Conflict: The Name of the Game

June 16, 2006 · Filed Under For the love of HR · 1 Comment 

You feel that tightening in your gut? A little twinge of fear? It is the topic of today’s post:

CONFLICT

There was some point in history where the HR guy was the king of conflict. It is true! I read about it in a book somewhere. The HR person was respected (and feared!) for going head first into any conflict, battering forward like a warship in the Pacific in World War II. He was a man of brauns and brain and could make a grown man cry with a snap of his fingers.
Then something happened.

HR became conflict adverse. They lamented being put into uncomfortable situations. They became little administrative people that were concerned more about EEO reporting and correct filing of I-9 forms rather than having a kickass business. Oh sure, they played lip service to that but that lip service turned HR from a significant player in any serious business (who often transitioned into operations and management roles) to an administrative wing placed uncomfortably under Finance.

I hope that in my time as an HR guy, we can balance the two. I hear a lot of hype about being a “change agent” but to be truly successful, HR guys need to become “conflict agents.” Not unnecessary conflict mind you but conflict that promotes real change and real business growth. Most organizations that are successful are ripe with strife and conflict. That’s why they are so good. And that’s why HR will continue to be excluded until they embrace conflict readily and throughly.

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Your HR guy has caller ID

June 15, 2006 · Filed Under Recruiting in the 21st Century · 4 Comments 

I know it comes to a shock to some of you but the HR guy has technology that has existed for the past 15 years known as caller ID.  That means when you hit redial every 30 seconds for 20 minutes straight, I know about it.  And guess what, it isn’t going to get me out of my meeting, lunch or interview sooner by calling me every minute.  So here is what I suggest: leave me a message and send me an e-mail confirming the fact that you left me a message, a callback number and the best time to reach you.  If you do this and do not annoy my co-workers, you will get the equivalent of a gold star next to your name on the board. If you do not follow my advice, I will furrow my brow and think mean things of you.  Will it disqualify you from a job? Not entirely (unless of course when I do answer, you simply breathe heavily and then hang up). But remember, your HR guy is going to be working with you and more importantly, he is going to be working very closely with your direct supervisor who will rake the HR guy over the coals, throw him under the bus, etc… if he hires a stalker-lite person (again).

I am all for being forward in your job search but there is a fine line between being a good job candidate and being an obsessive job candidate. Find it, learn it, love it.

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Researching to reduce turnover

June 14, 2006 · Filed Under For the love of HR, Slacking Off at Work, Stupid Employee Tricks · Comment 

Dr. Williams over at ERE says that the best way to reduce turnover is to look at past employee records and determine a pattern of traits that can help you avoid high turnover rates. There are several pitfalls that he addressed along with the obvious benefits of such a program that I am interested in talking about.

The benefits he goes over are of real value to any company. Reducing turnover has a true ROI if accomplished effectively as Dr. Williams states. It is an easy sell to the executive group.

What isn’t going to be an easy sell are a few questions they will have for your HR department like:

Who is going to do the analysis? Those sorts of skills aren’t as easily available in some organizations as others

Do we have a similar enough workforce to accomplish this? If you don’t, you’re done.

What kind of reduction are we talking about? It is untested and many companies don’t want to be testing grounds.

On top of those questions, I have to wonder what HR department has time to try something like this. Granted this could be a phenomenal success. On the other hand, there might be nothing significant that differentiates successful employees from the unsuccessful ones (or at least enough to enact positive changes). If you have more HR resources than you know what to do with and you have time to implement this sort of massive research and analysis project, you either don’t have a big problem (because you have adequate HR analysis) or you are missing the boat completely.

HR can make a proven, positive impact on the positions that are very similar: developing a world class training system, constant monitoring of new employees job performance and satisfaction and retooling the interview process in response. Better sourcing, reviewing of compensation, and even a change in management technique can make a more effective change in a company’s turnover rate than this sort of system (even if successfully implemented). If you have higher than acceptable turnover, you should be going through these basic, time tested and proven techniques before trying something like this. If you’ve had little success with the basics though, you should probably be looking at what you’re doing wrong before you spend resources on this because if you can’t nail the basics, I am doubtful you can implement this system successfully.

It isn’t that I think that Dr. Williams suggestion couldn’t be successful, it’s that I think the companies that could implement it effectively probably have little use and probably wouldn’t meet any ROI goal.

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Side Job Track

June 13, 2006 · Filed Under For the love of HR · Comment 

Side Job Track is easily one of the coolest utilities created for the indy contractor. I used to just keep everything jumbled in my personal calendar but whenever you have more than one project at a time, it becomes a real hassle. Now it is incredibly easy to keep track of all the projects I have going, making sure that I am billing things accurately, that I get all of my materials costs passed on and that I am invoicing in a timely manner.

It looks as though they are going to be launching a paid service sometime this summer. Maybe if you were using it for more than one person, that would be a little bit easier.

———
BIS provides employment background checks worldwide.

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SimplyHired and MySpace together at last

June 13, 2006 · Filed Under Recruiting in the 21st Century · 3 Comments 

SimplyHired has pulled off quite the deal here.

There is going to be a lot of “old money” companies saying this isn’t significant. “Who cares? These kids on MySpace don’t have any skills we need. Plus the whole lot of them are probably child molesters anyway.” The good thing for these “kids” on MySpace is that they will have one of the most effective job searching tools out there easily accessible to them. Even the old money will be benefiting tremendously through this marriage of sorts (since SimplyHired aggregates millions of job listings including many of old money’s newspaper ads). MySpace has consistently ranked in the top 10 websites since the beginning of the year.

It is all a matter of people eventually figuring out that MySpace has a job search. It will be used and it is really only a matter of time.

———
Checkout Oaseo for SEO jobs and internship opportunities.

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Offering Copious BJ’s at Work — Part 2

June 12, 2006 · Filed Under Stupid Employee Tricks · 2 Comments 

Where I left you last, I had terminated Matt, the person who talked about offering “copious BJ’s” to anybody who would take his shift. I told my IT person to kill his account but my IT person went home first and was going to do it later that night. That’s when I realized the advantages of having all the ducks in a row and pulling the cord before it goes down.

Matt sent an e-mail out about 45 minutes after our conversation. Whenever I received it, I was thinking that it was just sent to me. It wouldn’t be the first time, no doubt about it. Then I read the message and I noticed the “To:” field said it was sent to the listserv. I again was shocked to what I saw. A diatribe by Matt regarding how “the man” (not making this up) had brought him down and that our corporate culture was an enemy of human rights. It was laughable stuff, especially in sharp contrast to the note he had sent out not two hours earlier (not to mention the fact that we worked for a university). What floored me was that the e-mail was even accepted. I called the IT guy at home and did what I knew how to do best. I asked a question:

“So did you turn off Matt’s access?”

“Of course I did. Why?”

“Have you checked your e-mail?”

“No.” click click click “Oh crap!”

“Way to go, now will you turn it off?”

“Yes.”

So ended my optimism when it came to people leaving an organization. Thanks to Matt (and some new experiences) I now take much greater precautions and expect the worst of every single termination I am a part of. Most of them go well but I don’t bet on it any more.

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Offering Copious BJ’s at Work — Part 1

June 12, 2006 · Filed Under Stupid Employee Tricks · 3 Comments 

It’s not a joke, it’s one of the first problems I had to deal with as a manager. I was working as a manager in an administrative portion of a major university. I worked with a mixed group of classified employees and student staff. Since there were shifts between students and things always came up, we had a way of students requesting for people to take their shifts. We basically had them send out a request to the listserv to be distributed to all staff regarding when their shift was available and whatever reasons they were looking to get it filled. One day as I was about to leave at 5:30, I get an e-mail that says:

To: listserv
From: “Matt”
Subject: Shift available

Thursday 3/31
5:00pm - 9:00pm
Building C

Reason: I have a big lab I have to do. Copious BJ’s to the person who takes this shift.

I froze. I re-read. I froze again. I heard footsteps coming towards my office. A quicker pace than usual. In walks my boss, Director of the department. He says the four words I didn’t want to hear at 5:30: “Take care of it.” Guh. I call Matt and tell him to come to the office right now. I call my IT guy to have him come in. In between that time, I get e-mails from three people on my staff that can’t believe the e-mail. One of them is going to file a complaint with the Human Rights Department. The IT guy comes in first so I have him sit with me to fire Matt.

Whenever Matt comes in, he is completely unapologetic. Whenever I tell him he is going to get fired, he gets defiant and starts asking me to cite what policies he has broken. I told him we work for a university that has a zero tolerance policy on sexually harassing words. This isn’t one of those things I could overlook, it is something that we had to take care of right now.

After he leaves, I tell the IT guy to take care of his e-mail access. He says he will do it. He doesn’t. And guess what happens? To be continued…

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Changed format

June 11, 2006 · Filed Under Current Events · 1 Comment 

I changed the theme to Yaletown and after some modifications, I think I like it alright. Three columns are too many. I like that this one seems a bit more interesting and a lot less blah.

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How do you spend your Sunday nights?

June 11, 2006 · Filed Under Slacking Off at Work · Comment 

I have a ritual that might sound familiar to some and foreign to others. About 9:00pm, I start preparing for Monday morning. I started this ritual after finding that Mondays were, by far, one of the worst, most busy days. I often stayed at the office past seven on Mondays (pushing my hours to 12-14 on that day). I would come in at six or seven in the morning and have no prep work, no idea as far as applicant flow is concerned and what I needed to schedule. So, I started checking my e-mail and going over reports on Sunday night and setting my to-do list for the day including setting my first tasks for the day. I could do some of this on Friday but a lot of my work depends on weekend activity. When I get in on Monday, I don’t open e-mails. I check my voicemails and unless there is anything urgent, I usually schedule those calls for late morning. Then, I start working on my first task of the day.

Now I come home at my usual time. I get everything done that I need to and often more, simply by making my priorities before I get wrapped up in the craziness of Monday.

What sorts of things do you do to start your day off right? I would be interested in seeing those in either separate posts or in my comments section.

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Corporate Recruiting Broken

June 9, 2006 · Filed Under Recruiting in the 21st Century · Comment 

There is no good reason for this to be happening. The problem is that I see it all the time in HR, in my fellow profesionals, in education…it is a disease. Corporate Recruiters should be the most competent people to bring on the best employees. They are supposed to understand the culture and the little things that makes a person successful at their company. They don’t for the most part. Instead, it is lots of paperwork shuffling and draggin the feet.

I ask a lot of HR people why they don’t have a seat at their corporate decision making table (because they don’t, an assumption I am almost always correct on). They blame their companies. I blame them. Granted the problem is somewhere in the middle, you can’t do much about what your company does, you can only do what you can. Therefore, 100% of the problem is yours to change.

My current job wanted to hire me when I told them I was terrible at paperwork. I still think it is a good thing. I focus myself on bringing on the right people, not on verifying I-9 forms. I focus on setting people on the path of success, not on correcting performance reviews. I focus on retaining key players in our business, not creating and running reports. All those other things are important too (and there are people that do them) but it is not our focus. HR’s ROI are people. You don’t get ROI through reports, you get ROI through working with them hands on, getting buy in, and working towards long-term results.

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    Your HR Guy is a Human Resources Generalist practicing in the field. But don't let that fool you, this isn't a boring blog. I seek relevance and humor in a place we will spend much of our lives. Everything from workplace issues, job seeking and terrible bosses. Read more...

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