I was about to start writing an outline for the new Financial Education programme that I will deliver in Scotland with my colleagues from Speakersbank  sponsored by a major global bank when an e-mail from the CIPD ( the UK  body for HR professionals)   arrived in my inbox  which lead me to this ( incredibly detailed) article  about why HR people need to understand the financial side of the business they are in.

It got me thinking about what levels of financial literacy we need.

Lets think about the basics

The training I am preparing is aimed at young people in school. The English and Scottish school curriculums are different but I think ( hope) that their aims to develop knowledge of money and how to manage it - personally and from a business perspective - are similar. The Scottish Curriculum for Excellence outlines stages under the heading of “Money” which sits under the main heading of Maths starting at early years in recognising what money looks like and is for through to being able to compare financial products and make informed choices. Our training -  over one school day-  will be aimed at speaking about issues like comparing costs when making buying decisions, the costs and benefits of using bank cards and considering savings and credit.

When working with youngsters on this topic recently I was encouraged by how much they knew about money and related this to their own spending habits. The media coverage of the banking crisis clearly had had an impact on their knowledge ( and views ) on what banks do. But when I spoke about this more generally I was struck by how many people were surprised that it needed to be taught in school and when I questioned where they learned about money the usual answer is from their parents. Now I hate to have to say this - but sometimes, in some areas , doing what our parents did is not necessarily a good thing!  But knowing what to do with your first salary payment when you leave school can be really helpful in preventing some of the financial disasters that lurk out there.

Then the obligations

Then there is understanding your financial obligations regarding outgoings about which you have no choice. I spent many years as a tax consultant specialising in personal tax. The UK income tax system is very very complicated ( is there a simple tax system anywhere?) but the basics are that everyone has an allowance up to which no tax is due. For employees, that allowance is divided into 12 monthly chunks and is allocated against the income for that month before tax is charged. National Insurance Contributions are also due on income between certain levels. I have lost count of the times when people tell me they were surprised ( shocked actually) how much tax they had to pay when they started work and can only assume that they did not learn this at school. That needs to be addressed too and I am sure that it will be.

Finally finance in relation to business

One of the sections on the Money part of the Scottish Curriculum though is ” I can use the terms profit and loss in buying and selling activities  and can make simple calculations for this” and I think this leads neatly into what they CIPD article talks about. This is  aimed at “decision maker” level HR professionals  and I liked the comment from Vanessa Robinson  when she said “A big part of business is making sure that the books add up. Not being able to do that means it’s harder for you to connect and converse with the people you are working with.” . Absolutely.
I believe though  that any employee at whatever level  who has a clearer idea of how businesses work have an advantage in that they can  understand the issues that affect their own business.  For example an employee who feels unhappy with their current salary level and who can access and understand the company accounts will be better placed to negotiate - or, as may be more the case right now, understand why increases may not be possible.

So as I go back to my writing the school programme  please tell me what do you know now that you wish you had learned about money and finance when you were at school that I should include. And what do you know  now about finance in relation to business that you think could be helpful for all employees to learn?

Rosie Sherry at Talent Social has put together a blog page for UK based HR bloggers - and given me credit in the footer despite the fact that she has done all the hard work!  Thanks Rosie!

 Check it out - really good stuff do dip into there

http://blogs.talentsocial.com/

Yes  - I do have a vested interest here. But I like to read other blogs on HR issues - leadership, management, careers, engagement, retention, reward, recognition, etc  and I have had such trouble finding UK based writers. There are loads of blogs based elsewhere which are great. Now is time to get the UK blogs out in the forefront!

So as a start - and thanks to Lucie and the team at HR Zone for providing the means for me to put out the request for recommendations - here is my list so far.  I would love to hear about your own favourites?

Scott McArthur    Human Resources, Organisations and HR 2.0

Jo Jordan            Flowing Motion, Beautiful Work

Jon Ingham         Strategic HCM Blog, thoughts on value creating people management ( Human Capital Management, HR 2.o etc)

Karyn Romeis      Karyn’s erratic learning journey

Katy Ledger         Katy’s blog - portfolio work, how to get money , meaning and magic into your life

Frank Hobson      Frankly HR

Richard Donkin    People Work and Management

Advorto             Recruitment, Technology and other random topics

Sylvia Doyle        Just Rewards Blog - news, insight and comment on reward

Flip Chart Fairytales  ( not repeating their tag line  here -but take a look, it is good)

HC Global           The world of Human Capital Management

Couraud             HR Architecture, HR Tools, HR Training

Bowland Solutions

Tim Elkington      Online recruitment, the bigger picture

Donald H Taylor

 ….and of course my own one - you know - the one you are reading!

 In addition blogs at

People Management

HR Zone

And take a look at Talent Social

If you have ever been challenged to write an advert for a job in your organisation and found it a struggle take a look at the jobs listed in this post  by Nancy Rica Schiff - it should make your burden feel a whole lot lighter!

I wanted to share a quote with you that really made me think. In an article in the Daily Telegraph  about customer service Andrew McMillan , the customer service manager at John Lewis said  “…Up to a point you can take and intelligent person and train them to be polite. But you can’t train a person to be nice.”

I would like to meet Mr McMillan and shake his hand. For a while now I have been trying to work out why some customer service situations feel better than others. You know when you have had bad customer service. But sometimes the feeling of having what - on the face of it - is good customer service is not great. And I think it will be because some people don’t know the difference between being polite and being nice.

I was watching one of the TV programmes based in an airport and wondering at the way a young lady handled a passenger who was being denied travel because he was drunk. She told him that she was not letting him travel because he “appeared to be ” under the influence of alcohol. She did not sound or “appear to be ” judgemental . She was stating a fact. She has a difficult job but the safety and comfort  of passengers in the air  was her primary concern. And she was nice about it. She cared about this man and the state he was in.  Sadly he became abusive and the police had to intervene.

In that same programme a young man’s elderly mum had missed her flight. We never saw her but as far as I could make out the son had dropped her at the airport in good time and left her to check in but somehow she didn’t make it before check-in closed and was denied travel. She then called her son and he came back to the airport ranting about the treatment she had had.  The representative from the airline explained the conditions of flight were that she checked in within the time required and the lady had not done so. The son did not seem to know this and the rep printed off the terms and conditions to show him. He caved in , sheepishly took his mum home and brought her back the next day accompanying her through the check-in process. That situation was handled equally as politely as the first but it did not feel so good. There had clearly been some confusions, the son wanted to protect his mum and probably felt a bit of a fool for not taking her as far as he could through the process but the airline rep did her job but did nothing to make him feel better.

I know it is hard to deal with customers in a bright and smiley way all of the time just as I know that customers are sometimes deliberately difficult.  Andrew McMillan said  ” You can usually tell very quickly if people are suitable for customer facing jobs. They have a natural warmth about them, an interest in other people, an enjoyment in interacting with customers” I am wondering how their recruitment process works. I expect that training their recruiters will be just as important to allow them to spot those core qualities.

On a personal note I recently spoke with my cellphone provider to change my handset and contract. The lady I spoke with chatted to me throughout the whole process. I had expected it to be straightforward if a bit tedious. But it was not so. By the end of our conversation we had learned what each of us were doing over the weekend and she had helped me choose a better (and by the way cheaper) contract for the type of usage I had.

What we need now is for other companies to follow the John Lewis example.