Bit of politics...

Though I would consider myself "of the left" politically, I'm not a terribly militant person. I had little sympathy for the striking firemen, and the activities of our unions in the 1970's and early 80's, I believe, contributed greatly to the decline of this country as a manufacturing centre. Nevertheless... things have swung too far the other way now. Over the years, it seems to me from what I have seen and heard, a lot of businesses have started caring less and less about their employees.

It seems to start with the way that a lot of companies recruit now, particularily in the all encompassing "customer services" field. They hire temps, and if their face fits, they hire them "permanently" - I put permanently in inverted commas because permanency and employment seem to be two mutually exclusive terms these days. Having employed these people themselves after they have already spent a while doing the job, you might think, logically, that the employers have the person that they want. That's how my mind would work. I'd only employ those who worked well, and fitted the job, and so on. Those who I wasn't sure of, maybe I'd keep as temporary staff for a little longer, and then decide.

But no, that's not the way that modern industry works. They take these poor souls on, under the illusion they have a "permanent job", but in reality these "employees" are tied into a probationary period during which time they can be fired for farting in the wrong key without any comeback or redress. And, frankly, that seems to be pretty much what happens.

Now, nobody can blame an employer for wanting shot of shoddy workers. But why is it that staff who were deemed suitable to be offered a job in the first place can so suddenly become yesterday's people and given the old heave ho? What should cause an employee's performance to deteriorate so much over such a short space of time? It can only be one of three reasons - the company is incapable of selecting staff that can actually do the job; the company are failing to support and properly manage the staff they employ; or perhaps... just perhaps... it's because employers still want temporary (or "flexible" as I'm sure that modern human resource managers would say) staff, but don't want to pay fees to agencies...

It'd be very nice to see employment law tightened up a bit. Currently, you cannot claim unfair dismissal if you are sacked within a year of starting a new job. I'd like to see that changed to 6 months; or for any time spent as a temporary worker at the same employer to be taken into account as part of that year. I'd like to see regulation of "probationary periods" so that there is a maximum time span and a written contract setting out what the terms and conditions are of the probationary period, and under precisely what conditions the employee's contract can be terminated. When an employee's contract is terminated in this way, there should be a full written detailed explanation of why this has happened, and, unless there is gross misconduct, some form of parachute payment.

Of course, nicest of all would be if companies remembered how to manage people as people, rather than just a "human resource".