Radio Commentary and Henry Ford

Some months ago I wrote a Business Week Online article about the Ten Best and Ten Worst Corporate Practices. BBC Radio picked up on that and decided to air a series of short clips on these practices, which they titled "Dream Schemes and Dead Ducks." One of the short commentaries is on my website now. So then, NPR wanted to do some HR commentary, and this time the topic was moms opting out of the workforce. That aired last week.

Then the BBC decided they liked the Dead Ducks and Dream Schemes thing, so we are taping more of those. Our local NPR affiliate, KGNU in Boulder, wanted to do HR commentary also so we taped one of those last week, on weight discrimination in employment.

It is easy to see why radio commentary on workplace topics would be in demand. There is so much to talk about! The workplace has become absolutely crazy. HR people are confused - everyone is confused. It's not clear, beyond the strictly legal realm, what employers expect (or should expect) of their employees and vice versa.

When corporate folks and HR leaders email me with questions, every few days, I ask them to think from this perspective. Henry Ford, who perfected the assembly-line process, is long gone. The assembly line is exactly the wrong model to dictate how our workplaces should function today. When we obsesss about face-time, when we count the number of minutes our employees are spending on YouTube per day, we're stuck in an assembly-line mentality. When we can say, as Sun Microsystems, McKesson Health Systems and so many other employers do, "You can work from home, you can go to the mall as far as we're concerned - just get your work done" we've successfully moved past assembly-line thinking. It's not that easy. Your managers can be the big obstacle. Your senior leadership can be an even bigger obstacle.

HR can be the change leader in getting out of 100-year-old, Henry Ford-era thinking.

It doesn't start with proposing a telecommuting program, imho. That's an outcome. It starts with asking leaders, "How do we evaluate our employees' results?"