Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Laugh? I could have cried...

Two headlines caught my eye this morning, both of them for very different reasons.  The first headline was "Pudding renamed Spotted Richard".  It concerned the Flintshire County council canteen in the UK that renamed the traditional Spotted Dick pudding because customers were making crude innuendoes and jokes at mealtimes when the pudding was served.  For those of you who haven't heard of Spotted Dick, it is a traditional steamed suet pudding made with dried fruit like currants and is thought to have originated in the mid-19th century.  Spotted refers to the dried fruit (which resemble spots) and Dick may be a contraction/corruption of the word pudding (from the last syllable) or possibly a corruption of the word, dough. 

The second headline was "Kyle's big mouth in nasty relapse".  On his radio show, Sandilands and Jackie O were talking about who should be the next face of the diet company, Jenny Craig.  Sandilands commented on Magda Szubanski, who has recently lost 25 kilograms using Jenny Craig, saying "You put her in a concentration camp and you watch the weight fall off … like she could be skinny".  Sandilands has a penchant for the shocking, recently going off air for two weeks after a segment in which a 14 year old girl was hooked up to a lie detector and, when grilled about her sexual history, emotionally revealed that she had been raped when she was 12. His most recent comment has been met with disgust, both from Szubanski as well as from the Jewish Community.

So there you are; two very different headlines.  One, a tale of political correctness spiralling comically out of control; the other, a tale where control over a would-be comic would be politically correct.  Both of them potential public relations blows.  However only one where HR will be playing a major part.  I empathise entirely with the HR Director at Austereo who has to help balance the commercial need for ratings with the need to ensure that ethical standards are maintained.  Having said that, it does not remove the need for a thorough investigation of the incident against whatever Code of Ethics / Business Standards exists within Austereo and action taken accordingly.

In this inter-connected world, tales of employees potentially bringing their "company into disrepute" are many, for example the Fake Steven Conroy, and each one serves to highlight that there is a need for HR to continuously review policies for relevance.  If we want to operate HR as a business we ignore the basics, like policy and process review, at our peril.  We have to have strong and practical foundations on which to build value add solutions and services otherwise we will not succeed.

And Finally...

I leave you with a quote from the great sage, Un Known, to ponder:

"A man one on one is your equal and is himself, that same man within a group aims to be the king or the clown"
All the best,
Jim

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