Newsmakers: Fox in the coop

It wasn’t long ago that the more liberal minded of us felt a warm glow when we heard the Co-op brand mentioned. Whilst the precise details of its governance might have escaped us, we felt it had a moral value: something to do with membership, being of and for the people, complemented by a healthy belief in environmentalism, honest food and sustainability.

No longer. As if the drug habit of ex-Chairman and ‘Crystal Methodist’ Paul Flowers weren’t quite enough, the Co-op has scattered its remaining goodwill to the wind with displays of unjustified executive trousering that would make even the most hardened Goldman banker blush and stare embarrassedly at his Berluti shoes.

The resignation of Chief Executive Euan Sutherland has provided focus for much of the flak. But HR is at the heart of this too.

Will Hutton, Principal of Hertford College, Oxford, didn’t hold back in the Observer when it came to outgoing Co-op CHRO Rebecca Skitt:

In February Rebecca Skitt was told she was to be “exited” for reasons that did not amount to “dismissal”. To minimise “disruption” and to achieve a “clean break” she is to be paid her 100% retention payment for both 2013 and 2014, even though she is not being retained. This comes with a third of her entitlement to the long-term incentive plan as a “good leaver”, even though she no longer has to be incentivised in the long term. The total pay-off is worth over £2m for 11 months’ work.

It is mind-boggling, and this in an organisation that claims to pride itself on its ethical and co-operative values. She is in receipt of no more than an almighty bung, in a wider remuneration framework that has taken “incentivisation” to gothic levels of irrationality.

Rarely have quotation marks been used so scathingly. But who is Rebecca Skitt? There’s little doubt she’s highly accomplished. HRD of Barclaycard in her thirties, and a long-serving and much-promoted alumnus of Unilever, there’s nothing not to like in her CV.

However, you’d be hard-pushed to find anyone who thinks she deserves all that money. Particularly the two years ‘retention payments’ for a job in which she has not, at all, been retained.

Whether Ms Skitt will suffer reputational damage from this, and habitually be mentioned in the same breath as the BBC’s Lucy Adams, remains to be seen.

As do the answers to two interesting questions. One: where will all this leave the Co-op brand? (Not to mention the Employer Brand: good luck with that one.) And two: will the Co-op farrago taint HR in a way that’s particularly problematic to practitioners who seek to develop sustainable, fair – even moral – organisations?

About the author

Andrew Baird

Andrew is the CEO of HRville. He is also Employer Brand Director of Blackbridge Communications, Editorial Director of Professionals in Law and an associate of The Smarty Train. Previously, he was the MD of TCS Advertising.