by Janine Nicole Dennis | Nov 19, 2012 | Human Resources
In Mid-November of 1620, the Pilgrim Fathers better known as Pilgrims finally hit the coast of Cape Cod in Massachusetts after 65 grueling days of travel at sea. They were back an forth from the first fort and the Mayflower for living and sleeping. Finally, they settled at Burial Hill and created what was the first colony.
The turbulent seas were not the end to their difficult journey. They had to make it through a rough winter- in which a good bit of their fellow Pilgrims were lost due to poor nutrition and the fierce cold. Their luck began to change when they were met with an English-speaking Native American from the Pawtuxet tribe named Tisquantum or Squanto as they called him.
Meeting Squanto was the key to their existence as he taught them how to plant their first crop of corn, fish, and hunt for various animals. This in turn lead to what we now know as the First Thanksgiving and has subsequently led to what we celebrate as a national holiday the fourth Thursday of every November.
There’s your history lesson and here is the HR lesson. We are the Native Americans (that is HR) and our employees/internal clients are the Pilgrims. The colony is the world of work and we all have a vested interest in seeing that it thrives and succeeds. The issue is the key to its success depends on our squanto-like abilities to help our internal clients plant and nurture their crops. It depends on our ability to help them navigate the hunt for talent, resources and new ways of doing business. If we the Native Americans of the World of Work are unable to provide the solutions and foundation for our Pilgrims-the colony dies and the harvest is dead. No one feasts. It’s just famine.
For some of our Pilgrims the art of managing, developing and retaining talent to the end that the business is a success is the new world. It is unchartered territory. We have to be ready when our Pilgrims get off the Mayflower with plans, solutions, or at the very least an ability to reason through employee concerns and issues to relish in our thanksgiving.
If we fail at any of this no one is inviting us to the table. There’s no seat, no bench, no reason for the Pilgrims to thank the heavens for our presence.
Moral of the story: Channel your inner Squanto and be an indispensable resource to the companies and businesses you serve. Provide the crop and show your leaders and internal clients how to grow and nurture it. Well-planted crops lead to plentiful harvests and plentiful harvests mean everyone eats. Anyone hungry?
It would only be fair to share that Native American and Pilgrim relations went awry after that First Thanksgiving. Even then they could have used HR to manage their employee relations.
Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours!
by Janine Nicole Dennis | Nov 12, 2012 | Life
I’m sure I’m not alone in the ridiculousness that is keeping every e-mail,unnecessary cc’s, back-up paper copies of work documents, saved voicemails-you get the picture. No, I’m not a packrat or hoarder. However, somewhere along the line a paradigm of saving everything you do was handed down to me as the“norm”. It became the norm because someone, somewhere decided we all need a way to “cover our asses” if called on the carpet for not doing something important. Don’t get me wrong there is nothing better than being able to send that sweet c.y.a. e-mail that quickly puts a person’s selective amnesia and/or bashing to rest.The point is- it is tiring and pointless. Why is it tiring and pointless? Let’s get to it.
C.Y.A. or covering your ass takes precious time. It is not time well spent. It is time you take away from other important tasks to prove that you did your job. You have to find the folder, then the date the occurence happened on and then it requires further discovery to find the precise spot where you completed the task or said the very thing you are accused of not doing.
This brings me to why it is pointless. It is pointless, because it can all be avoided if people were held accountable at all levels. Accountability is not just for staff it applies to leadership as well. You don’t get to stop reading e-mails properly or not at all because you’re a leader. You don’t get to omit bits and pieces of information because you’re the big dog. You don’t have the luxury of regularly forgetting what is going on in your space, with your team and business-because you have a title. I’m not going to pick on leaders alone. You don’t get to call yourself a professional and do any of the above either. Mistakes happen. I’m not talking about occasional mistakes or slips of memory. I’m talking about a blatant lack of accountability.
Accountability ensures that all parties involved acknowledge their duties and take genuine responsibility for the completion of those duties and/or the lack thereof. If leaders and professionals alike hold themselves to this standard-why would we need to constantly c.y.a. ? We wouldn’t need to, because everyone would own what they did or didn’t do. If you didn’t follow up on something, you would say I didn’t do it, apologize and complete the task. Isn’t that far more productive than acting like you did something and having people search their archives only to prove you wrong? This is counterproductive behavior and I am frankly tired of it.
We are all busy, spread thin and overburdened with duties. It is understandable for things to slip your mind. Here’s a fact: employees don’t enjoy feeling like they have to create and keep a deposition for every action they take in business.Champion accountability and there will be less of a need to cover your ass. I say trash the c.y.a. shuffle and hold people accountable at all levels.
What do you all think? Is there a place for c.y.a. in the workplace or is it counterproductive?
by Janine Nicole Dennis | Nov 9, 2012 | Human Resources
For those of you that may have missed the headlines for the tri-state area in the last week- we have been pummeled by Hurricane Sandy and as of last night a Nor’easter. Though I was inconvenienced and pushed to my max in this past week- I was fortunate. I didn’t lose my house, wordly possessions and more importantly my life.
New Yorkers and people in general on the east coast are not accustomed to these sorts of natural disasters. A heavy downpour is the likes of what we know when it comes to natural disasters -but apparently this trend is changing. It is abundantly clear that we all need to wise up and prepare better, because we have been ill-equipped and not taking this stuff as seriously as we should and I am including myself in this.
Of course nothing that happens to me is devoid an HR lesson so here’s the story.
Things happened in this storm that we weren’t prepared for. Although we were forewarned, the attitude was either it won’t be that bad or it won’t happen at all. I lost internet, phone, power and more importantly- I lost heat. I had no generator so revving that up was not an option. This in turn caused me to charge my phone in my car. I went to stay with family also without power until the cold became unbearable and then off to a motel I went.
During this ordeal, there was no way to properly let anyone of importance know what my situation was. It was touch and go. In the interim, I became sick. How do I get that message out with all phones out of service?
The point I’m making is there was a plan, but the plan wasn’t good enough. There needs to be a team disaster plan for employees to follow in the case that they are in a situation such as mine. Conversely, empathy and common sense should prevail on the end of employers before these events to make plans among their teams so everyone is in the know. Here’s where I’m going with the common sense piece.
If your company closes down for an extended period of time due to a natural disaster and employees are unable to return to work because of this-how do you mandate them to work on non-traditional days of work (e.g. Saturday)? Answer: you don’t.Make them give up holidays instead. You can’t penalize an employee for an act of nature and your inability albeit out of your hands to make the business operational.
What does one of your employees do if they cannot make it into work due to a disaster and doesn’t have access to a working phone or computer? It isn’t business as usual. On a normal day, they would pick up the phone and call in if sick or otherwise. The day that a disaster hits-depending on the severity-is not normal. In fact, it is unlikely for it to be business as usual for a long time. Your expectations and directions have to become flexible; they have to change and that’s why you need a plan.
Have a plan. Make it simple. It doesn’t need to be verbose or terribly long. All you need to do is to come up with a reasonable way for your employees to report their status in the event that normal platforms of communication cease to exist.
Here are some examples of things you could implement:
1) Have an e-mail chain. In this instance my one saving grace was my cellphone. Consider having an e-mail chain where each team member has to contact another member of the team to let them know their status. The person at the end of the chain will report all statuses to the boss.
2) Assign emergency buddies. Have each team member team up with the closest employee to their residence in case of an emergency.
3) Make sure all of your employees have a current list of the entire teams contact information at all times.
4) In the case that everything is out including cell phones, speak with your emergency management or security groups to find out alternative ways to account for your team should you be faced with a natural disaster.
Natural disasters are not nice events. Everyone is concerned for their safety and the safety of their families. Make the ordeal a no-brainer. In this way, your employees will have guidance of how to react in these unfortunate circumstances.
Side note: My heart and prayers go out to my fellow tri-state people that lost lives, homes and all other worldly possessions. Be Strong!
by Janine Nicole Dennis | Oct 24, 2012 | Life
Recognition is defined as “an action of recognizing” or “special notice or attention”. The piece of the definition that speaks to “special notice” is where I’m going with this. When something is special it isn’t the same ol’same. It is uniquely different and out of the ordinary. When you tell a child that you have a “special” surprise for them for behaving well –there is an underlying perception by that child that they are about to receive something better than anything they have ever received. That underlying perception is what makes the recognition of their good behavior gratifying. Conversely, if that same child comes to know that the “special” surprise is synonymous with the same reward every time they behave well-the reward then becomes trite and meaningless. There is no sense of anticipation or excitement -it is simply ordinary.
The point here is recognition as we know it in HR is something small, something grand and sometimes a little of both. It is a means of letting our employees know that we value their contributions. Recognition with the best of intentions is sometimes overdone. There are things that we expect of our employees on a routine basis and that should never go unnoticed. However, constant awards, long drawn out speeches of praise and all other incentives overdone make routine seem extraordinary. That is to say, routine duties become extraordinary by way of the recognition. The routine and mundane every day responsibilities haven’t changed, but because a reward is attached to it somehow screams “I am awesome”. Let’s be real there are some things that we just expect from employees and that is the common denominator. The extraordinary work is where our employees take that common denominator and exponentially produce great outcomes. The areas where our employees do the routine stuff coupled with the “above and beyond” work are where real recognition has a place. Too often I have seen leaders praise for every project, every task, every breath, and even for an employee getting up in the morning and coming to work on time as they should. Don’t get me wrong-notice it. Recognize it from time to time, but for God’s sake focus your recognition efforts on the extraordinary not the ordinary.
Recognition becomes banal, meaningless, and a hoax when you constantly laud and praise employees for basics. It leaves a lot to be desired. There is no excitement in the “special” aspect of recognition; employees just come to expect something. This in turn will keep ordinary workers ordinary and extraordinary workers bored and thinking you run around spreading recognition haphazardly.
I implore leaders to think about what you reward and punish and the frequency with which you do them both. As with anything in life, balance is an exercise of discretion. Discretion will let your employees know that you are serious about recognition and their efforts.
by Janine Nicole Dennis | Oct 16, 2012 | Human Resources
Note: (This article was originally posted on the Smart Recruiters Blog)
It’s no secret to human resource professionals, managers and supervisors that one of the most critical decisions facing the workplace is talent acquisition, better known as recruiting. Recently I’ve read a few articles that proclaim recruiting is the MOST important function of human resources; trumping compensation and benefits, training and development, and process improvement. After wrestling this for awhile I realized that I could not argue against it. The results of recruiting are in all facets of the company. Recruiting really is the most important function of human resources.
At The Ohio State University I recall something my professor Robert Henemantaught, “All of your employee relations issues and all your human resource initiatives depend upon your people. If you hire the right people you can be successful; poor hiring decisions will cause you to fail.” Speaking to the professor’s point, if you have lazy management, it goes back to who you’ve hired to lead. If you have poor performing employees, you have to examine how you hire. Jim Collins wrote a groundbreaking human resource management book titled “Good to Great.” Some people mock it now-a-days however if you read the book it makes several excellent business claims; one being if you get the right people on the bus you will increase your chances of organizational success. There’s a ton of competition for skilled and talented employees, and competition comes from other countries as well. Good news is there is a ton of talent, skilled, educated and smart people available; you just have to find them. It’s election time in the United States. The Democrats are trying to recruit you; the Republicans are tying to recruit you; and job creation is the hot button issue. This focus on recruitment is old news for big companies, who are constantly in the war for talent. If you’ve been paying attention to mergers and acquisitions you’ll notice that the hardware and software giant Oracle purchased Taleo, a talent management and recruiting software company (aka ATS), for about $1.9 billion. But that’s not all, Oracle also bought SelectMinds, a cloud based social talent sourcing company. Hmm, seems like they are getting for the future of talent acquisition. Another giant, SAP acquired SuccessFactors for $3.4 billion. Coupled with Recruit’s billion dollar acquisition of Indeed, it all means that serious investment is being made to provide efficient and innovative methods to source for talent. “Yes! As I reflect on the other competencies of human resources you cannot do any of them without people,” saidTiffany Kuehl, Talent Acquisition and Staffing Leader of a Fortune 100 company and President of TCHRA an affiliate chapter of SHRM. Tiffany went on to discuss what makes a successful talent selection.
“You have to talk to the managers and the interviewers to ensure that they have a realistic idea of what they want and need from a candidate. Sometimes you have to re-sculpt the shape, scope and expectations in order to fit the business needs. It’s not only about finding external candidates but also moving the internal talent around. Everything goes back to the right people, the right jobs, and at the right time.” Class dismissed.Chris Fields is an HR professional and leadership guy who blogs and dispenses great (not just good) advice at Cost of Work. Connect with Chris on Twitter.
