I was interested to read that two leading academics have predicted a revolution at work over the next ten years. Alison
Maitland and Peter Thomson, visiting fellows at Cass Business School and
Henley Business School respectively, are predicting that employees will soon be deciding when, where and how they do their jobs and that in future workers will be paid by results and not by the hours worked.

Revolution will help boost output
Reported in People Management, the pair maintain that such a
radical change in working practices will help businesses boost output,
cut costs, speed access to new markets and afford employees greater
freedom.

They highlight the Clothing
retailer Gap that is said to have halved the turnover rate of employees
when it introduced a ‘Results-Only Work Environment’ in the production
and design department of their outlet division in California.

A flawed prediction.
I see there being a flaw in their argument. Can you imagine shops, banks, and other places where staffing is needed during opening hours, allowing complete flexibility in how, when and where the job is done?

Then there’s their proposal of paying for results. Now that sounds like a great idea and would have much support from people all over Europe that would love to propose that we start by paying Bankers, politicians, Estate agents (Realtors) and civil servants purely on their quantifiable results. I can see there being thousands of applications to be “Productivity assessors”
Now there’s a revolution! 

I do hate it when business use phrases to hide actions in order to reduce the potential impact and effects and one that I find increasingly annoying is “Rightsizing”. This is partly because it’s so often used to replace more accurate descriptions such as Redundancy.

It was used in Management Today “UBS is far from being the only bank which has announced
job cuts recently – everyone from HSBC to Credit Suisse has been busy
‘rightsizing’ their workforces…The job cuts at UBS amount to over 5% of its total workforce “.

Now, I know that “Rightsizing” has been used for some years but surely it’s poor management to have “Wrongsized” in the first place (see Tony Miller descriptions below) but I doubt that it’s the management jobs that are about to be rightsized! You can imagine the  press release from UBS HR was at pains to seem to be “normalizing” the situation but is the term “Rightsizing” the correct one.
 
Thanks to Tony Miller  for giving a reasonable explanation so that we can all make up our own mind!:

Downsizing
Is simply reducing the number of reporting layers in the business to produce a better line of communication and efficiency…Downsizing is a stressful and risky business and should not be carried out by anyone who has not experienced this technique.

Rightsizing
Involves reducing the organisation by a small percentage. By doing this you can keep the organisation trim and in better condition. It can be achieved by a number of painless means such as:
Freezing recruitment
Releasing the long-term sick
Releasing poor performers

The continuing discussion on banks and bonuses seem to shift between the need to attract and retain people and not upsetting taxpayers who have bailed the banks out.The discussion must have been made more complicated by Barack Obama deciding to restrict bonuses.

In the UK the banks in question are RBS and Lloyds TSB but one must presume that others such as Barclays and even HSBC will be looking at the result with interest.

Could this be the start of moderate salaries and reduced bonuses accross all sectors?

Over the past few weeks I’ve been speaking to some senior bankers about the financial crisis that’s gripping us all. One thing that seems obvious is that the one sector that is likely to make a lot of money over the next few years will be the corporate lawyers.

My reasoning is that the banks are beginning to argue over themselves over who was to blame for selling AAA assets to financial institutions that weeks later were assessed as being worthless. Who was to blame, the banks, the buyers or the rating agencies?

Then there are the law enforcement agencies such as the FBI investigating some of the “deals” and “Sell-offs” to see is some acted fraudulently.

What is interesting is that whilst the US authorities are taking action the UK Government is not instigating any criminal investigations. Perhaps the UK Government is too afraid of what they might find or perhaps they intend to let the US authorities extradite hundreds of our top bankers to face the courts and imprisonment. (Someone asked me last week if they would have a prison big enough).

In any event most corporate lawyers must be thinking that all the Christmases until 2020 are about to come early.

With the ongoing banking crisis and stock markets around the world continuing to fall it is possible that the best paid experts and talent in the future will not be bankers but those able to predict trends in business.

With everyone from Governments, businesses and individuals wanting answers to the current economic questions perhaps the best paid experts over the next two years will be those able to predict the future.

Of course the information being from futurologists, and paid for by business, will need to be based upon historical precedent and expert analysis. The individual in the street, however, might still have to rely on the astronomer’s predictions in their daily papers. 

One has to wonder how likely it is that anger over the financial downturn will spill over into prosecutions of those bankers found to have been negligent, incompetent or having given themselves huge salaries and bonuses despite being aware that their companies were in trouble.

Reports that bankers have taken upwards of $300 million in salaries and bonuses have been greeted with some disbelief by both customers and politicians. Such revelations can’t generate sympathy for any banker hauled before the courts.

However, one has to question whether such a series of court cases might be more of a reflection of “revenge” as opposed to justice?

There is one thing for sure, that is that banks can be expected to be saddled with rafts of restrictive legislation in the future.