If you’re ever tempted to think that of all the market sectors E&T magazine covers, management is the one least likely to generate news, then think again. I’ll admit that not much of it is good news, but since the recession (let’s stop calling it ‘the current climate’) really started to bite, I have been inundated, flooded, awash – use any hydrological metaphor you wish – with management stories.
These stories take the form of redundancies, the condition of the pound, interest rates, budget cuts, decreased output levels and companies going out of business. Most arrive as media releases from industry bodies whose press offices, it would seem, have never been so gleefully busy.
I’ve got one here announcing the publication of a joint survey commissioned by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and consultants KPMG. It says that there are even bigger jobs culls on the way, with UK job prospects deteriorating ‘at an alarming rate’. For those still with jobs the bad news is that the average pay rise is shrinking. Chief economic advisers are brought in to intone solemnly on the crisis.
According to one, the “survey underlines the urgent need for alternative monetary policy measures – so called quantative easing – to ameliorate the risk of a downward spiral becoming entrenched and turning what already looks like a grim recession into something even worse.” Managementspeak for: “somebody do something or we’re heading to hell in a handcart.” Incidentally, I loved the mixed metaphor of the spiral becoming entrenched.
You don’t need to be Maynard Keynes to work this out for yourself. But the question is, what are we going to do about it? Here at E&T, we run our own management forum called On the Coaching Couch. Originally, it was intended to be an agony column providing advice to accidental managers unsure as to how they might provide proper career development for their staff.
We drafted in the expertise of Janet Wright, a Chartered Engineer and professional management coach, and her job was to give impartial guidance through the myriad of training and coaching options. Increasingly, her mailbag has been filled with questions from managers not knowing how to hold onto their staff or, even worse, their own jobs.
I don’t have a swanky survey here to prove my point, but I’d be prepared to bet the shirt on my back that the main concern of managers in the engineering and technology sectors at the moment is job security. Companies are merging, overworked managers are inheriting new departments, established teams are being ‘downsized’ and no one knows upon whom the guillotine will fall next. Perhaps we should rename On the Coaching Couch as ‘A Quiet night in with Madame Defarge’?
Find out some of the issues involved turn to our extract from our online archive of management dilemmas visit http://kn.theiet.org/management/
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