Yesterday Sainsbury announced the replacing of their “Customer Service and Colleague
Director” with “HR Director.” Perhaps it is only to saving printing costs and
make business cards easier to read, and it may be a case of a rose by any other
name smelling as sweet, but somehow I could not help feeling that it was a
retrograde step.
And that is not just because the term HR is more frequently being disparaged
because it should be about people and not resources. The term “Customer Services
and Colleague Director” may be a little unwieldy but at least it highlights the
key fact that good customer service is dependent on people. As such it
considerably more appropriate, progressive and forward thinking. Indeed, I
cannot help asking myself if it partly explains Sainsbury’s resurgence in the
industry and the company’s climb back towards the top spot after falling to fourth.
As the picture shows, you cannot move from an idea to successful
implementation without action. And action requires human intervention. Business
is conducted through organisations to fulfil a defined purpose (a specific
idea) which makes it impossible without people. Thus the idea of pulling
colleagues together to provide customer service, while stating the obvious, seems
far more appropriate and wide-reaching than “HR Director.”
If Sainsbury’s now consider the term to be too clumsy perhaps they could
have rather thought of something different: something more succinct that retained
the progressive thinking that had gone into that other title. If it had been up
to me I might have suggested something along the lines of “Communication
Director.”
After all, effective human collaboration demands good communication, and by pooling
PR, marketing, customer service and people all together under one umbrella
called communications, you would be able to ensure the organisational integrity
and teamwork that would flow from a single, cohesive corporate message that
would ensure everyone sings from the same song sheet. Apart from anything else,
it would help ensure that people are properly represented in the C-suite and embed employee voice and greater employee engagement.
Sounds like a good idea to me. What do you think?