Understanding the Political Dynamics of Skills

In a recent article “The Politics of Skills”, author Richard Barton highlighted political risks accompanying skills. He argues that while skills are essential organisational growth and development drivers, they also have the ability to create nefarious conditions in the workplace.

Skills have value and wealth attached to them. The underlying assumptions are that restriction to the development of skills in emerging talent and restricted access to skilled human resources can, and will, materialize at some point in time. Organisations introduce competency and performance management systems to militate this defect, but Barton argues that these models may create, to certain and varying degrees, false objectivity that veneer workplace politics.

Joey Staphorst, NMMU Business School’s Senior Manager for Business Development and Customised Learning says: “Tacit practices have the potential to destabilise organisational values while impacting negatively on workplace performance, job satisfaction and employee wellness.”

She believes that, while training and education programmes are undertaken to produce honed and enhanced people resources, skilled employees are located by default to storms of office politics. “In some instances, employees with potential are deliberately blocked from training for a variety of reasons. This can create individual and organisational afflictions.”

She advocates heightened awareness and new critical paradigms emanating from HR to dislocate dissident and discriminatory practices that Barton identified as skills monopolies, path-clearing, career development resistance and inadequate job handovers which are often symptoms of organisational politics.

Protégé Path-clearing

For Barton, the rendering of support to emerging talent through mentorship and coaching is integrally linked to any manager’s responsibilities.

However, support becomes problematic when a manager intentionally or unintentionally obstructs growth and career development of other employees. When managers create career paths for preferred colleagues they are engaging in protégé path-clearing.

“HR should always be aware that emerging talent is susceptible to subjectivity,” says Staphorst. “Strategies should be designed to objectively identify emerging talent. The point here is that HR needs to utilize a mix of talent identification utilities, not only relying on management feedback, which can be biased,” she says.

Career Development Resistance

Another aspect of skills politics plays out when promoted individuals reach the top. They become resilient to support colleagues who are still in the promotion pipeline. Often these promoted individuals become hard-heartened to facilitate and support the development and growth of colleagues or team members.

Barton provides two reasons for this behaviour, namely, lack of awareness to help others or a strategy to keep competitive adversaries at bay. He believes that in this condition, marginalized employees spiral into despair, eventually leaving the organisation.

“Managers have to bring out the best in others, this is an uncontested law. HR and senior organisational leaders need to establish strong tenets of mutual cooperation and teamwork, Ubuntu, and this has to be embedded in organisational culture and values,” says Staphorst.

“Interventions of self-development and emotional intelligence can address problematic aspects of self-interest.” In addition, Staphorst believes that HR needs be aware of underlying dynamics of intra-competition in organisations too.

Inadequate Job Handovers

Barton believes that while some employees are eager to see successors build on their achievements, other employees will be inclined to see successors fail. In this regards, Staphorst states that HR should facilitate and encourage responsible job handovers.

“Firstly, an inventory of duties and responsibilities emerging through verbal interchange, a written job description authored by the departing employee and input from team members is necessary. Although HR departments have access to job descriptions, jobs often evolve over time due to changing market and organisational contexts.

“Secondly, unique knowledge, informational resources and organisational processes relating to specific posts should be collected, preserved and conveyed to the arriving employee.

“The job handover guideline is a third point. This blueprint is an aid directing the arriving employee to people and organisational resources, functioning to eradicate uncertainty. All standard operating procedures have to be included here.“Fourthly, it is also important for HR to understand that project succession planning is vital. This means that projects initiated or managed by the departing employee should be protected to evade organisational resource losses, notably time and finances.

“Finally, HR should facilitate a shadowing window opportunity between the departure of existing and the arrival of new employees, if this is operationally possible. Here, new employees can consult with their forerunners and this will further eradicate uncertainties.”

Skills Monopolies

Skills monopolies remain problematic and harmful to organisations. These materialize through large-scale skill restriction discourses or locally within organisations.

Barton states: “The basic economics of supply and demand tell us that restricting the number of qualified people means their fees will be higher. Similarly, some, although not all, old-style apprenticeships proved to be little more than time-serving programmes – you had to serve your time before you were deemed skilled, so restricting the number of skilled workers. Modern apprenticeships are not like this.”

He continues: “a characteristic of a skills monopoly is that the supply of the skill is not really limited. Indeed, there would be no need for those deemed skilled to restrict those not deemed skilled if they really were unable to do the protected work. It’s the recognition of the skills that is restricted”.

Individuals who are proficient to do work are often barred from doing it. This creates despondencies that lead to resignations.

The role of HR

Barton argues that HR is positioned as an agent of change to “disrupt these subversive practices” while bringing “a much-improved level of fairness”. He makes the following recommendation:

“I’d recommend such a rule to all: no unfavourable ¬comment may be made about any colleague at any formal meeting, including pay reviews, succession planning and resourcing discussions, unless that concern has already been given to the colleague as feedback and he or she has had a chance to discuss its validity and make a correction.

“A rule such as this should be a foundation stone to any policy of ethical people management. Those seeking to clear a path are forced to justify their denigrations of those they fear will rival their favourites. Those seeking to control recognition of a skill are forced to be open about what they are doing. The rule shines light on dark practices,” he says.

In addition Barton proposes three solutions.

Firstly, systems and processes, such as promotion and appraisal systems, need to be challenged. “We must challenge systems and processes, especially those we own, such as the appraisal and promotion systems. Make sure they are not applied outside their appropriate scope or are treated as somehow objective when they are not. We must stop pretending that detachment is possible when applying assessment processes. It is essential to compensate for any intangible advantages and disadvantages.”

Secondly, people have to be challenged. “We must challenge people. If a manager suggests his deputy is the best candidate for promotion, challenge for the specific results the deputy has delivered; probe beyond the general and the vague. If a manager suggests someone is “not ready” for a more senior role, first of all challenge them for specific, first-hand evidence for that assessment; second, challenge them to discuss it with the person concerned. They may prefer not to, in which case they should withdraw their assessment.”

And finally, Barton believes that HR needs to challenge itself. He says that: “The real challenge to us all is to recognise that we might have, probably in all innocence, been a party to skill restriction. That’s a hard thing to acknowledge. You have the choice of dismissing the possibility or of putting things right.”