Does CIPD CEO deserve £87K bonus? Personnel Today survey NO 94%, YES 6%!
Personnel Today picked up on my Jackie Orme story and laid out the case with a link to my blog along with an official response from the CIPD.
"There is an element of Jackie's package which is performance-related, and which is linked to a scorecard of clear objectives. The main point is that against that scorecard, the Institute has had a successful year….. That level of detail is between the remuneration committee and Jackie Orme.”
Let me translate: ‘It’s none of your business. We decide and that’s that!’
Listen, we all understand that the Remuneration Committee technically decides on these things, but it is not enough to simply state you’ve had a successful year with not a single word of support, especially as the stated facts suggest the opposite.
You can see from the annual report that the CIPD have had an annus horrbilis:
Jackie Orme’s bonus up by 49% to £87,000, BUT:
- Commercial income down by 23%
- Research down by 57% and ridiculed (report pulled and CEO apology)
- Magazine imploded (down 83%)
- Revenues from the branches down by 45.6%,
- Investment returns bombed (down 74.7%)
- And don’t forget that there was also a dramatic 50% increase in the number of staff on £60k plus from 14 in 2009 to 21 in 2010.
Devastating survey
The comments on the Personnel Today website were mostly negative, so they launched a survey. These are the results so far:
Do you think the CIPD’s performance in 2009-10 justifies CEO Jackie Orme’s bonus?
So far YES 6%, NO 94%
The poll ends on December 7th, so get your vote in now.
An overwhelming rebuke I’d say.
Credibility at stake
But there’s a wider issue at stake here, which is the very credibility of the CIPD. By failing to explain the £400k salary, and in particular the huge increase in her bonus to £87,000, the CIPD are in no position to offer advice and guidance on pay to others.
Their paper on bonuses on the public sector (recommending them strongly) was seen by many as a rather odd and idiosyncratic message in these times of austerity, especially as it was published close to the disastrous ‘Quango’ paper, attacking organisations that weren’t quangos, but charities, just like the CIPD. The paper had to be pulled and an apology issued by Jackie Orme, when the CEOs of those charities rounded on the CIPD for their amateurism.
If the CIPD was a large organisation with a large number of employees, I’d have some sympathy with a total package of £400k, but it is a charity and technically a SME, as it has less than 250 employees. Jackie Orme, in accepted this package from a weak remuneration committee of just three board members.
New President’s murky past
Let me add another warning. Gill Rider, the incoming President, was the Head of HR across Whitehall. To put it another way, Head of Civil Service Capability Group (widely seen as inefficient and incapable) and Head of Profession for Civil Service HR, widely criticised as being responsible for the excessive salaries and bonuses for top Civil Servants.