The Paula Principle

Paula at work

I’m aiming to build up examples of the PP in operation at the workplace – at all levels.

Overqualification, underutilisation

I've just been at a session of the Skills Commission.  Alan Felstead, whose work on how the skills picture has evolved over time has been so valuable, gave evidence before me, drawing on data which goes back twenty years or more.  Alan showed how the incidence of training declined before the recession but, surprisingly, not during or since.  However the duration of training has shrunk - i.e. the time people spend in training is going down. The focus of the Commission's discussion was on how well skills are being used.  Here the picture is complex and the evidence often quite tricky to interpret.   Alan's general points are: 1.  The…
Read More

Claudia Goldin and ‘grand convergence’

Claudia Goldin's presidential address to the American Economic Association - don't go away - is a stunner. It really should help to shift the whole focus of two important debates: the role and use of skills; and questions of gender equality at work. So it's hugely PP-relevant. There are large chunks of sophisticated number-crunching which are well over my head, but Goldin does a great job of summarising the key points, and how they fit into the historical narrative of what she calls the 'grand convergence' of male and female roles. She traces out the previous chapters of this narrative, which include greater female participation at work and, especially, changes in…
Read More

Self-employment: another area we need to understand

I've just been to a stimulating meeting at the Resolution Foundation, which always provides food for thought on employment issues.  This one was on self-employment, which now counts for over 15% of the workforce - some 4.5 million people. As Gavin Kelly, the FR's CEO, observed, when you have numbers of that kind routinely left out of most labour market analysis, it makes one query how robust the conclusions can be. Add to that the absurdity of using 16-64 as the age frame; and then pile on the limitations of the simplistic binary division between full-timers and part-timers and you reality begin to think that we need a radical rebuild…
Read More

Asia: where the PP applies most strongly?

The Economist recently ran a long piece on 'Holding back half the nation:  Japanese women and work'.  It chronicled the challenge facing Shinzo Abe, the Japanese prime minister, as he seeks to change the position of Japanese women in the economy.  Japanese women are amongst the best-educated in the world, but 70% of women who have children stop working for a decade or more, and many never come back.   The  economic participation rate  for women is just 63%.  Fertility is, predictably, low. Japan and Korea are probably the most powerful examples  of the PP at work, with exceptionally well-qualified women almost all of whom have poor career prospects.   Mr Abe…
Read More

A fertile post

Below is a comment submitted in response to a blog of mine challenging Mrs Moneypenny's sense of value. I've kept it anonymous at the request of the author  (let's call her K) but quote it in almost its entirety because it encapsulates so many PP issues.  In particular: 1.  Fairness is and should be central.  The driver is K's sense of injustice at her discovery, not her desire for more money.    People should not have to work to find these things out, nor happen on them by chance. 2.  Part-timers often give better value.  Another, rather different, example:  I was listening the other week to Brian Moore - the…
Read More

The Good Life and productivity

I've been reading How Much is Enough?, a thought-provoking tract for modern times by Skidelsky pere et fils.  Robert Skidelsky is an economic historian who has written with massive authority on Keynes and his legacy;  Edward is a philosopher.    Robert is giving a public lecture tomorrow (25/3) at the Working Mens College, part of an excellent series which the College has been running over past months (declaration of interest:  I chair the WMC governing board.) The Skidelskys' challenge is to the dominance of GDP and income as dominant measures of how well we are doing, as individuals and as a society.  They make trenchant and, to my mind, effective criticisms…
Read More

Valuing Talent

Here's an interesting initiative, Valuing Your Talent, launched by a consortium including the RSA, the UK Commission on Employment and Skills and several major personnel/management bodies such as the Chartered Institute for Personnel Development. It's interesting in part because of the crowdsourcing approach, aiming to amass a host of ideas and opinions but also offering something back in the way of a £10K prize to help develop the best idea.  An Insights phase has just started, to be followed by an Innovations phase which will explore how the ideas might be put into practice. Substantively it's a challenge to all those who say 'people are our biggest asset' to come forward…
Read More

Aspirations and hurdles

I’ve just had a fascinating  discussion with David Hemery, the former Olympic gold medallist hurdler, and founder of 21st Century Legacy, a charity devoted to raising children’s aspirations to greatness. The meeting was set up to explore our apparently opposing views of aspiration.  David is absolutely committed to getting children to find their spark of greatness and to pursue it.  Too many people say how ‘passionate’ they are about something when they don’t really mean it;  David didn’t use the word, but he evidently is, in a very unassuming way, passionate about linking aspiration to social justice.  So he’s for onwards and upwards. By contrast I’m  interested in people –…
Read More

Careers and progression

I've been doing a few interviews for the putative PP book, and they've prompted some thoughts about how different kinds of organisation do or don't foster careers and progression.  In particular, is working in a large bureaucracy more likely to help or to hinder a woman making her way up, at whatever level? I caught some of Lucy Kellaway's radio series, broadcast last year, on A History of Office Life.  One episode dealt with the invention of the career ladder (it's from that that I pinched the Dickensian illustration below), another with nepotism vs meritocracy.  A third covered the arrival of women in the office.  She slily sketches in the way office…
Read More

Valuing work – what measures?

Mrs Moneypenny, a Financial Times columnist, wrote this weekend about how depressing she finds it that Mary Barra, the new head of General Motors, is being paid a basic salary of $1.6 million.  This is 25% less than her male equivalent at Ford. The gap is a significant one, and not atypical, though I find it hard to get too worked up about discrimination at this level.  What I find depressing is Mrs M's subsequent argument.  Apparently Ms Barra's predecessor at GM is being rehired as a consultant, at $4m (we aren't told if this is an annual fee, but I assume so). Mrs M comments: "That is someone who…
Read More

Overqualification, underutilisation

I've just been at a session of the Skills Commission.  Alan Felstead, whose work on how the skills picture has evolved over time has been so valuable, gave evidence before me, drawing on data which goes back twenty years or more.  Alan showed how the incidence of training declined before the recession but, surprisingly, not during or since.  However the duration of training has shrunk - i.e. the time people spend in training is going down. The focus of the Commission's discussion was on how well skills are being used.  Here the picture is complex and the evidence often quite tricky to interpret.   Alan's general points are: 1.  The…
Read More

Claudia Goldin and ‘grand convergence’

Claudia Goldin's presidential address to the American Economic Association - don't go away - is a stunner. It really should help to shift the whole focus of two important debates: the role and use of skills; and questions of gender equality at work. So it's hugely PP-relevant. There are large chunks of sophisticated number-crunching which are well over my head, but Goldin does a great job of summarising the key points, and how they fit into the historical narrative of what she calls the 'grand convergence' of male and female roles. She traces out the previous chapters of this narrative, which include greater female participation at work and, especially, changes in…
Read More

Self-employment: another area we need to understand

I've just been to a stimulating meeting at the Resolution Foundation, which always provides food for thought on employment issues.  This one was on self-employment, which now counts for over 15% of the workforce - some 4.5 million people. As Gavin Kelly, the FR's CEO, observed, when you have numbers of that kind routinely left out of most labour market analysis, it makes one query how robust the conclusions can be. Add to that the absurdity of using 16-64 as the age frame; and then pile on the limitations of the simplistic binary division between full-timers and part-timers and you reality begin to think that we need a radical rebuild…
Read More

Asia: where the PP applies most strongly?

The Economist recently ran a long piece on 'Holding back half the nation:  Japanese women and work'.  It chronicled the challenge facing Shinzo Abe, the Japanese prime minister, as he seeks to change the position of Japanese women in the economy.  Japanese women are amongst the best-educated in the world, but 70% of women who have children stop working for a decade or more, and many never come back.   The  economic participation rate  for women is just 63%.  Fertility is, predictably, low. Japan and Korea are probably the most powerful examples  of the PP at work, with exceptionally well-qualified women almost all of whom have poor career prospects.   Mr Abe…
Read More

A fertile post

Below is a comment submitted in response to a blog of mine challenging Mrs Moneypenny's sense of value. I've kept it anonymous at the request of the author  (let's call her K) but quote it in almost its entirety because it encapsulates so many PP issues.  In particular: 1.  Fairness is and should be central.  The driver is K's sense of injustice at her discovery, not her desire for more money.    People should not have to work to find these things out, nor happen on them by chance. 2.  Part-timers often give better value.  Another, rather different, example:  I was listening the other week to Brian Moore - the…
Read More

The Good Life and productivity

I've been reading How Much is Enough?, a thought-provoking tract for modern times by Skidelsky pere et fils.  Robert Skidelsky is an economic historian who has written with massive authority on Keynes and his legacy;  Edward is a philosopher.    Robert is giving a public lecture tomorrow (25/3) at the Working Mens College, part of an excellent series which the College has been running over past months (declaration of interest:  I chair the WMC governing board.) The Skidelskys' challenge is to the dominance of GDP and income as dominant measures of how well we are doing, as individuals and as a society.  They make trenchant and, to my mind, effective criticisms…
Read More

Valuing Talent

Here's an interesting initiative, Valuing Your Talent, launched by a consortium including the RSA, the UK Commission on Employment and Skills and several major personnel/management bodies such as the Chartered Institute for Personnel Development. It's interesting in part because of the crowdsourcing approach, aiming to amass a host of ideas and opinions but also offering something back in the way of a £10K prize to help develop the best idea.  An Insights phase has just started, to be followed by an Innovations phase which will explore how the ideas might be put into practice. Substantively it's a challenge to all those who say 'people are our biggest asset' to come forward…
Read More

Aspirations and hurdles

I’ve just had a fascinating  discussion with David Hemery, the former Olympic gold medallist hurdler, and founder of 21st Century Legacy, a charity devoted to raising children’s aspirations to greatness. The meeting was set up to explore our apparently opposing views of aspiration.  David is absolutely committed to getting children to find their spark of greatness and to pursue it.  Too many people say how ‘passionate’ they are about something when they don’t really mean it;  David didn’t use the word, but he evidently is, in a very unassuming way, passionate about linking aspiration to social justice.  So he’s for onwards and upwards. By contrast I’m  interested in people –…
Read More

Careers and progression

I've been doing a few interviews for the putative PP book, and they've prompted some thoughts about how different kinds of organisation do or don't foster careers and progression.  In particular, is working in a large bureaucracy more likely to help or to hinder a woman making her way up, at whatever level? I caught some of Lucy Kellaway's radio series, broadcast last year, on A History of Office Life.  One episode dealt with the invention of the career ladder (it's from that that I pinched the Dickensian illustration below), another with nepotism vs meritocracy.  A third covered the arrival of women in the office.  She slily sketches in the way office…
Read More

Valuing work – what measures?

Mrs Moneypenny, a Financial Times columnist, wrote this weekend about how depressing she finds it that Mary Barra, the new head of General Motors, is being paid a basic salary of $1.6 million.  This is 25% less than her male equivalent at Ford. The gap is a significant one, and not atypical, though I find it hard to get too worked up about discrimination at this level.  What I find depressing is Mrs M's subsequent argument.  Apparently Ms Barra's predecessor at GM is being rehired as a consultant, at $4m (we aren't told if this is an annual fee, but I assume so). Mrs M comments: "That is someone who…
Read More

Overqualification, underutilisation

I've just been at a session of the Skills Commission.  Alan Felstead, whose work on how the skills picture has evolved over time has been so valuable, gave evidence before me, drawing on data which goes back twenty years or more.  Alan showed how the incidence of training declined before the recession but, surprisingly, not during or since.  However the duration of training has shrunk - i.e. the time people spend in training is going down. The focus of the Commission's discussion was on how well skills are being used.  Here the picture is complex and the evidence often quite tricky to interpret.   Alan's general points are: 1.  The…
Read More

Claudia Goldin and ‘grand convergence’

Claudia Goldin's presidential address to the American Economic Association - don't go away - is a stunner. It really should help to shift the whole focus of two important debates: the role and use of skills; and questions of gender equality at work. So it's hugely PP-relevant. There are large chunks of sophisticated number-crunching which are well over my head, but Goldin does a great job of summarising the key points, and how they fit into the historical narrative of what she calls the 'grand convergence' of male and female roles. She traces out the previous chapters of this narrative, which include greater female participation at work and, especially, changes in…
Read More

Self-employment: another area we need to understand

I've just been to a stimulating meeting at the Resolution Foundation, which always provides food for thought on employment issues.  This one was on self-employment, which now counts for over 15% of the workforce - some 4.5 million people. As Gavin Kelly, the FR's CEO, observed, when you have numbers of that kind routinely left out of most labour market analysis, it makes one query how robust the conclusions can be. Add to that the absurdity of using 16-64 as the age frame; and then pile on the limitations of the simplistic binary division between full-timers and part-timers and you reality begin to think that we need a radical rebuild…
Read More

Asia: where the PP applies most strongly?

The Economist recently ran a long piece on 'Holding back half the nation:  Japanese women and work'.  It chronicled the challenge facing Shinzo Abe, the Japanese prime minister, as he seeks to change the position of Japanese women in the economy.  Japanese women are amongst the best-educated in the world, but 70% of women who have children stop working for a decade or more, and many never come back.   The  economic participation rate  for women is just 63%.  Fertility is, predictably, low. Japan and Korea are probably the most powerful examples  of the PP at work, with exceptionally well-qualified women almost all of whom have poor career prospects.   Mr Abe…
Read More

A fertile post

Below is a comment submitted in response to a blog of mine challenging Mrs Moneypenny's sense of value. I've kept it anonymous at the request of the author  (let's call her K) but quote it in almost its entirety because it encapsulates so many PP issues.  In particular: 1.  Fairness is and should be central.  The driver is K's sense of injustice at her discovery, not her desire for more money.    People should not have to work to find these things out, nor happen on them by chance. 2.  Part-timers often give better value.  Another, rather different, example:  I was listening the other week to Brian Moore - the…
Read More

The Good Life and productivity

I've been reading How Much is Enough?, a thought-provoking tract for modern times by Skidelsky pere et fils.  Robert Skidelsky is an economic historian who has written with massive authority on Keynes and his legacy;  Edward is a philosopher.    Robert is giving a public lecture tomorrow (25/3) at the Working Mens College, part of an excellent series which the College has been running over past months (declaration of interest:  I chair the WMC governing board.) The Skidelskys' challenge is to the dominance of GDP and income as dominant measures of how well we are doing, as individuals and as a society.  They make trenchant and, to my mind, effective criticisms…
Read More

Valuing Talent

Here's an interesting initiative, Valuing Your Talent, launched by a consortium including the RSA, the UK Commission on Employment and Skills and several major personnel/management bodies such as the Chartered Institute for Personnel Development. It's interesting in part because of the crowdsourcing approach, aiming to amass a host of ideas and opinions but also offering something back in the way of a £10K prize to help develop the best idea.  An Insights phase has just started, to be followed by an Innovations phase which will explore how the ideas might be put into practice. Substantively it's a challenge to all those who say 'people are our biggest asset' to come forward…
Read More

Aspirations and hurdles

I’ve just had a fascinating  discussion with David Hemery, the former Olympic gold medallist hurdler, and founder of 21st Century Legacy, a charity devoted to raising children’s aspirations to greatness. The meeting was set up to explore our apparently opposing views of aspiration.  David is absolutely committed to getting children to find their spark of greatness and to pursue it.  Too many people say how ‘passionate’ they are about something when they don’t really mean it;  David didn’t use the word, but he evidently is, in a very unassuming way, passionate about linking aspiration to social justice.  So he’s for onwards and upwards. By contrast I’m  interested in people –…
Read More

Careers and progression

I've been doing a few interviews for the putative PP book, and they've prompted some thoughts about how different kinds of organisation do or don't foster careers and progression.  In particular, is working in a large bureaucracy more likely to help or to hinder a woman making her way up, at whatever level? I caught some of Lucy Kellaway's radio series, broadcast last year, on A History of Office Life.  One episode dealt with the invention of the career ladder (it's from that that I pinched the Dickensian illustration below), another with nepotism vs meritocracy.  A third covered the arrival of women in the office.  She slily sketches in the way office…
Read More

Valuing work – what measures?

Mrs Moneypenny, a Financial Times columnist, wrote this weekend about how depressing she finds it that Mary Barra, the new head of General Motors, is being paid a basic salary of $1.6 million.  This is 25% less than her male equivalent at Ford. The gap is a significant one, and not atypical, though I find it hard to get too worked up about discrimination at this level.  What I find depressing is Mrs M's subsequent argument.  Apparently Ms Barra's predecessor at GM is being rehired as a consultant, at $4m (we aren't told if this is an annual fee, but I assume so). Mrs M comments: "That is someone who…
Read More

Overqualification, underutilisation

I've just been at a session of the Skills Commission.  Alan Felstead, whose work on how the skills picture has evolved over time has been so valuable, gave evidence before me, drawing on data which goes back twenty years or more.  Alan showed how the incidence of training declined before the recession but, surprisingly, not during or since.  However the duration of training has shrunk - i.e. the time people spend in training is going down. The focus of the Commission's discussion was on how well skills are being used.  Here the picture is complex and the evidence often quite tricky to interpret.   Alan's general points are: 1.  The…
Read More

Claudia Goldin and ‘grand convergence’

Claudia Goldin's presidential address to the American Economic Association - don't go away - is a stunner. It really should help to shift the whole focus of two important debates: the role and use of skills; and questions of gender equality at work. So it's hugely PP-relevant. There are large chunks of sophisticated number-crunching which are well over my head, but Goldin does a great job of summarising the key points, and how they fit into the historical narrative of what she calls the 'grand convergence' of male and female roles. She traces out the previous chapters of this narrative, which include greater female participation at work and, especially, changes in…
Read More

Self-employment: another area we need to understand

I've just been to a stimulating meeting at the Resolution Foundation, which always provides food for thought on employment issues.  This one was on self-employment, which now counts for over 15% of the workforce - some 4.5 million people. As Gavin Kelly, the FR's CEO, observed, when you have numbers of that kind routinely left out of most labour market analysis, it makes one query how robust the conclusions can be. Add to that the absurdity of using 16-64 as the age frame; and then pile on the limitations of the simplistic binary division between full-timers and part-timers and you reality begin to think that we need a radical rebuild…
Read More

Asia: where the PP applies most strongly?

The Economist recently ran a long piece on 'Holding back half the nation:  Japanese women and work'.  It chronicled the challenge facing Shinzo Abe, the Japanese prime minister, as he seeks to change the position of Japanese women in the economy.  Japanese women are amongst the best-educated in the world, but 70% of women who have children stop working for a decade or more, and many never come back.   The  economic participation rate  for women is just 63%.  Fertility is, predictably, low. Japan and Korea are probably the most powerful examples  of the PP at work, with exceptionally well-qualified women almost all of whom have poor career prospects.   Mr Abe…
Read More

A fertile post

Below is a comment submitted in response to a blog of mine challenging Mrs Moneypenny's sense of value. I've kept it anonymous at the request of the author  (let's call her K) but quote it in almost its entirety because it encapsulates so many PP issues.  In particular: 1.  Fairness is and should be central.  The driver is K's sense of injustice at her discovery, not her desire for more money.    People should not have to work to find these things out, nor happen on them by chance. 2.  Part-timers often give better value.  Another, rather different, example:  I was listening the other week to Brian Moore - the…
Read More

The Good Life and productivity

I've been reading How Much is Enough?, a thought-provoking tract for modern times by Skidelsky pere et fils.  Robert Skidelsky is an economic historian who has written with massive authority on Keynes and his legacy;  Edward is a philosopher.    Robert is giving a public lecture tomorrow (25/3) at the Working Mens College, part of an excellent series which the College has been running over past months (declaration of interest:  I chair the WMC governing board.) The Skidelskys' challenge is to the dominance of GDP and income as dominant measures of how well we are doing, as individuals and as a society.  They make trenchant and, to my mind, effective criticisms…
Read More

Valuing Talent

Here's an interesting initiative, Valuing Your Talent, launched by a consortium including the RSA, the UK Commission on Employment and Skills and several major personnel/management bodies such as the Chartered Institute for Personnel Development. It's interesting in part because of the crowdsourcing approach, aiming to amass a host of ideas and opinions but also offering something back in the way of a £10K prize to help develop the best idea.  An Insights phase has just started, to be followed by an Innovations phase which will explore how the ideas might be put into practice. Substantively it's a challenge to all those who say 'people are our biggest asset' to come forward…
Read More

Aspirations and hurdles

I’ve just had a fascinating  discussion with David Hemery, the former Olympic gold medallist hurdler, and founder of 21st Century Legacy, a charity devoted to raising children’s aspirations to greatness. The meeting was set up to explore our apparently opposing views of aspiration.  David is absolutely committed to getting children to find their spark of greatness and to pursue it.  Too many people say how ‘passionate’ they are about something when they don’t really mean it;  David didn’t use the word, but he evidently is, in a very unassuming way, passionate about linking aspiration to social justice.  So he’s for onwards and upwards. By contrast I’m  interested in people –…
Read More

Careers and progression

I've been doing a few interviews for the putative PP book, and they've prompted some thoughts about how different kinds of organisation do or don't foster careers and progression.  In particular, is working in a large bureaucracy more likely to help or to hinder a woman making her way up, at whatever level? I caught some of Lucy Kellaway's radio series, broadcast last year, on A History of Office Life.  One episode dealt with the invention of the career ladder (it's from that that I pinched the Dickensian illustration below), another with nepotism vs meritocracy.  A third covered the arrival of women in the office.  She slily sketches in the way office…
Read More

Valuing work – what measures?

Mrs Moneypenny, a Financial Times columnist, wrote this weekend about how depressing she finds it that Mary Barra, the new head of General Motors, is being paid a basic salary of $1.6 million.  This is 25% less than her male equivalent at Ford. The gap is a significant one, and not atypical, though I find it hard to get too worked up about discrimination at this level.  What I find depressing is Mrs M's subsequent argument.  Apparently Ms Barra's predecessor at GM is being rehired as a consultant, at $4m (we aren't told if this is an annual fee, but I assume so). Mrs M comments: "That is someone who…
Read More

Overqualification, underutilisation

I've just been at a session of the Skills Commission.  Alan Felstead, whose work on how the skills picture has evolved over time has been so valuable, gave evidence before me, drawing on data which goes back twenty years or more.  Alan showed how the incidence of training declined before the recession but, surprisingly, not during or since.  However the duration of training has shrunk - i.e. the time people spend in training is going down. The focus of the Commission's discussion was on how well skills are being used.  Here the picture is complex and the evidence often quite tricky to interpret.   Alan's general points are: 1.  The…
Read More

Claudia Goldin and ‘grand convergence’

Claudia Goldin's presidential address to the American Economic Association - don't go away - is a stunner. It really should help to shift the whole focus of two important debates: the role and use of skills; and questions of gender equality at work. So it's hugely PP-relevant. There are large chunks of sophisticated number-crunching which are well over my head, but Goldin does a great job of summarising the key points, and how they fit into the historical narrative of what she calls the 'grand convergence' of male and female roles. She traces out the previous chapters of this narrative, which include greater female participation at work and, especially, changes in…
Read More

Self-employment: another area we need to understand

I've just been to a stimulating meeting at the Resolution Foundation, which always provides food for thought on employment issues.  This one was on self-employment, which now counts for over 15% of the workforce - some 4.5 million people. As Gavin Kelly, the FR's CEO, observed, when you have numbers of that kind routinely left out of most labour market analysis, it makes one query how robust the conclusions can be. Add to that the absurdity of using 16-64 as the age frame; and then pile on the limitations of the simplistic binary division between full-timers and part-timers and you reality begin to think that we need a radical rebuild…
Read More

Asia: where the PP applies most strongly?

The Economist recently ran a long piece on 'Holding back half the nation:  Japanese women and work'.  It chronicled the challenge facing Shinzo Abe, the Japanese prime minister, as he seeks to change the position of Japanese women in the economy.  Japanese women are amongst the best-educated in the world, but 70% of women who have children stop working for a decade or more, and many never come back.   The  economic participation rate  for women is just 63%.  Fertility is, predictably, low. Japan and Korea are probably the most powerful examples  of the PP at work, with exceptionally well-qualified women almost all of whom have poor career prospects.   Mr Abe…
Read More

A fertile post

Below is a comment submitted in response to a blog of mine challenging Mrs Moneypenny's sense of value. I've kept it anonymous at the request of the author  (let's call her K) but quote it in almost its entirety because it encapsulates so many PP issues.  In particular: 1.  Fairness is and should be central.  The driver is K's sense of injustice at her discovery, not her desire for more money.    People should not have to work to find these things out, nor happen on them by chance. 2.  Part-timers often give better value.  Another, rather different, example:  I was listening the other week to Brian Moore - the…
Read More

The Good Life and productivity

I've been reading How Much is Enough?, a thought-provoking tract for modern times by Skidelsky pere et fils.  Robert Skidelsky is an economic historian who has written with massive authority on Keynes and his legacy;  Edward is a philosopher.    Robert is giving a public lecture tomorrow (25/3) at the Working Mens College, part of an excellent series which the College has been running over past months (declaration of interest:  I chair the WMC governing board.) The Skidelskys' challenge is to the dominance of GDP and income as dominant measures of how well we are doing, as individuals and as a society.  They make trenchant and, to my mind, effective criticisms…
Read More

Valuing Talent

Here's an interesting initiative, Valuing Your Talent, launched by a consortium including the RSA, the UK Commission on Employment and Skills and several major personnel/management bodies such as the Chartered Institute for Personnel Development. It's interesting in part because of the crowdsourcing approach, aiming to amass a host of ideas and opinions but also offering something back in the way of a £10K prize to help develop the best idea.  An Insights phase has just started, to be followed by an Innovations phase which will explore how the ideas might be put into practice. Substantively it's a challenge to all those who say 'people are our biggest asset' to come forward…
Read More

Aspirations and hurdles

I’ve just had a fascinating  discussion with David Hemery, the former Olympic gold medallist hurdler, and founder of 21st Century Legacy, a charity devoted to raising children’s aspirations to greatness. The meeting was set up to explore our apparently opposing views of aspiration.  David is absolutely committed to getting children to find their spark of greatness and to pursue it.  Too many people say how ‘passionate’ they are about something when they don’t really mean it;  David didn’t use the word, but he evidently is, in a very unassuming way, passionate about linking aspiration to social justice.  So he’s for onwards and upwards. By contrast I’m  interested in people –…
Read More

Careers and progression

I've been doing a few interviews for the putative PP book, and they've prompted some thoughts about how different kinds of organisation do or don't foster careers and progression.  In particular, is working in a large bureaucracy more likely to help or to hinder a woman making her way up, at whatever level? I caught some of Lucy Kellaway's radio series, broadcast last year, on A History of Office Life.  One episode dealt with the invention of the career ladder (it's from that that I pinched the Dickensian illustration below), another with nepotism vs meritocracy.  A third covered the arrival of women in the office.  She slily sketches in the way office…
Read More

Valuing work – what measures?

Mrs Moneypenny, a Financial Times columnist, wrote this weekend about how depressing she finds it that Mary Barra, the new head of General Motors, is being paid a basic salary of $1.6 million.  This is 25% less than her male equivalent at Ford. The gap is a significant one, and not atypical, though I find it hard to get too worked up about discrimination at this level.  What I find depressing is Mrs M's subsequent argument.  Apparently Ms Barra's predecessor at GM is being rehired as a consultant, at $4m (we aren't told if this is an annual fee, but I assume so). Mrs M comments: "That is someone who…
Read More

Overqualification, underutilisation

I've just been at a session of the Skills Commission.  Alan Felstead, whose work on how the skills picture has evolved over time has been so valuable, gave evidence before me, drawing on data which goes back twenty years or more.  Alan showed how the incidence of training declined before the recession but, surprisingly, not during or since.  However the duration of training has shrunk - i.e. the time people spend in training is going down. The focus of the Commission's discussion was on how well skills are being used.  Here the picture is complex and the evidence often quite tricky to interpret.   Alan's general points are: 1.  The…
Read More

Claudia Goldin and ‘grand convergence’

Claudia Goldin's presidential address to the American Economic Association - don't go away - is a stunner. It really should help to shift the whole focus of two important debates: the role and use of skills; and questions of gender equality at work. So it's hugely PP-relevant. There are large chunks of sophisticated number-crunching which are well over my head, but Goldin does a great job of summarising the key points, and how they fit into the historical narrative of what she calls the 'grand convergence' of male and female roles. She traces out the previous chapters of this narrative, which include greater female participation at work and, especially, changes in…
Read More

Self-employment: another area we need to understand

I've just been to a stimulating meeting at the Resolution Foundation, which always provides food for thought on employment issues.  This one was on self-employment, which now counts for over 15% of the workforce - some 4.5 million people. As Gavin Kelly, the FR's CEO, observed, when you have numbers of that kind routinely left out of most labour market analysis, it makes one query how robust the conclusions can be. Add to that the absurdity of using 16-64 as the age frame; and then pile on the limitations of the simplistic binary division between full-timers and part-timers and you reality begin to think that we need a radical rebuild…
Read More

Asia: where the PP applies most strongly?

The Economist recently ran a long piece on 'Holding back half the nation:  Japanese women and work'.  It chronicled the challenge facing Shinzo Abe, the Japanese prime minister, as he seeks to change the position of Japanese women in the economy.  Japanese women are amongst the best-educated in the world, but 70% of women who have children stop working for a decade or more, and many never come back.   The  economic participation rate  for women is just 63%.  Fertility is, predictably, low. Japan and Korea are probably the most powerful examples  of the PP at work, with exceptionally well-qualified women almost all of whom have poor career prospects.   Mr Abe…
Read More

A fertile post

Below is a comment submitted in response to a blog of mine challenging Mrs Moneypenny's sense of value. I've kept it anonymous at the request of the author  (let's call her K) but quote it in almost its entirety because it encapsulates so many PP issues.  In particular: 1.  Fairness is and should be central.  The driver is K's sense of injustice at her discovery, not her desire for more money.    People should not have to work to find these things out, nor happen on them by chance. 2.  Part-timers often give better value.  Another, rather different, example:  I was listening the other week to Brian Moore - the…
Read More

The Good Life and productivity

I've been reading How Much is Enough?, a thought-provoking tract for modern times by Skidelsky pere et fils.  Robert Skidelsky is an economic historian who has written with massive authority on Keynes and his legacy;  Edward is a philosopher.    Robert is giving a public lecture tomorrow (25/3) at the Working Mens College, part of an excellent series which the College has been running over past months (declaration of interest:  I chair the WMC governing board.) The Skidelskys' challenge is to the dominance of GDP and income as dominant measures of how well we are doing, as individuals and as a society.  They make trenchant and, to my mind, effective criticisms…
Read More

Valuing Talent

Here's an interesting initiative, Valuing Your Talent, launched by a consortium including the RSA, the UK Commission on Employment and Skills and several major personnel/management bodies such as the Chartered Institute for Personnel Development. It's interesting in part because of the crowdsourcing approach, aiming to amass a host of ideas and opinions but also offering something back in the way of a £10K prize to help develop the best idea.  An Insights phase has just started, to be followed by an Innovations phase which will explore how the ideas might be put into practice. Substantively it's a challenge to all those who say 'people are our biggest asset' to come forward…
Read More

Aspirations and hurdles

I’ve just had a fascinating  discussion with David Hemery, the former Olympic gold medallist hurdler, and founder of 21st Century Legacy, a charity devoted to raising children’s aspirations to greatness. The meeting was set up to explore our apparently opposing views of aspiration.  David is absolutely committed to getting children to find their spark of greatness and to pursue it.  Too many people say how ‘passionate’ they are about something when they don’t really mean it;  David didn’t use the word, but he evidently is, in a very unassuming way, passionate about linking aspiration to social justice.  So he’s for onwards and upwards. By contrast I’m  interested in people –…
Read More

Careers and progression

I've been doing a few interviews for the putative PP book, and they've prompted some thoughts about how different kinds of organisation do or don't foster careers and progression.  In particular, is working in a large bureaucracy more likely to help or to hinder a woman making her way up, at whatever level? I caught some of Lucy Kellaway's radio series, broadcast last year, on A History of Office Life.  One episode dealt with the invention of the career ladder (it's from that that I pinched the Dickensian illustration below), another with nepotism vs meritocracy.  A third covered the arrival of women in the office.  She slily sketches in the way office…
Read More

Valuing work – what measures?

Mrs Moneypenny, a Financial Times columnist, wrote this weekend about how depressing she finds it that Mary Barra, the new head of General Motors, is being paid a basic salary of $1.6 million.  This is 25% less than her male equivalent at Ford. The gap is a significant one, and not atypical, though I find it hard to get too worked up about discrimination at this level.  What I find depressing is Mrs M's subsequent argument.  Apparently Ms Barra's predecessor at GM is being rehired as a consultant, at $4m (we aren't told if this is an annual fee, but I assume so). Mrs M comments: "That is someone who…
Read More

Overqualification, underutilisation

I've just been at a session of the Skills Commission.  Alan Felstead, whose work on how the skills picture has evolved over time has been so valuable, gave evidence before me, drawing on data which goes back twenty years or more.  Alan showed how the incidence of training declined before the recession but, surprisingly, not during or since.  However the duration of training has shrunk - i.e. the time people spend in training is going down. The focus of the Commission's discussion was on how well skills are being used.  Here the picture is complex and the evidence often quite tricky to interpret.   Alan's general points are: 1.  The…
Read More

Claudia Goldin and ‘grand convergence’

Claudia Goldin's presidential address to the American Economic Association - don't go away - is a stunner. It really should help to shift the whole focus of two important debates: the role and use of skills; and questions of gender equality at work. So it's hugely PP-relevant. There are large chunks of sophisticated number-crunching which are well over my head, but Goldin does a great job of summarising the key points, and how they fit into the historical narrative of what she calls the 'grand convergence' of male and female roles. She traces out the previous chapters of this narrative, which include greater female participation at work and, especially, changes in…
Read More

Self-employment: another area we need to understand

I've just been to a stimulating meeting at the Resolution Foundation, which always provides food for thought on employment issues.  This one was on self-employment, which now counts for over 15% of the workforce - some 4.5 million people. As Gavin Kelly, the FR's CEO, observed, when you have numbers of that kind routinely left out of most labour market analysis, it makes one query how robust the conclusions can be. Add to that the absurdity of using 16-64 as the age frame; and then pile on the limitations of the simplistic binary division between full-timers and part-timers and you reality begin to think that we need a radical rebuild…
Read More

Asia: where the PP applies most strongly?

The Economist recently ran a long piece on 'Holding back half the nation:  Japanese women and work'.  It chronicled the challenge facing Shinzo Abe, the Japanese prime minister, as he seeks to change the position of Japanese women in the economy.  Japanese women are amongst the best-educated in the world, but 70% of women who have children stop working for a decade or more, and many never come back.   The  economic participation rate  for women is just 63%.  Fertility is, predictably, low. Japan and Korea are probably the most powerful examples  of the PP at work, with exceptionally well-qualified women almost all of whom have poor career prospects.   Mr Abe…
Read More

A fertile post

Below is a comment submitted in response to a blog of mine challenging Mrs Moneypenny's sense of value. I've kept it anonymous at the request of the author  (let's call her K) but quote it in almost its entirety because it encapsulates so many PP issues.  In particular: 1.  Fairness is and should be central.  The driver is K's sense of injustice at her discovery, not her desire for more money.    People should not have to work to find these things out, nor happen on them by chance. 2.  Part-timers often give better value.  Another, rather different, example:  I was listening the other week to Brian Moore - the…
Read More

The Good Life and productivity

I've been reading How Much is Enough?, a thought-provoking tract for modern times by Skidelsky pere et fils.  Robert Skidelsky is an economic historian who has written with massive authority on Keynes and his legacy;  Edward is a philosopher.    Robert is giving a public lecture tomorrow (25/3) at the Working Mens College, part of an excellent series which the College has been running over past months (declaration of interest:  I chair the WMC governing board.) The Skidelskys' challenge is to the dominance of GDP and income as dominant measures of how well we are doing, as individuals and as a society.  They make trenchant and, to my mind, effective criticisms…
Read More

Valuing Talent

Here's an interesting initiative, Valuing Your Talent, launched by a consortium including the RSA, the UK Commission on Employment and Skills and several major personnel/management bodies such as the Chartered Institute for Personnel Development. It's interesting in part because of the crowdsourcing approach, aiming to amass a host of ideas and opinions but also offering something back in the way of a £10K prize to help develop the best idea.  An Insights phase has just started, to be followed by an Innovations phase which will explore how the ideas might be put into practice. Substantively it's a challenge to all those who say 'people are our biggest asset' to come forward…
Read More

Aspirations and hurdles

I’ve just had a fascinating  discussion with David Hemery, the former Olympic gold medallist hurdler, and founder of 21st Century Legacy, a charity devoted to raising children’s aspirations to greatness. The meeting was set up to explore our apparently opposing views of aspiration.  David is absolutely committed to getting children to find their spark of greatness and to pursue it.  Too many people say how ‘passionate’ they are about something when they don’t really mean it;  David didn’t use the word, but he evidently is, in a very unassuming way, passionate about linking aspiration to social justice.  So he’s for onwards and upwards. By contrast I’m  interested in people –…
Read More

Careers and progression

I've been doing a few interviews for the putative PP book, and they've prompted some thoughts about how different kinds of organisation do or don't foster careers and progression.  In particular, is working in a large bureaucracy more likely to help or to hinder a woman making her way up, at whatever level? I caught some of Lucy Kellaway's radio series, broadcast last year, on A History of Office Life.  One episode dealt with the invention of the career ladder (it's from that that I pinched the Dickensian illustration below), another with nepotism vs meritocracy.  A third covered the arrival of women in the office.  She slily sketches in the way office…
Read More

Valuing work – what measures?

Mrs Moneypenny, a Financial Times columnist, wrote this weekend about how depressing she finds it that Mary Barra, the new head of General Motors, is being paid a basic salary of $1.6 million.  This is 25% less than her male equivalent at Ford. The gap is a significant one, and not atypical, though I find it hard to get too worked up about discrimination at this level.  What I find depressing is Mrs M's subsequent argument.  Apparently Ms Barra's predecessor at GM is being rehired as a consultant, at $4m (we aren't told if this is an annual fee, but I assume so). Mrs M comments: "That is someone who…
Read More

Overqualification, underutilisation

I've just been at a session of the Skills Commission.  Alan Felstead, whose work on how the skills picture has evolved over time has been so valuable, gave evidence before me, drawing on data which goes back twenty years or more.  Alan showed how the incidence of training declined before the recession but, surprisingly, not during or since.  However the duration of training has shrunk - i.e. the time people spend in training is going down. The focus of the Commission's discussion was on how well skills are being used.  Here the picture is complex and the evidence often quite tricky to interpret.   Alan's general points are: 1.  The…
Read More

Claudia Goldin and ‘grand convergence’

Claudia Goldin's presidential address to the American Economic Association - don't go away - is a stunner. It really should help to shift the whole focus of two important debates: the role and use of skills; and questions of gender equality at work. So it's hugely PP-relevant. There are large chunks of sophisticated number-crunching which are well over my head, but Goldin does a great job of summarising the key points, and how they fit into the historical narrative of what she calls the 'grand convergence' of male and female roles. She traces out the previous chapters of this narrative, which include greater female participation at work and, especially, changes in…
Read More

Self-employment: another area we need to understand

I've just been to a stimulating meeting at the Resolution Foundation, which always provides food for thought on employment issues.  This one was on self-employment, which now counts for over 15% of the workforce - some 4.5 million people. As Gavin Kelly, the FR's CEO, observed, when you have numbers of that kind routinely left out of most labour market analysis, it makes one query how robust the conclusions can be. Add to that the absurdity of using 16-64 as the age frame; and then pile on the limitations of the simplistic binary division between full-timers and part-timers and you reality begin to think that we need a radical rebuild…
Read More

Asia: where the PP applies most strongly?

The Economist recently ran a long piece on 'Holding back half the nation:  Japanese women and work'.  It chronicled the challenge facing Shinzo Abe, the Japanese prime minister, as he seeks to change the position of Japanese women in the economy.  Japanese women are amongst the best-educated in the world, but 70% of women who have children stop working for a decade or more, and many never come back.   The  economic participation rate  for women is just 63%.  Fertility is, predictably, low. Japan and Korea are probably the most powerful examples  of the PP at work, with exceptionally well-qualified women almost all of whom have poor career prospects.   Mr Abe…
Read More

A fertile post

Below is a comment submitted in response to a blog of mine challenging Mrs Moneypenny's sense of value. I've kept it anonymous at the request of the author  (let's call her K) but quote it in almost its entirety because it encapsulates so many PP issues.  In particular: 1.  Fairness is and should be central.  The driver is K's sense of injustice at her discovery, not her desire for more money.    People should not have to work to find these things out, nor happen on them by chance. 2.  Part-timers often give better value.  Another, rather different, example:  I was listening the other week to Brian Moore - the…
Read More

The Good Life and productivity

I've been reading How Much is Enough?, a thought-provoking tract for modern times by Skidelsky pere et fils.  Robert Skidelsky is an economic historian who has written with massive authority on Keynes and his legacy;  Edward is a philosopher.    Robert is giving a public lecture tomorrow (25/3) at the Working Mens College, part of an excellent series which the College has been running over past months (declaration of interest:  I chair the WMC governing board.) The Skidelskys' challenge is to the dominance of GDP and income as dominant measures of how well we are doing, as individuals and as a society.  They make trenchant and, to my mind, effective criticisms…
Read More

Valuing Talent

Here's an interesting initiative, Valuing Your Talent, launched by a consortium including the RSA, the UK Commission on Employment and Skills and several major personnel/management bodies such as the Chartered Institute for Personnel Development. It's interesting in part because of the crowdsourcing approach, aiming to amass a host of ideas and opinions but also offering something back in the way of a £10K prize to help develop the best idea.  An Insights phase has just started, to be followed by an Innovations phase which will explore how the ideas might be put into practice. Substantively it's a challenge to all those who say 'people are our biggest asset' to come forward…
Read More

Aspirations and hurdles

I’ve just had a fascinating  discussion with David Hemery, the former Olympic gold medallist hurdler, and founder of 21st Century Legacy, a charity devoted to raising children’s aspirations to greatness. The meeting was set up to explore our apparently opposing views of aspiration.  David is absolutely committed to getting children to find their spark of greatness and to pursue it.  Too many people say how ‘passionate’ they are about something when they don’t really mean it;  David didn’t use the word, but he evidently is, in a very unassuming way, passionate about linking aspiration to social justice.  So he’s for onwards and upwards. By contrast I’m  interested in people –…
Read More

Careers and progression

I've been doing a few interviews for the putative PP book, and they've prompted some thoughts about how different kinds of organisation do or don't foster careers and progression.  In particular, is working in a large bureaucracy more likely to help or to hinder a woman making her way up, at whatever level? I caught some of Lucy Kellaway's radio series, broadcast last year, on A History of Office Life.  One episode dealt with the invention of the career ladder (it's from that that I pinched the Dickensian illustration below), another with nepotism vs meritocracy.  A third covered the arrival of women in the office.  She slily sketches in the way office…
Read More

Valuing work – what measures?

Mrs Moneypenny, a Financial Times columnist, wrote this weekend about how depressing she finds it that Mary Barra, the new head of General Motors, is being paid a basic salary of $1.6 million.  This is 25% less than her male equivalent at Ford. The gap is a significant one, and not atypical, though I find it hard to get too worked up about discrimination at this level.  What I find depressing is Mrs M's subsequent argument.  Apparently Ms Barra's predecessor at GM is being rehired as a consultant, at $4m (we aren't told if this is an annual fee, but I assume so). Mrs M comments: "That is someone who…
Read More

Overqualification, underutilisation

I've just been at a session of the Skills Commission.  Alan Felstead, whose work on how the skills picture has evolved over time has been so valuable, gave evidence before me, drawing on data which goes back twenty years or more.  Alan showed how the incidence of training declined before the recession but, surprisingly, not during or since.  However the duration of training has shrunk - i.e. the time people spend in training is going down. The focus of the Commission's discussion was on how well skills are being used.  Here the picture is complex and the evidence often quite tricky to interpret.   Alan's general points are: 1.  The…
Read More

Claudia Goldin and ‘grand convergence’

Claudia Goldin's presidential address to the American Economic Association - don't go away - is a stunner. It really should help to shift the whole focus of two important debates: the role and use of skills; and questions of gender equality at work. So it's hugely PP-relevant. There are large chunks of sophisticated number-crunching which are well over my head, but Goldin does a great job of summarising the key points, and how they fit into the historical narrative of what she calls the 'grand convergence' of male and female roles. She traces out the previous chapters of this narrative, which include greater female participation at work and, especially, changes in…
Read More

Self-employment: another area we need to understand

I've just been to a stimulating meeting at the Resolution Foundation, which always provides food for thought on employment issues.  This one was on self-employment, which now counts for over 15% of the workforce - some 4.5 million people. As Gavin Kelly, the FR's CEO, observed, when you have numbers of that kind routinely left out of most labour market analysis, it makes one query how robust the conclusions can be. Add to that the absurdity of using 16-64 as the age frame; and then pile on the limitations of the simplistic binary division between full-timers and part-timers and you reality begin to think that we need a radical rebuild…
Read More

Asia: where the PP applies most strongly?

The Economist recently ran a long piece on 'Holding back half the nation:  Japanese women and work'.  It chronicled the challenge facing Shinzo Abe, the Japanese prime minister, as he seeks to change the position of Japanese women in the economy.  Japanese women are amongst the best-educated in the world, but 70% of women who have children stop working for a decade or more, and many never come back.   The  economic participation rate  for women is just 63%.  Fertility is, predictably, low. Japan and Korea are probably the most powerful examples  of the PP at work, with exceptionally well-qualified women almost all of whom have poor career prospects.   Mr Abe…
Read More

A fertile post

Below is a comment submitted in response to a blog of mine challenging Mrs Moneypenny's sense of value. I've kept it anonymous at the request of the author  (let's call her K) but quote it in almost its entirety because it encapsulates so many PP issues.  In particular: 1.  Fairness is and should be central.  The driver is K's sense of injustice at her discovery, not her desire for more money.    People should not have to work to find these things out, nor happen on them by chance. 2.  Part-timers often give better value.  Another, rather different, example:  I was listening the other week to Brian Moore - the…
Read More

The Good Life and productivity

I've been reading How Much is Enough?, a thought-provoking tract for modern times by Skidelsky pere et fils.  Robert Skidelsky is an economic historian who has written with massive authority on Keynes and his legacy;  Edward is a philosopher.    Robert is giving a public lecture tomorrow (25/3) at the Working Mens College, part of an excellent series which the College has been running over past months (declaration of interest:  I chair the WMC governing board.) The Skidelskys' challenge is to the dominance of GDP and income as dominant measures of how well we are doing, as individuals and as a society.  They make trenchant and, to my mind, effective criticisms…
Read More

Valuing Talent

Here's an interesting initiative, Valuing Your Talent, launched by a consortium including the RSA, the UK Commission on Employment and Skills and several major personnel/management bodies such as the Chartered Institute for Personnel Development. It's interesting in part because of the crowdsourcing approach, aiming to amass a host of ideas and opinions but also offering something back in the way of a £10K prize to help develop the best idea.  An Insights phase has just started, to be followed by an Innovations phase which will explore how the ideas might be put into practice. Substantively it's a challenge to all those who say 'people are our biggest asset' to come forward…
Read More

Aspirations and hurdles

I’ve just had a fascinating  discussion with David Hemery, the former Olympic gold medallist hurdler, and founder of 21st Century Legacy, a charity devoted to raising children’s aspirations to greatness. The meeting was set up to explore our apparently opposing views of aspiration.  David is absolutely committed to getting children to find their spark of greatness and to pursue it.  Too many people say how ‘passionate’ they are about something when they don’t really mean it;  David didn’t use the word, but he evidently is, in a very unassuming way, passionate about linking aspiration to social justice.  So he’s for onwards and upwards. By contrast I’m  interested in people –…
Read More

Careers and progression

I've been doing a few interviews for the putative PP book, and they've prompted some thoughts about how different kinds of organisation do or don't foster careers and progression.  In particular, is working in a large bureaucracy more likely to help or to hinder a woman making her way up, at whatever level? I caught some of Lucy Kellaway's radio series, broadcast last year, on A History of Office Life.  One episode dealt with the invention of the career ladder (it's from that that I pinched the Dickensian illustration below), another with nepotism vs meritocracy.  A third covered the arrival of women in the office.  She slily sketches in the way office…
Read More

Valuing work – what measures?

Mrs Moneypenny, a Financial Times columnist, wrote this weekend about how depressing she finds it that Mary Barra, the new head of General Motors, is being paid a basic salary of $1.6 million.  This is 25% less than her male equivalent at Ford. The gap is a significant one, and not atypical, though I find it hard to get too worked up about discrimination at this level.  What I find depressing is Mrs M's subsequent argument.  Apparently Ms Barra's predecessor at GM is being rehired as a consultant, at $4m (we aren't told if this is an annual fee, but I assume so). Mrs M comments: "That is someone who…
Read More

Overqualification, underutilisation

I've just been at a session of the Skills Commission.  Alan Felstead, whose work on how the skills picture has evolved over time has been so valuable, gave evidence before me, drawing on data which goes back twenty years or more.  Alan showed how the incidence of training declined before the recession but, surprisingly, not during or since.  However the duration of training has shrunk - i.e. the time people spend in training is going down. The focus of the Commission's discussion was on how well skills are being used.  Here the picture is complex and the evidence often quite tricky to interpret.   Alan's general points are: 1.  The…
Read More

Claudia Goldin and ‘grand convergence’

Claudia Goldin's presidential address to the American Economic Association - don't go away - is a stunner. It really should help to shift the whole focus of two important debates: the role and use of skills; and questions of gender equality at work. So it's hugely PP-relevant. There are large chunks of sophisticated number-crunching which are well over my head, but Goldin does a great job of summarising the key points, and how they fit into the historical narrative of what she calls the 'grand convergence' of male and female roles. She traces out the previous chapters of this narrative, which include greater female participation at work and, especially, changes in…
Read More

Self-employment: another area we need to understand

I've just been to a stimulating meeting at the Resolution Foundation, which always provides food for thought on employment issues.  This one was on self-employment, which now counts for over 15% of the workforce - some 4.5 million people. As Gavin Kelly, the FR's CEO, observed, when you have numbers of that kind routinely left out of most labour market analysis, it makes one query how robust the conclusions can be. Add to that the absurdity of using 16-64 as the age frame; and then pile on the limitations of the simplistic binary division between full-timers and part-timers and you reality begin to think that we need a radical rebuild…
Read More

Asia: where the PP applies most strongly?

The Economist recently ran a long piece on 'Holding back half the nation:  Japanese women and work'.  It chronicled the challenge facing Shinzo Abe, the Japanese prime minister, as he seeks to change the position of Japanese women in the economy.  Japanese women are amongst the best-educated in the world, but 70% of women who have children stop working for a decade or more, and many never come back.   The  economic participation rate  for women is just 63%.  Fertility is, predictably, low. Japan and Korea are probably the most powerful examples  of the PP at work, with exceptionally well-qualified women almost all of whom have poor career prospects.   Mr Abe…
Read More

A fertile post

Below is a comment submitted in response to a blog of mine challenging Mrs Moneypenny's sense of value. I've kept it anonymous at the request of the author  (let's call her K) but quote it in almost its entirety because it encapsulates so many PP issues.  In particular: 1.  Fairness is and should be central.  The driver is K's sense of injustice at her discovery, not her desire for more money.    People should not have to work to find these things out, nor happen on them by chance. 2.  Part-timers often give better value.  Another, rather different, example:  I was listening the other week to Brian Moore - the…
Read More

The Good Life and productivity

I've been reading How Much is Enough?, a thought-provoking tract for modern times by Skidelsky pere et fils.  Robert Skidelsky is an economic historian who has written with massive authority on Keynes and his legacy;  Edward is a philosopher.    Robert is giving a public lecture tomorrow (25/3) at the Working Mens College, part of an excellent series which the College has been running over past months (declaration of interest:  I chair the WMC governing board.) The Skidelskys' challenge is to the dominance of GDP and income as dominant measures of how well we are doing, as individuals and as a society.  They make trenchant and, to my mind, effective criticisms…
Read More

Valuing Talent

Here's an interesting initiative, Valuing Your Talent, launched by a consortium including the RSA, the UK Commission on Employment and Skills and several major personnel/management bodies such as the Chartered Institute for Personnel Development. It's interesting in part because of the crowdsourcing approach, aiming to amass a host of ideas and opinions but also offering something back in the way of a £10K prize to help develop the best idea.  An Insights phase has just started, to be followed by an Innovations phase which will explore how the ideas might be put into practice. Substantively it's a challenge to all those who say 'people are our biggest asset' to come forward…
Read More

Aspirations and hurdles

I’ve just had a fascinating  discussion with David Hemery, the former Olympic gold medallist hurdler, and founder of 21st Century Legacy, a charity devoted to raising children’s aspirations to greatness. The meeting was set up to explore our apparently opposing views of aspiration.  David is absolutely committed to getting children to find their spark of greatness and to pursue it.  Too many people say how ‘passionate’ they are about something when they don’t really mean it;  David didn’t use the word, but he evidently is, in a very unassuming way, passionate about linking aspiration to social justice.  So he’s for onwards and upwards. By contrast I’m  interested in people –…
Read More

Careers and progression

I've been doing a few interviews for the putative PP book, and they've prompted some thoughts about how different kinds of organisation do or don't foster careers and progression.  In particular, is working in a large bureaucracy more likely to help or to hinder a woman making her way up, at whatever level? I caught some of Lucy Kellaway's radio series, broadcast last year, on A History of Office Life.  One episode dealt with the invention of the career ladder (it's from that that I pinched the Dickensian illustration below), another with nepotism vs meritocracy.  A third covered the arrival of women in the office.  She slily sketches in the way office…
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Valuing work – what measures?

Mrs Moneypenny, a Financial Times columnist, wrote this weekend about how depressing she finds it that Mary Barra, the new head of General Motors, is being paid a basic salary of $1.6 million.  This is 25% less than her male equivalent at Ford. The gap is a significant one, and not atypical, though I find it hard to get too worked up about discrimination at this level.  What I find depressing is Mrs M's subsequent argument.  Apparently Ms Barra's predecessor at GM is being rehired as a consultant, at $4m (we aren't told if this is an annual fee, but I assume so). Mrs M comments: "That is someone who…
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