An HR Affair … ?
Marc’s previous post discussing “the very fat and lazy” put me in mind of the HR Director at BKV, Eleonóra Szilágyi Szalainé. I have met many HR Directors over the past several years; and I don’t recall this one as being either exceptional or typical, but it appears that she did develop a uniquely personal pay and benefits system.
Trolley Bus Number 70
The story unfolds in Budapest where she works for BKV, the company that runs the city’s public transport system. Budapest has much going for it. It has the oldest metro line in the world, and a transport system that functions pretty well even when it snows which is more than can be said for some capital cities! The trolley buses are also something of an historic monument, all painted a cheerful communist red, with the routes all numbered in memory of Joseph Stalin. Yes, you did read that right!
The trolley bus system was inaugurated in 1949 when Stalin was 70 to commemorate his birthday, naturally numbering the first route 70. Hungarys’ ruling communist leadership decided to continue to honour Stalin with trolley buses and as more trolley lines were added they were numbered according to how old Stalin was that year. Although Stalin died in 1953 the last line added to the system, number 83, was in 1963 when Stalin would have been 83. That BKV have never felt it necessary to distance themselves and their long suffering customers from a man such as Stalin says much about the firm and its management – in fact until fairly recently its ticket inspectors, sported red armbands with yellow writing just like the old soviet flag! Some might describe BKV as one of the more “traditional” enterprises in Hungary, and we can only guess at the kind of HR policies in place in this organisation! Others may see it as deeply out of touch, venal and staffed by a management board interested only in their own welfare. In fact BKV management have persistently ignored advice and warnings, robbed the taxpayer blind, and been implicated in a string of corruption scandals culminating this past week in the arrest of the HR Director who has been charged with defrauding the company of some HUF 96 million (EUR 360,000 approx.). She paid herself a redundancy package and then continued to draw a hefty monthly salary under the terms of notice in her contract.
What has all this to do with HR? Not too much or perhaps everything. The scandal has turned BKV into a symbol of everything that is wrong in a country that has been hard hit by the recent economic crisis, and it has done little to improve the reputation of HR in Hungary. Maybe if the HR Director had been doing her job properly, I understand she had one of those coveted seats at the table, BKV and she might not be in the mess that they are today.
Seem’s like a couple of weeks of “HR Fraud” reported by the media, nothing of the scale of BKV which is quite simply, breathtaking. Here is another one from the NHS in the UK which pales by comparison: @ http://bit.ly/7PW86Y
and Irish Rail HR Head John Keenan started covert operations putting tracking devices on workers’ cars – differences over the level of fraudulent practices in the company, allegedly costing up to €8.7m more @ http://bit.ly/61XNU7My own notes on the BKV case: Human resources departments could be called the “front line defence” when it comes to workers’ compensation fraud. Scary thought: How bad could it really be, given workers’ compensation fraud is the fastest growing scam in the region? I suspect it is much deeper and stinks of politics. Ms Szalaine took not only a large chunk of change for being “fired” (a severance package worth around HUF 100 million (EUR 368,800) yet continued to earn gross monthly wages of HUF 1.2 million (EUR 4,427). She had a HUF 10 million (EUR 36,900) “confidentiality clause”, although BKV has no direct competitors”. No speculation needed, it took enormous confidence and direction to pull this off from an organisation drowning in debt, amidst the worst recession known to most.
Furthermore, I hope there is a tribunal across the whole public sector to weed out corruption. A story that since left me flabbergasted about OTP Bank last Friday, it seems people in authority not only go unpunished but rewarded http://bit.ly/7NtcT6
It pays to be fired!
Unfortunately not all HR professionals can be considered as such and there are more cases in which people without any talent or values has been rewarded only because they were in authority while the bottomline ones, excelent professionals, have been punished and threatened.