Cor blimey
What would a Jeremy Corbyn government mean for HR?It’s 2020. David Cameron has lost the election – a further unfortunate twist to the global economy and his continued insistence on austerity finally did it for him.
Now everyone’s favourite leftie, Jeremy Corbyn, has moved his Soviet posters, Marxist textbooks and remarkable collection of Greek fishing caps into Number 10.
So what’s happening to HR? Using our incredibly astute understanding of the political-economic landscape, a little guesswork and a tongue that’s firmly in our journalistic cheek, we can reveal the ten ways in which a Corbyn administration will turn HR upside down. And quite possibly to the left.
1. More of us work in organisations owned by the state
There’s plenty of re-nationalisation. Energy and Transport are the first in line – Railtrack is brought back into the public domain within the government’s first month. There’s an incredible amount of TUPEing and general redrawing of contracts. The admin workload is immense. You can’t see your desk for paper.
Before long, the conversations in the HR press have changed. We’re still talking about engagement, but not just as a condition of productivity and increased revenues. We’re also talking about engagement as a condition of excellence.
Oh, and how to explain to employees that they don’t automatically get a better pension purely because they’ve shifted sectors. What do they want, blood?
2. All of us have to declare equal pay figures
Corbyn has decreed that every single organisation – not just the big ones – needs to publish figures relating to equal pay.
Your entire C Suite is crying: they need to up the women’s pay or lower the men’s pay. Either route is a nightmare. Yikes. Maybe they should’ve thought about this earlier?
Suddenly, female members of your workforce are splashing more cash. Deborah in the canteen has started wearing Prada as she dishes out the pie and mash.
3. Workforces are further decentralised
The new Prime Minister is following up on his promise to introduce superfast broadband to towns and rural areas.
Half of your management wants to move to locations with cheaper housing and lower costs of living, now remote working is actually feasible everywhere.
Your Marketing Manager wants to move to Morecambe, your Marketing Associate to Dundee. Better brush up that remote working protocol and finally call that smarmy salesperson who’s being trying to flog you a collaborative working platform.
4. Manufacturing industry expands, leading to talent challenges
The government has decided that the UK economy is too reliant on financial services and decides to balance matters by piling tonnes of cash into resuscitating the manufacturing industries.
British Leyland is reinvented as a brand, Norwich becomes home to a new megatastic biscuits factory and a premiere white goods campus opens in Oswaldtwistle.
Suddenly, there’s a massive run on anyone with an iota of expertise in manufacturing. The recruitment market goes ballistic, with retention issues in existing manufacturing organisations made immeasurably worse.
Plant managers are the new rock stars, and become even more highly paid than corporate lawyers, footballers and city traders.
5. There’s a premium on employee relations jobs
Of course, a left-wing government and an increase in the public sector means that HR people with experience of working with unions are also at a premium.
Reward people – the current hen’s teeth in HR recruitment – lose their kudos, and industry job boards are packed with ads for six-figure ER assistants.
6. Universal childcare heightens the appetite to work
The state pays for all childcare six days a week, which means that many more people can afford to go to work. More women have the time and the inclination to progress and challenge the glass ceiling.
Perversely, though, there’s more competition for lower level roles, and many organisation don’t feel the need to improve on the minimum wage. (Which, to be fair, is now topping £59 pounds an hour.)
7. The Working Time Directive gets fully enforced
After a decade of David Cameron trying everything in his power to remove WTD obligations from UK business, Corbyn leaps into Brussels and embraces it thoroughly.
Anyone found working more than 48 hours – whether or not they’ve opted out – is rounded up, put in the town square and walloped on the bottom with a copy of the Morning Star.
8. High-earners are hit with a 50% tax rate
Bosses are sad, because they have less disposable income. Fewer can afford to send their children to boarding school, and have to do the school run like everyone else.
Bosses also act up, refusing to buy beer for the staff at after-work drinks, ignoring leaving do whip-rounds and occasionally incurring disciplinaries for pilfering stationery and company toilet rolls.
9. Corporation taxes are increased
Oh, almost forgot about this. Businesses are in big trouble when it comes to pleasing shareholders, because a) they’re being taxed more, b) they can’t evade paying it and c) have to pay their employees more. (See above.)
HR bears the brunt of this. Every day, HR people are harangued for not improving engagement/productivity. Assets are definitely squeezed, and HR is looked to as the department that provides the juicers.
10. Nobody wears a suit to work any more
Finally, fashion in the workplace changes. With a PM who doesn’t wear a suit, let alone a tie, the populations relaxes sartorially.
Every day is a dress-down day, and HR has to write another dress policy that this time makes specific reference to donkey jackets, Venezuelan hats and Josef Stalin beards.
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