board, the federal government agencies and many many more enterprises. There is no consideration of the national interest and the
development of human capital
in Australia by such short sighted and myopic
policies developed, engineered and rammed hom by corporate executives. It could be argued that too many highly paid executives are semi - literate in human behavioural and
management theory.
They appear to believe that they operate in vacuums, affected only by the world that they know or have identified.
There is a permeating view in many of the larger organisations that their arrogance and decisions cannot, and should not, be challenged.
The organisation is a shaping influence on behaviour and belief.
Particularly sophistiacted organisations with strong managerial and human capital systems.
Employees, particularly middle managers are programmed to ape the mantra and often engage in sycophantic emulation of their bosses
intimidating views and their own inexperienced, or substandard, notions of control, and management of people,
over any other form of
getting the best
out of their human assets.
They are very good at spouting the rhetoric and the latest theory, to their peers and the sometimes to public at large.
The organisation employs lawyers, and human resource advisory, and employment, agencies to ensure domination of
the "acceptable employee and management modus operandi" and the cultural fit. They
manage risk
and cultural fit. These two
managerial dynamics
have
taken on a greater importance than the actual skill and ability of employees and they stifle innovation and creativity.
The "managerial class" frame the workplace laws and give effect at each level of implementation moving their corrsove ideology into government.
This threatens the public interest as Departmental Secretaries and senior Ministers, and advisers, come to believe that the private sector
models, particularly competition and risk management and the shedding of accountability, have currency and application in the public sector.
"The new breed personifies qualities the Howard Government plans to enshrine
in controversial legislation now before Parliament, fundamentally changing the nature and
mission of the Public Service. They are managerialists and economic rationalists with a mixture of
public-sector and private-sector experience. They are believers in radically smaller government, where most government
services are delivered by private operators and where the "red tape" of accountability is kept to a minimum." (Source: The Axemen Cometh
The Sydney Morning Herald, November 1, 1997.)
In the federal government the laws around employment are influenced and some might say even drafted by external entities e.g. the law frim Feeehills.
Within every large organisation it appears that managerial and human resource practioner
(airheads)
populate the structures and have taken over policy and action at the highest level.
Among their weapons of culture shaping and control are the
psychological tests,
tools that have no proven foundation of accuracy or worth other than for
management legal fairness and other similarly inspired gobbly gook. These are products sold by snake oil purveyors to be swallowed by the gullible.
A worrying trend is the infiltration of airhead management, and fad theory, practices within Australia's public services. At the federal level, Immigration, Customs, Taxation,
Foreign Affairs and Trade - to name but a few. At the state and territory levels, education, health, transport and utilities.
Ministers are displaying their poor administrative, judgemental, rational and communication abilities almost every day. Senior advisers activley interfere in the adminstration and activities of the
public services at federal, state and territory levels.
Examine the responses of the Deputy Prime Minister, Mark Vaile, at the Cole Enquiry into the Australian Wheat Board. The Minister was too absorbed in trying to learn his job and it was not his responsibility anyway. Weak kneed he blamed someone else and whined. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alexander Downer, showed us his smug and arrogant side, stating that he never read international diplomatic cables except when he ran out of things to read on the plane. These two do not bother to read the material provided by spy agencies, intelligence sources and the large staff complement operating overseas. What a waste of money then and why have them if these two, and others in Ministerial offices and departments, cannot be bothered with what they send in. This is an example of jow people in senior roles view the work of others. Downer tells us that when he did bother to read one he dismissed the assertions because they were written by a "low level Captain". What a supercilious, class oriented and arrogant little man Downer shows himself to be.
The highly paid Ministerial advisory staff in the offices of the Prime Minister and the other Ministers, seem to have
never thought about the consequences.
The Australian public service does not push the point because
the Minister may become annoyed. What were the sources of information, and advice,
that the Prime Minister, and these two senior Ministers, used to inform their cabinet colleagues about the international ramifications?
They seem tio have turned a blind eye to the implications of the
Work Choices policies and legislation in the hands of many Australian employers?
It would seem that they were very selective.
Why should employers, particularly many seemingly incapable of
reading and deciphering legislation or learning the
art of human resource management behave any differently?
The media advisers to the Ministers, add to the climate of misrepresentation and confusion.
The should tutor the Minister Andrews, on the power of words.
We find the nation engaged yet again in adversarial behaviour and with demarcated
hostility. Kevin Andrews, the Minister for Workplace Relations, contributes to a gross
waste of time and resources. The Work Choices legislation is a public statement of
ignorance of human resources management. The government is ably assisted in this regard by the various employer associations
who place short sighted ideology and profit before stable and
reliable planning and implementation. The nation's policy and action
is framed on short term, selfish business objectives. Why does the Minister for Workplace Relations appear
surprised by the
emerging state of affairs
that has come about?
Perhaps Australian management could take a leaf out of American practices and
entertain their customers like this
in Australia. There are employers in the nation who are similar in their views about what employees might do to please customers. We prostitute so much in Australians society why not go all the way.
What do the federal government rules say about
exploiting peple in sheltered workshops?
Probably nothing because that is a welfare issue and not real employment. Governments and certain business interests can demonise trade unions but when it comes down to it the creation of
workplace inspectors and a massive government bureaucracy
will never replace the good work of those in
Australian trade union representatives
dedicated to the welfare of others. The Minister for Workplace Relations, Kevin Andrews, and like minded others, prefer to belittle and denigrate their contribution whilst egotistically self applauding his, and the government's own, efforts and views. These are such good qualities in our senior public leaders that so many want to emulate them.
On Monday the 10th, and Tuesday 11th, of April, 2006, the Australian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Trade and the Foreign Minister, both provided an insight
into the level of competency in their own management of their portfolios and that of their senior staff. Ignoring the "pass the parcel" antics and lapses of memory, the underlying theme was one of incompetence on the
part of all parties. Cables were sent many times from the USA to the Ministries pointing to large scale corruption by the Australian Wheat Board
in its dealings with Iraq during United Nations sanctions and the invasion. The Minister did not read them or cannot recall them and the staff were not astute enough to
discern the future implications. Thus the task of ensuring that the matter of incompetence is addressed falls to the titular head of the
Australian Public Service (APS), Dr. Peter Shergold who can only deal with the bureaucracy and not the performance of Ministers.
The Prime Minister will not deal with the incompetence of his Ministers for there are no managerial or public interest standards set for the people whom he unilaterally chooses
to appoint into these roles.
It has been apparent for sometime that the pool of talent upon which the APS draws is shrinking. Director roles are being filled by people who are inexperienced and
of lesser ability than the older public servants who have left the ranks. Australia got in this mess through a failure of people who are paid to do a job, not doing it.
It was not that they did it clumsily or that they were instructed not to do it. It was simply that they are incapable of performing the roles for which they are employed. Dr. Shergold has the unenviable and challenging task of rebuilding large
parts of the public sector human capacity.
If you spent time inside recruitment companies and saw how many of them treated their staff, the
limited backgrounds, and experiences, of some of the recruiters that interview you
you might want to sue them for misrepresentation. Peole of early thirties are holding themselves out to be experts. One wonders why companies would employ their services such as advising on human resource matters when they are incapable of running their own
human resources productively and have such limited, and narrow, experience and expertise. You might want to interview the company's call centre staff to get an idea of their own practices
before you chose to contract the company to advise and guide you. Many of the well known enterprises
are simply appalling in their draconian and often childish styles of management of people. Particularly those that adopt
the US model of staff motivation through fear and oppressive micro management.
Recruitment companies are literally a dime a dozen on the sidewalk. They have an association and code of practice that seeks to give them some legitimacy and dress them up as competent.
The implication is that if they follow this code they are exemplary service providers. They tout the expertise of their staff. They are effectively call centres, listing jobs like a real estate agent.
A large number of recruitment companies engage in misrepresentation, breaching the trade practices act every day.
They misrepresent their products and services. On balance what they claim and offer is often not deliverable.
The hype does not match the performance. Their advertisements are too often misleading, the jobs, in a lot of cases, are non existent and
their smooth talking banter is nothing more than rhetoric that they learnt in rote school.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission ignores their behaviour.
It is a world of cons. A con by the applicant and a con by the agency.
Day after day I have sat and read resumes that include qualifications that read like some
primary school credential. Short courses offered up as credible education and training, deliver in house within businesses that have trouble justifying the quality of their product let alone
their training. Applicants who were simply too lazy, or did not have the opportunity, to further their education. They have grasped at the
quick fix courses offered up under the Australian Training Framework. Courses of little substance and duration deliver by "nationally accredited training institutions", private and state owned Training and
Further Education Institutions. These are shallow competency based courses with assessment that is not based on a rigorous content, mind taxing puzzles and substance. However they are like locusts plagues across the Australia nation devouring the foundation of our education.
One must question the capacity of the person who offers them up as credentials supporting an application for employment beyond anything other than for things such as fork lift driving.
In comes the short listed applicant to be interviewed by someone whose life experience is measured in days not decades. It is no wonder that
the recruitment industry is held in such low esteem. Add the experience, knowledge, ineptitude, and questionable ability, of the interviewer, who themselves come late to work and are unreliable, to the
misrepresentations of the company on its web site, and in the brochure, and the industry is quite contemptible.
Creeping into the Australian lexicon, and operation, are the spurious, and
questionable practices employed in the United States of the America, the bastion of sleaze marketing and misrepresentation which lauds the employment practices of Wal Mart.
Put your resume on one of the many job boards, that promise employers will come flocking to read the document and see how many hits you get. It is laughable on one hand but
of greater import when you realise that it is quite dishonest.
The purveyors of hollow promises are playing with peoples' sensibilities, hopes and aspirations. Having
studied and worked with recruiters I find none are reliable or as qualified as they claim. They are the used car sales people of human aspiration and dreams.
They emulate other purveyors of dishonesty and trickery, namely Australia's politicians. Like the companies that exploit candidates and employers, with drivelling justifications as to why one should
use a recruiter, senior politicians exploit the gullible and also manipulate through misrepresentation. The difference being that the politician purportedly is there to serve the
public interest. Like the recruitment companies that infest Australia's landscape, Australia's government is about glossy advertisements, smoke and mirrors without much substance and result.
It is not about Australia's human capital and talent. The world of "work choices" in Australia is not a quality product, experience or environment. It is far from world best practice whatever that might be.
Hardly a week goes by that senior politician does not cause one to question their maturity.
Take for example Kevin Andrews, the federal Minister. He says on radio that the new laws introduced by him permit an employer to sack someone
from their livelihood on a "personality difference". This is an immature and reckless statement hardly worthy of a senior figure in politics.
One can always consider the adage - pay peanuts and you get a monkey but he is not paid peanuts and one assumes he is not a monkey. Though he does dance to pretty common ideology that drones on and on with raucous effect.
The Minister ought to be aware that as very senior member of the
Australian government cabinet words can be weapons. However history shows that he, and his Ministerial colleagues, have little comprehension of their role and the onerous responsibility it brings.
Perhaps he is self absorbed with his place in history as the reformer of Australia's labour market.
Pity that it appears that he did not educate himself about Ministerial responsibility and
the power of language before he took his oath to serve or at least gave it some thought over his time in parliament.
The question is, who does he serve? The record shows that it is not the national interest.
Pity that he is not confronted more often about not being a role model that is worthwhile emulating and listening to.
As federal Minister for Workplace Relations he has taken the
government's mean, and tricky status, to a new dimension
when he released his Workplace Relations Amendment ct and the regulations
in March 2006. The act has been touted as a simplification for it seeks over time to abolish awards, the power of the
Australian Industrial Relations Commission, tribunals and union power neutering anyone who effectively opposes the government's will.
To propose with your employer that you include a provision for dealing with dismissal (calling it an unfair dismissal) in your employment contract is a criminal offence. The fines are in the tens of thousands.
To do anything to attempt to block the government's objectives, using freedom to contract, is a criminal offence, to
propose that people might belong, or not, to a union is a criminal offence.
What is criminal is that an elected, and paid public official, a Minister of the Crown can act against segments of the population in pursuit of an ideological
objective. What is criminal is the manner in which the Minister focuses denigration upon a particular segment of the nation's population.
Unions are legally incorporated bodies. If they go about their legal business in a manner that the Minister does like he and sanction them.
This is draconian piece of legislation with puerile and sanctimonious overtones. It is poorly framed, with some 1,500 pages of incomprehensible legalese with no complete copy to which one can refer. It is has 440 pages of regulations for employers and employee es and is
cross referenced to legislative
instruments
that will have little meaning to any who is not Kevin Andrews, not a lawyer and not one of the Departmental public servants who
produced this diatribe of pure targeted spite. Perhaps the ever bright neo conservatives in the Australian Business Council and Industry Group, can decipher it.
"Do as I tell you or you will pay", is the simple summary I discern of Kevin Andrew's contribution to public policy.
Rather than gather the nation to work together to growth, economic wealth and harmony the Howard govern met likes to conquer and divide, create division and make its perceived enemies pay.
These are mean people who have for years been kept in their bottles until the very stupid voting public
let the genies out to
bite them.
Australia has become meaner as a place to work and people who would want to migrate here should think carefully about that. There are companies, including some indicated below, who will
find Andrew's legislation the ants pants. They are not Australia's
leading employers or leading human resource lights, they are definitely not world best practice role models
in their field. This piece of foolhardy and reckless legislation will cause the fall of the government but worst, it will
damage the nation irreparably for it imbues hatred into legislation even though it is veiled and covered in velvet glove lies and misrepresentations.
On behalf of a corporation, covered under the legislation, I rang the Kevin Andrew's Department's hot line and asked a simple question,. If the legislation mandated a
maximum 38 hour week, but employees could demand reasonable extra hours. What did this mean? My client
currently demanded that staff work 40 hours per week. The Department adviser referred me to another service, Wageline. I net to their incomprehensible web site which has
state and territory and federal awards. I rang them, they could not tell me. They said the employer would have to pay overtime.
The employer (my client) disputed that and said that no consultancy in the world worked a 38 hour week. I was none the wiser after two hours of web crawling and
phone calls. Tis is not atypical of the Department under Kevin Andrew's administration. I have had previous experience wit their misrepresentations and propensity to waste the money and time of other people.
This is a hallmark of the Howard government, wasting the peoples' money in office and in dealing with people externally. When you deal with a member of the Howard government remember that they are first and foremost, their interests,
their objectives and their egos. They are not unique, labor state and territory ministers, and departmental heads, are similarly inclined.
There are few glimpses of excellence at Australia's Commonwealth Bank.
Shareholders of one of Australia's leading banks, a very large and prestigious corporation, might be lead to question the competency and ethics of the
board members, chief executive and senior managers particularly in relation to human resources expertise and strategy.
In the week of December 15, 2005, the bank was fined $750,000 in the federal court for breach of the
Workplace Relations Act. The bank had forced 250 people to resign and then reemployed them through
a third party company. These people were effectively devalued and robbed by the bank of fair payment for their abilities.
I think this is unconscionable conduct and shows that at this bank, employees are not the greatest asset.
Perhaps the Board and managers think they are. Austalian banks have been held in contempt by consumers for their charges and pursuit of greed coupled with branch closures and poor service delivery and it appears that
senior managers learn nothing and attract further ridicule and contempt. Perhaps the Board and the fool who made the decision to be
creative, should pay the fine and not the shareholders. The board and managers are likely to make another brilliant decision, costing shareholders more
money by appealing the judgement.
As if this were not enough the bank management compounded its poor record with another brilliant
idea, producing a "grooming handbook".
5 December 2005, Commonwealth Bank
"The Commonwealth Bank today said that the grooming guide that the Bank
had issued to its retail banking staff was intended as a guide only.
Hugh Harley, Group Executive, Retail Banking Services said that the
Bank is very proud of the way its staff present to work.
The grooming handbook was developed in conjunction with the new
corporate collection which was issued to staff in March of this year,
free of charge to staff serving customers directly. With the issue of
the new designer collection, staff had shown a keen interest in personal
presentational matters. The Bank has been holding workshops
for staff to show them the full potential of the
new attire and how to present it in the most professional manner.
In this context, the grooming guide had been developed, as a
guide only, to support any staff looking for additional information.
Response from staff to the new corporate collection has been
overwhelmingly positive. In particular, staff serving customers directly are very appreciative that they were given a high quality wardrobe free of any charge.
Mr Harley said, "The guidelines are just that - guidelines.
They should be seen in that context.
The guide was developed in response to staff interest in
personal presentation and I apologise to any staff who may have been
offended or who do not feel comfortable discussing such matters".
Australian bank apologises for grooming guide, 06/12/2005 14:13
CANBERRA (Reuters)
One of Australia's largest banks apologised on
Monday for a "grooming handbook" that suggested staff wear flesh-coloured
underwear and advised against shiny stockings because they make legs look fatter.
The grooming guide -- which also recommended that earrings should be no bigger than
a small coin and that women should wear no more than two rings on each
hand -- was given to retail banking staff at the Commonwealth Bank.
Do you bank with, and use the services of, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia? If so why?
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Careers guides and news articles on human resources management
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Endowing "superiority".
Work at Australia Post and be endowed with the status of "superior officer". On the ABC news at 6pm on Friday November 25, 2005, an Australia Post spokesperson said that
employees who were absent on the day that national protests occurred against the federal government's Work Choice legislative diatribe would be asked to explain their absence to "superior officers".
This is a particularly inspiring description of people in supervisory roles in one of Australia's largest public sector enterprises.
The Australian government finds nothing wrong with this.
Of course one can understand why they would not the actions of Australia Post substandard in management theory and practice,
when one looks at
the record of the Howard government,
and the record of
other government owned enterprises
and the people with whom,
the Australian government deals and appoints to represent it. The Australian government under John Howard's devalues people into econoic increments.
It is botba culpable, and a negligent government, in the administration of one of the largest enterprises in Australia, the
federal parliament and government. A litany of poor management, ignorance and questionable ethics taints it and
this permeates downwards to industry, and enterprise, as managers emulate the example.
John Howard, and his Ministers, have given a legal license to the
mistreatemnt of human capital, dressing it up as economic necessity under global competition imperatives.
Only the stupid, or semi-literate, the bigoted and those without vision of what we as a nation might be,
would accept the propositions of Howard's human capital strategies. The quality of leadership and lack of ability to create a national bonding towrads goals,
might explain why Australia does not achieve its full potential.
It seems also evident that Australia's full potential would not be achieved
under the federal labor opposition ranks, of 2006, given the quality of
leadership and ability, therein.
The Commonwealth Bank, Australia Post and other examples we see every day,
demonstrates that the nation (citizens, shareholders) allows people of limited ability to take the running in too many sectors.
What are the classifications of people at Australia Post other than "senior officer"? "Less than ordinary officer", "ordinary officer", "above ordinary", "extraordinary" and "superior"?
What description might the CEO, and Board, have for their
esteemed office and positions in this enlightened publicly owned corporation?
I fully support Australia Post, execute the people! How brazen, and treasonous, employees are to dare to exercise their democratic right to protest against the government.!
Not on the government's (public) dime indeed!
Why not, you unenlightened, despotic small minded lot in charge of Australia Post?
Why are you wallowing hypocrisy, is it to impress your political masters?
The Australian government has no qualms in spending $50M - $60M of our dime,
pushing its own agendas, ideology and flaky theories, through shallow, childish advertising.
which is short on substance and strong on
misrepresentation. If quality for the buck is a determinant, then government should consider not paying its creative agencies for producing much of the drivel that comes out.
If quality of human management in government enterprise and the public service is a goal then again it should consider what sort of talent it is employing to achieve this.
Enough frivolity and sarcasm. Those whom about I rant are not worthy of a second thought.
We know high minded objectives of the value of their employees, or anyone else outside their circle, are not to be found on the Australian government's agenda.
Now back to the government inspired hunt for those who challenged its authority. Imagine what anarchy would occur if employees were allowed equal time, rights and costs, to similarly argue, protest and
advertise their feelings about their employment future, conditions and rights.
What a pathetic, and mediocre, set of human management standards and responses have crept into our enterprise lexicon, courtesy of the "communications sopin doctor" and the mentality of
management. What poor role models Australia has, in its major enterprises, particularly
government owned business enterprises.
There is a gulf between the published mission statements and standards and the exposed face of modern enterprise.
Are we to suspect that the inquisition is alive and well in organisations like Australia Post and that people are imbued with class, status and traits of superiority through employment?
We cannot tell much about the
quality of how people are managed
in this government enterprise. The Human Resource governance document is of such depth as to almost overwhelm.
In terms of its primary goal, shareholder value, revenue and a change from its past it successful.
However apart from what we see at the counter it is, like all of the Howard government
enterprises
not really transparent
in terms of fullsome reporting, and being accountable to the people that own it, the Australian public.
It extols the standard rhetoric. Consistent with modern management practice human assets are not the most valued in the strategic business plan.
Talking to Australia Post's independent contractors, particularly in rural areas, one gets a sense of an organisational culture that is
impervious to humanity in regard to how it deals with people. It is said that Australia Post plays hard ball knowing that jobs are in short supply,
investment is high and contractors are thus locked in. A "slavery" style contracting process that is about minimising the returns on investments that contractors can make on their trucks, equipment, outgoing costs and labour.
They never know if their contracts will be renewed or if they will actually retain them during the
tenure of the one they have. They pay a five-figure performance bond and the return on their capital is less than 3%, if that. As petrol and costs rise it can overall become a negative.
Contractors need the cash flow. They rise at 3am and work in all conditions.
By comparison the "senior officers" earn six figures with no outgoings. A forensic examination of the Annual report gives clues as to what sort of organisation Australia Post is inside.
Bondage through fear and insecurity is one of the managerial tactics used by the less inspired, and mediocre, organisations in the globalised world of competitive work to control people.
At the counter staff are polite and efficient but none wear "superior officer" nametags. It is unlikely that
"superior officers" actually man the front line service delivery and nor are they likely to be responsible for the quality of service.
That is the task of those who will have to explain, and justify, themselves to "superior officers".
We might have a further window to the style from the media spokesperson's statements.
To determine where such cultures have been nurtured we can look at the quality of human policy, politicisation and penchant for
retribution, vengeance and payback
all hallmarks of the Howard government.
Such traits seem inherent in the performance profile of some senior ministers, ministerial staffers spreading this corrosively into senior public servants.
We might ponder what are the benchmarks, and merit criteria, for
appointment to public sector boards?
Australia Post is a placid organisation. It is never in the headlines for "bucking" the government line, unlike Telstra.
So as the senior officers of Australia Post, with the government's consent enquire into the unexplained absence we can be assured
that the use of fear, to control, is something that the Howard government admires and practices.
The only anomaly is why Howard, and his governjment troops, do not wear uniforms and boots?
|
The quality of human resource management practice is affected by the
quality, ethics and behaviour
of the politicians and high profile leaders, in our communities as well as by the
efficiency
of the operations of the public, or private sector,
enterprise itself and the quality of its decision makers and managers.
By Comparison to the examples above there are enlightened employers
There are not too many employers in Astralia who will take on the disabled and give them employment and self respect.
Disability Works Australia has identified these
more enlightened human capital practitioners.
Many people are defined predominantly by their work.
|
As sad as it may seem, for many work is status and the definition of their personality and being.
It has become the central feature of modern existence and the lines of
living and working
are blurred.
The hours of work, and intrusion into personal life have had different effects on peoples' opinions and
satisfaction.
Technology is a pervasive
instrument that allows the employer unfettered reach, anywhere, anytime.
Society is complex and the nature of our policy planning and organisational behaviour systems
have not kept up with advances in technology. Theories of human resource management abound yet our governments and many employers, .
can only visualise and promote archaic,and simplistic, workplace relations.
Extract: Give us a break: Australia is hard at work
By Tim Colebatch
Economics editor, Canberra
July 7, 2005
"Even with four weeks' annual leave,
Australians are already the hardest-worked citizens in the Western world.
We bear an average workload of 1855 hours a year - more than
workers in the United States, Japan or anywhere in Europe.
Workplace Relations Minister Kevin Andrews wants his changes
to allow workers to swap two weeks of annual leave for money,
but in fact our four weeks is already in the lower half of Western leave levels.
Whether you look at annual leave, public holidays or total working hours,
comparison with other Western countries suggests Australian workers are
far from being the bludgers we think. Koreans aside, no Westerners spend more
time in the office, shop or factory than us.
In a book of statistics,
How Australia Compares, Sydney academic
Rodney Tiffen and Age columnist Ross Gittins
found that Australians have the longest working year of any
Western nation for which data is available.
Australians on average work 1855 hours a year, or 38.6 hours a
week if you assume they work 48 weeks a year. That Australia also
has the West's second highest rate of part-time workers, Tiffen and Gittins
add, "makes its position at the top of the league of hard workers even more remarkable".
(end extract)
The senior members of Australia's parliaments are career politicians who have
limited experience, knowledge and awareness.
Put simply the members of the Australian government are pontificating and some would say that they do it
without a clue. I cast no such aspersion. Ther must be some clues? They do, on the face of it, appear to be
producing legislation that is
unbalanced
Dear Kevin
"The Democrats opposed the Work Choices legislation
because it was unfair, unwise and there was no empirical economic justification
for the changes. Please feel free to visit the Democrats campaign page on the Work Choices Bill."
Democrats policy and media on the reforms
Kind regards
Kellie Caught
Workplace Relations Adviser
Senator Andrew Murray
Australian Parliament
This is a signifiant problem.
Politicians, governments, and many managers of human endeavour and labour
make decisions based on ideology, untested theories, outmoded ideas, concepts, policies and a lack of new ideas and strategies.
The Australian Labor party has, for years, claimed that the major failure in Australia's human capital planning is the lack of focus on training.
This is not the case.
The greatest problem that Australia faces is the immaturity of the policy and decision makers.
The mediocre planning of government, and industry, and the definition criteria and selection processes
in use. Despite a reality of an ever-lessening pool of experience, job advertisements, and selection practices, still focus on the proposition
that for a person to be successful in a job
they must have experience within that sector. The advertisements are cannibalistic, recycling people. One of the most tedious of advertisements are for consultants.
They invariably specify that applicants should ave experience with "top tier" firms and the "Big 4".
These are the organisatons that have been investigated for corruption and fraud worldwide. The best known firms have had to be broken upo to survive scandal.
The greatest commercial failures in the world involve companies that used the services of these firms. What is it with recruiters and employers that they are mesmerised by size and
and smooth marketing?
Playing it safe, there is little, if any, recognition of the possibility, and potential, of transferability of skills across sectors.
Much of this myopia has to do with Australian management, and consultants', aversion to risk, lack of knowledge and
the human trait of choosing people who relate on a personal level with their interviewer. The situation is further exacerbated by
the protectionist barriers maintained by professional associations.
It appears beyond the comprehension of those who make decisions that there are fundamental skills, which are generic.
Successful people in other sectors learn very quickly in new ones.
Additionally the quality of policy, and practice, in human resources management and the harnessing of talent
in Australia is closely linked to
ethics and leadership.
Qualities that may be severely
lacking in many areas of public and corporate life.
|
| International job market,
employment, work, news, associations and jobs services |
DOES AUSTRALIA NEED A BULLSHIT FILTER?
ACADEMICS EXAMINING THE FEDERAL INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS CHANGES
Wednesday 16 November, 2005, one hundred and fifty (151) academics representing the majority of Australia's academic industrial relations expertise lodged
their submissions with the
Australian Senate enquiry into the Australian government's Work Choices
employment legislation.
They were not flattering in their critique.
Kevin Andrews, the Minister for Workplace Relations, responded when asked if he would take their criticisms and views on board,
that there was "no substitute for common sense" and that the legislation was evolutionary. Such is the quality and the measure of
the political debate and perhaps the intellectual capacity of the Minister.
On this statement we can be assured that the world is flat.
Common sense would imply that under
Minister Andrews' hand there would be little future for nonsensical and noncommon sense, research of any kind such as flying to the moon.
There is no proof offered to support the government's, Minister's, some industry associations' and employers' claims that these laws will enhance
Australia's
productivity.
There is no research, or supporting evidence, in the world. Thus the government must go
beyond the planet into the mystique.
The newly appointed Chair of the Fair Pay Commission, says that he will be taking his guidance from God
and one can see that under the Howard government, the dark ages of
Christian crusades, servitude of the masses to the princes, and kings, of government and enterprise is in the ascendancy.
Howard, and his cabal, seem to have a mistrust of intellectual enquiry, unless it is supportive of, and consistent with, their
myopic perceptions and beliefs. Some critiques argue that Howard has diminished Australia's intellectual institutions. There is nothing exceptionally intellectual, or factually robust, about the government's polices, actions and decisions.
The government has printed a very simplistic, almost childlike, booklet called Work Choices, a reader for the challenged public who might find it hard to decipher complex statements and claims. The booklet tells us much about the level of maturity of the Minister, the Department and the members of parliament who think that it is all worthwhile and substantial in its content. It states categorically that an employee's award will be protected
and that they may elect to stay on it.
What the booklet does not say is that the
legislation clearly states
that this option will apply only
to the date of expiry of the award and that it may not be renewed.
The employment arrangement will then revert to the five minimum conditions until, and if,
an Australian Workplace Agreement is negotiated and agreed. The government's publication misleads by omission. This is common tactic and this is its record.
On Tuesday 15 November 2005 a national day of protest is planned against the Australian government's proposed workplace, and employment, laws.
One can gain a sense of the level of maturity of the Australian government, public service managers and employers generally by how they are responding to this event. This is in essence a political protest by citizens
against the policy actions of their government. However it is being characterised by some politicians, by the public service and by employers and their associations as a strike".
This is puerile and demonstrates how immature we are as a nation in approaching human resource management and strategies. The media airways are filled with a crescendo of parroting.
Those who characterise the political protest as a strike demonstrate their inability to conceptualise the nature of a true democracy and the level of their maturity and ability to deliver strong and effective fair government. For them democracy is voting once every few years and keeping ones head down for the remainder so that the "people who are in charge" may have unfettered control. At every level of Australian society without challenge.
The federal public service has decided that an employee may not take leave to demonstrate their opinion of the proposed legislation.
How ignorant and what an interference with democratic rights and process! It is all very well for employers to engage in lobbying, and influencing, governments and to seek to get the legislation they want but is illegal for the ordinary employed person to do so.
Activism in politics is actively discouraged. According to the "power collective" employed people must put their (employer') interests first above public good, vibrant democracy and challenging debates.
The leaders of our nation, at so many levels of political and corporate life tend to be a narrow minded and self interested lot whose greed, corruption and desire to dictate has resulted in this piece of legislative crap being offered up as innovative and
visionary policy for the economic, and social wellbeing, of Australia.
The Australian government demonstrates that it has no innoavtive, or unqiue, ideas
reading human resource management practice and how it might create a cooperative society for the advancement of Australia.
It borrows its policies largely from a country with an obscenely rich ruling class where half the population is mired in poverty and slavery.
This is not surprising when one looks at the background, and pronouncements, of the policy makers in Australia's federal government
and how the Ministers of that government, and senior public servants, run the administration with little regard for
quality management practices.
The Australian government's proposals for employment laws is another sure
fired way to put barriers and impediments in the way of harnessing, and deploying, Australia's productive human resource talents.
Australian government television advertisements for the proposed changes to workplace relations, industrial relations and
employment in Australia are one line printed statements, a page of
print with boxed statements "protected by law" overlaid in the newspapers. Governments, and their media advisers,
treat the electorate as if they are only capable of understanding simplistic concepts.
These advertisements are to cost taxpayers around $45,000,000 - $50,000,000. One advertisement says that
Australia cannot afford the 130 separate pieces of legislation,
thousands of pages and six different jurisdictions.
On that logic Australian cannot afford the 10,000+ pages of taxation legislation, health legislation, education legislation and nine multijurisdictional systems that cover the federation.
The Prime Minister and Minister for Workplace Relations are often unable to articulate a
comprehensive, and cogent argument,to justify their presumptions and claims. They resort to printing their single sentence thoughts in the media.
Unlike them people within communities are able to pose
telling arguments for and against.
Now if it says that page could not be found it is because Fairfax has removed Margo's web diary, and Margo.
Seems she did not take kindly to interference in editorial freedom. You wil see a really nice statement on Fairfax's site.
But you can find Margo by entering "webdiary Australia" into Google.
Workplcae Relations Minister, Kevin Andrews, appears evasive and somewhat trite in his explanations.
when asked specific questions about legislation and policy debates.
He has no evidence or research to support his broad assertions and simplistic assumptions.
Of greater concern is the slapdash and manipulative approach of the
Australian government to important public policy issues and to shaping legislation. Everything hs to be rushed through.
Legislation is poorly articulated and conveyed by Ministers to the people drafting and there is some form of "thought transference process" negating the
need to clearly enunciate the intent.
The employment legislation is convoluted, conflicts with other pieces of federal and state laws and with the Australian Constitution.
The Prime Minister fatuously denies the obvious.
The Prime Minister states with conviction that certain Australian employment conditions are
protected by law. The advertisements are over printed with this statement.
When the fine print of the 800 or so pages of legislation, and regulations, are studied it can be seen that
the Prime Minister misrepresents and misleads the public.
The Australian government has a solid, and constant, record of misrepresentation on most contentious
public policy issues.
It is a government of expediency. The end justifies the means of the ideological pursuit.
There is no research or intensive investigation of their beliefs. The policies of the Australian government are too often
acts of faith without foundation merit. They feel it in their guts.
These political role models shape other decision makers and their influence can be seen
in the
decline in ethics, and standards, in Australia.
Compounding this is the decline of standards and expertise in the human resources industry as
the Australian workforce ages and more experienced practitioners leave to be replaced by people of narrow expertise, education and experience.
The growth in the market place of specialist human resource (employment, training and services) enterprises, and disappearing teaching of human resource (soft)
discipline in universities, leaves Australia exposed on many fronts. If you look at the membership of cabinets
of Australia's parliaments, and membership of boards, and the level of influence
exerted by those who might be described as human related practitioners in those places it is clear that a significant number of Australian decision makers hold little regard for these
disciplines preferring to take the advice, and guidance, of the hard core practitioners of economics, computing, finance and law.
In these places the human resources agenda is given token recognition. There is no
concerted national strategy, planning and cooperation between government and industry, beyond
simplistic concepts and self interests' protection. The process of participation and debate, communication and listening denotes extensive immaturity,
lack of expertise, vision and innovation
within key areas of Australian society. Much of what is published, government reports, committees, corporate vision and mission statements and such can be seen to be
hollow rhetoric. The most prominent examples being the Code of Conduct and Values of the Australian Public Service and the Big brand name audit, legal and consulting firms.
Australia desperately needs an organisation that can act as a "bullshit" filter, a role currently being undertaken by an overworked legal and court system in the absence of an investigative and
enquiring media which is also afflicted by the talent drain of an aging population.
|
On Sunday, 9 October 2005, the Prime Minister and the
federal Workplace Relations Minister, Kevin Andrews, held closed meetings with special interest groups to unveil the government's industrial relations and labour market reform intentions.
This is typical of how Australia's political leaders, particularly the Prime Minister and the federal government act. Though they are not alone in this. The state government of Steve Bracks, in Victoria, is as myopic, insular and ignorant in its own practices.
The Prime Minister in response to questions,
about the impact of proposals on the nation responded glibly that we should look to his record.
This is is standard response which is drivel. It is a response full of hubris
standing on a foundation of political sand.
Which record is that? The one where he, whilst in opposition, railed against Asian immigration?
The manner in which special interests receive consideration, and patronage,
and others do not?
Buying votes and pork barreling? Corrupt, and manipulative, practices
in managing the business our parliament? The record of exclusion and bigotry? The record of borrowed, and expediently jettisoned, ideas and policies?
The sneaky, and underhanded approach to government?
Or perchance the record of the government, and its senior personnel, and their manipulation, omission,
lies and deceit? Torturing refugees, deporting Australians?
Can we look to the doctored pictures of people in the ocean and the claims of the Prime Minister about children being thrown into the sea by their parents?
Or perhaps the existence of weapons of mass destruction,
the abandonment of Australian citizen, David Hicks, to torture, sexual deviancy and the inhumane practices of his captors?
Denigrating the courts and legal system?
Perhaps the Prime Minister is referring to the perpetrated falsehood that he and his government are responsible for economic prosperity in a global world where money market, commodity prices
and big business influences the outcome?
What record would he have us rely upon that is an indisputable fact of his time in office that
does not involve some element of deception, manipulation and degradation?
John Howard is unable to articulate a human resources policy, industrial relations system and a need for change
through trust and leadership. The Minister for Workplace Relations, Kevin Andrews similarly lacks the ability and
no one in the Australian government of John Howard, at ministerial level, appears to want to answer questions honestly and in detail.
They must instead spend $50,000,000 and more on television and media advertising
using tricks, lies, misrepresentations and mass manipulation techniques. Howard has made squalour in government and art form.
|
Australia operates in an environment where political, and corporate deviance, is rife underpinned by adversarial and substandard political governance processes and systems.
There is lack of trust, evidence of very poor to criminal examples of
ethical behaviour,
by interests engaged in significant areas of the nation's economy and society.
The politicians, union officials, representative bodies of employers, legal and other powerful
interests have combined, and colluded, to create a system of self serving principles asnd operation
It is a corroded environment where self interest of one form or another
is placed before public interesta dn even human decncy. Collusion to create a cartel is illegal under the Trades
Practices Act. However the Trade Practices Act does not apply to our system of government, politics and power.
It does not help that there are six states
and a federal government, unable to create a common system of processes in the nation.
It is the opinion of the author that the Australian government's proposals for labor market reform and employment legal practices, are yet another example of
the lack of detail, consultation and open government in operation in Australia. They appear to be cobbled together from a hybrid of systems, and ideas, borrowed from the sources below in this article. For example there are commonalities with the
government's proposals and with Vietnam labour laws and other developing world countries as well as bits and pieces from the USA.
They are designed to limit third party intervention in the arena of employer and employee.
They are a determined effort, by the coalition parties, as always to put the aim of destroying union power before any other logic. They are the creation of the unimaginative and the unethical.
They are the work, ideas and propositions of people who are
left brain thinkers
and who appear to sneak about. They should be
treated with scepticism by the working people of the nation.
The Howard government proposals will fuel the poor record of harnessing Australia's human talent.
The successive federal Ministers who have held the portfolio of Employment and Workplace Relations have no discernible experience, or qualifications, in people management and human resources.
Yet they propose dramatic alteration and systems without any credible justification of substance.
The Prime Minister likes to refer to
productivity claiming that it will rise.
Is this true?
Is productivity the same as
workload?
The Australian government, particularly the Minister for Workplace Relations, Kevin Andrews, has no data and research to support such claims.
This apparently will be undertaken by the Fair Pay Commission. The new Chair of that Commission has stated that he will be assisted by God's advice to make his decisions. Will God's advice come by email. Letter or other mechanism to be recorded, in accordance with public record legislation?
This drivel is typical of the low standards exemplified in decision making and argument in Australia.
The Ministers of governments, not just the federal, prefer to fly on ideology and assumption.
""Libertarian policy prescriptions are based on just a few principles,
outwardly appealing in their seeming simplicity ...'simple rules for a complex world.'
The first ... is that social problems can be resolved by creating a market.
Are schools failing? Create a free market in education. Is there pollution or
waste of resources? Create a market in the resource or the right to pollute; ...
Is there a shortage of human organs for transplants? Let people sell their body parts.
Not enough babies for adoption? Allow people to sell their babies ... "
And with equal deftness, Aune fingers the trouble: "These principles of 'economic correctness'
are increasingly mouthed in the universities and especially in conservative think tanks, but
their obvious long-term implications may strike ordinary Americans as horribly cruel.
They need to hear this economic gibberish first-hand...
Free-market rhetoric is powerfully persuasive only to a certain kind of elite audience;
uncoupled from nationalist appeals...it begins to lose its power to motivate general
audiences in a positive way."
Aune goes on to focus closely on the rhetorical practices of several major libertarians:
the legal scholar Richard Posner, the novelist and Greenspan mentor Ayn Rand,
the philosopher Robert Nozick, and the polemicist Charles Murray. He shows how the
"realist style"of economic argument works, combining the definition of any "object,
person or relationship as a commodity"; reliance on quasi-logical argument; appeals
to irony (via reference to the "inevitable perversity of well-intentioned social programs");
failure to respond to opposing arguments (because "in real science, when fundamental questions
are settled, only cranks dispute them"); and perhaps
above all, the avoidance of empirical
investigation".
Such avoidance has been made an art form by the Howard government and its Ministers.
There is little research and no evidence for his claims
just manipulations and assumptions,
and there is no defineable relationship between productivity and the policies
espoused by John Howard, the government and the supporting business community. The eminent American economist
J.K Galbraith states categorically that there is
there is little solid evidence that high unemployment results from labor market rigidities
and that such policies have widened the gap between rich and poor.
Employment is an outcome of demand for goods and services. In the United States he calims that full employment is sustained by the tacit acceptance of
large scale poverty by the administration and the greedy in society.
Questionable claims and statements of disputable fact
The Prime Minister, whose qualifications by comparison are that he diod a law qualifiaction back in the sixties and progressed to become a wily politician,
is clearly misleading the Australian people when he categorically states that there is a positive relationship between the government's
legislative intentions and the liekly outcome effects on productivity. This view is challenged with deep research and experience in the USA and Canada.
"For decades, workers' wages were tied to productivity. The idea was simple:
When workers produce more either tangible products or services in an hour of work
than before, they are being more efficient and, usually, that means more profit
for a corporation. Historically, increased efficiency flowed to workers in the form
of higher wages.
Not anymore. The link between productivity gains and wages
has been broken." (Tom Paine, July 14, 2005)
The Prime Minister also claims that the government's policies will result in higher wages and more jobs.
"Empirical studies have concluded that, when we aggregate among all workers,
the labor supply curve is upward sloping and fairly steep (that is, labor supply
decisions are highly wage inelastic or insensitive to changes in the wage rate).
Stronger influences on labor supply come about with changes in population,
labor force participation rates (demographic changes) and immigration flows."
(Ruby, D. 2004)
The Australian government has proposed sweeping changes to Australia's employment laws using corporation powers within the
Australian Constitution based on false, or at best very questionable, premises in an environment that has deep problems arising from
a lack of complementary planning and action in other arenas of the economy and society and a failure to work in concert with the broader community.
If these proposals pass the parliament then the government will do untold damage to Australia's human potential and enshrine "employability" and "short term expediency" because they refuse to admit that the roots of the problem are broad and pervasive.
The Australian states currently operate their own industrial systems with the exception of Victoria.
It is highly unlikely that the Australian government will deeply research its policy, be open and transparent in looking at every angle before it seeks to shunt this legislative junk through Australia's parliament.
The Australian government has yet (at October 2005) to unveil comprehensive documentation of its planned changes to workplace relations and labour laws in Australia. It will do this at the last mi9nute in the last session of parliament before the end of the year.
It will deliberately limit public, and parliamentary, scrutiny. This is a reprehensible tactic and a degradation of Australia's parliament.
The government of John Howard, will care little for such concepts as vibrant parliamentary processes and democratic representation and debate. Most people believe that the government's numbers in the Senate render any
any notion of parliamentary representation as academic.
Based on statements to date by the Prime Minister, John Howard, and the Minister for Workplace Relations, Kevin Andrews,
the government's justifications reflect an archaic view of "employer - labour" dynamics and practices.
They are economically framed and give employers control of human capital with little protection to those who do not have bargaining power.
The government will simply add to the failure to value Australia's human potential other than for its
"employability".
This narrow concept of peoples' value is also reflected within the government's Education and Training policy portfolio which continues the quick and nasty "competency approach" to education and training based on industry views of employability , which
has the effect of dumbing down Australia.
Engaging in adversarial games. consistent with history, the Australian Council of Trade Unions launched an $A8 million campaign in a preemptive
response to try and stymie the government's plans for labour market reforms. The media love this and it allows them to avoid having to do any deep investigation or analysis.
According to the commentators the ACTU caught the government by surprise and the media made much of this.
Poll surveys indicated in the week of 8 July 2005 that some 65% of the Australian population were skeptical even opposed to the
government's reform package. Of that 65% a large proportion were implacably opposed. The government's response was that the ACTU advertisements were misleading.
The government began what is expected to be its $A20 million advertising blitz on the 9th July, 2005. The debate is emotive and politically charged and it is highly likely that
gross misrepresentations, and distortion, will be undertaken by all of the adversarial parties involved.
The government claims productivity and other future benefits which cannot be quantified. Trust
is not a value that can be easily associated with such environments and it is always interesting how politicians ignore this fact.
They are generally not believed by people who are suspicious of motive and agenda. Thus they tend to stick to the faithful audience and rarely play to the
ambivalent, critical or objectionable audiences.
On Wednesday 13, July 2005 the media reported a survey which purported that 83% of business in Australia said that they had no intention
of hiring extra people. This was juxtaposed against the Prime Minister's claim that employment would be created.
Peter Hendy from the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry claimed that 17% of business would employ extra people.
This he said correlated to some 200,000+ businesses. These are the type of broad-brush justifications and arguments that are used to colour the debate.
Add to them advertisemenst that are misleading and statements that are incorrect and there is reason to mistrust what the Prime Minister and senior Ministers say.
Much of their claims are fortune telling, some are meaningless and unprovable, each side counters. The NSW state government is sponsoring a discussion forum in Sydney for Thursday 14, July 2005 and that is also polarised. One business representative stated that he might be the only Christian in the
lion's den. Religion and state are coalescing. History demonstrates that the Australian government prefers the tactics of shaping, denigrating and of stealth, misrepresentation, manipulation and threats as its primary tools of governance.
The Prime Minister and senior members of the government are never directly associated with this type of activity. Instead they employ ethically, and morally challenged, subordinates to trash Australia's democracy and public service. An example of the Thuggish approach to industrial relations can be seen in the creation of the
Australian Building Commission. A body whose task is to seek out corruption in the industry. The government based this model on something it saw on a television drama and staffed it accordingly.
The Commission manages to be confrontational, and objectional to employers, employees and trade union members and officials. It is yet another failed exercise of liberal Minister Tony Abbott.
At the apex of the federal government's conceptual model for industrial relations is is the Individual Workplace Agreement (AWA). The process is not about finding the type of people like those described abive in politics, union and business. The federal government of the Howard cioalition is a closed shop.
It is the mrror image of the people they ridicule.
It is a mypoic, and mechanistic, approach to ideas, policy and execution, by people
with little knowledge of what happens behind the scenes and a perception that they, and their confidants, are the drivers of outcomes.
They are not. If Howard wins this adversarial game, it will not be of his making.
He is a person who merely holds office. Others deliver the goods and most of the delivery is quite poor. He is the front man and the face of the liberal party that cringes before his will. Listen to him speak and you may see that vision, imagination, and leadership, are not his forte.
The essence of the government's excruciatingly brilliant concept (excuse me, or not, for my sarcasm and ridicule of all of this mediocre stuff) is a contract between
employer and employee. So novel it should win the Nobel prize?
This contract, over which business leaders, with little human resource management expertise, salivate, can contain anything that exists today, including parts of awards and collective bargaining agreements.
It can exclude a lot of things under a "bargaining away" process.
It is predicated on the proposition that both parties are of equal negotiation power.
Real people, in the real world know that such a concept is "bullshit". However in the surreal world of politicians and public servants in Canberra, miracles apparently occur, in their imagination, regularly.
The contract may contain the method of determining disputes. All of this is guaranteed, and watched over, by Honest John and his lieutenants. He dog whistles the same political tune, every day of every year,
"trust me I am from the government".
There are the odd Ministers and the public servants, advisers and immoral spin doctors, paid to doctor pictures and documents to make it so as required.
The second refain John sings is " I did not know!"
The modern day political leader, and the acquiescent public servants, advisers, and the machine men and women of politics have perfected the art of
the con, in every dimension.
According to the chorus of John's current tune, the AWA implies that everything can stay if an employee so chooses, if the employer will not agree then the employee should according to the
government find a new job. An award (at state or federal level) cannot over rule an AWA and the Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC), which has had legal jurisdiction over awards, conciliation and arbitration, cannot interferer in an AWA.
The AWA is registered with an office within the Ministry of Workplace Relations. The AIRC is to have its powers and role circumsized and it will not be able to set wages and conditions.
So much for the independent umpire and the likelihood that
a public servant will challenge the government's will and look after the individual. That is the first bad element. The Ministries of the federal government cannot be trusted to serve the
public interests as the Immigration Department, Department of Defence and Foreign Affairs and Trade, to name but a few demonstrate day after day. Their role models are Ministers of the Crown and a government with a very poor record of honesty and integrity
in good governance.
The second bad element of the government's intentions is the abolition of the Industrial Relations Commission's powers to arbitrate. The government prefers to use the courts and as a sop to
natural justice it offers $4,000 in legal aid if the worker can prove that they have a likely winnable case.
The cost of the court action will be five times that and more to the employee. The government behaves as if it is selling consumer services instead of governance and democracy.
Conciliation can be carried out by the Industrial Relations Commission or some other agreed third party.
This is a method rewarding the "friendly lawyers and advocates" who operate behind the scenes.
The government is creating something called the "Fair Pay Commission. This is a name probably created by marketing and communications zealots with little else than shallow imagination and slogans
rattling around inside their collective little minds. It will take over from the Australian Industrial Relations Commission and will be governed by a limited set of powers.
It is to decide the minimum wage and minimum conditions having regard to the state of the economy.
It should be noted that politicians will be exempt
from the employment changes, applying to the wider community, and they will retain the Remuneration Tribunal which has unlimited power to decide their pay and conditions.
The level that federal politicians are paid is determined by the Tribunal giving consideration to what state parliamentarians around Australia are receiving and not to the state of the economy.
Politicians will not be required to bargain or enter into an AWA or contract and they wil enjoy no diminution of any facet of their current conditions. By comparison a non-politician will have their award conditions removed if they are a new start employee or they change employers.
The third bad element is that the government, and certain business representative organisation officials, approach human resources policies with a pathological hatred of unions. The unions have contributed to this by employing, or appointing, intellectually challenged officials in some sectors and
through a mix of illegal activities, stupidity, thuggery and poor service to their members.
Union officials should not have access to employment premises that are private property but labor state governments give them access.
The two together have fuelled the adversarial environment and even ideological hatred.
This debate exposes a world of immature, and petulant, people playing games with the community at large. There will be a right of entry for health and safety issues but the person calling the union official in has to do so in writing.
The government of John Howard has always liked to "identify and label" people and have them outed. It is a less than subtle method of ensuring that people keep their mouths shut out of fear.
This is an extension of the model of control used by the federal Department of Immigration - fear. It is an extension of the electioneering style of Howard, fear.
The government plays on insecurity and peoples' fears. The Prime Minister is in danger of over playing his hand. His statements are in conflict with other policies and laws.
He says that if a person cannot negotiate the wage and conditions they want then they make seek another job. What if they are unemployed and on welfare benefits? To decline or leave a job has penalties attached under the social security legislation.
So Howard is yet again either deceptive or ignorant. It is also hypocritical for the government to do business with, and allow participation by, the Australian Medical
Association and other employer and professional associations and decline to do business with, or discriminate against, registered trade unions.
The employer associations are registered under the same industrial legislation.
If John G Howard appreciates his "economic" record then it is strange that he would place it at risk by implementing a policy that may reduce overtime and penalty payments.
Which in turn affects taxation, disposable income, demand and consumption on a wide scale across the employed landscape.
This policy can trigger rate increases in the money market, affect mortgages and default levels and cause a housing market slump.
This is indeed dangerous stuff economically and politically.
It is unlikely that main stream media will extend their imagination to such levels, research the scope of this article or cover, in any depth, the
intricacies of the debate and possibilities in detail. They are more likely to cover the conflict between the Australian Council of Trade Unions and the Australian government with Labor standing on the side.
The Australian federal labor party is dysfunctional to the extent that it cannot take a leading role with its front bench members and strategists standing around sucking their thumbs and
looking everywhere for a toehold. They are now powerless to defend their constituents and the disadvantaged in the Australian community.
This is the real tragedy in the litany of failures of the federal labor party. The greater number of Australians are unrepresented in the federal parliament.
The architects of the government's proposals did not come up with these elements out of their creative minds.
They borrowed them from a myriad of sources.
Australian industrial laws and systems as at June 2005
The Australian government's proposals and justification
Alternative views of the impact of the above proposals
Australian Council of Trade Unions perspectives
Minimum conditions, Vietnam
Labor and employment laws, by country across Europe, including the United Kingdom
Good practices in labour administration.
Labour relations, Ontario Canada
Labour laws and systems, Netherlands
Sample collective labour agreement, Netherlands
Bureau of International Labor Affairs, USA
Federal and state labor laws research utility, USA
Free trade and the issue of labor and employment laws
Pleasing the International Monetary Fund, changes to employment law in Colombo
Committee for Worker's International
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The government's advertising campaign theme is that the changes will improve choice and cooperation, thereby improving productivity which in turn will lead to more jobs and better pay.
By osmosis upwards everyone will be protected against the unscrupulous and the stupid. This is a simplistic notion that fails to take account of the more complex and deeper-rooted systemic problems of the nation's approach to harnessing
and deploying talent across a wide range of fronts.
Why is Australia under productive?
The reasons are complex and are largely the failure of governments, institutions, decision makers and planners in Australia who are unable to work together to build a cohesive strategy and then implement it. They are bonded like cement to an ideology
and refuse to accept the simple proposition that their theories and
efforts are not working. They focus on
redressing perceptions of imbalances, power and control.
Their failures to cast aggressive, and antogonistic and mediocre approaches, by all parties (unions, governments and employers with media exaltation and legal exploitation thrown in) permeate society.
Such infantile chest beating, and one upmanship approaches, are reflected in the
policies, practices
and operation of public and private enterprises. These entities operate in isolation of the whole. Some are effective, others are neither here nor there, even laughable, and then there are some that are simply horrible, inefficient and anti-social.
The mere changing of labour laws and industrial processes will not do the things the government claims. The problems are largely to do with education and the maturity of everyone in the process all the way from the top to the bottom.
There is no model or template of best practice strategy, few shining examples of excellence and applaudable benchmarks across our political and corporate landscape. People are not really assets are they?
They are expendable.
Enterprises shed thousands of employees to boost their profits and share price. This is the most prominent strategy adopted by government, and business, decision makers alike. Get rid of people.
Counter to the truth and in the face of evidence to the contrary, the Australian government persists in arguing
that management value their employees because if they do not they will not have a successful business.
This presupposes that Australia's managers and executives have the fundamental benchmark skills, and experience and abilities, to fulfill such a premise.
It also assumes that employers know how to assess and
value performance
, both in
selection interviewing
and ongoing work assessments. My personal experience (based on over 5,000 interactions between the years 2000 - 2005) is that most do not.
The resume interpretation, lateral ability, interviewing techniques and skills of many recruitment professionals are measured in a range from mediocre to
extremely poor.
Of the hundreds of recruitmentagencies with which I have dealt I can name thre that I consider excellent.
As for the others their mediocrity lies in quick decisions made on limited reading of the resume, poor preparation for the interview, poor industry knowledge or none and
a tendency to assume and mirror their own perceptions and bias. To be fair all of the recruitment firms are
are constricted by risk adverse and myopic clients who specify narrow industry based experience and criteria.
The use of criteria to bring everyone to a common reponse is a lazy approach.
Human resources management is complex and there are many issues in Australia that indicate
the
nation has a lot to learn.
Many employers do not have good reputations.
The long record of employers
disposing of people
to boost profits and
productivity
and the short term planning reported in company returns and in research,
would seem to belie this.
False assumptions as to expertise
A common mistake made by those in positions of leadership, or public profile, is to
assume that they are good communicators and managers.
Heather Ridout writes in the Australian Financial Review (Monday 10, October, 2005) in support of the proposals. She is Chief Executive of a business representative body, The Australian Industry Group.
She tells us of the complexities of the system of 4,000 awards etc. mentioned above. She makes no mention of the interests including her own members who helped create those systems.
The article is trite fluff without substance and attribute. She says that China and India are emerging global giants in industries not burdened by over regulation. In China thousands die every year in the mining industry and in both countries counterfeiting is rife.
They are not global giants in manufacturing, as she writes, they are unethical environments of thieves, and crooks, and only the Australian government and their most sycophantic supporters would state that
China should
receive major trade nation status.
Ms Ridout does not tell us about the abilities of her organisation's members, the corporations and their managers and how they have contributed to the debacle that Australia now finds itself in.
True there are too many complex awards and the parties to those awards have been derelict. The government is going to have a task force examine all of these awards and streamline them into a national single and less complicated set.
No doubt Ms Ridout will get a seat. The government will exclude those who criticise belying their continued refrain that they "choose people on merit".
Instead of using the human abilities of their employees, many managers hunt voodoo systems and fads, for the secrets of productivity, sold by an industry (much like computers) that has a thousand new and different, but eventually obsolescent, ideas every day of every year. Magic remedies such as
Sigma Six,
which appears to be based on a conflict oriented models with staff, and experts, described as "master black belt", "black belt" and "green belt"
practitioners. Among other strategies, they promote lean, and some would say, mean environments. But is
"leaner" synonymous with "fitter" in business parlance?
What if Australia's employers and managers were employed to do, or they actually learnt to
to do their jobs? What if the trade union officials actually did their job meticulously and with the interests of their members at heart?
Australia's decision makers and planners, it seems, think the terms "productivity" and workload" mean the same thing or are interchangeable.
They appear to learn nothing from observing societies such as Japan, Sweden and other performing countries
and rationalising why they become such economic dynamos and why the United States stumbles towards a financial and social crisis.
In the case of Japan and Sweden it is largely the result of cooperation between governments, politics, business, unions, entrepreneurs, institutions and citizens.
In Australia people pursue their own agendas, to some extent based on perceptions of their own
abilities and the righteousness of their ideas.
As evidenced in the Australian government's confrontational approaches, and the barracking of industry representatives (who themselves do not have to manage operational businesses for profit and reward) there is no cooperation of any bipartisan, meaningfully significant, and long term, level.
There are no national human resource policies, strategies and standards to which everyone contributes.
Policy makers would rather engage in puerile displays of political one upmanship and ego, as if democracy, and government, is their personal playground.
They are exalted, and egged on, in this by the media and self interested external stakeholders.
They (governments, ministers, politicians, bureaucrats, political parties, businesses, entrepreneurs and institutions) each, in segmented isolation to each other, advertise their own exceptional brilliance, and achievements,
whilst extolling that the employed must all work harder together, whilst those above that govern, direct, plan and employ
are not required to do so for the same level of remuneration.
The Australian government conducts narrow, selected, meetings, advisory committee structures and consultative processes. They become irate when the churches criticise the manner in which people are treated.
The outcome of the liberal governments' approach, is a flurry of repackaged theories, restructures of the labour market and pursuit of ideology without adequate foundation.
The Australian government, and many employer approaches, are based on notions and structures of hierarchical power and influence, where one group seeks to have dominance over another. The Australian government is one of the largest employers in Australia and one only has to look at the public service to see this model of hierarchy and patronage in action.
A civilised, and well functioning and rich (in every sense), society is one based on mutual trust and cooperation.
By comparison, the ideology of capitalism, and competition, in Australia is taken to every level of the nation and is exercised externally, and internally, everywhere. It is based on conflict and control
not trust. The failure to work together to tap, harness and deploy all of Australia's human talent demonstrates the immaturity, and self-indulgence, of the nation's power collective.
The citizen is now a consumer of services, slave to the economy, and as such has swallowed the hook of capitalism
well and truly and instead of being happy and mutually assured we are insecure and need a John Howard to protect us and guide us all to a never reachable nirvana, for which it is our role to strive ever harder.
Is the outcome of our approach challenging or stressful?
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"There is a widely held view that Australia's seeming incapacity to produce adequate
full-time, remunerative work, distributed equitable amongst households, amounts to a social
crisis (Borland et al. 2001). Australia appears to be faced with a growing gulf between '
employment-rich' and 'employment poor' households, a gulf which now has regional and spatial
aspects as well as social. Recent experience shows that jobs growth alone cannot address the
marginalisation of large numbers of people of workforce age".
Click here for source
The reasons that the church - state divide is morphing is directly attributable to governments and corporations, their policies, style, actions and misinterpretation and miscalculation.
Membership of political parties is on the wane whilst membership of evangelicalism of many types is on the rise.
The federal government involved church, and charity, when it abrogated welfare, in favour of the pursuit of small government and fiscal restraint, and through its employment services model, contracting them for the Job Network.
The governments, and public services, are exhibiting a degraded performance in their moral and social roles, and responsibilities, preferring a focus on economics and political self interest.
The lessening performance of the public service (eptomised within health, education, welfare, disability, immigration etc.) and an ever developing
role as policeman, enforcer and benevolent autocrat of governments' will has created a void into which the churches, and other influences, have stepped.
Government, in the hands of a few factional career types, has abrogated much of its right to respect, in the eyes of many, which explains why politicians are at the bottom of the
trust surveys. Governments have to spend more on advertising, and spin communication, than they do on many public services just to maintain the semblance of an image of believability and credibility.
The 17% figure however is important for other reasons.
These are likely the very small businesses employing casual, and part time, labour to meet seasonal needs and work loads.
They are in hospitality, tourism, food, in sub - contract construction (corporate and residential), across the labour and semi skilled and project work fields.
The government strategy is to create dependency of employee on employer.
For this reason the government (Ministers, Kevin Andrews and Tony Abbott) became uneasy as the
building industry, employers and unions, entered into long term registered agreements which fall outside the government's capture zone.
Sub contractors are employed by the major building companies and their own conditions, including employment, are dictated within the
operational framework of the sector by the master contractual employer. This can be a "no ticket, no start" situation where people working on site are in the union.
If these sub-contractors do not comply they simply miss out on contract work.
Such persuasion is illegal.
A federal building commission was established by Tony Abbott to deal with perceived corruption in the industry.
The Australian government is not averse to using a hybrid style of third line forcing
itself for its own ends (illegal in the commercial market place but not in the political market place) dictating compliance or missing out on federal government construction contracts.
Another reason the government is focused on the 17% is that it is here that the "welfare to work programme" could have its greatest success.
The unemployed, and others on welfare, are the majority within the unskilled and semi skilled and disability sectors.
The focus of debate and resistance by the ACTU is not on these groups and thus the government has to shift the focus there somehow.
Mainstream church leaders are well aware what the focus is and their resistance, and objections, will have to be dealt with.
They are caricatured as uninformed, requiring readjustment in their views. The well educated and economically secure are not threatened by these reforms and
there is a strong undertone in the welfare and charity sector that the government is largely unconcerned with individual plight versus majority benefit.
A society that cares little for the minority in favour of the majority is often categorised as morally deficient with flow on effects.
The author of these articles, unless otherwise stated, is Kevin R Beck, who has experience in people management, training and education and labor relations and industrial negotiations. The author undertook a major master's thesis between 2000 - 2003, researching the performance of the public sector in relation to employment services, training policy, outcomes and attitudes.
In addition the author has daily interaction with several leading human resource recruitment agencies and regularly monitors industry practices through interaction and research.
This set of articles demonstrates the disparate, disjointed and, in parts, immature approach of politicians, governments, business, recruitment agencies and educators to harnessing and deploying Australia's talents.
There are hundreds of thousands of Australians who want to contribute and in some form or other are denied the opportunity. Bigotry and discrimination interplay with
lack of experience, education, incompetence and ignorance on the part of many players in the national landscape. Adversarial and competitive positions over ride the good sesne of working together in the national interest of participating fully in a global economy and society.
The question is, why does have to be this way? The answer sadly is probably there is no leader of vision who can persuade, cajole and require. all of the self interested parties to work together.
The real tragedy in the litany of failures of the federal labor party, and Australia's democratic sysems, is that a great number of Australians are not represented in the parliaments of the nation.
The Australian Council of Trade Unions' (ACTU) advertising campaign did not catch the Howard government by surprise. History demonstrates that the first choice of the prominent players is fighting, not cooperation.
The ACTU used traditional methodologies not realising that a television advertisement is least likely to be watched and even less likely to be remembered. The government's strategists are smarter than that.
They operate at the national, state, regional and local levels employing a far greater number of stakeholders than the unions, and labor, can bring to bear. The government also
identifies, and handles, those critics it judges to be a problem. Putting the government's propensity for unethical and questionable behaviour aside
this is what makes the Australian government of John Howard far more interesting, complex and politically able than Kim Beazley's labor front bench. It is an indictment on the quality of our democracy that thes enior members of Australia's governments ee nothing wrong with spending millions of dollars of tax payers money to promote politically partisan ideologies and proposals
dressing them up as "information for citizens". Similarly the unions have no problems spending their members' funds. This is a thoroughly dishonest and immoral approach now entrenched across the nation, at every level of government, enterprise and institution, and the people are powerless to stop the practice.
It is not so much what Australian governments propose in their legislative agendas, and it is not so much their ideological beliefs that are destructive to the
democratic process or are offensive in content. It is the manner in which they choose to go about putting them into action. It is the poor attention to detail, the near enough approach that
often includes inadvertent breaches of laws which are casually fobbed off by senior ministers in the parliament as technicalities.
It is the delegation of power, and accountability, by unethical ministers and members of the cabinet
to unelected advisers. It is the deliberate exclusion of people from process and participation.
Australian, federal, state and territory governments (of any political colour), have little public record of creating innovation, and visionary, policies and ideas.
Most of what they have is ideologically driven by party political machines (this is the same for Greens and Democrats as it is for Labor, Liberal and National) and much is borrowed
from other countries and then presented as a repackaged and different model.
There is no legislation, systems or plans designed to harness Australia's human resource talent other than a harping on skills training for employability.
The control of elected members of parliament in vital debates, and their voting on bills, such as the industrial relations and employment law reforms,
by the small executive of the major parties, denies the electorates, and citizens, across Australia, democratic participation in
determining policies and actions. Many see that their only option is to march and
demonstrate.
Given the nature of this exercise and proposed restructure it should be the citizens of an electorate, who by some method of determining majority opinion and desire, direct their representatives in parliament how to vote on bills and debates
and not the political party, cabinet or leader in isolation. They claim broad mandates from each election.
This participation by citizens in each electorate would require that the existing systems of politics, self interest, and government in Australia be changed to a true democracy and that apathy to participation by the greater number of citizens,
end. It would challenge the status quo and systems of power, decision-making and influence and it is likely to be rejected as cumbersome and expensive.
The power collective have no motivation or desire to alter the way things are
particularly when they have such good benefits and are not interfered with.
Is there a price cap on democracy in Australia? Yes. Is the current system, at territory, state and federal levels the best we can have? No.
Is the system controlled and manipulated with information filtered, manipulated and even withheld? Yes.
Will the federal government win in changing the Australian industrial relations system? Probably not, in whole, because they forgot about the
Constitution, and its focus on federalism, and state rights, assuming that they have unilateral control federally because they have the perceived numbers in the Senate.
The 17% of support mentioned above are not influential and well versed in the political game and are of little benefit to the government.
The manner in which some of the senior members of the liberal party behave insults the professionalism of, and integrity, of certain parliamentarians, who actually
try, against the odds, to act in the interests of their state, citizens and electorates. Labor and Liberal parliamentary leaders, can direct their members,
but it is much harder to manipulate, and direct, thinking parliamentarians.
In 1991 I met with the Secretary of the independent branch of the Australian Services Union. Independent because under the rules the national office could not dissolve or force the branch to
merge into national office control. Under his vision, we planned, executed and delivered the privatisation of Loy Yang B power station. The first in the
embryo national electricity market. We did this in the face of 23 electricity power unions, more concerned with their self interest than the
employee. community and national interest. We did this in the face of a "do nothing attitude" of the National Office executive, where one senior member of the union now sits in federal parliament,
making the same contribution to the electorate that he made to the union membership.
It is not about ability in our parliaments, it is about being anointed by the machinery men that run the party.
We did these things in concert with Phillip Herrington, senior adviser to the Victorian Minister for Energy, David White. Phillip's contribution to the public interest was exceptional, and unusual, for a political advsier. He was to my mind, and many others, the real Minister for Energy.
We did this in the face of a "mind in neutral" mentality of the senior members of the Labor government and the power unions.
We moved on to the rest of the privatisation, under the state leadership of Jeff Kennett.
Though he too was ideologically driven, making decisions without empirical evidence, we never the less moved on, delivering the goods for the membership, pay rises, careers and security.
Where did the politicians, commercial advisers, law firms and consultants, who earned the mega million in fees, fit in? Nowhere really, they advised their clients to but power stations and assets at enormously inflated prices.
The Kennett government was the focus of the media, and of folk law, and it was as usual, wrong and off the mark.
The result of the restructure was $30 billion to the public purse and the loss of tens of thousands of jobs, apprenticeships, careers and in some cases the destruction of local communities. The objective was, as it is today, to break the control of
unions in the workplace and to promote an agenda of greed within the private sector by handing over the peoples' assets. No one can actually point to any examination of the after events of privatisation to demonstrate that this was a good thing to do in the interest of the wider society. There is no lowering of the price of utilities and there is no "national market" of competition even after fifteen years of political rhetoric, just continued lies and manipulation of fact to make the story fit. There is no accountability by the few who benefited so much. This is a model of how Australian decision makers approach the harnessing of talent and skill. It is expendable to their goals and objectives.
The perpetrators just move on, framed as myths in folk law, unaccountable as they always have been for their impact on other peoples' lives.
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The owner of the Mosaic Portal will take RSS feed from any Australian political party. At this time
the Australian Labor Party (e-Herald) is the only entity that has provided script.
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Dumbing down Australia
The Australian Labor Party has made much of education and training in its policy platforms, year after year.
At the same time it has levied what are euphemistically called volunteer fees, in its public school system.
Voluntary except that if parents do not pay their children are excluded from programmes. Governments of all persuasions charge heftily for education and students can take out loans.
John Howard told the nation some time back that there would be no $100,000 degrees under his model.
He was, as usual wrong.
This is a "free system" where the user contributes mega - millions across Australia, every year without redress. The labor party in government lies.
The Australian government, of John Howard, has little interest in formal education of any deep type.
It is useful to quote a statement by the former Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations regarding the value of training and the role of employment as training.
The quote refers to a previous policy of the Keating labor government to integrate training with employment policy mandating participation.
"Working Nation was based on the "training fallacy" - the notion that
providing long-term job seekers with certificates of competency in basic
tasks makes them attractive to employers. Training is important, but not training
for training's sake. Working Nation projects often catered to the union-dominated
TAFE sector as much as to the real needs of the unemployed.
The Howard Government has dramatically boosted training
(apprenticeship and traineeship commencements have tripled since 1995) but
training linked to employment rather than training as an end in itself.
The Government's approach is training through work rather than training then work.
Labor's message to job seekers was that government-provided training would solve
their employment problems. This Government's far more challenging message is that a
demonstrated work ethic counts more than a training certificate and that an element
of self-help is the key to a better life." (Personal web site of the Minister for
Employment and Workplace Relations, the
Honourable Tony Abbott, accessed June 2002).
In the 2004 election the liberal party launched a plan to create 26 technical training colleges in a venture with industry. Those colleges will come on stream, according to the
Department of Education and Training web site
in 2006 - 2007. The government abolished the Australian National Training Authority, created under a previous federal Labor government, and integrated its function back into the above Department in mid 2005.
The previous Labor federal government similarly has no interest in deep, long-term education, education.
It was not until 1998 that the Australian National Training Authority (ANTA), Ministerial Council, comprising all federal, state and territory government ministers, decided to take a social marketing approach
to the challenge of building a life long learning (LLL) culture in Australia and ANTA undertook, and published in 1999, a literature review as a part of its National Marketing Strategy for Skills and Life Long Learning. In that publication ANTA cited other countries' aims of instilling the desire to acquire skills that are valued to engage in life long learning, indicating this should be an aspiration for the Australian community. They cited other countries' experiences and strategies because Australia has no experience of its own regarding a public policy to promote LLL.
ANTA was advocating a customer centred approach where initially created projects draw together what Australia may know about life long learning, which inter alia, according to them is that "learning is the central dimension in the pursuit of economic resilience, individual confidence and social cohesion".
Lewis Perelman, (School's Out) which says that, "learning has become the strategically central enterprise for national economic strength".
This comment relates to nations other than Australia since this nation possesses no training culture of substance and has no national strategy to develop and harness talent.
I am not sure what it is about LLL that daunts Australian policy designers and it is incomprehensible that ANTA had not addressed the fundamental and vital concept of national life long learning until 1999 and then only by a literature review. This may have occurred due to the absence of a practicing teacher or professional educator on the ANTA Board which is Australia's premier advisory body on training to the national government, federal liaison entity to state authorities, to industry and the industry training boards. The extracts below is apologetic, offering excuses for the lack of initiative by Australia's governments, past and present:
"It is difficult categorically and confidently to prescribe the elements of a life long learning policy framework or, more practically, what exactly it is governments at all levels should be doing", (ANTA report 1998, p. 21).
"The problem is these attributes are in various stages of being defined and tested… some aspects of the role and process of government are becoming clearer and ... requires a new policy approach", (p. 23) and in a footnote they state, "There is a lack of commitment to training and learning in many lean and downsizing corporations", (p. 32).
The attributes referred above, which were in various stages of definition and testing, at the time were:
- "Shared vision
- Consistent national frameworks
- Funding that empowers learners
- Bias towards investing in front end education (primary and secondary schooling)
- Business and work culture that values and contributes to learning
- Willingness to undertake reform
- Information and feedback"
ANTA proposed a marketing and public relations campaign to commence the task of
engendering a desire for broader participation in education. Such glaring omissions in the development and application of sophisticated and integrated public
policy have helped shape attitudes to education and training in the community and assists those argue that engaging in Vocational Education and Training (VET),
in skills, does not, on balance enhance the likelihood of getting a job.
"Working Nation was based on the "training fallacy" - the notion that providing long-term job seekers with certificates of competency in basic tasks makes them attractive to employers.
Training is important, but not training for training's sake. Working Nation projects often catered to the union-dominated TAFE sector as much as to the real needs of the unemployed.
The Howard Government has dramatically boosted training (apprenticeship and traineeship commencements have tripled since 1995) but training linked to employment rather than training as an end in itself.
The Government's approach is training through work rather than training then work. Labor's message to job seekers was that government-provided training would solve their employment problems.
This Government's far more challenging message is that a demonstrated work ethic counts more than a training certificate and that an element of self-help is the key to a better life."
(Personal web site of the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, the Honourable Tony Abbott, accessed June 2002).
Learning for learning's sake, or rather training for training's sake, is not
supported or condoned by the Coalition government and there is a trend towards the "erosion of values distinctive to education by the application of economic,
financial and organisational imperatives" (Taylor, W., 1992), together with an ever increasing predominance of managerialism within the public service (Pollitt, 1990)
dictating the profession of education and the content and depth of its curricula. In the week of June 15, 2005, the Australian government abolished the Australian National Training Authority.
Compounding the problem is research that suggests that people do not complete training due
to the poor quality of delivery, content and capability of providers and this is a point made by the Senate Employment,
Workplace Relations, Small Business and Education References Committee in its report into the quality of VET in Australia (Aspiring to Excellence, 2000, R.19, p. xxxiv)
however a survey by the Australian Council for Private Education and Training, tendered to the Senate, referred in the report (p.51), claimed that only twenty one (21)
percent of respondents attributed non-completion to
poor training delivery with other factors attributed such as not being suited to the work,
lack of employer support, poor quality information to prospective students and employers on courses, misuse of government monies paid as incentive to employers,
personality conflicts and poor attitude. Still twenty one percent is viewed as quite a high number of dissatisfied people and bad experiences can be strong shapers of attitudes.
"Australia's approach to designing curriculum is inherently flawed and represents an unsatisfactory political and intellectual compromise", (Wilson B, 2002, in Donnelly, K; " Why our schools are failing", 2004).
In 2005 it is highly probable that 30% of year 3 students and a higher figure for year 5, are illiterate.
NSW Premier Bob Carr praises the results of students in the Programme for International Student Assessment (2002) whilst ignoring that his Department of Education
directive that the students not be marked on spelling, grammar or punctuation. If they had been many would have failed (op cit, p.9). Why are there so many remedial teaching courses in
Australia and why are parents taking their children out of state government schools
and enduring costly private schools? Is there a correlation between Australia and the US experience?
The following excerpt is taken from Charles' book, Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why America's Children Feel Good About Themselves but Can't Read, Write, or Add
"More alarming is the US performance against the students of other industrialised countries. By virtually every measure of achievement,
American students lag far behind their counterparts in both Asia and Europe, and if the Americanisation of Australia is any example,
there is a growing relevance of US studies, and experience, to Australia".
Article content and sources
There is debate about bias in Australia's curriculums and the effects of outcome based approaches and the movement to competency rather than educational standards based syllabus content.
The teaching of rigorous subjects such as mathematics and science using memory and repetition as well as directed teacher learning seems to have taken a back seat to student choice learning.
The changes from syllabus to outcome-based curricula are driven by bean counters, and progressive theorists, who would argue that children, adolescents and adults should create their own learning experiences by some form of discovery process.
Outcomes based approaches enable bean counters to calculate cost and it greatly politicians in manipulating the data to create misleading, and even false, outcomes that make their policies look good.
State and territory education departments are the bastions of detached mediocrity stifling innovation. They are some would claim, worthless cost overheads, imposts and impediments, in an under national funded system that has no standards or coherence.
Teachers' and principals' unions in Australia resist the British approach to funding on academic performance.
Funding in Britain is directly proportional to performance and in Britain, as in many educationally developed nations including Korea, teachers teach hard content syllabus.
Add to this the lack of discipline, growing abuse and violence, by students on teachers and there is the loss of talent out of the profession.
If students want to be abusive and violent then stick them in reform schools by the droves, bill the parents for their keep and education, teach them there, and see how they like that. Given the absenteeism statistics, stupidity, ignorance and illiteracy of many students, how can the federal Minister for Education,
Dr. Brendan Nelson suggests, without being able to tell us how, that we should measure their teachers' performance. He has no foundation but that does not stop him from demonstrating naivety and cant along with his state and territory counterparts
The Australian government is as hair brained in its approach to education, at every level, as are the states and territories.
Competency education, for skills and thus employability, does not equip citizens now and of the future for dealing with the complex issues of society and economy. It creates robots that cannot think and transfer learning and experience and who cannot articulate and distill complex information.
It also creates a society focused on work and not on the broader human condition. Competition in a global world requires more than just skills, but do you see any Australian politician of any party, actually demonstrating that they are aware of this?
The Australian labor party simply babbles on about skills like a generic can of home brand beans, and the liberal and national parties simply make it available to everyone at the lowest possible price.
The
debate about dumbing down is pervasive. It covers the privatisation of education, the outsourcing and creation of lower level award issuing institutions and a focus on work competency versus deeper education is worldwide, not only in education but also in public service reforms, and people argue it is dangerous.
Raffique Shah on education
University of Canberra Australia, on public service
Orwellian education by William Jasper
The dumbing down of Korean education by Robert Fouser
Dumb and dumber by Phillip Ford - competency education for work
School to work by Robin Akers
Australian National Training Authority focus on VET
Separating academic from skills standards in education will lower education quality and outcomes
Free trade agreements (GATS) impact education and public service dumbing it to a common denominator
The focus on work subverts education
Values in Education - South Africa
Numbing and dumbing by Linda Schrock Taylor
School to work, Texas Education Consumers Association
Brian Cusack, Thinking deeply in New Zealand
Behaviour modification for work by Alana Caruba
John Leo on dumbing down teachers
Anne Schult on dumbing down teachers
The dumbing down of America's colleges by Phyllis Schafly
The dumbing down of some Australian universities
Andrew Norton on dumbing down Australia's universities
The quality of Australia's traineeship and apprenticeship systems - NCVER
Australia: Get a quickie course over a few days, earn more than a qualified three or four year trained teacher or start your own Registered Training Organisation. It has never been so easy to get a ticket to educate! Under every state and territory in Australia, a three year diploma or degree or a degree in teaching does not mean that you are allowed to train in the workplace. You have to be assessed against the workplace competencies, but you can go and teach hundreds of children and adults in a school!
Here's a quickie to get you started as a trainer, only 36 hours!
Become an educator/trainer real quick, just a few days is all it takes
Here's another quickie to get you started as a trainer
The failure to tap and develop Australia's human potential
Are you employable? How would the policy and decision makers know?
Just as the policy approach to education, training and learning, by governments is skilled focused, making it shallow,
and fragmented so too is the lack of integration between policy, industry, and the Australian talent base.
There are thousands of human resource consultants and recruitment companies ranging from the very competent and sophisticated
through to the small, cut price operators working on a shoe string with little quality checks and adherence to regulatory frameworks or best practice.
They operate in isolation of any cooperative strategy framework developed by government and industry to ensure that all Australia's talents are identified and brought to bear.
They operate outside codes of enforceable practice.
The adversarial and hotchpotch approaches to values, education, training and employment practice are on display every day. We can view, and experience, the ignorance of the people assessing others for their suitability for employment in job advertisements and in interviews.
The author has studied hundreds of Australian recruitment firms and processes and has assessed firms capacities on just over 6, 000 occasions between the years 1998 and 2005.
The author has an interest in doing a thesis on how the Australian recruitment industry performs.
One glaring omission in their armoury of tools is their capacity, or knowledge, to measure left and right brain thinking on
employability
Creativity is not measured in employment interviews. The processes of criteria for recruitment and selection are about shaping; making the individual fit the system, stifling innovation. People employ others who look and think like them. This is a standard human response. It causes some recruitment consultants considerable angst. Their clients tell them that they "want to go wide" to test the field and then in the end they go narrow.
Anyone outside the box, outside the specialisation focus and narrow criteria, are deemed unsuitable, lacking in that "ideal criteria match". It apparently is impossible for a person to cross boundaries and for skill to be transferable to other sectors. One must have "x years" experience in the precise industry to be competent. The criteria match is the focus of decision-making, not the individual's ability. What if the criterion is the problem?
The trend towards specialisation and narrow criteria, with demands of specific industry experience are stifling organisational, and national, development of talent pools and capability. Despite all of the evidence that this is the case employers persist with their notions and their biases.
The most annoying, and myopic, recruitment companies, are those that make applicants fit their system, allocating 150kb, to an online resume upload assuming that everyone has had a limited, unadventurous and non diverse career, with education, interests and extra curricula activities
as limited as their own. Another likes an application in the form of a one page statement of skills and then there is the best of all, a summary not exceeding 50 words, which they then present to prospective employers.
The advertisement run in the newspaper has more words.
By comparison the leading on line agency, Seek, has a limit of 2MB per resume and 2MB for a cover letter.
This is a very long letter indeed, since 1MB is about 330 pages.
Why bother applying to a recruitment agency that fits all applicants into a straight jacket and pays scant attention is paid to career and experience?
One wonders what the employer paying the recruitment company for their services might think of this? Obviously, under these circumstances, one might contend that the selection of the best candidate is not the priority.
The explosion in "on line" agencies would on the face of it appear to be a bonanza for job seekers, recruiters,
employers and human resource specialists. Some do it brilliantly from a user perspective. However most companies and employers simply transferred their
inept operations and biases to the web. They still persue their activities in the traditional manner. Many misrepresent opportunity by implying that
companies and human resource practitioners and employers are searching their databases. There is no evidence that they are and they probably are not.
How can anyone tell what is fact and what is fiction when
ethics
takes aback seat in the modern Australia and mission statements are hollow rhetoric?
Traditional methods are imbued by mediocrity. Requiring response to criteria, is a mediocre and lazy method designed to reduce the effort of recruiters and selection panels,
nd applicants to a common denominator. Proponents argue that this practice sets a fair basis for comparison.
This again presumes that the criteria is well researched and founded on a valid set of methodologies. In most cases they are not, they are thought up for the occasion.
There are exceptions such as the Senior Executive Service criteria for employment in the federal government.
However these have been shown by example (the management of the federal immigration department, the Australian defence forces denial of natural justice and humanity)
to be idealistic, hypothetical and ethereal.
Study the criteria for jobs, many are simply boring, repetitive and even inane. People who require criteria love process and the environment in which they work is likely to be stifled and unimaginative, full of other people who love process.
Criteria will ensure that the non traditional candidate will not get a look in.
The assessment panel likes to allocate points to the criteria response, and for me it implies that they are incapable of deciphering a resume against
their understanding of the role. Criteria can also be used in employment processes to create a barrier to outside applicants ensuring appointment of the preferred, inside, candidate.
This practice is rife in the public services where the winner is already known before the race is run. This has been confirmed to be quite a large number of professional recruiters who think putting up candidates to the public service is a waste of time.
Some recruitment companies are perverse and like to put the dark horse in to disturb the tranquility of the process, testing the imagination and
risk orientation.
Common words and descriptions have been purloined to mean something else to a particular industry sector.
Read an advertisement for Change Manager and then one finds that it is not a change management role at all. It is a role for a computer system installer.
Change management is about restructuring, and changing culture, and operations in a unit, division, organisation or whole sector, with attendant performance impacts.
Change involves working with animate objects and it does not equate to swapping boxes or putting something new against the wall to make the organisation look different.
New software and/or new boxes and whoopee, we have change. Why is it that many people are so besotted with a machine that count 0 and 1? Business Development Manager is another word for sales and so it goes.
The following assumptions, perceptions and experiences are based on a three year deliberate, documented and monitored, interaction with hundreds of Australian recruitment firms, employment services providers and government agencies across Australia.
I have kept records of responses, non responses and auto computer generated replies from companies. Every company for three years has been "overwhelmed with the high number, and calibre, of responses and selection has been a difficult task".
The first perception is that applications, and resume, are sometimes not read, and often not studied in detail.
The second is that computer technology is used (keyword) by many on line companies to filter and select applications and resumes.
The third perception is that many people operating in these sectors, and in human resource divisions of organisations today, have little or no historical knowledge or experience of the fields for which they are assessing and interviewing.
There is no obvious approach to matching professional recruiter to candidate based on the applicant's history, knowledge or experience of the industry for which they are interviewing.
For example one professional indicated to me during an interview that experience in coal mining, and thermal, electricity production in Victoria was not relevant to a job in energy in NSW, for which she was assessing applicants, because the power stations in NSW are nuclear.
It is now clear that one function of the resume may be to educate those who have no knowledge or experience and how does an older more broadly diverse and experienced applicant
do that in two or three pages that are then likely to be given a cursory look?
There is a selection process mentality of varying discipline and sophistication, in the Australian recruitment industry and then there are the employer directives, based on "putting people into boxes" or "labeling" them, such as engineer, lawyer, accountant , sales person, based on
on a general understanding of what these classifications mean.
You must fit into a box.
There appears to be an assumption that being able to classify a person into a certain box equates with ability to adequately perform the employment role.
It is a climate of narrow specialisation and you must fit the box. There are the added barriers that the employer representatives will have a mental picture of someone who looks and behaves like them and would prefer to employ someone who will not threaten their
position by displaying superior abilities.
Associations (representing engineers, accountants and so on, are vehemently opposing cross pollination of disciplines, protecting their turf, arguing that their professional members are the best at the doing the job and seeking to exclude others who are interlopers.
There is also the proposition that an applicant is likely to be a better fit if they are working in, or have a direct background, in the specific sector for the job.
To be fair to the recruitment agencies, many have their hands tied by myopic clients who specify narrow candidate industry experience criteria, who want to employ certain types of people with defined experience who mirror them, resisting transfer of skills between sectors and the "out of the box" candidate.
This attitude is consistent with the commentary below on Australia's management style and risk adverse security blanket.
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Some industry observers claim that poor performing managers have a vested interest in employing the candidates who are non threatening and less likely to challenge to show up their performance. The question arises how far recruitment agencies that are professional try to educate their clients in the possibilities and in innovation in employment practice.
Similarly in house human resource practitioners may be hampered by poor management practice and policy. Human resource departments can be amongst the first to be culled when times are tough, giving an indication of
how Australian business values the human side of their business. Since 60% of Australia's businesses are small.
Australia's governments offer no leadership because they too are focused on focused on cheap, uninventive mediocrity.
The likelihood of Australia's public services, under the Australian government's hand, of being a leading edge human resource practitioner, which they once were, is indeed slim.
We only have to look at the federal Department of Immigration and Indigenous Affairs and at the Australian military justice system and the overall quality of public policy in federal state
and territory governments. In October 2005 an independent enquiry in Queensland found that successive governments (labor and liberal/national coalition) had engaged in misrepresentation and fraudulent reporting of health statistics and outcomes. The state
Department of Health had doctored the records for political expediency.
Australia's public and private sectors, and employment industries, have no political role models of ethical quality with which to be guided.
Risk averse employers, and governments, through policy, practice and singular focus, are
dumbing down Australia
and this will have a long term impact.
To see a case in point and the full dimension of the Australian government's vision on human resource practice, go to
the federal Department of Workplace Relations.
This Department presents an interesting enigma as to the primary objective of the public service.
It enacts government policy and in many ways operates like a private sector enterprise, and business, within the Australian Public Service.
The objective on some levels is to lead in the use of technology and to be an exporter of employment services models of operation around the world.
It is achieving world-class status in this goal. However the question arises who does it actually serve, the government, the unemployed, the citizen or its own commercial objectives? The primary public service delivery vehicle is via contractors in the Job Network.
It is a public service entity where all of the core field delivery functions are undertaken, not by public servants, but by contracted commercial enterprises, non - profit and charitable and religious organisations.
It is one of the most significant federal public service departments in the nation spearheading much of the Australian government's current, and forward, agendas and social engineering experiments.
It is a machine of impressive capability and performance and this places it in an interesting public policy sphere.
The Australian Productivity Commission undertook a review of DEWR and published an uncomplimentary critique of its
operations in 2000. DEWR's databases are massive, its data collection and analysis sophisticated and its employees are very talented.
It has the ability to create the talent database that is missing in the nation and to harness and deploy Australia's latent talent.
It uses a five star rating (1 to 5), which it equates to hotel grading system to rate its Job Network contractors.
Those on the higher ratings earn the right to receive additional contracts. This begs the question - why is there not a standard of quality and performance across the nation
and what sort of service do clients, of the one star rated agencies, receive and for what time period, before the substandard performance is addressed?
Should all recruitment and employment services companies, and individuals, in Australia be rated on the same principles?
If they were many hundreds, perhaps as many as 80% - 90% of the human resources professional sector might fail the test. The disenchantment with recruitment agencies and government services, by job seekers,
is not limited to individuals. It is a criticism echoed in many developed nations including the world's largest economies. If we follow these practices where will it lead?
"Testimonial: Westwick-Farrow Publishing - Geoff Hird - Associate Publisher/COO: "
Having had nothing but bad experiences with recruitment companies in the past,
I had made it quite clear when they approached us, that it would take a lot to
change my mind."
"They lie to get you into contracts along with putting in illegal clauses like taking money from you if you break it."
Article: "IT AGENCIES are not better then a car salesmen.
- Flames web site
"If you have a bad attitude it seems the recruitment companies can read between the lines and apply the appropriate response. One must never have a bad
attitude particularly if at a disadvantage, otherwise this article has relevance".
Article: "A bad attitude comes across in cover letters, resumes, e-mails, and even networking opportunities, says Matias, president of The National Resume Writers'
Association and also
President of Long Island Outplacement."
How can one not get a bad attitude when major companies, such as this one below, respond in a manner that is ignorant (there is no author of this email reply to a job applicant in Australia)
and gives you no right of response back?
"Yours sincerely,
Deloitte Recruitment
Please do not reply to this message. Replies to this message are undeliverable".
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Where is there a strategy by Australian federal, state and territory governments to come together with employers, academics and enterprise and the unemployed to develop a national and cohesive plan for utilising Australia's talents in full?
There is none apparent. There are disparate bodies such as the Australian National Training Authority, the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations, the State Training Boards and the Industry Training Advisory Boards. Meanwhile 1,000,000 people who want to work have no opportunity and another 2,000,000 who would like to do more work cannot.
Most large agencies use computer technology to filter, and group, their resume databases using key words.
If an applicant sends in a large document, or a document, that does not have the correct trigger, embedded key words, they will be at a
disadvantage. Recruiters like short documents and it is a fact that regardless of your experience you are required quite often to present on one page. Now people are busy and the attention span has become even shorter.
A reader of my web articles contacted me and told me that I have to keep my articles to one paragraph or two.
A news article in the paper must be an average of 800 words, no more than 1,500.
We give short attention to some of the most important things and in this case it is the assessment of human ability.
It is an easy process if you one is a known "commodity', and even better if you are a "young commodity" - accountant, lawyer, engineer, salesman but it is difficult if you are a multi-educated, multiskilled and experienced performer across multiple sectors, with prodigious output, and disciplines.
It is a task for most interviewers, who have narrow experience particularly younger ones, to comprehend anything that is outside the box. One interesting feature of responses is the stock phrase, "We received a large number of applications".
This is at odds with all of the published material as to a shortage of skills and experience in Australia.
Another proposition to consider is that given the large number of agencies in Australia, employing and continuously advertising for staff, it is likely that many they employ are likely to lie in the `average' spectrum of skills and abilities and therefore they cannot fulfill the glossy promises, and claims, of the agency Mission and Service statements.
There is a difficult problem now. The people who are left, unemployed, are the complex cases that require a skilled practitioner and a bit of lateral thinking on the part of governments, bureaucrats, agencies and employers, to harness and apply their talents.
It has not yet dawned on some that the complexity of globalism, free trade, competition and sophisticated systems requires deeper skill and experience and shallow competencies, defined in the nationally accredited curricula, will not cut it.
Consider the simple proposition that the trading rooms of the world's merchant banks and financial institutions are full of young sharp traders who have never experienced a downturn, recession or regressive environment.
How do they cope when it all goes awry? What happens in the franchise bakery when the computerised icons will not drive the oven? What would be the benefit to Australia if we could harness and deploy all of our human talents?
Community services reform in practice "privatisation" of employment services in Australia
Australia has two types of national employment services agencies. The federal government funded, private network, Job Network and the private sector agencies, with the latter ranging from single entrepreneur outfits to the well known large, national and international brands.
In this latter group I include the Internet service job boards. The federal agency Job Network has its roots in the original Social Security Department's Commonwealth Employment Service, and the federal labor government's Working Nation policy programme.
The Liberal National Coalition government, of John Howard, dismantled the national public service system replacing it with an orchestrated, market driven competitive model, originally under the Minister, Tony Abbott.
Parts of the foundation were kept, and branded Employment National, with a commercially oriented government appointed Board answering to the Minister.
This entity went broke and the government's designed Job Network model collapsed financially. Since 1996 the government has had to continually `bail out' the network financially, and subsequent Ministers have performed no better at management than Mr. Abbott and have moved on to bigger and brighter prospects, as is the case with under performing politicians.
The establishment of Job Network lead to the creation of hundreds of providers from church and charities to small regional and rural organisations,. There is a common feature. They are small businesses with very limited resources and their budgets are such that they cannot employ diversely experienced and seasoned professionals. Along with the Job Network came a plethora of new private registered training entities, taking advantage of the dumbing down of employment competencies to a handful (five or six)
and as limited in resources.These organisations sit outside the private and public training and further education institutes that provide quality vocational education. They are short, sharp and minimalist in rigour and depth.
These agencies use workplace trainers, who either have a "train the trainer" two week qualification, qualified in 35 hours, and certificate 4, vocational qualification of a limited number of low level units. They will be paid anywhere from $35,000 to %60,000.
By comparison a teacher, of three year diploma or a four year degree qualification, can earn at the highest level of the pay scale $66,000.
Job Network deals with the mass of unemployed from school leavers through to long term, to severely socially disadvantaged clients and those who have little education beyond secondary school. They are given job search training as if the resume will replace the lack of a coordinated national policy and action.
The performance hurdles set for the Job Network `clients', as the unemployed have been rebranded are, not surprisingly, much harsher than the performance criteria of the bureaucrats, and ministers, but this is nothing new as the unemployed are politically labeled with quick media sound bite to maximise aspersion and deflect the public awareness of failure of policy and ministerial performance.
At one stage the department took to rigging the performance figures for Job Network, comparing them carefully and with manipulative intent, to the older Commonwealth Employment Services. They were exposed by the Australian Productivity Commission in 2002. Now the government does not publish performance figures.
In order that the `client' can be allocated to a Job Network provider, one goes to a Centerlink (the rebadged Social Security Department) to get a `client number'
and a quick assessment and they are allocated to a Job Network provider or given a list in their area. In the first design the `client' could not change providers but the government found that this seemed to clash with their ideology of "choice". The Australian government simply loves the notion of `choice' the ability to decide if you want to use a service. Nice theory, but the downside that the conservatives always have hidden is, in this case, user pays when users choose.
Centrelink is the first loading ramp to Australia's `human cattle' processing system, a methodology of a market based theoretical model, rammed into practice without too much consideration of the direct and indirect consequences, for dealing with the unemployed or under utilised human talents of the nation. The use of
The Centrelink offices, whilst looking quite snappy in their design and fitout, hide a misery, they are degrading, and humiliating places both by design, atmosphere and policy.
These are places where people line up, and wait, because the Australian government does not like to spend money on `human resource' services of any type or description.
The people employed in Centerlink are harassed from every angle. By the sheer number of clients each officer has to deal with,
and the sadness of the circumstance they see every day and internally by an endless `bunch of change managers' who troop through Centerlink on their way up the ladder of public service.
Every day, of every week of every year, Centrelink gets a new computer, or a new operational plan, a new bright idea from a person far away in the Minister's office or the Department, or if they are really lucky they get a new Minister to educate.
The allocation of portfolios is not something done by the Prime Minister on merit and the human resource portfolios tend to get the `passing cavalcade' of political appointments. people who are likely to ensure that labeling and subtle humiliation is maintained, because what better way is there to get people off the unemployed statistics than to make them not want to collect benefits!
If that does not work, then Centrelink will classify the `client' to a label that does not get included in the unemployment statistics making the government look good but continuing the age old practice of rigging statistics and simply lying.
Once `numbered' the client then proceeds to the `human cattle matching' station. here they are job matched, get some training on skills like resume writing, quick competencies and a range of low level and cheap support.
The Australian government does not like to pay for comprehensive case management so they cast that element of the previous system into the bin.
Job Network is a processing station where the client performs through the hoops, fills out the paperwork and continues to receive benefits under an ever-increasing microscope of examination.
There is no other system, or plan by government on its own, or by a concentrated effort by government, private sector and community. Thus we sit back and watch them waste a massive opportunity.
For a long time older unemployed people (that is fifty years) did not qualify for any support in their job seeking and had no access to Job network. These people were, and are still, considered to be redundant by a myopic lot of recruitment practitioners and employers. I have attended numerous interviews with quite young consultants. They are patronizing and some talk in measured tones, slowly, to ensure I understand. They ask riveting questions such as - 'Tell me about one occasion where you made a decision and how did it impact the organisation in which you worked"? On another occasion I was told to speak more slowly because the consultant had to write the answer in long hand and only one example was necessary. One might consider that the resume, and a bit of research or knowledge on the part of the consultant, could provide a pointer.
After a while experienced people began to rebel and speak out and then the government realised a few social and economic truths and the doors were opened to older applicants. Retraining was and is still the mantra regardless of the applicant's background and qualifications. Very experienced people over 40 are being offered apprenticeships, and traineeships, as a way f getting into employment. The system can be insulting and offensive in so many ways..
For all the rhetoric and glossy wrapping, the message is still, that the unemployed are some how backward in technology, and skills, and older Australians are past it
It is the same mantra for all three of the major political parties and the Job Network operated by the Australian government. It is the mantra inherent in the Australian government's employment legislation. It is the mantra of bias and ignorance.
It is the same ingrained bias and the same approach to harnessing and deploying Australia's talents.
It is a "discount economy ticket" approach, based on market theory, not human development and satisfaction theory.
The next lot of practitioners, the personnel agencies and corporations, are a hybrid of the above where many private agencies operate subsidiary enterprises as Job Network contractors and also a range of subsidiary companies to capture every spectrum of the market.
It is not yet clear if the recruitment companies and practitioners have realised that older people do not like being interviewed by `inexperienced kiddies'
focus group research
conducted by COTA in Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide show that unemployed mature age people are incensed at their treatment in the workforce.
As employees they were in the firing line of retrenchment, and as job seekers are constantly being passed over for jobs because of their age.
The focus group research dispels many myths about mature age workers.
Australia generally appears to be afflicted with an inability to identify, utilise and galvanise, the nation's full human resource potential.
We therefore approach the world with a self-imposed limitation.
The question is why? Some muse that underemployment, unemployment and access and opportunity, discrimination and a blinkered, narrow approach
to determining peoples' skills and abilities are major impediments that governments, industry, business, employers,
and community at large are not addressing. Outsourcing of the human resource recruitment function has been identified as an abrogation of good management.
Outsourcing of employment screening and other services, to the marketplace, by the federal and state governments in the case of public services and the
creation of the Job Network
is reinforcing the use of external parties and contractors.
Unlike the individual employer these companies have multiple clients and assignments and are driven by the need to develop their revenue base.
There are thousands of recruitment companies operating in a crowded market with differing levels of capability and sophistication. These pressures result in a
resume receiving 30 - 40 seconds attention and the proposition that a candidate must cram their career and
background into a maximum of two pages.
An important decision that affects the life of the candidate, and
the prospects of the employer, getting the right person is given trivial and curt attention. Evidence indicates that using outsourced recruitment services alienates the human resource function from an organisation
and indicates that the entity and its management are focused on trying to do one of the most important
functions on the cheap.
Antipathy, by candidates, towards agencies is a growing trend
and this is logical given that there is a
plethora of agencies springing up
lacking in resources
and their own staff capacities to screen and interview.
It may be argued that an organisation that cared about its employees, and their potential, would not risk such an important function to someone who has no loyalty, or inner knowledge of the workings and culture of the organisation and indeed the sector in which the organisation operates.
Read the mission statements, and rhetoric of the recruitment companies, and one can see that the claims of relationship and professionalism to the interests of the client and the job seeker are fraught with conflict of interest. They claim on the one hand to represent the employers, to know their business, interest and needs intimately despite having so many clients. They also claim to represent the best interests of the candidate. They are like a lawyer claiming to represent both parties in a negotiation.
Remarkably some critics argue that the inability of recruitment companies to know or detect competency is a bonus to an organisation's
incumbent management.
The author of this web site has distributed a paper, to parliamentarians across Australia, on the use of profiling and psychometric tools to test employees and prospects
and the issues for public policy facing legislators, arguing that such methodologies are flawed, fraught with risks and inconsistencies, and too often disadvantageous to applicants, with attendant legal and social consequences.
I spent a whole day doing psychometric tests for a leading Australian human resource company that specialises totally in this method.
They are a multinational firm. They were testing for everything except right brain attributes.
The computers failed to work, the tests and presentations ran over time so two key exercises were dropped.
The executives spun stories, made excuses, told the participants that something unexpected had come up and the session would be curtailed, they were exceptionally unprofessional. The only positive was that they had paid for my airline ticket and travel costs to participate.
Job advertisements almost always lack detail, are mysterious and in a crowded contested climate border on misleading.
They set out skills and attributes for lower level roles
that are more befitting a stellar performer. Words like "exceptional" and "lateral" appear for a job paying $35,000 to $60,000, "chance of lifetime", "this job comes along rarely", etc..
Misrepresentation is against the law in Australia
and newspapers publish warning advice on their pages however job boards carry no such warning advice and
the advertisement is simply transferred electronically from paper to the Internet. here is one example.
Integrated Training operates in a different environment to any other training company and has solved the skills crisis!
An advertisement for a Training Industry State Manager in Victoria, Australia, in the Melbourne Age, Saturday, 28 May, 2005:
"Our training division is leading the rapid consolidation of the Australian Training market.
With a national branch network and a unique strategy to address the skills shortage in Australia..... For the successful candidate, Integrated Training can provide career development opportunities and professional development unparalleled in the Australian training sector."
My first objection is that every advertisement for a job invariably describes a company (or client) as a "leader".
How many leaders can there be in a market? The second observation is that there is no consolidation of the Australian training market, there is actually an expansion.
The third is that the skills shortage is a perplexing issue for governments, which is always with us, and this company that placed the advertisement should immediately ring every state, federal and territory government education, and employment ministry, and let them know of their unique solution.
The federal government can abandon immigration as a solution to skils shortages, something that annoys former NSW State Premier Bob Carr, who is worried that Sydney will slip off the edge of Australia if we add another person. In October 2005 the Daily Telegraph newspaper reported that "Sydney is full".
The final issues I have with the advertisement are (a) skills training registration in Australia is based on specified competencies and they are not unique, they are standard and regulated for all registered industry training providers and there is no novel, new and patented inventions of presentation and content.
and (b) this advertisement implies, and claims for itself, a stature up there with world multinational corporations that provide industry training to their employees in house, universities, training and further education institutes (tafe) with budgets in the multi-millions and billions of dollars, and balance sheets that
are jaw dropping and that are amongst the world's best training and education providers. There is no company (private) registered training provider in Australia that is a leader equal to, or above, the Universities of Melbourne, Sydney, Monash, Macquarie and so on, or the major state owned Tafe institutes.
Here is yet another set of meaningless words placed by a major global (commonly called Big 4) recruiter, for a HR practitioner,
"Alignment with the culture and values of the organisation which hinge on integrity and excellence are not negotiable."
Here is another newspaper advertismenet transferred to a leading Australian internet jobs board.
"My client is one of Australias fastest
growing companies and is quickly gaining a reputation
for their amazing culture and career advancement opportunities.
Leaving all competition in their wake,
this Telstra providing Telco company is growing very,
very quickly, and as a result they are looking for a number of experienced Assistant Managers
to come on board and continue to drive the company to the top of the mountain.
What you will need:
* An exceptional approach to customer service and solution type selling
* A comprehensive understanding of business financials
* A proven background in team training and development
* The ability to pump up and motivate your team to achieve budgets
* The passion and drive to further develop yourself to grow with the company
In return, you will be provided with every
opportunity to earn a huge income whilst growing and having
fun amongst this amazing culture.If you want to become the envy of the entire Telco world,
apply now and get the ball rolling!"
Every day in Australia's print and electronic media, job advertisements are run that gush hyperbole, meaningless statements and that make claims, describe environments and operations, that are misleading and in some cases false, and yet governments, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, and the acquiescent job hunter, do nothing.
The media take the money and they have a disclaimer statement on their job pages, warning advertisers not to breach the trade practices act and engage in misleading advertisements. These warnings are ignored as the heated competition of the market, pressures, age and inexperience of the people drawing up the copy, push the boundaries.
Job seekers, particularly those not aware, take these advertisements as gospel, wasting their time and precious resources on people and companies that think it okay to embellish and play easy with the truth.
Applicants applying to Education Queensland for a job are required to submit three hard copies by post. There are exceptions.
I was lead to ask why the
Smart State required this archaic method? Here is an extract from the hard copy reply of 26 May 2005, to my electronic email, which inter alia, says they are investigating electronic lodgement. The Queensland public service has a long record of investigating and prevaricating over every matter, large, small, vital or trivial.
"Dear Mr.Beck
The Minister for Education and the Arts, Anna Bligh, MP, has referred your letter to me ...the requirement for an applicant to submit several copies of their application in hard copy is a requirement regardless whether the applicant is a current Education Queensland employee or not.
Human Resource Services has trailed the electronic lodgement of applications for employment. Security and other issues are still being investigated. For this reason applications at this point must be submitted by post.
Where and applicant ... resides in a location where ,ail services are irregular ...they are ... able to negotiate electronic lodgement.....
There is no doubt that electronic submission of applications would provide a benefit to the Department.
For this reason the Department is committed to negotiate electronic lodgement ...this will reduce the cost of lodging an application with the department.
Al Wagner
A/Assistant Director General
Shared Services"
This is a new public service, managerial title, "shared services" adopted from private enterprise.
In the federal department of Education, Science and Training, three completed written references responding to the criteria must be lodged with an application.
Obviously this is an easier task for internal applicants who have both the referees close at hand.
The external applicant has to pay for the cost of the application, the internal applicant has major advantages, apart from incumbency in the organisation, and they also get to use the word processors, the photocopiers and the stationery, at their work place
and then they can put their application in the internal mailbag. One external recruitment consultant told me that it was a waste of time for an external applicant to apply because the delegate on the panel had already chosen the
successful applicant and was only going through the motions because the regulations required advertisement.
Misrepresentation in advertising is narrowly defined for legal purposes than the broader definition implied here.
Candidate specifications are narrow, because employers in Australia are not risk takers, are not highly experienced in global management practices and experiences as their US and European counterparts, they have embraced specialisation and
professional bodies are protecting their turf. In Britain employers take people from many disciplines to work side by side. This does not occur in Australia.
There appears to be little cross pollination in Australia and a closed shop mentality to people being able to do the job stifles organisational development and innovation.
Look at the criteria that is set for selection and you can see it is a lazy approach to candidate processes and is used to bring everyone to a common denominator.
Most criteria preclude recognising that skills are transferable across industry sectors. It is also
silent on the creativity that brings a different level of
capability to the process.
None of the recruitment companies have ever discussed thinking styles and creativity and their questions indicate they are oblivious to this scientific and
contemporary approach. Instead they apply "the theory of averages" and safe choices. Nominating the candidate with the relevant industry background is the safe choice for the employer and one that they will mostly likely agree with.
Many recruiters tell me that employers say they want to go outside th ebox but they rarely if ever do.
Employers are cannibalising their competitors and other organisations ably assisted by the lesser lights of the recruitment industry and contract agencies.
This has an affect in the longer term on narrowing the expertise, reducing any cross pollination and ultimately reducing the competitive ability of the nation as a whole.
Job advertisements wax lyrical seeking "exceptional traits" as if they are in the majority within the market rather than a minority. About half of any population would be expected to have a peak in a single thinking style. Thirty-five percent of people have peaks in two thinking styles,
with the most common combinations being analyst/realist, idealist/analyst, and synthesist/idealist. Two percent of the general population has a preference for three thinking styles. About 13 percent exhibit relatively flat profiles, with neither peaks nor valleys.
How many recruitment practitioners are qualified to discern thinking styles and apply this knowledge to a role in an organisation?
How does each style affect communication, skill, team behaviour, output and other abilities and which style is the exceptional one that fulfills the recruiter's perceptions and demands?
Which style matches the selection criteria set out by the employer?
There is a preoccupation with the notion that if a person has worked for a big company then they are superior.
Mention that one has worked for the "Big 4" in Australia, or for a brand name entity, a major bank or enterprise and bingo they have an advantage.
Is there a recognition that these huge companies, and their employees, though lauded as the best at one point time, have been found to be
incompetent and fraudulent
often costing
shareholders and
tax payers millions and billions.
This occurs under the noses of, and within the watch of, highly paid executives who are experts in their field equated with success
who when moved on receive exorbitant payouts known as a golden parachute'
The public outrage does not appear to flow through to the recruitment agency screeners and the employers
despite politicians seeming to get the gist and mouthing platitudes but doing little to address Australia's failure to harness its people talent.
The free market is about choice, it is about discrimination on age and race and gender and many other discriminatory practices that are subtle. It seems that people think if you had an experience more than 3-5 years back it is inconsequential to modern day application and performance.
Perhaps in the minds of recruiters, and employers, any experience in the big companies is worth more than a credible performance in a no name entity, particularly if you are older and fit a stereotype perception of the world of work.
Research indicates that large organisations may actually stifle creativity,
innovation and human development. It also shows that people with little experience beyond their own work spheres make rash judgements and are less likely to be able to determine potential and performance.
There is nothing more annoying than being interviewed by a person of lesser
experience, and knowledge. Add to this
the incumbents of governments who have never had a career beyond politics.
Such people, and they are in the majority, are acting as barriers to harnessing the latent talent of the nation.
|
(April 2005) Psychometric Testing Requires Government legislative Controls
The growing use of psychometric testing, outside of medical and psychological application for measuring mental retardation, poses issues for legislators at state, territory and federal levels as well as for employers and managers in the private and public sectors of the economy. There are human resource and recruitment firms that specialise, in the administration of such tests for all recruitment assignments. I want to point out why I think these developments will, in future, create problems in areas of discrimination, psychological practices as health issues and employment and why there is a need to consider these matters.
Some work has been undertaken in jurisdictions across Australia in part on key issues but that there is no extension of this legislative work, on a national basis, to matters of psychometric testing for employment and performance appraisal.
If legislators are prone to allowing the development and administration of such tests, particularly in the public employment sector, then they might consider under what conditions (physical and physiological), qualifications of administrators and assessors and circumstances they are to be allowed and the public policy issues including litigation, employee relations, equal opportunity and fair practice, they are to be allowed. What are the licensing processes and mandated qualifications for administration, and assessment, in Australian jurisdictions for firms and individuals?
What are psychometric tests?
"Psychometric literally means, measuring the mind and, in one sense, any systematic attempt to assess mental characteristics could come into this category. The term however, is usually used to describe specific tests for personality, intelligence or some kind of attitude measurement".
I believe that the tests can be flawed and can have consequences within the framework of public policy outlined above and I set out compelling evidence that the growth, and consequence for legislators, goes well beyond this.
We have seen how people perform in schools under testing conditions and how some individuals do not perform well at all in exams. Are such people to be at a disadvantage in their quest for employment and career progression? In addition psychometric test performance, and results, are affected by external and internal factors - physical premises, reliability of technology, lighting and air conditioning, physiological influences such as language, cognizance, health at the time, sickness through flu, headache, worry and peer pressures and attitudes and the existence of an unknown medical condition or onset, in the subject, such as depression, multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer type conditions.
Legislators might also note that certain people are not subjected to such tests, e.g. chief executives, board directors and people of stature creating discrimination. What are the frameworks and challenges available to the subjects who are subjected to tests as part of the selection or appraisal processes?
We know, from our own personal experience that attempts to classify and measure people is fraught with danger and consequence and labeling is an insidious practice. For those unemployed being placed in a measured category - dole bludger, job snob, shirkers - is not only demeaning but can be self fulfilling. It is similarly so for such practices in psychometric testing.
"There is the danger that the labelling of an individual as possessing a particular trait or ability will tend to encourage conformity to that trait. The psychometric approach implies a nomothetic view of people: that is to say, a view that people are capable of being classified and measured. The opposing view to this would argue that humans are essentially individuals and not susceptible to classification. This is an idiographic view".
SOURCE
The purveyors, and promoters, will tell you, their target users, clients and subjects, that psychometric testing is but one tool in an arsenal of resources, that there is no right response to a question and that reliance on the interpretation, and results, is at best problematic, yet they will not address the above considerations. Each subject test can garner between $1,500 and $3,000 in revenue per test subject.
Beyond the issues of employment and appraisal legislators should be aware that the growth of "psychometricians is not limited to working within the testing industry however. Many psychometricians are employed in industrial and organizational settings performing job analyses, consumer surveys, developing and validating
personnel selection procedures, and performing market research.
Positions in private and public consulting agencies, clinical research positions, and positions in managerial and administrative roles are also open to graduates of psychometric programs.
Psychometricians can even find employment as researchers in fields only tangentially related to psychology, as statisticians, expert witnesses, and of course, in academic settings as well.
The field of psychometrics has made and continues to make important contributions to psychology and to our society. Psychometric principles, applications, and issues continue to permeate every aspect of psychology and impact many people's lives.
The complex issues brought on by our rapidly changing society provide new challenges for psychometricians and new directions for the future of psychometrics".
SOURCE
We can see examples of this predicted growth arising in the British Parliament:
"Mr. Flook: To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department if the Marriage and Relationship Support branch of the Department will include the use of pre and post marital psychometric inventories as part of the criteria for considering bids for LCD grants. [96499],
SOURCE
Disrmination in employment, psychometric and other testing legislative issues:
No legislation or registers beyond use of discrimination legislation, questions and answers for the general public
In the European Union:
"Assessment of a person with a known medical condition for employment" and the legislative issues
In Victoria Australia:
Victorian Law Reform Commission, psychometric and other testing of workers, privacy, legislation and other issues
In South Africa:
Extent of pre-employment testing
In the United States (Harvard University)
Workforce Development (e.g. employment preparation and supporting families transitioning from welfare to work) and Tests/Assessments: Data sources include standardized test scores, psychometric tests, and other assessments of the program and its participants.
These data sets are collected with the purposes of the evaluation in mind.
The resources quoted are not exhaustive and are given to provide you with informative material to assist your response to this evolving public policy issue.
Read a case study on the effects of privatisation of Australia's assets, utilities and communities
How management practice exposes Australia
Free trade agreements between Australia, and international countries, are a double sided blade
The defects in Australian managerial style and decisions are masked by a performing economy and a lack of real competition with the exception of certain sectors such as education, agriculture and resources
which are subject to the full glare of world competition. There are pockets of innovation and maturity and the following scenarios, and bald statements, do not apply to every Australian enterprise, and every individual.
Small to medium enterprise, which make up the greater extent of the national production in terms of jobs and output have not been subjected to world market experience except in competing with imports. They are targets for takeover simply due to the fact that they are too often unaware.
The capital market for investment in Australia is very small and whilst resource companies it seems can raise endless amounts of money, and support, from gullible governments, investors and banks, other small to medium enterprise cannot. To fund any major project of consequence requires consortia of banks, as much as 23 to fund a $1 billion dollar energy project. The reason is risk aversion.
Australian banks like to invest in property, housing and ATM machines earning their fees on interest and charges on safe territory.
Every now and then they get a shock, such as when the National Australia Bank dropped several hundred million on irregular trades on the stock and financial markets and their management was exposed as both inept and unaware. Naturally the employees, across the bank, must take the fall, with job losses and a few token heads at management level taking the multimillion dollar golden parachute and move on.
Similarly Australian insurance companies HIH and FIA demonstrate the assumptions set out below.
In my view, and experience, it is quite easy to out flank many senior Australian boards, executives, managers, politicians, bureaucrats and governments. This was proven in the case of Australian Magnesium Corporation and CSIRO, where the federal and Queensland state governments, and stock investors, took a billion dollar plus bath and the government's light metals agenda was shown to be not only pie in the sky but created without any deep research.
It s similarly shown in the Tasmanian government's energy policy, totally predicated on bringing natural gas to the island and the building of a dual electricity supply cable (Basslink) between Tasmania and Victoria, According to the lyrical spin of the Tasmanian government, the island
will make a mozza out of electricity trading and industry will flock to the island to because the natural gas is there.
Unfortunately the state government refused time and time again to believe that the economics were wrong and their assumptions invalid.
There is no natural gas, no cable and the cost is going through the roof. If built Basslink will require extensive public funding subsidisation.
Why? The answer is somewhat simple. Gullibility and a failure to do the hard work. I find it quite extraordinary to meet with policy advisers and others who are framing advice and influencing decisions, and learn that they have no idea of the world and the participants beyond their immediate horizon.
It is as if they get their information only from people of known status and reputation, or the known high profile companies and executives, and then the decision is shaped, built and deployed, using very narrow and questionable inputs.
Status, job title and role are the determinants of who is believed, and who is influential, in Australia and no matter how many examples there are of failure, the title holders maintain their dominance.
When they are wrong every other small to medium enterprise in that sector is hurt as governments and investors knee jerk in droves.
Role models of quality leadership, motivation and leading edge practices are few and far between and the characteristics that define Australian enterprise and government are "average".
There are pockets of excellence but they are not the most prominent title and role holders. The attitude to enterprise, and government, management and thinking in Australia is a mandate one based on hierarchy and control.
It is an ethos of "boss and worker". Australia's public service has become government service where Minister and Premiers see themselves as CEOs. From this comes the pervasive implementation of private enterprise practice into government, which is totally unsuited to the notion of state and citizen.
The population is managed at every level. The Australian government's workplace reforms and human resource management models reflect and enshrine the principle of "boss and worker". It is an archaic and destructive mode of thinking and public policy framing and its impact is nation wide.
The Australian government's policies inadvertently dumb down the nation. People vote for politicians who are reflect their views and beliefs.
Average puts average into power roles and then bleats at the result.
Many organisations, and individuals, do not, as standard practice, not think deeply about their work based decisions and nor are they inclined towards deep research.
The reason individuals may not see the need to research might be attributable to a low regard for life long learning, a lack of experience in the process and methodology of research (the net is their primary source), a misconception of strategy, confusing it with mission, objectives and goals definition.
There is a stereotyped view of the employment role and the place of people in the processes of decision making.
Experience indicates that many organisations, governments and agencies, are not good at converting their knowledge, and findings, to accurate analysis, strategies, predictions and outcomes. Why?
One reason might be a resistance to changing their assessments which have been informed by reputable sources.
Another might be ego, a self belief in their abilities and a willingness to tough it out, because the "boss" has to be seen to be right or the very
foundation of corporate, management and political structure and operation is put at risk.
Another reason is that they may have no idea who can exercise influence and impact their world.
The people who make policy and decisions and the analysts and commentators who examine those decisions and expound their views, and ultimately the end recipients, the investors, the employees and the public, are trusting for they have only these sources.
They are unprepared for anyone, or anything, coming unexpectedly out of "left field" and putting a spanner in the works.
They assume that they have identified all the known players in their field and the risks.
If employers believe that only people with experience in their sector should be employed then why would they not also believe that
anyone not in their sector is irrelevant, uninformed and unable to contribute to, or damage and fraught their plans?
Intelligence gathering, as a tool, and deep research, tends to be limited to trying to determine consumer and voter behaviour.
Australian management, and employees, will approach their task methodically according to their systems, procedures, methods and directions.
Employees, shaped by the control mechanisms described above, and insecurity brought about by change and globalism, rationalism and the domination of economic and managerial theory, and the "supremacy of the boss"
are unlikely to question or oppose to any extent that puts them at risk.
These systems are self limiting and everyone within will operate accordingly.
Australian decision makers, politicians, public servants, employees, managers and commentators and the media,
(with the exception of some obvious multinational enterprises e.g Qantas and BHP Billiton) are risk averse and will not spend money,
and time, on long term research, development, intelligence gathering and education.
The current Australian model of education and training, as set out by government and opposition politics, is a set of narrowly defined competencies applied for "employability".
These competencies do not teach people to enquire, think, question and analyse.
Only a small number of the Australian population has tertiary education with a limited number possessing university master and doctorate qualifications.
Higher education is denigrated, and diminished, in Australia and is replaced by "skills". Australia is being
dumbed down.
The Australian management and decision style is probably more practically oriented, and application focused, rather than a mix of lateral thinking examining and exploring contradiction.
Many employers
place little value on academic qualification, study and training.
Technology is used for precise work applications and the Internet technology is deployed with limited scope.
Many are yet to realise that the Internet enables anyone, anywhere to enter the game, to influence agendas, clients, customers, voters and any one else.
It is a telecommunications marvel well beyond the simple Google search, downloading of movies and music and display of a nice web page with "click to buy" buttons.
I read a recent advertisement for a strategy and policy researcher with the primary requirement being the ability to do "searches on the Internet".
There are people, beyond the horizon of business and government and its constituency, who are far and away ahead of the current view and understanding of the potential of this technology to influence and impact operations and activities.
The exceptions to limited technology use are the Australian resources and biomedical and science sectors, who develop technology applications for their own use and then export them to the world as best practice software in its field.
There are pockets of R&D that are exceptional but they are more often scientifically inclined.
The perception of R&D is narrow and the mechanisms used by the Australian government to assess its value are narrowly commercial, sector defined and myopic.
There is no R&D funding of any substance by state and territory governments beyond a few
"glamour of the day" projects funded because they boost the political image, and might happen, as a secondary consideration
to also benefit the nation. Australian companies, with the exception of those that have t such as pharmaceuticals, rarely invest large sums in intangibles, like education and R&D, rather they tend to invest in bricks and mortar, machinery and non human assets.
They do not invest in R&D about things like human resources and management practice beyond buying a computer systems to do the job. They may from time to time employ a consultant.
Australia, as a nation, has no plan, strategy or mechanism to identify, nurture and harness human talent.
There is no cooperative model, system. committee or institution, that looks at the spectrum of people and says how will we utilise all of this talent?
It is left to the segments and the vagaries of the employment market.
The decision makers protect the status quo and maintain their control and are focused on their bailiwick.
It is a clubby country of mates, male dominated and suspicious of anything outside the norm and the box.
The greater number of directorships on the boards of Australia's medium to large enterprises, and organisations, are held by a small number of people whose experience cannot match the United States constituency .
There is limited succession planning. Much human ability is wasted and there are many talented people capable of besting the incumbents when given the chance.
They are available for work and careers but they are not let in or are regarded as unsuitable because their experience and backgrounds do not fit within the narrowly defined boxes.
Governments and enterprise, public agencies and institutions, have, through policy and attrition,
rid themselves of the talent of the older workers, knowledge and experience.
Now they find that the nation suddenly has limited expertise and cannot grow, that there are skill shortages.
What a load of bollocks. The employers will not cross pollinate and would rather cannibalise like industries.
Politicians putting forward solutions rabbit on about retraining and increasing immigration.
The malaise that exposes the nation is broader, deeper and more pervasive.
The decision model is restricted, archaic and focused on cost, the policies lack vision and are rehashed time and time again.
Much knowledge, and experience, has been lost overseas or has been retired.
Older people are viewed as redundant by assessors of talent, who themselves have limited experience and no historical memory of knowledge of what were once the premier enterprises and the extent and dimension of an applicant's personal contribution.
In the mid to late nineties Australia's public employment agencies (Commonwealth Employment Service, federal Department of Employment, Education and Youth Affairs and then the Job Network, extolled hospitality, tourism and services as the new horizon.
They shunted unemployed engineers, managers, technicians and a myriad of skilled individuals, along with immigrant professionals, desperate for work into training courses and jobs as waiters and kitchen hands, retail shop assistants and other lower skilled, lower paid and usually casual roles.
The federal government has lead the charge downhill and the state and territory departments rattled along with the vision of Australia, the restaurant and services capital of the world.
This stupidity not only denigrated the people with talent, forced to retrain, but it set Australia down the path where it finds itself today.
According to the Australian experts, in 1998, the traditional sectors were dead but not yet buried and the future is services and knowledge underpinned by the Internet, the mobile phone and an Ipod.
What drivel.
The politicians imbued their policies with slogans like "the call centre capital of Australia" and the "smart state".
Yet the governments, and employers, learn no lessons and their thinking is still bogged down in "skills for employability" and they await the next big thing.
Australian employers, and decision makers, are focused on the short term, on shareholder unreasonable expectations, voter behaviour, pandering to interest groups and the pursuit of profits and political gain today, not tomorrow.
The challenge of creating a national system to harness talent and deploy it is problematic and too hard for them.
It would require large expenditure by governments because Australian enterprise is not going to band together and collectively invest.
Governments will not spend because that would mean that the magical surplus would be very hard to fudge.
It is easy to cut costs, play with taxes and fiddle Australia's public accounts.
Governments and enterprise will continue to operate on limited investment, and solutions, which are okay for the good times but sadly lacking when the unexpected downturn occurs.
Australian employers are discriminatory, in terms of risk, race, age and experience, thus they are containable in their own straight jackets of myopia and bigotry.
They are unlikely to look outside the box and prefer to employ people with specific industry experience and this is their Achilles heel. They do cross pollinate and develop their internal culture and knowledge base
They will employ people who look, behave and think like them, people backgrounded in their industry and members of the exact discipline they think they need.
They go for safe options.
International organisations cross pollinate and develop through multidisciplinary staff hire.
In Australia, you are unlikely to find biologists, teachers and engineers working in trading rooms, financial institutions, consumer services and retail, and in traditional roles.
Another developing problem is Australian organisations are now populated with a large number of young, and inexperienced, managers and employees, of limited education, experience and scope, who have never lived and worked through a recession or a crisis.
For them the market has always been on the rise and the profits and cash flow have hidden the problems.
When problems hit they are left floundering, large, small and medium enterprise alike.
Large numbers of Australians are immature, and reactive, as evidenced by the Schapelle Corby issue.
They take this immaturity into the workplace and it creates a culture that defines the outcome.
International enterprise, governments and professionals will have moved on to the next theory, or practice, and Australians will still be five or more years behind in adaptation and application of the old one.
Sigma Six, quality circles, emotional intelligence and a cat in hat, we love theories and structures, reviews and enquiries, because that makes the people in charge look as if they are busy and on top of things.
How many times have you heard managers, and politicians, say
that they have heard the message and learnt from experience and that they have a whole new set of ideas, as if they are reborn and grew a new brain?
Usually the front line employees are the lowest paid and perhaps the lesser skilled.
They may have no idea to whom they are talking, who is calling and why.
Australian Ministers, Premiers and Prime Ministers, Chairmen, CEOs are very busy, and important people, not to be bothered with ordinary everyday customers and other unknown types.
They rarely do their own research, beyond reading professional publications of interest, BRW, the Financial Review or the glossy magazines in airline lounges and periodicals.
They rarely see or read the mail, email and communications, unless it is from a cleared or known source or someone they believe the writer is of stature.
The logic, applied by the employee, is that they are to be protected from annoying and bothersome outside distractions.
I have noted a number of exceptions and they are all have a common characteristic.
The CEOs are working internationally, they either read the mail, they have talented secretaries and executive assistants, and they appear to be unfazed that the writer is an unknown person of no particular reputation or status and that the correspondence is unsolicited
and even contrary. In 1998 I wrote to the outgoing CEO of Ansett and opined that
the change management model, and restructuring being undertaken by the "Big 5" expert consultancy, outlined in the media, was
flawed. I set out a ten page justification for this claim. The CEO arranged for me to meet with the Director of Human Resources and a consultant, twice.
They listened and thanked me but begged to differ. Ansett they informed me was solid and their plans would
be successful. The CEO moved on to an international role. I wrote to the next CEO and did not receive a reply. Ansett, as we all know, went down the gurgler.
In 2001 I wrote to the Chairman of Siemens in Erlungen Germany expounding theories on many things, a meeting was arranged quite swiftly with a Board member and management.
Similarly the Managing Director of Daimler Chrysler arranged a meeting between senior managers, and myself and my colleagues, in Stuttgart.
I wrote to the CEO of Billiton in London and was granted a meeting with a member of the Board.
I have similarly written unsolicited, to CEOs in corporations such as General Motors, Ford and other businesses in the USA and Canada and been invited to meet with them.
Sent off letters to international companies, and government agencies, in London, Zurich, Rome and Milan, Florence, Washington, Honolulu, Los Angeles and New York, Montreal, Bangkok, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, and many more and on every occasion have received a response and a meeting date.
My costs have been met on every occasion.
Every letter written to an Australian company CEO, Chairman or Director has been ignored, or politely acknowledged and fobbed off, with the exception of the Ansett case cited above
No meetings have been offered. Responses, to extensively researched and time consuming communications, sent to Ministers and Premiers, on investment decisions and other matters of public policy, elicit a single line or at best a few paragraphs of cant that is already in the public arena.
One Ministry likes to send their brochure attached assuming that this constitutes a considered response. They invite you in if you represent a powerful interest group or are someone of status.
There is always the exception. One federal Minister invites me for coffee, and a chat, every few months and every few years likes to pop up, unexpectedly, for lunch in the pub.
Meet with an Australian politician or adviser to a Minister, or put a proposition to a public servant, and it is indeed a challenge.
The first twenty minutes is involved in explaining how you fit into the picture and then listening to how they fit in, there is an education session required
during which their eyes glaze. They are polite and you leave.
They do not appear to be inquisitive people, wanting to learn more, as are the cases cited above.
This is distinctly different to my experience in dealing with US Congressman and bureaucrats, who are polite in the extreme and who suck up information.
The problem in Australia might be that the people with the talent to pick out the unusual in a communication are not those in the first line of entry role reading the document.
They are filters. They direct and channel, place and file, throw in the bin and forget.
The people at the desks, good at the defined roles they hold, are not the most talented, and aware, of the total environment and threats to the enterprise or organisation in which they are employed.
They usually are not the people who should be reading, deciphering and interpreting the communications, and information, coming in.
The world's best international professional, in their respective discipline, can send in an unsolicited application for employment, and be told by the HR department that there are no vacancies.
Then, if read and referred the communications are not tracked, and organised through key word or system, in order to discern patterns and provide additional material to the "intelligence gatherers" and to place hem with similar material.
Why is that business, political parties and governments do not have an "intelligence agency" within?
Probably because that would be too costly.
Best to lose millions, and billions, on being unaware than to spend $100,000 on good talent at the front end.
There are similarly no systems to track and analyse the relationship between any communication and event unless it is glaringly obvious and pops out in a Senate enquiry.
Memories are short, awareness blinkered and any evaluation might expose things best forgotten.
It is similarly so in many corporations.
The intelligence gathering is limited in scope and its assessment deemed secondary to the primary task of carrying out the current plan approved by the board or the owner.
Imagine readjusting the approved plan and resubmitting on the grounds of
mail, communications and speculative research and unsolicited receipts.
The managers would look like they did not know what they were doing.
Board members are too busy to be bothered with operational matters and communication to board members, employees and others must be filtered and limited.
The corporate and political models are so similar in operation in Australia.
However write to a person who lives with risk, and investor, and tell them they are going to drop a bundle and they take the communication seriously.
All one has to do is exploit these weaknesses, this lack of knowledge and lack of up to date and ongoing deep research, practice and strategy based on old and trusted methods.
Confront the decision makers outside their comfort zones, subject them to the blow torch of sophisticated strategies, competition, new theories and practices, and they are all at sea.
The free trade agreement will test them all and may cause some heartache and damage to the nation, more than expected.
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