I believe in all that too. But increasingly I wonder if there isn’t something else which is rather less apple pie and motherhood – a clear and explicit framework for performance.
Employees like to feel they toil in a workplace managed with some grip. It even makes them happier. I ponder this in the aftermath of my Fair Pay Review, when so many voices from left and right are saying that a performance regime is impossible in the public sector and will just create perverse results. Too few people trust their line manager to do performance fairly; it is counterproductive.
I should drop any attempt to associate pay at the top with performance. Indeed, my old friend Lord Richard Layard would go even further. Performance regimes and bonuses actually undermine performance, he argues. They accentuate the cash nexus. But most workers just want to do a job well and sending a signal you are going to incentivise and measure them just turns them off. They become disengaged and unhappy.
This debate suddenly has more salience. Layard is the prime mover in the Action for Happiness campaign. We are all to “pledge to create more happiness in the world and take positive action to promote happiness in whatever way we can”. Happiness is about connecting, relating and giving; indeed, research shows that what makes you happy is giving money away to others – or even meditating.
All this is rather at odds with performance management, it might seem – although happiness, the campaign also acknowledges, is about having goals and being part of something bigger. This is where, I suspect, some of the edgier ideas about happiness enter the frame. Happy workplaces are where clear goals are set – and where there is an explicit business purpose.
At the same time as Action for Happiness gets going, so the Government is backing David McLeod’s Employee Engagement taskforce (declaration of interest – I am a pro bono adviser). LibDem minister for employment relations Ed Davey offered this homily as he generously gave the work, begun under the last government, a second wind: “Workers know better than anyone how the firm they work for can grow, innovate and succeed. For any business or organisation, a committed and involved workforce all pulling in the same direction is essential.” It is embarrassingly bland – how many times have you read or said something similar yourself?
But one of the reasons it is so bland – and where the happiness movement also has a bland spot – is that it only captures part of the truth about a good workplace.
Of course we want to be trusted, respected and involved – but we also want to be noticed. We want our good work to be rewarded within a framework of goals; and we don’t want shirkers to get away with blue murder. HR, as everyone knows, struggles to be taken seriously by senior management – too readily categorised as the professionals who do payroll, grievances and ’soft stuff’ and who can be relied upon to back employee engagement and happiness unthinkingly because it is in their DNA.
But if the Engagement taskforce or Action for Happiness are going to make a difference – and I ardently hope they do – then it will be because they connect their preoccupations with a tougher and more complex view of human nature. This is a big opportunity to redefine HR. Take it.
Will Hutton is executive vice chair of The Work Foundation
