I saw this last week - personally I didn't take it as a swipe at HR professionals in general but more at the bureaucratic / form filling / process approach that seems to pervade in certain parts of the public sector. I saw it as part of the inevitable ideologically driven rolling back of "red tape" and rules and restrictions that gets lumped together as "HR" but can include health and safety etc. Post Brexit we will see a number of things "liberalised" which is probably key for what many in control of the Brexit agenda wanted and "HR" is a useful bucket to group many of these things together in.

A bonfire of HR will be really a reduction in rules, "red tape" and some pretty basic benefits and legal minimum.

We have five years of this !

Completely agree with Keith: it's the terrible old school view of HR as form filling or organisational policing or petty bureaucracy which I think still largely exists in public perception. Given his comments about easily getting rid of people, I think we can guess the objections Dominic Cummings has with HR! I do find it desperately sad because I don't recognise it as a form of HR I would personally practice: it doesn't reflect the creative problem solving and the complex debate that working with people can provoke and which makes the job so interesting.

Separately, I really like Neil's Change Effect blog: it's really sensible and pragmatic. Years and years ago he was my boss (and is still one of my most favourite bosses!) and I told him I didn't want to work in HR because it was just too depressing... :)

Dominic Cummings "We want to hire some VERY clever young people either straight out of university or recently out with with extreme curiosity and capacity for hard work." - correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this blatant age discrimination? You can't specify youth on a job advert for god's sake! Looks like someone in HR could have done with reading this job advert before it got posted, not that Cummings cares one jot about UK law...

In reply to Rosie :

He would, I'm sure, cite that as an example of the "horrors of HR".

Why in heaven's name he thinks that the disruptive weirdos he's looking for are going to be reading his blog I have no idea, but I can imagine the looks on the faces of the Special Branch security detachment commanders at Dominic's invitation to free-running Chinese-Cubans with "the KGB" on their CV.

Seriously, though, I love the fact that Dominic wants some free-thinking disruptors advising No 10, but think he's kidding himself that

a) they want to work for the Tories
b) they're going to recommend anything remotely Tory-friendly

These hip, young, newly-graduated economists he's referring to? They've cut their teeth of Kate Raworth and Christian Felber. First thing they're likely to suggest is abandoning GDP as a measure of national worth, and the Tories are going to recoil from that like a vampire from daylight because it stops them counting the outrageous growth of the finance sector and CEO salaries towards GDP and insists on them measuring things like the economic value of the countryside just before they drive HS2 through the middle of it. It would remove things like defence manufacturing, tobacco and alcohol sales and gambling from the measurement of national living quality. Why, by these measurements, Britain may not even qualify to be in the G20, let alone the G7!

Nice try, Dominic, but you've aligned yourself with the wrong party if you're looking to get radical thinking into government policy.

In reply to Alys Martin:

Hi Alys

What did he say to that?

In reply to Elizabeth Divver:

That he was sorry I felt like that and it didn't have to be like that. Which (years later) I'm pleased to say is true!

In reply to Keith:

Hi Keith

Thanks for posting. That interpretation hadn't occurred to me but now you have pointed it out, I think you are spot on.

As a (currently on career break overseas) Civil Servant (pictured outside of Number 10 in my profile picture), I read Cummings' blog post with interest, along with a lot of the fall out from the political press.

I can't comment about my political views here at all due to the need to be impartial (and any likes I make in this thread cannot be assumed to be representative of my political views either!!), but it did make interesting reading from a HR perspective.

I was surprised I hadn't seen any commentary from the HR community about the "obvious" need for a "bonfire" too.

There is certainly some valid challenges to be made about how we recruit in the Civil Service and whether or not CSHR recruitment processes actually allow for the recruitment of "weirdos and misfits" as Cummings is seeking. It is also true that the Civil Service struggles to attract mathematicians and computer scientists and I know a few have been sufficiently intrigued by Cummings blog post to consider applying, when they would never ever consider a role in the Civil Service normally (my husband did Joint Honours Computer Science and Mathematics at University and he was telling me about how this blog post has been widely discussed in his professional circles, across the political spectrum).

The discriminatory aspects are of course a little more concerning, as well as the warning about "binning" staff if they don't fit - hopefully someone in Cabinet Office HR will be keeping a close eye on that, otherwise it is highly likely these comments will come back to bite at a later date!

However, I'm really curious to know how my fellow Civil Service HR colleagues have responded to this. CSHR is actively trying to professionalise, modernise and reduce bureacracy and form-filling, but there's still a huge way to go for it to be a truly responsive and enabling function for the Civil Service.

Actually it is certainly getting people talking and sharing so full marks for advertising. Personally I am ok with the advert and believe if it speaks to those who may want to apply then fair enough. I am not saying I agree with some of the context but it has gone viral so may be that was the point. HR needs to be different things to different people.

In reply to Tracey:

Going viral is probably completely the point, and very likely the main aim of Dominic Cummings. I'm not sure he really meant it to be anything other than his usual controversy hype to create some deflection and chaos...

The weirdos are right in front of him - ministers and Secretaries of State!

In reply to Pete Thomas:

Pete said:

The weirdos are right in front of him - ministers and Secretaries of State!

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