Reverend Flowers has been big news as the disgraced chairman of the Cooperative Bank which has almost been brought to its knees with a £1.5 billion black hole.  Facing a government committee he displayed a pitiful ignorance of the bank which he was in charge providing incorrect information about the balance sheet when questioned on such important matters despite having done the job for three years.

When asked about his qualifications for the role he said he had four years as a banking clerk when he left school.  Key questions are now being asked how and why was he recruited for the top job where he earned £132,000 when clearly he had little or no relevant experience.  He had been a church minister for forty years, a Labour councillor and a trustee and/or chair of various high profile charities which includes Lifeline .  It appears that possibly the “old boys club” got him appointed to chairman of the bank to oversee the board’s directors.  Ideally he should have been steering the bank to profit, but unfortunately the reverse has happened.

Clearly the bank’s recruitment process was not fit for purpose.  It is important to recruit top executives carefully as they have a serious role to play in steering an organisation strategically.  The starting point is a robust job description and person specification.  To find candidates the use of a head hunting or executive search agency might be beneficial.  They take the leg work out of creating a final shortlist provided they are provided with the right information from the organisation of what they should be looking for in accordance with the job description.

The short listed candidates can then be subjected to an executive assessment day which should contain a range of assessments designed to provide the organisation with sufficient information on each candidate to make a decision as to who should get the job.   Assessments can include psychometric profiling, a group exercise to highlight team working and leadership skills, verbal and numerical reasoning together with a robust job-focused structural interview and accurate reference checking. The assessment centre can be carried out over several days.

Clearly the Reverend Flowers was guilty of performance errors.  With many top jobs employees’ performance is assessed with 360 degree appraisal which is a useful tool for identifying good and bad performance.  It is a less subjective process than a 1:1 appraisal.  The employee is assessed by 4-5 peers who they are managed by and who they manage who all comment.  The process can be carried out on paper or online.  Poor performers should be dealt with quickly before they cause damage to the organisation.  Unfortunately, in my experience many employers are not good at dealing with poor performance issues. It seems they don’t like to have difficult conversations with members of staff, but it is essential that they are dealt with.

Flowers, the apparent pillar of the community, has been exposed for drug taking and how he has conducted his private life.   It is reported that he used his Cooperative bank email to purchase drugs and contact rent boys.  He also viewed pornography on the bank’s computers.  Hopefully the Cooperative bank has a robust IT and computer use policy in place whereby misuse of the system is linked to use of the disciplinary procedure.