Today’s guest author is: Joanne Rencher, Founder of WGN in HR and Chief People Officer for Girl Scouts of USA.
Blow up HR. Disrupt it. Embed it in the business. Outsource all of it. Move HR Operations somewhere else in the company. Don’t talk about it so much. Talk more about it.
This article is tackling none of that. It’s all about you, HR professional.
Twenty-three years ago I was thrust into the world of business with only a dream and a belief that I could change the world. One bond insurance company, global NGO, consulting stint and two iconic institutions later – I still believe that. My dream has always been to lead. I view it as the highest calling in business. It is a responsibility to take others where there may not want to go, but need to be, as Rosalynn Carter once said.
The HR Journey (the field, but not the person)
The field of HR itself is a televised revolution of sorts. It has moved from 20th personnel administration and compliance as its textbook definition, to acquiring different territory with 21st century character. ‘Strategic business partner’ and ‘change agent’ increasingly reflect the fine lines of this newer model. Dave Ulrich, a leader in business and champion of HR, continues to push the envelope around how the field must stay relevant. In discussing one of his more recent books, ‘HR from the Outside In: Six Competencies for the Future of Human Resources’, Ulrich noted that ‘for the last 20 years, we have been enamored with “strategic” HR where the strategy is a mirror that reflects what HR should focus on. We now believe that HR should look through the strategy to the outside world. Strategy becomes a window on both the general business conditions and on specific stakeholder expectations so that HR can connect their work to external factors.’
However, as this wonderful evolution continues and businesses come to realize the importance of data analytics in their HR functions, and the next wave of marketing-based talent acquisition – HR leaders seem, in a word….stuck. In fact, I fear that the dreams of HR leaders to aspire to new and different heights are being deferred. What happens to a dream deferred? Langston Hughes has already explored the possibilities: rotted dreams, dried up dreams, those which fester or perhaps explode. We mustn’t let that happen.
Our HR Journey (the person beyond the field)
With amazing talent and skills in organizational effectiveness, talent development, and transformational leadership – in theory and practice – there should be far more HR professionals moving through the ranks of senior leadership, within and outside of HR.
The dearth of leadership development focus and opportunities is supported by a global executive survey recently released by Korn Ferry. The study, which included over 700 executives, asked about the state of professional development for human resource managers within their organizations.
Roughly two-thirds said that development programs for senior HR leaders were not “as rigorous” as programs for leaders of other functions in their organizations.
More to the point, just over half of respondents said HR people were considered for high-potential programs, but nearly 60 percent said there was no succession plan for their organization’s CHRO!
From Shoemaker to Runway
HR is the classic case of the shoemaker’s children. We take care of everyone else to the neglect of ourselves. But, it’s more than just benign neglect. I believe it’s the need to break the paradigm….that, in fact, is the thing which must be blown up.
I founded Who’s Got Next in HR?, Inc. (WGNinHR) to do exactly that. We’re blowing up the paradigm that says how rare it is for HR professionals to go to higher heights – whatever that means. The vision of WGNinHR (www.wgninhr.com) is to create the tools, the soil and practical advice for the tired, innovative, ambitious and business-oriented HR professional looking for ‘what’s next’.
No one will do it for us. We must create and sustain this movement ourselves. In fact, I often describe WGNinHR as a ‘Movement’. The world of business needs more C-Suite leaders – including CEOs – who have rich HR backgrounds and can lead through the toughest of terrains.
So, as you’re waiting for the next new model or opinion on the field of HR, abandon the ‘seat-at-the-table’ conversations and start setting the table. Join the movement!
Joanne Rencher Biography
With more than 22 years of experience across the profit, non-profit, domestic and global arenas, Joanne brings a wealth of executive leadership experience to her roles. She currently serves as the Chief People Officer of the national office of the Girl Scouts of the USA – the preeminent leadership development organization for girls – and is a member of the executive team. With a passion for developing business leaders across the HR field, Joanne recently founded Who’s Got Next in HR?, Inc. (WGNinHR) to challenge conventional wisdom around career paths for HR professionals. Joanne holds a B.S. in Business, Management and Economics from the State University of New York’s Empire State College.
Good Morning HR Aristocrats! Are you mourning the end of the summer like I am? We are on the heels of fall and I have lots of new content across all of my channels to share. This week, I decided to take a bit of a break here, but wanted you to know about new content I have elsewhere. If you’re looking for some good reads and wondering where the “CzarinaofHR” is- you can find me in these places:
Synopsis: The post is about knowing when it is time to delegate work or outsource some of it- so you can be a more effective entrepreneur. I regularly contribute at Womeneur. Please check them out for some great content from some of the top women professionals and entrepreneurs.
Synopsis: Did you know that women-owned business has grown 74% since 1997? Women are taking entrepreneurship by storm and I find it not only fascinating; but an enduring trend. Just Haves.com is a lifestyle blog founded by Justine Santaniello, Lifestyle and Trend Expert. Look for more from me on her blog this fall and check out her blog for more great content. Also, join Justine on Wednesday night at 8pm for her #JustHaves Twitter Chat. Great topics, Lots of fun.
Synopsis: Where there is a union, there is often a culture of mediocrity. When you have employees with a sense of entitlement and management that is too fearful to ensure that union members play by the same rules as their non-union counterparts- it can be disastrous. If you’ve worked in a union environment and want a fresh perspective- take a peek.
Synopsis: I will be featuring my business this evening on “Black Biz Scope”. What is #blackbizscope? It is a community that promotes and supports black-owned businesses. They do this by allowing black business owners to present their businesses during 5-10 minute slots on Periscope. To be introduced to some great businesses and owners, tune in every Friday from 10-11am EST and 6:00-7:45pm EST. I will be on tonight at 7:45 EST to present my business: Talent Think Innovations, LLC. If you are on Periscope, follow me at: @CzarinaofHR.
To round out my list of endeavors this week, I have a new Ask Czarina up on “The Aristocracy of HR” You Tube. Have you subscribed yet? If not, subscribe now to get regular updates on future “Ask Czarina” shows. You can find my latest here.
Summer is over…practically, but there’s lots to be excited about as we slip into colder weather. Thanks for reading and supporting me. I appreciate every eye that graces this page.
Here is one of my favorite summer songs and I quote it in my latest “Ask Czarina”. Have a great weekend!
Today’s post is by guest Aristocrat contributor Lola Dart. Lola Dart is the creator of The MINTOA™ Mentality and owner of Live and Learn with Lola. She works together with clients to make their lives better by teaching them how to transform their motivations into accomplishments. Connect with Lola on Facebook and Twitter: @TheLolaDart.
My team and I had just finished revising a textbook and adding a new online video series to accompany it. The revisions and additions caused the book sales to more than triple over the previous year. As the project was coming to a close, I realized the success we were about to experience, but in turn – I was more concerned about our success as a team.
I knew that the project finished earlier than planned and used fewer resources than allotted. I also knew that the team seemed happy and satisfied with their work- but as an Industrial Engineer, I wanted to make things better and document our successful project process for the future.
My idea was to gather feedback on what I had done well as a Project Manager and what I could improve upon. I wanted to do this by having individual meetings with every team member who had worked on the project. Before I started these meetings, I reached out to a couple of team members to ask their opinion on the idea of the feedback meeting itself. Our team hadn’t conducted anything like this before – but the company had tried various ways to get input from employees in the past.
Honesty is the best policy
My team was very open and honest from the start. By telling me stories of their past feedback experiences, we were able to craft a situation that was geared towards success.
One team member shared the numerous times that feedback had been given and was not implemented. She said that: “it felt like a waste of time if the feedback wasn’t going to be used”. So, I let them know exactly how their ideas were going to be accounted for. I created a document and incorporated their feedback into it. This way, not only would our team be better served in the future – but the reach would extend to any team performing these tasks in the future.
Another team member shared the experiences he had with managers who asked for feedback and said they would be open to it; but then spent the whole meeting justifying their actions or explaining away situations. He said it can turn out to feel more like a criticism or even a battle. So, we came up with an idea. Instead of having a meeting about how well I managed, we set the scope of the meeting to be the project itself.
The feedback meetings became targeted. The scope of the meeting explored the aspects of the project that ran smoothly. Additionally, it was a chance for us to examine aspects that needed to be ironed out. The focus was on the solutions. For every issue identified by a team member, their solution was requested. The outcome of the meeting was a document shared with other teams.
While in the feedback meetings, I listened. That is the most important part. In a meeting like this, it can be so easy to turn things into a debate or argument that leaves all parties on the defense. Instead, I limited my responses to follow-up questions. When I didn’t understand something, I asked for clarification. I consistently expressed gratitude and appreciation that they took time to seriously consider how we can make our team projects better in the future. I also took a ton of notes. I let them know that their feedback was important and I was documenting it.
The simplest approach is usually the best…
As a manager, it was really helpful to learn what was working. It’s reassuring to know that some things aren’t broken and don’t need to be fixed. For example, my team liked to have check-in meetings twice a week. It made them feel connected to the project and the team. It also held them accountable to finishing their assigned tasks. They also liked the assignment spreadsheet I had created to keep track of where each piece of the puzzle was at all times. I thought that a spreadsheet might have been a little overwhelming. However, numerous team members said that they enjoyed being able to see the entire trajectory of each piece and that it held them accountable to finish their tasks – when they could see the later steps at a glance. My team also provided helpful solutions to the overall run of the meetings. For example, now we end meetings on time – even if we are in the middle of a discussion. We either hold the discussion until the next meeting or schedule a follow-up call.
After implementing these feedback meetings, I realized that I not only created a document that could be used each time I start a new project with my team, but a valuable practice to be used organization-wide. Throughout the company, projects and products are benefiting from the results of the feedback meetings I implemented.
We are a company that believes trusting and supporting the power of individuals will lead to greater things in the workplace. After more than a decade of building HR portals, we realized it was time to revolutionize the way we work, because the reality is that traditional methods are simply not meeting the needs of today’s changing workforce.
Consider the thoughts of a worker: “My work influences who I am and what becomes of me, not only as a worker but as a person. So anything that supports me in being more connected at work and more effective in life is something for me”.
The workers of today are self-taught digital managers. Outside of our working hours, we are used to having all the information we want at our fingertips through apps on our mobile devices. It doesn’t have to be different at work. People also want to be connected and trusted to contribute, without being constantly monitored. Self-service combined with intranet tried to capture this, but is cumbersome for employees, particularly for remote employees without access to computers or email. Adoption is a problem, particularly in a generationally changing workforce where millennial’s represent a growing majority of the work population.
But how do you capture this as an employer? How do you relate to this and support your own goals–and theirs– in a cohesive and non-invasive way? The answer is trust. Trust both frees and motivates.
Trust is a backbone of relationships in work and life. It is often perceived to be granted from the employer to the employee through social collaboration tools, which however are generally attached to strict guidelines or monitoring policies. Employees in turn often view these limitations as undermining the purity of that trust. Facebook or WhatsApp are popular tools among dynamic workforces, but the enterprise cannot really utilize these platforms effectively. Corporate social tools implemented and monitored from the top down are all too often unsuccessful. Workers fear exposing themselves. At best, they use them cautiously; at worst they reject them wholesale. It is a key aspect of why many HR practitioners do not get the results that they would like out of intranet and collaboration initiatives currently.
Hunite sees itself as a connecter within the “black box” of any enterprise, especially among dynamic workforces. By actually entrusting them to a tool that promotes self-organization and growth, employees can become better at what they do and can be recognized within their teams or self-made networks. Employers can positively influence this disconnected realm where there is little reach or control. The key, though, is respecting the balance between control and trust for everyone involved.
Our mission: to access the potential of workers within enterprises for the good of all. By adopting this tool, that mission can be fulfilled for both individual and enterprise. Individual workers can effectively support themselves not only in work, but also in life, while enterprises can reach out to connected workers with meaningful information in a non-invasive way.
Free from fear, workers can begin to learn—and love—an unencumbered and self-organizing way of life, while employers and HR practitioners reap the benefits of increased employee contribution, motivation, efficiency & success.
Hunite will play an important–and revolutionary–role in transforming and building competitive workforces to drive revenue. Help your people be connected in work and more effective in life!
Author Biography
Kym Lukins works as an Industry Specialist at Hunite. He investigates the needs of workers in dynamic workforces. Previous work in customer focused industries such as hospitality and retail along with study in international HR management has spurred an interest in engagement and connectivity of workers on an international level. He is a firm believer that mobile will play a huge role in improving not only the ability for people to communicate in work and life, but also the chance to balance it in a more effective and cohesive manner.
Only in the last few years has the amount of social data begun to scale, allowing data-driven individuals to begin to search for hiring trends. Within this social data, there are strong indicators of when a top performer is about to “come to market,” or pursue their next career opportunity. As a result, it’ll be the job of tomorrow’s recruiter to figure out how to leverage big data and predictive analytics to find the right candidates when they aren’t yet actively looking.
The majority of recruiters lack the time to gather all public data on each of these professionals. They lack the ability to run multivariate regressions needed to identify the one in 200,000 professionals who are both qualified for and open to a new opportunity. These recruiters will need a tool to do these things for them. Until now, no one’s done a good job of building one.
That’s why we’ve built Entelo. It takes the average recruiter a half-hour to manually collect all available information on just one candidate. Entelo does all this work for you, providing the most comprehensive view of talent available and saving you from hours of research. Entelo Search includes rich profiles of over 30 million candidates, each filled with data from social sites such as Github, Dribbble, Quora, Twitter, and more.
Entelo also uses this wealth of data to help recruiters identify those candidates who are about to change jobs, using our first-of-its-kind More Likely To Move™ filter. Our proprietary algorithm analyzes over 70 variables indicative of upcoming career changes to tell you the right candidate to speak with at the right time. We track everything from layoff announcements and M&A activity to length of time at current company and social profile activity. When a candidate is flagged as More Likely To Move™, they have a 30% likelihood of changing jobs in the next 90 days.
We feel we’ve only scratched the surface of what this data can do to help HR professionals build great teams. We launched Entelo Diversity in April, which helps you find candidates whose social profiles indicate a high probability of meeting specific gender, race or military experience requirements. It’s our hope that this latest element of our algorithm will help companies of all sizes reap the benefits of building strong, diverse teams. Studies show that a more diverse workforce is more creative, more productive and less likely to turn over.
We’d love to show you and your organization how Entelo can help you hit your hiring goals and build a great team. For your free demo of the Entelo platform, visit www.entelo.com/demo.
Author Biography
Kyle Paice runs the Entelo Marketing Team. Previously, he was the Head of Marketing for RentJuice, a real estate software company that was acquired by Zillow. Before RentJuice, Kyle built inbound marketing software as a Product Manager at HubSpot, and consulted to investment banks and other financial services institutions with Deloitte. He has a B.A. in Economics and Political Science from Boston College.
In 2002, Patrick G. Riley published “The One-Page Proposal” that became a bestselling self-help book in North America, China, Japan, and Korea, which described how the author succeeded in helping businesses all around the world using one-page proposals. In 2011, Patrick G. Riley and Joanna Weidenmiller co-founded 1-Page. The co-founders wanted to take the successful approach and founding principles of the book, and leverage technology to tackle the largest demographic with the biggest communication problem: companies and job seekers.
For every job post it is reported that companies receive an average of 250 resumes, with leading brands receiving up to several thousands of resumes every week. The problem goes beyond quantity, as the content received within a resumes doesn’t provide any indication on the future performances, fit and motivation of a candidate. HR departments and hiring managers need a new system of engagement to identify top candidates before the interview, enabling job seekers to pitch their value instead of simply providing a list of their past accomplishments.
1-Page provides the Challenge-based Assessment Platform that gamifies hiring, giving recruiters the access to predictive data for enhanced decision-making on talent. With 1-Page, companies engage candidates to compete for jobs based on their ability to solve real-time business challenges, to achieve company’s strategic objectives. Candidates’ ability to pitch their value to the company for that specific role, and propose their solution on a 1-Page Job Proposal, is at the core of the process.
Some of the largest US and global companies like First Republic Bank, BevMO!, UST Global, Orange, rely on the platform for:
Hiring talent
Engage passive candidates
Internal promotion
Open- source innovation
The platform helps the talent acquisition team to turn job descriptions into real-time business challenges that are unique and specific to the role, and share them through their ATS, customized email invitations, referral lists, and social media. Companies can track in real time the status of candidate’s progression, and leverage collaborative and automated proposal scoring (powered by Natural Language Processing technologies) to identify the best. Thanks to the innovative approach to hiring, the technology behind the scoring model, the great candidate experience delivered, and the results achieved by their enterprise clients, 1-Page has been awarded as one of the top three HR technologies in the US (HRO Today, iTalent 2014). 1-Page has also been endorsed by some of the leading experts in the field of HR technologies:
– “While I always ask candidates to describe how they’d solve a job-related project as part of the assessment, the folks at 1-Page.com have taken this idea a few steps further … candidates submit a one-page proposal summarizing how they’d handle some challenge likely to be faced on the job.”- Lou Adler, Best-selling author and CEO of The Adler Group.
– “The idea of a company engaging with a candidate through evidence of what he or she could do, rather than for what they have done in the past, is a very bright light in recruiting.” –Bill Kutik, Founder of the HR-Tech Conference, on HRE Online.
1-Page’s clients have been able to lower cost per hire by 70%, increase retention by 75% and reduce time to hire from an average of 13 to 4 weeks. With 1-Page, companies have significantly increased the quality of interviews and hires, while delivering the greatest candidate experience.
Author Biography
Joanna Weidenmiller is CEO and Co-founder of 1-Page, the next generation hiring solution that revolutionizes talent acquisition.
Successful and active woman in tech, prior to launching 1-Page Joanna was CEO and Founder of Performance Advertising, responsible for building one of the US leading outsourced direct sales and marketing firms for two Fortune 500 companies, with a successful exit in 2007. Joanna moved back to the US after spending 5 years in China where she developed and led technologies in the mobile and e-commerce fields. On top of building 1-Page, Joanna most recently served as Managing Partner for Hubert Burda Media (one of the largest magazine and digital publishers in the world) in China, where she headed the expansion and led all strategic operations. Joanna earned her BA degree in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia where she was a Full Scholarship athlete and National rower. Joanna was recruited to the FBI out of college, where she trained police in the Middle East.
