[leewilliams]

Don’t get me started on the written test. This whole process is an example of weak leadership allowing HR to run the show. NEVER allow your people team to run these processes.

This has been a problem in the Beeb for a long while but supercharged under chief people officer Uzair Qadeer whose job description alone is a completely meaningless word salad:

He oversees the full spectrum of global human resources capabilities across the BBC Group and is responsible for driving the BBC’s short- and long-term employee experience, cultural transformation, and organisational change through the people agenda.

For clarity, the NUJ forced a long-time ban on many roles being advertised externally but that’s now ended. I’ve said it before here but all the people I know at the BBC are either clamouring to get out or staying put only because there are so few alternative journalism jobs around at the moment - there are very few permanent jobs being handed out pending the next licence fee settlement, so instead people are scrapping over short-term contracts and very poor recruitment decisions being made. A couple of employees I’m friends with are plotting new careers outside media because they’re so miserable at New Broadcasting House.

This thread has already touched on the complete Horlicks made of the most recent pol ed recruitment (where Chris Mason was effectively ruled out before management did a reverse ferret and begged him to apply); the chief pol corr farce (where Nick Eardley who stepped up to the role was bizarrely overlooked in favour of a journalist from The Times with no broadcast experience and demoted to occasional spots on the BBC Verify screen before his recent return to Millbank) and now this royal editor farce. It’s as if they’re deliberately trying to rile up their most trusted and talented faces and voices and drive them out.

That leaves the BBC in a situation where long-standing journalists end up with understandable chips on their shoulders while under-qualified (and most definitely underpaid) newbies try to keep the machine running to a much lower standard than 10 or 15 years ago, creating mass disillusionment not just with HR and poor management but the product as a whole.

The whole thing stinks and I have no idea what the solution is.