HRpedia: 'Bike shed syndrome'
When colleagues are worrying about who conducts exit interviews, rather than stopping the departuresBike shed syndrome, n.
Whilst we’d love this to be a neat way to describe the practice of disappearing for a crafty puff on a ciggy or a snog when one should be at work, it’s actually a shade more complex than that.
Bike shed syndrome – or bikeshedding, or more formally Parkinson’s Law of Triviality – refers to the tendency of people to dispute minor issues whilst overlooking larger, more complex ones. To wit: building an atomic reactor is too much of a stretch for anyone to get their heads around, so instead they spend their time arguing about what colour to paint the bike shed they’re building next door.
Examples of bikeshedding in HR include: arguing over the day people get paid when salaries are thirty percent lower than industry average; arguing about which supplier should provide leadership mentoring when the only member of the Board who’s signed up for it is the Company Secretary; arguing about employee participation when the whole darn office has gone out on strike.
People usually ‘bikeshed’ when the big issue is beyond them, but they want to make some of contribution, so concentrate on the low-hanging fruit.
Used in practice:
‘I think it’s important that we hold the Business Ethics seminar in the office, Jacinta, to show that ethics are integral to our working environment.’
‘I see where you’re coming from, Graham. But the message would be more powerful if we held it at the local church hall.’
‘Stop bike-shedding, you two! Shouldn’t we think about getting the CEO out of prison first?’
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