Demise of Experience

FunkyAnorak.com

Anecdotes from an Anorak

Home

Computing Nostalgia

Ironmonger’s Tale

Northolt

Greenford

Hemel Hempstead

Coach Tour - Corsica

Coach Tour - Sardinia

Who are They

60s Miscellany

Demise of Experience

About and Contact

The Demise of Experience

In the words of the late Fred Dibnah, “There’s a lot to be said for the olden days and how they did things. They were better craftsmen, better everything, … now they’ve no respect for anything …”

Yes, in the days of yore, up to the 1980s and the Thatcher era, there were opportunities to add one’s own perspective on how thing were done. The mentor in this relationship could then discuss the suggestion and decide if or not a task could be done in a certain way. Apprenticeships were a vehicle for two way communication, both participants learning from one another, amassing experience in their chosen vocation to carry forward into the future.

Very few seem interested in succession by the passing down information through the generations. The situation is akin to teenagers being uninterested in listening to their parents experiences.

In these days of large conglomerates it seems that people with experience and local knowledge are irrelevant. The ‘craftsmen and women’ are overtaken by new managers or directors whose sole purpose seems to disregard what went before.

In these less enlightened companies, a very short time after the new manager arrives at an organisation they are seemingly able to assess the situation and know what is best.

Many of these managers have a degree usually in some generally unrelated financial subject and then attend in-post courses on a chosen vocational career. History shows what little in-depth knowledge is gained by attending this type of course. It is said that if 20% of knowledge is imparted to the attendees, a course is a success. In my experience, some course tutors are so up themselves, they fail dismally at teaching others.

So the fresh faced manager/director reports to the Board or, say, in the case of local government, the Councillors. They start with a meeting in which they inevitably give a Power Point presentation of figures and their plans. They show how after decades of steady business growth they can improve on the status quo and make savings at the same time. They talk of reorganisations which is a euphemism for redundancies.

The members of the board, usually of little more experience than the new manager, go starry-eyed with £ signs and think the plans are wonderful. Little do they realise that this is window dressing.

The first thing to experience from the new manager is the “outsource syndrome” Everything is greener on the other side of the fence, especially when the third-party salesman says so. The outsource company offer a partnership and to take existing staff off the payroll. This move is to appease the organisation and their clients alike. The outsource company may have also realised the value of importing local knowledge. Savings will be made as predicted by the new manager until the honeymoon with the third-party is over. History shows that costs will then rise for the same original level of service, but it’s now too late because decades of experience have been lost.

Not all companies are guilty. Some have woken-up and realised that as the baby-boomer post war generation retires, knowledge is being lost. I’m pleased to say that some forward-thinking organisations are already seeing the benefit in passing on knowledge through apprenticeship schemes. There are a few good apprenticeship schemes already coming on stream, for example, the companies immediately springing to mind are BAE, British Gas, Morrisons, railways and some Olympic construction companies.

On the flip side of the coin one encounters other organisations that do not value experience and, furthermore, can have some unbelievable schemes to off-load staff.

The first is the ‘re-apply for your job’ redundancy scheme. To any business CEO this seems a fair method of selection to ensure the company has the required expertise for the future. However, what is very unfair is the pre-amble to the job interviews. Although a staff member has been doing a job successfully and efficiently for 20 or 30 years updating their skills over time, they may now be asked to go for an initial job assessment. Quite often in this assessment unsuccessful re-applicants are told to not to bother applying for interview! But we all thought they were re-applying for the job they were already doing!

Re-applying for your job could be considered a fair way of selection, but to be told to not bother at a pre-selection phase smells of skullduggery. Who is at fault if the applicant is considered unsuitable after a considerable time in post doing the job? In my opinion it is not the applicant. If there was some ongoing performance issue, this should have been identified and remedied by the employee’s line manager years ago. To destroy a loyal employee’s career at this late stage using a pre-selection process is corrupt and unjust.

A second scheme to off-load staff for small to medium size organisations is to profile the company’s future needs in terms of skills then fit suitable existing staff into each skill set. This is done through a review of HR performance records by senior management. Those left over are then deemed not to fit and are nominated for redundancy. There is an appeals process usually taking the form of a meeting between the outgoing employee and senior manager.

Again, to any CEO this scheme also seems fair. However, unbelievably this profiling in my opinion has the scope for even more corrupt practices than the first. It has been known for senior managers to use this process in reverse and first profile their workforce negatively grouping the staff they want to off load. The remaining staff they want to keep are then grouped into separate skill sets. Finally, these unscrupulous managers may purposefully create fictitious company skill sets which match the staff they want to keep and exclude the off load group.

The process of creating the workforce profile before a company’s actual long term skill needs could be used to circumvent any redundancy and diversity legislation problems by identifying the ‘unwanted’ member of staff’s background in advance. In the absence of union representation, it would be difficult for the individual to prove any wrong doing by a company in either of the above scenarios. Someone who values their career may not even want to have on record that they challenged such a situation whether the outcome was successful or not.

Apart from the obvious benefits of apprenticeships to both employee and company whilst ‘earning and learning’ there are also hidden benefits over classroom courses alone.

Most importantly is keeping up to date with best practice and health and safety. However there are other spin-offs, including:

- Communication with peers and management

- Community Involvement within the business sector

- Respectfulness of colleagues from a diversity of backgrounds

- Team building

- Pride in work contributing to promotion of brand image

Familiar? Yes, but to date most companies prefer to not to invest in apprenticeships and instead spend enormous sums of money on consultants who make a speciality of each of the above ‘spin-off’ disciplines. Not only do companies have this added expense, they are then likely to employ a new director to oversee this new overhead expense of the business.

Pride and respect comes from within.

Local experience and knowledge have given way to regional operations. What chance does an apprentice have in learning about their surroundings and interacting with their clients. For example, in the 1970’s the British Gas (BG) engineer used to service our boiler. It was the same person for several years who visited, regularly bringing an apprentice with him. The engineer knew our boiler and, if there was a problem and there was no spare part on his van, he popped down to the local depot solved the issue, then returned immediately to complete the job.

The local BG depot closed around the 1980s. The engineers now operate on a call-out system by region. Once they complete a job, they log into the system to be told the address of the next job. They can drive several miles between one call and the next. In my experience, if they do not have a spare part on their van, they have to order it from a plumbing supply centre and make a second appointment for delivery and a third for an engineer’s visit. Not what one would call good customer service, or putting the customer first. One seldom sees the same engineer from visit to visit and only occasionally with an apprentice.

In the case of BG, what was once an opportunity for an apprentice engineer gain local knowledge and experience involvement with the community seems to have turned into a mobile engineer/driver function.

When Fred Dibnah said, “There’s a lot to be said for the olden days and how they did things …” I believe he wasn’t only referring to best practice and safety. He was referring to technique, ability to solve problems, taking a pride in what you do, and being respected for it.

ooOOoo