Arguing or finally talking?

I looove the movie Jerry Maguire.  It’s one of those movies I watch whenever it’s on TV, along with The Wedding Singer or The Sound of Music.  Everytime I watch it, I unpeel another layer and discover that I love it even more, especially for its classic quotes from Tom Cruise (aka Jerry Maguire):

“Show me the money!”

“Help me help you!”

“You complete me.”

And my personal but perhaps more obscure favourites (and go figure, they’re all from Cuba Gooding Jr. aka Rod Tidwell):

“You are hanging on by a very thin thread.  And I DIG THAT ABOUT YOU!”

“You bet on me like I bet on you.”

“See, some dudes might have the coin, but they will never have the kwan. Truth, love, respect.”

I find that quotes and lessons from Jerry Maguire can be applied to several moments of my life, in the same way that folks claim that episodes of Friends frequently parallel their own lives.  Let’s take last week as an example… I facilitated an HR metrics course and was challenged left right and centre about the standard HR metric formulas and some example calculations.  After all the explaining and defending, I felt exhausted and exposed.  It was a tough morning and I wondered if this is what it felt like being in Scared Straight!.

I snuck out at lunch for a walk around the block to clear my head and just chill out.  The morning was disaster, disaster I say!  I felt like I was arguing with the students and defending my work all morning.  Then it hit me that I’ve seen this pattern in the past.  All the best teams I’ve worked with and all the successful endeavours I’ve been a part of, they all started off with good, old-fashioned have at ‘er debates.

I needed to keep in mind that people are new to this measuring thing and everyone has gotten used to measuring turnover or absenteeism in one way.  Being presented with one standard formula as the end all and be all is a difficult pill to swallow.  At the initial stages of anything, people question everything and that’s a good thing.

It’s only through different perspectives and by questioning everything do you think through everything, make good decisions and are ready to defend/explain them at any time.  By questioning what I was doing, these students were thinking, learning, and absorbing, getting ready to go out in the world and apply their knowledge and defend it to the ones who question them.  This was just one of those times that I needed reminding to keep my ego in check because at the end of the day, it’s not all about me.

And yet sometimes it is.  Here’s where Jerry Maguire and my life intersect once again, with Rod standing in the locker room and screaming at his agent Jerry:

“See, that’s the difference between us.  You think we’re fighting, and I think we’re finally talking.”

Introducing, the Rod Tidwell

 

Finally someone’s showing me some money

In last week’s post, I issued the following challenge:

What I would like is to hear from folks who are using Twitter for work and using it well.  And most importantly, show me the money!  I want to hear whether or not you can prove it’s working for your business.

It’s about time someone responded to this challenge because it’s been a quiet, quiet world out there on measuring the value of social networking.   The response comes from Jessica Lee at Fistful of Talent.  OK, so she didn’t exactly say that her blog post was a direct response to my call for reaction but I like to think that I inspired this piece of work in which she describes finding a quality hire via Web 2.0:

How ’bout them apples? Right? I tweeted something pretty harmlessly. They went to my blog to learn more. They then contacted me via Facebook. And then the wheels started turning. Twitter. Blog. Facebook. Oh, and one other detail about this story? Her friend was following me on Twitter because a recruiter at a competing company recommended that she follow me during an informational interview where she was asking about people in the industry to pay attention to for jobs. Read that again. Community matters. Networks matter. Relationships really matter. And – there was no cost to this hire except for the investment of time and effort I’ve made to be a good, contributing member of the social media community. That’s it.

Good point of view – social networking is ultimately about networking.  In this case there was a straight line between the Tweet to the new hire.  However, as with any type of networking, it can be difficult to draw a straight line from the networking event to a sale or hire.  But I’ll still don’t believe Twitter is all that and a bag of chips.  The time/effort equation to get Twitter working for you doesn’t seem worthwhile.  Wouldn’t you have just as much success not using Twitter but spending more time on other social networking activities?

Most importantly, LinkedIn doesn’t have any Balloon Boy stories

Aaaand I’m back from my holidays.  An e-round of applause to our guest bloggers Suzanne Boyd, Jonathan Lowe, Ian Cook and Kellie Auld who did an excellent job in the last 4 weeks offering their opinion on the world of HR.  Now back to my point of view.  (Hey, I’m not being harsh here, they can go get their own blogs!)

So,  Mylie Cyrus is no longer twittering!  She said “the reasons are simple… I want my private life private – I’m done tryin’ to please.”  Wow, me and Mylie aren’t so different after all.  I don’t want the world to know about my personal life either, unless you really want to know that I’m taking my mom shopping tonight….

But what about using Twitter for business to garner more customers or revenue?  In HR, folks are using this tool for recruiting to generate interest in job openings and garner more applicants.

I previously mentioned my dislike of Twitter.  Perhaps I’m too much on the cusp of Generation Y to understand it.  For Twitter to work, you have to “follow” people in order to get people to follow you and therefore receive your latest posts looking for a “Customer Service Rep extraordinaire”.

I’m not on Twitter because I believe I’ll explode from information overload.  If it was all about business, well, I may be convinced.  But Twitter crosses the line between personal and professional and I unfortunately I’d have to wade through stuff like the Balloon Boy phenomenon.  During the in-flight saga, people went nuts posting on Twitter to the rate of 1000 tweets a minute.  OK, I get the in-the-moment frenzy, afterall I was on CBC reading the latest story.  But if I wanted to use Twitter for business, what did I really get out of this social media investment?

What I would like is to hear from folks who are using Twitter for work and using it well.  And most importantly, show me the money!  I want to hear whether or not you can prove it’s working for your business.

One thing I certainly don’t understand is the HR community’s inability to grasp the concept of LinkedIn.  For those of you who groaned, it’s not Facebook folks, it’s a professional site.  Other professionals are on it busily networking with their customers, suppliers, potential employees and even other recruiters.  The smart folks are using LinkedIn to find out about important events and have discussions with others on topics such as how employers are dealing with the H1N1 flu.

Not taking advantage of the wonderful world of LinkedIn is like telling someone “I know you’re offering me $1 million dollars but really, I can’t be bothered to do anything with it so just give it to someone else”.

I’m showing you the money.  So why are you leaving it on the table?

Top Companies to Work For

Have you ever worked for one of the “Best Places to Work”? 

I have.  And you know what, it really wasn’t… you can’t imagine my excitement when I was hired to work for the company.  Wow!  I’d been waiting a long time to have this opportunity.  I followed the business for some time and when my chance finally came, I jumped at it.  I didn’t think twice! 

So, why was it rated as one of the best employers?  What were the criteria used to measure the designation?  I learned through researching a number of companies that compile the lists of what constitutes the best places to work, that things they look at are:  work atmosphere and social activities, wages, benefits, performance management, vacation and time off.  Depending on who is collecting the data, the criteria may change slightly but most are gathering very similar information.

Unfortunately, in my case, I soon realized that while this company had all the niceties anyone could ask for (a gym, a cafeteria with a great menu at fantastic prices, Blackberries and many other assorted toys), it really wasn’t a great place to work after all.  Don’t get me wrong – all of these things were pretty nice and initially – during the honeymoon phase – these things seemed great!

So, that being said – you might wonder what the problem was then?  Well… I discovered the not so good things or the dark side - as it were.  There were far too many examples of nepotism, favouritism, departments that were completely separate from one another (silos) which created enormous communication issues, unfair work distribution (the social activities?  Only a select few could take part… everyone else had to work), and several other dysfunctional business practices.

Oh, and the performance management?  Well – to be honest – no one understood it and those that worked on developing it didn’t even have any human resources backgrounds.  In fact, almost the entire HR department (I soon learned) was made up of employees that started with the company several years prior and they were just promoted into these roles with no training in their ‘specialized areas’ of HR.  Many in the executive and management team were the same. 

I honestly believe that we need to groom people to take on these roles and when someone has the urge to grow with the company and seems to have the drive, ambition and a good skill set the opportunities should certainly be provided where possible.  However, the key is to give people the tools to work with so that they really can be a “top employer”. 

Have you ever heard the term, people don’t quit their jobs, they quit their managers?  Well, this is why being the top employer has to be more than perks.

So, now I’m wondering – was this just my experience – or are there others that feel their companies have a long way to go even though they are classified as a “Great Place to Work”?

-Guest editor, Kellie Auld

If HR had just been invented…

One of the biggest challenges with change is that you are so often stuck with the old view of things.  How many of you out there had to change organizations because you were still seen as the office junior, who photocopied and made tea, even though you had been there 10 years and were completely in charge of the recruiting function?  First impressions stick and then solidify, making it twice as hard to have people treat you differently.

The whole HR profession has this problem and has been working on it for over 15 years.  Hardly rapid progress.  We have tried a bunch of soul searching – complaining about strategic status – requesting strategic status – getting strategic status etc and yet the HR function remains maligned, mis-understood and under-valued by the majority of our peers in the business community.  A strategy that has not been tried is to disappear and re-appear as something else.  This could work.  I am serious – let’s collectively take a month off (my vote is December) and then come back with a clearer structure, compelling value proposition, strategic drive, and most importantly of all a new name.

If the current impression we are making is not the right one, nor the one we want, why not create the opportunity to create a new first impression. It works – as someone who has changed jobs every 3 years and countries twice – I know it works.

We have most of the answers when it comes to structure, value proposition and strategic drive – so what do we call ourselves….. any ideas?

Guest editor:  Ian Cook

CEO, Human Resources???

Richard Beatty, a professor of HR at Rutgers University probably raised the hackles of many an HR professional when he criticized the HR community for their failure to provide useful analytics in making workforce planning decisions.  His comments parallel what we’ve all heard – that HR needs to speak the language of business and be able to provide hard data and metrics to support their strategies and initiatives.  This is all about HR needing to learn to think and act like CFOs.

Effective HR professionals that are obtaining those bona fide seats at the executive table are the ones that are also thinking and acting like CEOs – how the organization’s strategies are increasing market share, expanding growth, improving efficiencies, reducing costs, and increasing profits.  What I’m hearing from the C-level executives that I work with are that effective HR executives and professionals take into careful consideration the organization’s day to day, in the trenches, real world operational challenges, and more importantly how it impacts the top and bottom lines.  Those who “get it” have learned how to sell, market and influence those who have the approval to say yay or nay.  Many a solid HR initiative has been kiboshed because it didn’t earn the necessary executive buy-in.  And that’s where selling comes in.

Most HR people hate selling and willingly admit it.  Yet you’ve been doing it all your life and probably aren’t always aware that many of the goals that you’ve achieved involved following a sales process – from landing your job to convincing your significant other to shack up or marry you.  You uncovered a need, asked questions about the criteria involved, presented your idea and convinced the decision-maker to support your case.  At work do the same when dealing with the executive suite, making sure you always link your HR activities to the top and bottom lines.   

-Guest editor:  Jonathan Lowe

Time to lift our eyes up?

Built to change is a great book about how to make your organization more flexible and better at changing.  A key concept in the book is strategizing as opposed to strategic planning.  The key difference being that strategizing is something that happens frequently, not once a year in a conference room.  When strategizing, individuals gather to think about the future, play out different scenarios, and choose how to respond to those scenarios in a way that aligns with the identity of the organization.  In short, strategizing adopts the philosophy that 80% of strategy is figuring out where the world is going.  If you can do that, what you need to do usually becomes obvious.

So here is my challenge to you.  After all this hunkering down, cost cutting and focus on efficiency (for good reason), what opportunities are out there?  Are there talented people you could recruit to your business because they have been “recessioned” by their employers?  Are there opportunities in your market that you can attack before your competitors? Could you pick up a piece of real estate with phenomenal lease or mortgage terms?  Think about the future, play out a few scenarios, keep your CFO happy by making sure the numbers work, but start moving forward. You will find opportunities.

-Guest editor:  Suzanne Boyd, Peoplestuff

Yeeesss! My dishwasher is finally fixed

My solution to getting stuff done at home?  My least favourite option but the most necessary – take holiday time.  I’m thrilled to tell you that the dishwasher repair guy showed up on Monday, somewhere between the 10:30am-1pm he promised.  The irony?  There was nothing wrong with it in the first place.  I can’t believe I washed dishes by hand for the last six weeks.  Please, no questions….

Like several great people before me, I’m going to take the next few weeks off from the world of work to decompress.  That means it’s guest editor time!  Every week I’ll be featuring a guest blogger, each with their own twisted twist on the world and HR.  A quick intro to the bloggers you’ll be reading from:

First up to bat is fellow BC HRMA blogger, Suzanne Boyd.  Smartie girl is a Partner with Noverra Consulting & Capital Partners where she leads the HR practice.  She loves working with people and businesses to make a difference from a people perspective.  In her spare time, Suzanne loves reading about politics, social trends and enjoys the occasional glass of wine.  Check out her always insightful blog Peoplestuff.

Next up, Jonathan Lowe.  Currently a consultant for the executive search firm Galt Global Recruiting, J. Lowe has worked in the industry as an HR director and recruiter and in his former life  was an operations manager in the hotel industry.  Most importantly, he’s got a killer sense of humour.

In Week 3, it’s Ian Cook, Director of Research & Learning at BC Human Resources Management Association.  He’s also my boss.  He’s originally from Scotland, so be sure to read his stuff in your best brogue to maximize the impact of his wise words.

And finally, Kellie Auld, soon to be a featured blogger with BC HRMA! 
Kellie has been working in the Human Resources/Training & Development field since 2000 for a number of different organizations from government to a small privately-owned firm.  You can tell by her ideas and voice that Kellie’s an avid reader and has acquired a broad base of interests in HR.  With her new blog HR Scoops, she’s ready to connect with other HR pros about the ever-changing, ever-challenging field of HR. 

Good luck to all bloggers!   And now if you’ll excuse me, condensation is amassing outside my martini glass.  Must deal with rapidly deteriorating drink situation.

Work/Life Balance… I just want my dishwasher fixed

Now with extra cleaning power!

I’ve reached the point in my life where I’m outsourcing things I never thought I would.  Sure, we all typically “outsource” things like our haircuts, hemming or shoemaking.  Some outsource their housecleaning.  I’ve taken it to the next level, folks.  I’m outsourcing the waiting game.

A few weeks ago my home phone stopped working.  After huffing to the customer service rep (on my cell phone), I had to concede to a technician visiting my home in a week, anywhere between 9am-12pm.  On the same day, I was having a new mattress delivered, again anywhere between 9am-12pm but at least I would be forewarned when the truck was close by.

Fast forward to the next week, I had my new dishwasher installed only to be told that the dishwasher is faulty and that I shouldn’t use it until I call in for service.  Following warranty protocol, I called the approved list of service providers.   Turns out every place I called is open from 8:30am – 5pm, Monday through Friday, and requires that I book out at least a week.

Hmmmm… first challenge is trying to get stuff done in my life while earning a living.  Second challenge is that while these places can guarantee which day they will come, they can’t even tell you an approximate time.  Essentially you could be sitting around and wasting away for 8 hours before you see anyone.

You see where I’m going with this!  Basically, if you work full-time with a regular office schedule, the only way you can get anything in your home fixed is to:

• work from home
• take a vacation day
• call in fake sick (something Gary would never do!)
• buy paper plates and swear off any modern technologies, like the telephone

Here is the greatest risk to labour productivity known to mankind.  Forget employee illness - what can we do to keep employees working while they get their home stuff done?

My answer is to outsource the waiting game.  I simply approached a few retirees in my building and in return for them being available to open my apartment door at anytime, I pay them.  They earn extra cash, I get to go to work.

Let’s get more creative with managing the work/life balance thing.  Entertain me for a moment while I offer ideas to get stuff done while maintaining productivity at work:

1. Petition the government to force service companies to guarantee service times or at least offer priority spots for a premium.
2. Create a Craigslist of sorts where you can post your waiting game challenge and pre-screened folks who want to sit on your couch all day bid on your time slot.
3. Companies offer “dishwasher days” for those times when you really do have to sit around and wait for someone to show up.  You get the time off and make it up later or just take it unpaid.  Either way, the company takes less of a hit on productivity and you don’t have to pretend to cough in your phone.
4. Get a spouse or a significant other.  According to Jack Welch, it’s either the career or the life but never both.  He took care of the career part and his wife took care of the kids and home.

The revered JW is shockingly offensive here and I’m not about to take me a husband just to have a clean kitchen or a dial tone.  Time for the service call revolution.

When Gary calls in tired, what do you do?

Love this commercial.  I stop whatever I’m doing (even eating!) when it comes on.  The ad isn’t selling a product so much as it’s selling an idea.

While we’ve all had those “I’m exhausted and totally unproductive” days, who would seriously put their job or reputation in jeopardy by being totally honest to their bosses?  It’s easier to come up with an acceptable but dishonest rationale than being upfront about it and just saying “I was kept up all night with a recurring nightmare that I was being chased by a man in a donkey suit but when I tried to dial 9-1-1, I kept misdialing!”.

Well, this guy believes in having nothing to hide.  And he gets the day off he needs and his boss gets the job done. He likely pulls it off because he’s clearly delivered the goods before.  As cranky as the manager is about the situation, his hands are tied because he both values the employee and goals are being met.

Here’s the disconnect:  we’re ultimately judged on whether or not we deliver on our goals but we’re paid by the clock.  The rationale is that we must be at our desks to be considered productive, whether or not that’s actually happening.  I don’t have any stats on this but my gut says you’re more likely to get fired for being flaky about showing up to work than you would be for not producing on a regular basis.

How do we work our way around this one?  Take a look at Motley Fool’s vacation and sick day policy which boils down to “take the time off you need and get paid for it”.  The fine print?  Do the work.

HR practices that are 2000 & late – Part Deux

Aaaaaannndd we’re back!

We’re playing “Are you ahead, on top, or behind the HR game?” and last week we had questions on recruiting, performance management, and trends in business.  This week focuses on your knowledge on the latest goings on in HR.

Let’s Get Ready to Rumble!

 

 

 

 

 

 Q:

1. During these tough economic times, organizations are trimming headcount, merit increases, salaries and benefits to keep costs down.  Are you offering alternatives to staff to offset these cost cutting measures,  such as flexible schedules, extra vacation time, etc.?
2. Are you making business decisions without data?
3. Are you outsourcing any of your HR functions or processes and gaining efficiencies or cost savings with them?

 & A: 

1. Just like every organization is trying to figure out how to make do, so are employees.  Life is about  compromise and trade-offs.  Why not offer something your employees value at minimal cost?  Keep ‘em happy, keep ‘em loyal and at the end of the day, you’ll get to keep ‘em.
2. When you make decisions without data, you’re upping your chances of making the wrong one.  Without data, who is really taking you seriously?  Imagine your organization’s leader saying to you that  he has this gut feeling that the organization isn’t doing so well.  Sure, he’s right but he doesn’t sound like he’s the right person for the job.
3. Outsourcing is not always the holy grail of efficiency and cost savings.  ExcellerateHRO is getting out the outsourcing business because it discovered that it’s not making any money.  Other companies have had a tough go at implementing their contracts, especially when they are highly customized.  And on occasion, offshoring work can pose challenges and require contingency plans perhaps not previously considered, such as in the case of organizations outsourcing to Mumbai.  Outsourcing can still work, but only if you can keep your processes simple and you’re extra careful to cross your t’s and dot your i’s.

How about adding suggestions on any other HR practices out there that you think should be considered old school?  Submit some comments!

The LinkedIn Bible

If you’re not maximizing LinkedIn yet on the job or for your career, I feel sorry for you.  No, I don’t really feel sorry for you but I do think you’re not focusing enough on the right stuff.  Lucky you, I scored a great online resource to help you get the most of it.  Excelleeeent….

LinkedIn Bible: Everything You Need to Know About the Social Network for Professionals – CIO.com – Business Technology Leadership

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HR practices that are so 2000 & late

Thanks, Black Eyed Peas, for coining this new term.  I’m using it ad nauseam to annoy my friends, family and most importantly, coworkers.

BEP are always ahead of the game but then, they have to be.  As for HR, rest assured that you don’t always have to be ahead of the game.  But, you should at least be on top of your game by applying new ideas that have been tried, tested and produce results.

Trying to decide if you’re ahead, on par, or behind the game?  Here’s the quiz.  Make the most of it by thinking about your response before checking out the answer key.

1. Are you upgrading your talent in the downturn?  In other words, are you letting go of poor performers in hopes of snatching up better employees?
2. Do you care if your employees are at their desk or do you care if they deliver?
3. Are you recruiting solely via your corporate careers site?
4. Is your company making a profit, albeit less of one, and cutting employee pay and benefits to maintain it?
5. Are you a hoarder?

Here’s your answer key:

1. It’s understandable if you’re trading up while the War for Talent is on hiatus.  But let’s be blunt – you’re not giving the impression that you’re regularly dealing with underperformers and you’re missing an opportunity to be a game player.  (and pssst… like in your case, the high performers may still be working….)
2. Of course, you care more that your employees deliver.  However, chances are that you pay by the clock and not the results.  The underlying assumption is that your employees have to be at their desks.  Think about it – how would you react if your employee walked out of your office after doing only 4 hours and yet they’ve met all their targets?  Figure your way around this to be on top of your game.
3. If your answer is “yes” (save for the occasional newspaper ad), you must be watching the hit new show Three’s Company.  Using only your careers website as a sourcing tool is like being a hotdog vendor in the corner of an underground parking lot.  If you’re using LinkedIn, Facebook,  or Twitter, you’re at least on top of things, but you’re a long ways away from being ahead of the crowd.
4. It’s a new world out there, one where people are fed up with exorbitant executive compensation and the sole focus on the shareholder.  Harvard Business Review says that “trust in business is running out”.  These smarties say that the future will include a “broadening [of] the list of key stakeholders to include employees, customers, suppliers, communities, the press, unions, government and civil society.”
   In other words, if your focus is on profit and the shareholder, you are officially 2008 and late.
5. I get it, there’s a recession and we’re all in survival mode.  But history has taught us that society thrives when it works together.  Hoarding ideas, resources, people, money, knowledge, and whatever else is soooo over.  It’s all about collaboration, sharing, adding value, and unity because we’re all in this together, baby.

Thanks for playing!  Get ready for Round #2, where the questions will be tougher and the stakes higher.  Coming at you next week….

Knock Knock! >> Who’s there? >> Your CFO!

Former Enron CFO Andrew Fastow. Proof that being good with numbers means squat if you can't do anything good with it.

No joke.  Your scary CFO is here and he’s taking over.

There was much buzz online when CFO.com posted the article “Memo to CFOs:  Don’t Trust HR” back in March.  Rutgers University professor Richard Beatty lambasted HR for “having no relevance to an organization’s success”.  He then went on to say that “HR isn’t very good at data analytics” and stated that since analytics is the CFO’s job anyways, Finance should see to it that it gets done. 

Fast forward 4 months and CFO Magazine is at it again, building Finance’s case for supremacy in the business universe.  They write about the need to finally apply HR metrics to help focus and track the outcome of activities on the bottom line.  I’m not going to argue with this one, nor am I going to argue against their dislike of using job satisfaction as a measure of corporate health. They’re right, there is no proof that happy employees make for happy and therefore free-spending customers. But I digress, that’s a discussion topic for another day…. 

The clincher to this article is secretly hidden in the middle, kind of like those warm, gross pickles in the middle of a perfectly good hamburger.  Here’s what they said: 

“It’s one thing to measure; it’s another thing to act. One possible solution… is to staff senior HR positions with people who have come from finance or other areas where ROI analysis and multivariable correlations have long been studied. Other companies may choose to restructure so that the head of HR reports to the CFO or to a chief performance officer.”

Are you offended yet? 

If you’re one of many analytical HR people, you should be.  If your organization is using HR metrics to make business decisions, you’re probably royally offended, too.

If you aren’t measuring, get ready to start reporting to the CFO because they are building the case that they are more competent than HR to get the job done.  There is no argument that Finance folks are analysts by nature.  But while they may help HR use their calculators, do they really think they are going to know what to do with that information?

I previously covered some ground about whether or not non-HR people can or should work in HR.  The conclusion:  yes they can and they should because other professions may have a lot of skill to offer HR.  However, I would much prefer to invite them in and hand them their agenda, not have them forced upon us.

When society ain’t so smrt, what does it mean to your talent pool?

I’ve talked about it before and I’ll talk about it again because I don’t think we’re beating a dead horse just yet – it may be time to include education as part of our organizations’ CSR strategy.  Now there’s more solid research to prove my point, thanks to the latest report from the Conference Board of Canada, “Western Canada – Productivity, Competitiveness, and Potential”.  I love it when I’m right…. 

In a previous post, I talked about how executives feel that in the future, the War for Talent will be more about a society lacking the right skills and not about an aging workforce.  Perhaps it’s time that Corporate Canada steps in to fill this gap, lest it rest on its laurels thinking that the government will address the problem. 

The Conference Board report states that labour productivity is determined by these key inputs:

1. Global Forces
2. Business and Policy Environments
3. Innovation
4. Investment
5. Human Capital

It’s pretty intuitive that all these factors impact productivity and HR folks know that human capital has a large impact on productivity.  We don’t expect the job the be done well or customers to walk away satisfied unless we have the right employees on hand, doing the right thing, at the right time.

Although the Conference Board didn’t include an exhaustive list on how our workforce can become more productive, they did make it clear that university or apprenticeship completion rates are a strong predictor of future of productivity.  The crystal ball shows that our future talent pool isn’t particularly talented.  They reported that “the adult literacy skills of 4 in 10 working-age Canadians are inadequate” .  A few more insightful quotes from the Board: 

• “Educated people not only make healthier life choices but also contribute disproportionately to business innovation, productivity, and national economic performance.”
• The Canadian education system “lacks focus on work-based skills training and lifelong education that can be fostered outside traditional academic institutions”.

If you increase literacy skills, create systems to encourage the completion of university or trades programs, and increase training and education within the workplace, you’ll have a more innovative and competitive organization.  That’s the type of CSR work that sounds right up HR’s alley.

Be a phoenix rising from the ashes

A few weeks ago I was at my mother’s house for a catch-up (and of course, dinner).  Suddenly the latest General Motors commercial came on.  I had never seen it before and unlike other ads, it caught my eye from the start.  I even asked my mom to stop talking to me for just a moment.  While this is not new territory for some, I don’t usually interrupt someone so I can see what’s on TV.  When the commercial ended, I had goose bumps, the kind you get when you’re waving a giant Canadian flag on Canada Day.  Ever since that night, whenever I see this commercial, I think “yeeessss!”.

The commercial is bluntly authentic, telling North Americans that they can no longer do business the way they have been and that they’re working towards change, using a mix of images that translate into strength, power, rebirth, the struggle to overcome challenges and most importantly, winning.  It’s clear that the changes wouldn’t take place overnight and the message was that they need everyone to cheer them on to be a success.

GM:  Way to rally your employees, customers, future customers and shareholders together to reinvent the brand and rebuild the company.  Since you’re a smart HR pro, you know that whenever there is a focussed and compelling goal and you get stakeholder buy-in, you’re increasing the chances of being successful.

Now I’m flipping this back to you, the HR’er – what you have done to reinvent yourself, your department, or your business that’s worthy of cheering on?  Have you reassessed the state of the organization and started to make plans to address a business problem or opportunity?  Have you made a compelling case to improve the bottom line, build a better brand, impact your communities, provide viable employment opportunities, and then rallied the troops behind the cause?

From one HR pro to another, know that I’ll be cheering you all the way… Go!  Go!  Go!

Are your employees busy little bees?

I think this bee is trying to tell us something...

You may want to start asking your employees to act less like salmon (swim upstream, spawn, die) and more like bees.  No, I don’t mean they should be making honey on their spare time or setting their stingers on people they feel have threatened them.  But employees can mimic their communication patterns to become more productive employees. 

Here are some details, using an excerpt I found in the February 2009 edition of the Harvard Business Review.  Skip to the Coles Notes version below if you know you’ve got only 2.2 seconds before you get interrupted by a coworker’s question. 

“One of the most important group decisions made by a bee colony is where to locate the hive.  Bees use a kind of “idea market” to guide their discovery:  The colony sends out a small number of scouts to survey the environment.  Returning scouts that have found promising sites signal their discoveries with a vigorous dance, thus recruiting more scouts to the better sites.  The cycle of exploration and signaling continues until so many scouts are signaling in favor of the best site that a tipping point is reached. 

The bees’ decision making highlights both information discovery and information integration, two processes that are crucial to every organization but that have different requirements.  A centralized structure works well for discovery, because the individual’s role is to find information and report it back.  In contrast, a richly connected network works best for integration and decision making, because it allows the individual to hear everyone else’s opinion about the expected return from each of the alternatives.” 

Here’s the Coles Notes version and what it means to you:  when researching and developing ideas, the less people involved the better and create a centralized communication structure to gather the ideas.  But when it’s time to implement these ideas and make decisions, expand the network to get the input and expertise of others to get the best results. 

Further, research has shown that there is a link between productivity and how information flows.  Employees who have extensive networks using Web 2.0 tools (e.g. Wikis, blogs, LinkedIn to name a few), were 7% more productive than those who didn’t use the tools.  However, employees using face-to-face communication were 30% more productive.  Huh. 

Web 2.0 is getting a lot of buzz lately (pardon the pun) but are we forgetting to tell the employees that it’s okay to go hang out at the water cooler?  There is a time and place for the latest and greatest social networking tools but when it comes to making the ideas happen, you may be better off creating avenues for discussion, like buying staff lunch and asking them to just sit around and (gulp!) talk.

The career satisfaction test – would you rather be working or watching The Bachelorette?

It’s a trick question, really… no job can beat Season 5 of The Bachelorette, featuring Vancouver’s own Jillian Harris.

But back to the topic of career satisfaction.  I just caught this news story that appeared in the June 10^th edition of The Globe and Mail’s Report on Business.  The story:  results from a survey last year of 11,000 Canadians show that 12% know they chose the wrong career and another 24% say they’re not quite sure they made a wise choice.

Of course, this brings up the question of whether or not we feel HR was the right career pick for us.

Sometimes folks considering an HR career approach me to talk about what it takes to get into the profession.  I like to throw the question back at them, “why are you choosing HR?”  Without fail, the first response is “I want to work with people” or “I want to help people”.    Big uh oh, unless you think terminating people falls under the scope of “helping people”.  During these informational interviews, about 80% of people tell me they want to go into recruiting.  There is visible uneasiness when I say, “how comfortable are you telling people that they are not the successful candidate for the job and then explaining to them why?”  I also ask them to imagine themselves at a career fair, repeating the job application process about 100 times during the day.  The point is, most people don’t get the real story about their chosen careers until they’re in them.  Luckily, some folks get that working in HR is not about working with or for the people but about making the organization successful through people. 

OK, HR’ers!  Time to fess up.  Are you in the right career?  Be your participative HR self and answer the poll.

Web 2.0, standardized processes and the US Air Force – oh my!

A friend of mine bought this shockingly bright yellow car some years ago and I remember thinking “wow, that’s different!”  Next thing, I see the same yellow cars everywhere.  I know this is a real psychological phenomenon, I just can’t remember the term.  (If you’re a smarty pants and know the answer, pass it on in the Comments.)

Here I am experiencing the same phenomenon.  I heard one thing about standardized processes and now I’m seeing it everywhere.  Check out what the US Air Force has gotten up to (and feel bad if you haven’t done anything to get value from Web 2.0).  Pshaw – the Air Force, you say?  Of course they would have something like this.  Think about it – they’ve got to entice people to sign up for a job that requires several location transfers, lengthy periods away from loved ones and with a higher probability of being hurt on the job than most people.

True, there are some fabulous ideas in the linked article to add to your employer branding to-do list but the true focus of this post is to talk about how the Air Force has implemented standardized processes.   They have forseen the need to develop a process flow called “How to Handle a Blog”,  a simple employee reference on how to respond to situations where the Air Force is being blogged about and an employee stumbles across the post.  The guidelines are easy to follow and yet they still allow the employee some flexibility by creating their own response – no intervention by management or the Communications department required and no robot-like response to copy and paste.

So, the US Air Force is innovative with recruiting and they’re doing the social networking thing.  And they’re building standardized processes.  This is not the blog to pass judgement on what they’re about but they sure have implemented some good HR stuff and managed to convince the government to fund them.

Now that you’ve seen a sample of a standardized process, what else can HR standardize so employees feel supported yet not stiffled in their role and therefore can easily execute on strategy?

Add it to the list! Should CSR include educating the world?

What do you do when you forecast a skill gap in your workforce?  You could tempt employed folks with the right skills to come work for you by offering something their organization doesn’t currently offer.  You could turn to hiring immigrants, should that talent pool provide the required skill set.  You could rehire women who left the workforce to care for their children and provide in-house childcare.  In these scenarios, you’re investing your corporate dollars to get in those who already have the skill set. 

So what if you’ve tapped the well dry; how about an alternate scenario where you train for skills? 

According to the 2009 Global CEO Survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers, CEOs said that they don’t feel that governments are creating effective education systems to create a skilled workforce.  Perhaps there is a glut of fine art experts but you need chimney sweepers and not many are choosing chimney sweeping as a major.  Perhaps you have a lot of would-be chimney sweepers who cannot afford to go to chimney sweeper school.  Either way, you’ve got a skill gap problem and the education system isn’t working for you.

Here’s an idea:  reinvent Corporate Social Responsibility.  CSR is where organizations self-regulate their “adherence to law, ethical standards, and international norms”.  The popularity of CSR started out of the desire to do good and save the planet but let’s be honest – it’s truly snowballed as an idea because of its impact on recruiting and retaining both customers and employees.  Environmentalists win, organizations win and government wins because the market is replacing the need for them to create rules and laws.

Where issues of skill gaps are concerned, market forces aren’t helping you here – people are not choosing to learn the skills you need, education costs will almost always be going up and the government is not intervening on your behalf.  Why don’t you turn the tables and include education as part of your organization’s CSR offering?  What if your organization provided:

• scholarships to students who may have a bright future with your organization
• corporate sponsorship deals to schools to provide the training at a subsidized cost
• active recruitment and paid retraining of those affected by a layoff or those who are marginalized by society
• tuition reimbursement galore for current employees and their kids along with paid time off to learn, or
• recruitment fairs that begin in elementary school via fun classroom activities (hey Billy Joe, let’s play the chimney sweep game!  How would you want to be a chimney sweeper when you group up?). 

Okay, so I’ll admit that the last point is farfetched and maybe even a little twisted.  But while the other ideas require work and investment, they can be done.  Imagine generating the skills your organization needs and otherwise wouldn’t get but also doing a service to our fellow human beings (Heellooo! Less unemployment!).  Now which person wouldn’t love the company who helps folks earn a living?  I’ll bet the organization’s name will be on the tip of every tongue.

True enough, it’s not like the economy is floating with money for such programs.  And CSR is not all about doing good – there needs to be an ROI.  What do you think:  is it cheaper to create your own skill set or to spend money recruiting an existing skill set?