Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Planned Obsolescence aka Grumpy

About 6 weeks ago, my iPhone was still impressing me with its battery life consistently finishing each day of normal use with about 55% left in the charge.  Then something strange happened, almost exactly to the day of the 1st year anniversary of buying it, the battery stopped retaining its charge all day and instead lost all of the charge within 4 hours of switching on.  Forget normal use, it just died without use at all!  

So when I saw this article by Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear fame, it firstly made me laugh which is why I share part of it below, but secondly got me thinking about planned obsolescence.

Today, if something is made to perform a function, it will perform that function for a short while, and then it will stop, and you will throw it away.
This applies to everything, except fondue sets. Actually, it might apply to fondue sets as well, but no one can be sure because everyone's fondue set is at the back of a kitchen cupboard where it's been since the fateful night 30 years ago when it tipped up, spilling hot fat all over your uncle, killing him.
Anyway, it applies to everything else. Examine, if you will, exhibit A: your mobile telephone. How long have you had it? I'm willing to bet the answer to that is "less than two years". Good. So what happened to the one you had previously? It's in a drawer somewhere isn't it? And it's broken. It might not have been broken when you put it there. But it is now.

Planned Obsolescence, according to Wikipedia is "a policy of deliberately planning or designing a product with a limited useful life, so it will become obsolete or nonfunctional after a certain period."  Now I confess my naivety by saying that I thought that this was a bit of an urban myth, yet according to Vance Packard in his book, The Waste Makers, it has been around for nearly 80 years. In the 1930s an enterprising engineer working for General Electric proposed increasing sales of flashlight lamps by increasing their efficiency and shortening their life. Instead of lasting through three batteries he suggested that each lamp last only as long as one battery. In 1934 speakers at the Society of Automotive Engineers meetings proposed limiting the life of automobiles.

I know I sound like a grumpy git when I say my parents still use kitchen appliances that they bought when I was a baby and they still do exactly what they were designed to do but we had a toaster that died in less than 12 months!  I understand that there are lots of good commercial (read "financial") reasons for designing in a limited lifespan, but what I can't really grasp is why we accept it.

So how does planned obsolesence play in the HR space?  Hopefully it shouldn't but we should be aware that if the companies for whom we work use the concept in the products that they sell, then customer complaints will no doubt be high.  That in turn has implications for the company in terms of brand management and HR in terms of training, stress, OH&S to name but a few.  It is not going to go away, not in this modern era of rampant consumerism, and you may not agree with the ethics of such a practice, but you should be prepared for its consequences.

All the best

Jim

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