David Brent could not have delivered a better toe-curler: in his legendary memo to staff in 2006, Cable & Wireless (C&W) CEO, John Pluthero, wrote: "Congratulations. We work for an underperforming business, in a crappy industry and it's going to be hell for the next 12 months ... If you are worried it all sounds very hard, it's time for you to step off the bus. This is no longer a place for the timid."
From the outside, this Ratner-esque rant could appear to have come straight from the 'Things Not To Do' school of HR. But Pluthero, famous for his no-nonsense abruptness (he once said: "My pet hate is when businesspeople complain about it being a 'tough year' - it's just excuses, and it's ridiculous"), was not only being true to his own style of management, he was also reflecting how he wanted his HR function to run.
"Pluthero arrived as CEO after the acquisition of Energis - of which he was the boss - in 2006," recounts Colm Coffey, C&W HR director for Europe, Asia and US. "At the time C&W was losing money. We needed a total business turnaround. That meant an HR revival too."
Coffey, the man responsible for what he describes as "fixing the basics", has actually been presiding over a far bigger process than that - transforming a failing company suffering from chronic "lack of communication" to one where everyone knew why they were there and what was expected of them. Next March Pluthero gets his reward - a rumoured £20 million windfall - based on meeting market growth forecasts and hitting share price targets. For Coffey, three years into a four-year HR change-about, it is a number 20 of a different kind: a 20% improvement in team morale (based on its 'Your Say' survey), complemented by a 72% figure for staff optimism about the company.
"Pluthero's style was exactly right," says Coffey. "We had to be competitive again, but we just hadn't communicated well and engagement was low. Colleagues did not know the context of the business, and how it needed to change. For the first time we needed to be really frank about what was happening in our company."
For all Pluthero's bluster, the big plan was to get closer and be more open and honest with employees. "What upset people in the past was having information that had too much corporate gloss on it. It's now common for colleagues to email the CEO, chairman and board direct, but this culture has needed a gradual introduction," Coffey says.
One of the HRD's first projects was co-ordinating information roadshows and ensuring that minutes of the leadership team meetings, which take place every Monday, were communicated to managers and beyond, as part of the company's 'New Way of Management' programme. According to Coffey, Pluthero is a fan of the cascade approach, with HR tasked to ensure the contribution the top 200 managers make is known and understood by all. HR is also responsible for checking that the 650 managers below that "do not work to a two-speed approach". (In a recent interview with The Times, Pluthero said managers are there to "support the front team, blast bureaucracy out the way and make it easier for them to do a great job".)
"Managers initially found this tough," recalls Coffey. "Previously, C&W had outsourced most of its back-office functions. We decided to bring it back in-house to be more customer (ie, staff) focused. The main demand from management was for more tools to help them work to the new regime, so over nine months in 2007 we put our 'great manager' profile in place. This was followed by our experiential managers programme called Ignite, launched in September last year. Here, HR collects management information, news about what is going on in the company, and sends out a Management Insider document. It is supported by scheduling monthly phone calls from executives to managers, telling them exactly what is happening, while pre-recorded voicemails are sent to manager's inboxes."
Again the cascade approach has been adopted - Coffey says this system enables the top 40 in the company to speak and have an impact on the next 400 below them. "Managers absolutely love the voice emails," he chuckles enthusiastically.
Coffey has his own ideas about the role of the HR function, and in addition to the top-down approach, has spent the past two years working from the bottom up too. "Colleagues were saying they did not know how their goals dovetailed with company objectives," he explains. "My belief is that companies have to stop being prescriptive. In a fast-moving telecommunications market, the best policy is to encourage employees to develop their own pace of change and for them not to stand on ceremony."
To emphasise this, Coffey rattles off a range of initiatives he has introduced: an employee consultation forum (staff are voted on to it by their colleagues and they can raise any issues throughout its two-hour duration); the ability for staff to define and co-write important pieces of documentation - such as when staff came up with a more transparent pay review policy; a 'Roll of Honour' scheme, where staff who innovate are encouraged and championed on the staff intranet; and one of his favourites - Just Plain Nuts.
"This is a mechanism that enables staff to tell their bosses that something work-related is driving them mad," says Coffey. "We find out who is responsible for this policy being in place, and demand, in the form of a reply, that they justify why this procedure happens or should continue to do so."
Coffey is convinced the business spin-offs from having a more customer-friendly internal HR approach is that employees are more customer-friendly externally. "Many of the Just Plain Nuts emails refer to how business processes are bad for our external customers - such as one that asked why we didn't have emergency numbers for major technical incidents, which would allow customers to get help faster than normal technical support. This has now been changed."
Coffey is rewarding better employee buy-in by developing a Colleague Manifesto that will codify its commitment to staff from recruitment to departure. "Part of the rationale is to be more customer-friendly in-house," says Coffey. "Everything we want to do is predicated on this. Performance management conversations are now called Straight Talking - I think people understand this better."
Coffey says he is three years into the four-year transformation project, and believes staff are now "past the 'what's going on?' test." He adds: "Clearly there are people who will always want to be distant from the process, and will try to stay as they were, but we're presenting this as 'our commitment to you, in return for a commitment we want from you on a daily basis'."
Projects aimed at getting across the company's commitment to staff include the creation of the C&W 'My Career' portal where staff register the skills they have (these might not have been recorded previously). Coffey's ambition is to find more talented staff from within - in fact he has set a target of 50% of vacancies being filled internally. The site even includes a section where staff can fill in their aspirations including the jobs they would like to do. "Two months ago, we asked 500 staff to help redefine our careers-map policy. I believe the real difference here is getting staff involved in this. So far we have 51% of staff using the portal. I want it higher, but it's a good place to start."
Giving employees tenure of the HR process is what Coffey gets most animated about. He calls it "putting ownership into colleagues' hands" and says it is not the easy way out. "It actually sets a precedent," he says. "It means we need to be able to live by our promises. If a member of staff has a great idea about something, we need to implement it. We have to be extremely honest."
I ask Coffey if this is what he thinks is meant by 'authentic leadership' - the latest buzz-phrase doing the rounds in HR parlance. Coffey thinks about it for a moment. "I like the word authentic," he says finally. "This sits particularly well with me personally. I think it is difficult to achieve, but it has the potential to generate more energy and commitment."
Perhaps the greatest testament to the success of this came in the summer when workers in C&W's field services division voted not to have union recognition over pay, working hours and holiday. The Communication Workers Union had been pursuing this goal since May 2007, but an overwhelming 77% of workers voted against it. Coffey puts this down to the effectiveness of the employee consultation forum.
"It's a stamp of approval," he says not wishing to dwell too much on this particular subject, but being more than happy to wax lyrically about setting an overall culture for high performance: "In year four of the project, we're all about growth, productivity and margins, but also being a great place to work," he enthuses.
The hard work setting the foundations for this to happen has already been done. Now Coffey is ready for the next act. "I say to staff: 'You're on a stage. I get to see every move you make. I know you can really transform this business, and if you show me this, you can have a great career.' I think this is a great rallying call."
CV
1974: Born London; educated University of Middlesex
1995: Personnel administrator, Philips Communication and Processing
1997: Bid and transition manager, Origin
1999: Global head of people development and HR outsourcing Atos Origin;
then HRD UK; and HRD UK, America, Asia Pacific & 0lympics
2007: Joined Cable & Wireless in organisation and development role
2007: Appointed HRD Europe, Asia Pacific and US, Cable & Wireless
Outside interests: Mountaineering; running - Paris marathon 2008
