Darwin was probably right, business is a dog-eat-dog world where survival of the fittest is the name of the game but is the key to success really innovation, after all Royal Mail has just reported bumper profits but what have they done differently?
By Annie Hayes, HRZone Editor
Postal giant, the Royal Mail reported an annual profit of £537 million this year, triggering a bonus of £1,074 each for around 180,000 happy postal workers. Not to mention the fat cat pay out for Chief Executive Adam Crozier of £2.2 million.
A remarkable turnaround considering that just three years ago, the organisation was licking its wounds, haemorrhaging profits of up to £1.5 million daily while lamenting a failed re-branding exercise and struggling to tackle a poor industrial relations record.
So just what have they done differently, after all they offer the same service don’t they? Well according to the organisation, performance has hugely improved. Mail is being delivered more promptly meeting or beating targets and fewer letters are being lost while the parcel service has moved into profit.
While the basic model is the same and as simple as it ever was summed up pretty much in two words ‘distribute mail’ it has had to ramp up its service by reinvigorating its workforce.
It has linked pay to performance, dealt with bullying and harassment and introduced a much ridiculed pay for attendance scheme luring workers back to the mail room.
And so it would seem that for all the media spin, criticism and contempt posted at its door, excuse the pun – it has had the last laugh.
It’s clear that the ideas that have led to this complete turnaround stemmed from the realisation that failure was knocking at its door but is innovation always the key?
Speaking at last October’s Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development’s conference in Harrogate, keynote speaker and strategy guru Gary Hamel certainly thought so, albeit that he might disagree with Royal Mail’s timings.
The challenge for businesses, he said is to build the capacity to move forward before the case for change becomes desperately obvious.
The yawning realisation, he added, is that many businesses don’t wake up to what is happening around them until it is too late, profits dip and customers are lost before action is taken.
“Success has never been more fragile and as change accelerates we are becoming more ignorant,” Hamel commented at the time.
Who should champion this change? Well yes you guessed it HR.
The three-pronged solution he suggests is revolution, renewal and resilience. Companies must continually reinvent themselves he argued and develop a capacity for continuous reconstruction.
This quest for resilience should be the focus of every HR professional. Strategy dies he said if they are replicated, supplanted, exhausted or eviscerated.
So how can HR champion innovation and change? Well it’s tricky especially when it dawns on you that most workers don’t have their best ideas in the workplace or in the meeting room. In fact a survey out last year by WebEx Communications suggested that one in three daydream about sex during meetings – rather distracting if you’re pouring over the finer points of how to resurrect your business.
While an East of England Development Agency study also exposed the hidden truth that almost a third of workers have their best ideas in bed.
While the utopia that Hamel points to might be a far off dream for most businesses operating in the ‘real world’ it appears that those companies like Royal Mail who can embrace failure and resurrect themselves with the help of bigger and better ideas are the ones who will continue to succeed, even if they must endure the merry-go-round of failure and re-structure along the way.
And if snoozing is the answer why not forget the boring meetings and replace them with a gizmo gadget for every aspiring employee. That way staff can wire their ideas back to the office from the comfort of their own beds making everyone happy!
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