Making People your Business brings both good news and bad news.  The good news is that chief executives in the UK now bestow high ratings on the importance of people to the success of their organisations.  The bad news is that they seemed to lack the techniques and systems needed to capitalise on these vital assets. 

The report was commissioned by Coopers & Lybrand and Investors in People UK in order to measure what was happening to "people issues" at the front line of British industry. After years of campaigning by everyone from the Government to the TUC about the need to give greater recognition to the people dimension it was reasonable to expect that the intellectual argument had been won.  But the time had come to test out whether the rhetoric was being matched by the reality. 

What emerges from the report is a highly detailed, complex and often ambiguous picture.  For example, on the one hand it was good to know that about four-fifths of employers are committed to making their staff aware of their business strategies.  But about half the employers surveyed felt their organisation failed to make an effective connection between business aims and individual staff members. 

In considerable detail the survey tried to tease out these issues and look at the implications.  It targeted the attitudes of chief executives, employees and young people at the start of their careers.  And what it revealed, most importantly, was a series of critical gaps emerging which employers must now start to bridge if they are to channel effectively the energies and ambitions of their workforces. 

The findings are particularly tangled around issues of job security.  Many of the chief executives surveyed for the report adhered to traditional notions of aiming to guarantee job security for their workforces.  Yet the result seems to be a mismatch between aspiration and actuality.  While HR policies are built around traditional models the truth is that employers are being forced to down-size, to become lighter on their feet and have a more short-term contractual relationship with their people. 

Of course the employees recognise this and as a result are often sceptical of the "people strategy" their organisations have adopted (assuming they have one at all).  The result is that running consistently throughout the survey is a story of thwarted good intentions and mismatches between what employers are trying to do and what employees feel is happening to them in practice. 
 

PROGRESS SINCE THE MID-80s 

The report is ringing an alarm bell but not bringing a message of doom.  Indeed it is important to recognise that it has many positive aspects.  In particular it is encouraging to see that the evidence of Making People Your Business suggests that events have moved on a long way from the seminal report of 1985 "A Challenge to Complacency" (also by Coopers & Lybrand) which revealed that attitudes towards "people issues" at director level were often very slack and unfocused.  Above all, in the mid-1980s, there was deep complacency about the level of investment in training. 

Since then - and Investors in People itself can claim considerable credit for this - recognition of the importance of people and their skills to business success has improved immensely.  Rather than complacency the report shows that there is now a high level of alarm among chief executives about issues such as skill shortages.  Over 60% of the chief executives interviewed said that skill shortages were a worry for them. Added to that, over 50% of chief executives said they were concerned about management competence.  And a similar proportion were nervous about the level of training they were providing to their staff. 

The danger highlighted by the report, however, is that managers may delude themselves that because recognition is given at board level to the importance of people that enough is being done.  It is not.  As the report comments, one of the most important prerequisites for success is: 

"The commitment at all levels - but particularly at the topmost level of the organisation - that will make it clear to all managers and employees that the pursuit of excellence in people management is a real, business objective, not just rhetoric, and that this is central to the culture of the whole organisation." 

CRITICAL GAPS IN OVERALL PERFORMANCE 

Arising out of these shortcomings the report points out six common "gaps" in British industry: 

an involvement gap 
a performance management gap 
a management skills gap 
a communications gap 
a contract gap 
a skills gap 

In many cases these gaps are not due to neglect.  Instead, efforts are frequently being made by senior managers to close them (for example, to communicate more effectively with staff).  Unfortunately, they are often failing to produce the desired objectives.  The result is that the employees surveyed often felt themselves to be unrecognised and therefore uninvolved in their organisation.  About one-third of employees complained of a "lack of praise" and about one-fifth suffered from a lack of encouragement. 

Although these failings may seem to boil down to the shortcomings of managers alone, the report suggests that in most cases the real reason was that the organisations lacked the systems necessary to provide this support. 

INGREDIENTS OF SUCCESS 

So what must be done if improvements are to be achieved and "excellence in people management" is to be achieved ? The report shows that what is required is a combination of: 

real commitment from the most senior level 
the right processes and systems to put people management on to a "robust and professional" basis 
the right management skills to make the most of the systems. 

The ultimate object, says the report, should be for organisations to become "Real Investors in People".  The process of becoming recognised as an "Investor in People" is an important step in that direction.  But the report stresses that, for the benefits to be sustained and endure, it requires a culture change so that the habits of investing in people become engrained in the organisation's entire way of operating. 

The trouble is that, in many cases, organisations still do not recognise the problem.  Alerting them to the dangers remains a high priority. 

Once they have woken up and acknowledged it, says the report, they have two choices.  Either they can take a long view and set up the right systems and processes in order to build the linkages between organisational goals and individual tasks.  Alternatively they can empower teams at a more local level to take action, for example, to support staff development or improve internal communications. 

Which route will work best will depend on the nature of the organisation.  At the end of the day, however, to secure a longer-term dynamic commitment to people excellence both the "process" and the "activities" will be needed. 

So Making People Your Business is not just a piece of academic research.  If its lessons are learned then it should stimulate people to remedy within their own organisations the shortcomings which beset British industry as a whole.