DXC Tech asks staff to profile their skills

That's not even the funniest part

What's even more farcical is the broken comms over yet another skills database.

Not everyone received the email telling them about the new skills system, but everyone did get the "you only have 3 days left" reminder, so you can imagine the number of "WTH?" conversations that were going on yesterday afternoon.

Plus the title of the email is brilliant, "blah blah skills update #2" er what? Where's number 1?

In update #2 it tells us there will be two more emails, email #1 (shouldn't that be #3?) and email #2 (Er, I thought this was number 2?) that will tell us how to fill in the skills database, which is good as update #2 doesn't even have a link to the skills database, it's more be prepared there is an email coming sort of email. Shame that the follow-up email with the information, never turned up for some.

Confused? Welcome to DXC!

Just do....

..a load of bullshit "soft skills" course (the ones that say you completed the course while the video plays in the backgrounds) and you'll be fine.

Effective Time Management

People Centric Solutions

How to maximise your potential

Advanced Ass kissing

Blue Sky Thinking - A executive guide to holistic and organic growth in data-centric, agile cloud, dev-op, AI environment.

It's the same crap that senior management pay £1000 a day for. You know, where you sit in a Holiday Inn conference room, while a bloke who also sells timeshares, fires out a million buzzwords that tick all the boxes while actually saying nothing.

Forget the real work skills, they are no longer required.

Best way to handle this

If you're in charge of a team that's doing anything remotely critical, conspire so that everyone has a current CV available at all times. Loudly and defensively reassure the bastards in management that this is "normal" and not a prelude to massive synchronized resignations. Watch executive paranoia start to eat Swiss cheese holes in their little brains.

The legal disclaimer has been on all DXC vaguely HR-related emails ever since the parochials in the US discovered Germans and other Europeans did not live in a "hire at will" or "change your Ts&Cs at will" jurisdiction (i.e. were shocked to discover that non-US countries actually have employment legislation that protects employees - in some cases to labyrinthine levels of detail) and probably got told so in no uncertain terms by relevant statutory Works Councils, or other such bodies. Every time an HR email of a global nature leaks out of HR's arses, they probably get shouted at by said Works Councils unless the legal disclaimer is there. It's only purpose is to stop Works Councils sending more irate emails to HR central.

The legal disclaimer is a lesson learned anew every time an American C-level HR person with no international experience gets appointed to a multinational corp and thinks that local country HR leaders are only there to do the centre's bidding rather than advise the centre on what might or might not be done, BEFORE policy is made.

The lesson they never learn is that national diversity means each such global missive would be better sent and filtered via local HR. Diversity is a good thing, isn't it? I think there's a DXC policy that says so, but no, 'one size must fit all'.

'Twas ever thus.

eds/hp/dxc/something else next

This will contain lots of drop down boxes with all the products and skills included.

You will have to tick the ones you have skills in. At this stage you will realise how little you

actually know about anything current and how its difficult to represent anything you actually do

even though you are very good at it.

The best thing to do is have a thrash through and claim knowledge of things you thing you can

get a good grasp of before you are challenged to prove it.

Good luck.

Work for years on some strange application that no one else uses

Become an expert on a strange bespoke large application for a customer that no on else really uses.

When go to find this in the skills list, not even one mention of it.

That is going to sting

Maybe the best approach if you are aching for VR is to not fill in the SABA questionnaire?

That's bound to raise a red flag to Joe Doherty, Peter Hands & co, right? I mean how useful can this idiot be if he cannot even fill in our simple skillz form?

Here's hoping...

DXC must have employed some ex IBM beancounters. This is what IBM did before launching mass redundancies years ago.

Look out DXC staff, next thing you will have to enter your time utilisation into 3 different systems because the beancounters can't work out how to match the time billing system with your utilisation and with your percent of "extra" work you perform with no pay - yet another brilliant IBM scheme because they are too cheap to integrate your hours claimed with some metrics system they can use to give you the chop.

Management by metric

Management by metric is generally doomed to failure, because you end up rewarding people who are good at gaming the system, and getting rid of people who are crap at this sort of thing, but rather good at their specialisation. Essentially, management are trying to use this as a technological 'fix' to avoid actually having to do their jobs as a managers - which is to know your team.

What should be happening is that managers should be completing the skills inventory for each of their team members, and each completed inventory should then be reviewed by the team member - not the other way round. The manager's manager (and HR) then gets to see the result, and managers who produce inaccurate assessments are dealt with.

Self-assessment works well for people who are good at trumpeting their skills. It's not so good for the less outgoing people who quietly get on with the job.

Getting subordinates to complete self-assessments just gives managers another sick to beat people with: have you completed your self-assessment yet? Any problems with it are your fault/responsibility etc etc.

Of course managers don't want to complete the assessments themselves: its a lot of work when done properly, and subject to tiresome grievance processes when you get it wrong. It's entirely understandable they want to shift the responsibility downwards. And wrong.

I asked a former project manager to complete mine ...

... he rated some of my abilities as 'towering intellect'

I would never have rated any of my abilities like that. It's not just the DK effect, but the general cultural difference between "I'm not too bad at ..." which translates to American "I'm really good at ..."

When the exercise ends....

Can someone post Nick Wilson's profile please?

I'd love to know what skills he possesses. £5 says none of them are Soft.

Lost!!

Joined CSC over 2 years ago as a consultant. (Now DXC)

I have not yet had an assignment. I have had numerous different manager.

Im getting £75k a year + bens

I dont even know who my manager is now lol.

I spend my days trading forex whilst waiting for someone to contact me.

I book all my time to study, how im not redundant i do not know, but sod it I will now take as much money out of DXC as i can.

Living the dream