by Janine Nicole Dennis | Feb 12, 2014 | Business, Entrepreneur, Featured, HR Innovation, Human Resources, Life, Talent Management
Image from Flickr
One of the things we HR practitioners get dinged on consistently is our ability to be flexible. Yes, there are compliance pieces and yet other things that we must oversee and manage in HR, but is there no flexibility in how we roll out our programs, initiatives and policies?
Being in business has taught me that one of the most important things we need to be able to do is “pivot”. The definition of “pivot” as a verb is “to turn on or around from a central point”. In HR, we are the central point in the organization. It is the place from which all operational and transactional aspects of the business’s workforce emanate.
When you are asked to step slightly out of your comfort zone which is standing right at that central point- do you?
1) Tell your business partners an emphatic “no”.
or
2) Hear your business partners out and find ways to stand at your central point while pivoting to allow them some flexibility in how they accomplish what you need them to.
Pivoting in business is no longer a best practice-it is the way we need to support our partners in doing business. Owners of businesses have to pivot all of the time whether it is regarding the direction of the business or who they market a product to. Doing things the same way with a sentiment of rigidity, control and authority is no longer the way we need to support the business. Just as business is changing so should the discipline of HR and how we do things.
The key to success is to have a basis by which you operate but not to impede progress for the sake of rules or compliance. Instead of saying “no” try listening, discussing and providing a new path for your partners to achieve their expected outcomes.
Consider these scenarios…
Has an employee asked you for some flextime to deal with personal obligations lately? Ask yourself this, are they a good employee and will this adversely impact the run of the business? If your answer is “no”, pivot and offer your employee some flexibility.
Does one of your hiring managers want to try a new platform for recruiting a specific professional that may cost more than what you usually pay for advertising? Pivot. Ask questions, find out more and offer he or she some alternatives if the option they have suggested isn’t budget-friendly.
I’m not just looking at you HR, this also applies to those running businesses that haven’t figured out the importance of pivoting. For all of your business savvy and vision, sometimes the reality of business or market conditions is very different. We are all part of an economy where the needs of the customer and the demand for products and services are rapidly changing.
Would you rather to hold on to a vision that no longer translates to a profitable business or might it make sense to pivot and explore new ways of serving your customers?
These are the types of considerations that businesses and those that support business owners need to be mulling over in 2014 and beyond. Pivoting is a business imperative not a new year’s resolution.
Here’s how you can work your way to pivoting today:
1) Start listening to customers, business partners, associates more.
2) Take every concern or suggestion you receive seriously and think about ways you can make each situation easier for your partners without forsaking you position.
3) Discuss possible alternatives with your customers/partners and allow for their input on how you reach the desired outcome.
4) Enjoy the fruits of having more collaborative relationships, because you were able to consider solutions and viewpoints other than your own agenda.
How will you pivot this year and how can I help you?
by Janine Nicole Dennis | Jan 20, 2014 | Business, Entrepreneur, Featured, HR Innovation, Human Resources, Personal, Talent Management, The Aristocracy of HR
Image courtesy of EdrinWilliams.com
I think it fair to start off 2014 addressing what I am doing and what my continued purpose is for being socially visible. In January of 2013, I started my own business called Talent Think Innovations, LLC. In addition, to having this new business I remain employed by Brookhaven National Laboratory. My move to start a business in lieu of working full-time was a goal and not something sparked by blogging or my involvement in social media.
Plain and simple, I knew after my last position in healthcare that my long-term goal and insurance plan for both my sanity and professional prowess was to be my own boss and call the shots.
So why am I still working full-time?
It’s quite simple, I have bills to pay, mouths to feed, and I still enjoy being a practitioner. Not everyone has the luxury of being able to quit a job where they are gainfully employed to go into business for themselves. I much rather keep myself afloat and gradually build my business for longevity and success.
I essentially get to have the best of both worlds by keeping my practitioner acumen sharp while expanding both my mind and capabilities through my business. It’s a win-win.
Who is Talent Think Innovations, LLC?
Talent Think Innovations, LLC is a Talent Management Consulting firm dedicated to helping start-ups as well as small to mid-size businesses focus on developing smart, innovative talent strategy, policies and cultures that value talent and put them first. This business is the heart and soul of everything I have preached on The Aristocracy of HR and beyond. It is about helping businesses operate in a way that makes sense and that focuses on talent-centric practices, programs and policies that truly favor the success of the workforce.
After working a few places and in HR, I have seen everything HR shouldn’t be about and how we not only undermine our value but also facilitate a diminished value of the business with poor practices from the perspective of both candidates and employees. I have long been known by co-workers and superiors as a change facilitator and initiator; always looking to improve or create something better. Unfortunately, my experience has also shown me that all of that enthusiasm, passion and knowledge can go but so far in an organization with the impact of politics, bureaucracy and ignorance.
I have decided that I want to work with the organizations that have made missteps and need help regaining inspiration and traction. This is my call to action.
What’s next?
They say you are not truly in business until you start making money and have clients. Well, I accomplished that prior to my one year anniversary. I am working with some fantastic people and even more important there is synergy between my philosophy and my partners.
You all know me best and first as the “CzarinaofHR” reigning over the popular Aristocracy of HR blog. It is finally on its own domain and also acting as the official blog for my company. It is only right that my two voices be unified on one platform. I will continue to blog my heart out as your “Czarina” as well as on my contributor platforms like Performance I Create, TLNT, and Achievers.
You can also find me on my new You Tube show “Ask Czarina” where I will make the blog experience a little more personal in 2014.
Lastly, in case you missed it, I am speaking now and so you shouldn’t be surprised to see me at select events or venues sharing what I know.
Regarding social media, my theme for 2014 and beyond is to “engage with a purpose”. For my business, brand and network purposes I must remain active, but how active and how frequently will vary. There’s something called life and while the digital life is great, real life is even better.
In conclusion, my aim is to help people and businesses whether through the blog or my services. If I can help you or anyone you know don’t hesitate to reach out.
I look forward to walking this new journey of 2014 with you. Thank you for your continued support!
Janine Truitt
The Aristocracy of HR
by Janine Nicole Dennis | Aug 15, 2013 | 2, HR Innovation
I had the honor and privilege of attending a regional TEDx East NYC talk here in New York City on Tuesday evening. The talk was on trade and innovation. There were three accomplished speakers on the roster and a room of professionals from various industries, walks of life and of which were almost completely monochromatic figuratively and physically speaking.
I was one of two people of color in the room. None of which precluded me from taking in the experience and meeting people, but it was intriguing and a moment-of-reflection kind of occurrence.
The first speaker was Nathan Eagle, CEO of Jana. His work involves connecting major corporations to customer bases in emerging markets for the purposes of marketing their products and services. In exchange, for the customer opting in to share their demographic information along with consumer preferences- he reimburses them money for towards their mobile airtime in their currency. Since people in these emerging markets spend 10% of their daily wages on mobile usage it is a valuable incentive to receive money to defray the costs.
In essence, by implementing something as simple as redirecting how corporations capture and utilize consumer data- he is putting the control as to how it is shared in the consumer’s hands- and creating wealth for people in emerging markets.
He piloted this in Kenya and the first year he did this, he paid out of pocket to these consumers. You know what it cost him? $240 dollars was the cost to reimburse these consumers. That is a negligible amount of money on his part for something with profound economic and human impact.
I’ll come back to Nathan in a second, but let’s examine the next speaker, Timothy Wu. His talk was about a scarcity and surplus and what innovators need to know from a societal perspective about solving problems for a society conditioned by surplus.
In his talk, he suggested that we have been a society of scarcity for several centuries whereby many needs were unmet and the ultimate goal of citizens was to achieve more- whether that was a better life, more money or possessions. Tim went on to suggest that we are no longer a society of unmet needs. He purports that we now have the resources, the money, knowledge and all other things that generations of the past worked towards. His feeling is that we are now a post-scarcity society entering the era of surplus.
The era of surplus is comprised of the notion that we are in abundance of information, knowledge, resources, money and all basic needs are met or overly met. This being the case, Timothy made the case that today’s innovators will have to solve the problem of surplus in the variety that it presents itself.
I took that to mean that innovators will have to simplify what was made complex by previous generations in their pursuit of having more. Those businesses that can seemingly give people more time in the day or provide a service or product that makes a complex process easier will be widely sought after.
How does this connect with Nathan’s talk?
Nathan is the product of a post-scarcity society. He could easily cater to helping big corporations extrapolate big data that lead to sales and make his millions, but instead he has decided to create and distribute wealth in countries where post-scarcity is laughable, because for all intents and purposes- they are still living in the nightmare of scarcity. Timothy’s perspective of an overall post-scarcity society is superficially intriguing until you realize that it isn’t true for the majority for emerging countries farless first-world countries like the U.S.
Scarcity of proper education, adequate wages to sustain a family, and access to food supply is still in abundance during what may appear to be an era of surplus in the U.S and even globally. Essentially, we are at a point where we have everything and nothing at the same time. As a society, the goal has become achieving equilibrium, because neither the extreme of scarcity or surplus works for us as a whole.
The last speaker was Simon Winchester. He is a newly branded citizen of the U.S. and rather educated on the fundamental reasons why the U.S. is a great place to live. His anecdotes and historical references are too vast to recall here, but what resonated was his pride in our past, present and future as a global innovator. He loves the U.S. and presented it in a way that left me with a renewed sense of enlightenment and pride in our country.
In summary, it was an amazing event with mind-bending concepts. To circle back to my observation about the lack of diversity in the crowd- I must say this- you don’t begin to truly level the playing ground until knowledge is shared consistently and abundantly with everyone. I am unique in that my entire life has been spent in search of answers and learning and I was brought up to seek that out. People that don’t do what I do are not less important, intelligent or innovative- it simply comes down to not being made aware of possibilities. Information is hoarded and cloaked in our society and it is shared sparingly to restrict certain groups of people from knowing and becoming more. Having a discussion with those that are already “in-the-know” doesn’t begin to solve society’s issues of fair and equitable knowledge transfer. A part of me left there feeling like the depth and importance of this particular conversation was limited to 70 people that it doesn’t adversely affect or have an effect at all.
On the bright side of things, these gentleman are asking life’s fundamental and human questions, creating the answers and sharing it. It is rare and if many more did what they are doing- we could all agree that we are truly in an era of surplus.
I asked myself some questions based on what I heard and I have to soul search for the answers:
1) As an HR practitioner, entrepreneur and citizen, how can I find a way to create and distribute wealth? Wealth in my terms could mean money but it could be in many forms of currency ( i.e. knowledge)
2) Am I living in scarcity or surplus and if it is the latter- how do I find a common ground where I live in neither extreme?
3) I’m always eternally thankful for what I have, but how can I fully appreciate the resources that I have?
The answers to these questions are emerging in my head and I’m glad I attended theTEDx talk to start the conversation.
Janine Truitt
The Aristocracy of HR
by Janine Nicole Dennis | Jun 24, 2013 | HR Innovation
Amidst all of the HR knowledge transfer at last week’s SHRM National Conference in Chicago was an expo hall full of vendors catering to everything from health and wellness to applicant tracking systems. It became an overwhelming experience merely walking the expo hall and hearing all of the pitches and opportunities to give up your contact information in exchange for an iPad mini or something else.
Alas, I decided to focus my efforts on a single area. My focus was on technology that are aiding us HR practitioners in doing our jobs better. In my quest, to find the “techies in the ruff” I identified some innovative gems that I want to share with you.
Benefits
I had the great pleasure of meeting with the founders and executives of a company named ALEX The Jellyvision Benefits Counselor. Consider this: you start at a new company and your are sitting through employee orientation. The benefits representative is giving you the rundown on what you are covered for. Now, ask yourself these questions: How much pertinent information did you retain? Do you understand everything there is to know about your benefits?
If I had to guess your answer, it is probably “no” and “no”. As an HR practitioner that has been a new hire a few times, I can admit that I have not always understood my benefits and all of the coverages that come along with it. What the good people at Jellyvision were able to do was to create a virtual benefits counselor that counsels employees on their benefit offerings through the Jellyvision platform. Alex walks you through deductibles, copayments and is happy to stop or explain further anything you don’t understand. Your explanation of benefits comes in plain language with cartoon skits to both humor and inform you in the best way possible. I found myself extremely impressed and laughing during my demo.
If you can spare some continuous improvement dollars for the year, this is a product worth looking into.
HR Apps Provider
I wasn’t planning on visiting with this next vendor largely due to the fact that I didn’t know they existed. Thanks to a colleague of mine, I am so glad I found this product. We all know that cloud software is the future. I would even argue that cloud software is the present. While many have not caught on, there is no question that the flexibility and bandwidth of the cloud is going to be unmatched for sometime.
We can also speak to both the popularity and convenience of apps. The marriage of everything you love about the cloud, HR systems and apps are in HR Cloud. HR Cloud is a company that develops a cloud-based HR management suite that engages a company’s workforce with tools like onboarding and performance assessment with plug-and-play usability and cloud-based scalability. Since the company has developed an intuitive suite of HR cloud apps with an easy, self-service HR experience, HR Cloud truly empowers an organization with social tools that promote connectivity, ideas, support and recognition while also boosting employee participation, morale and productivity.
Productivity? Yes, please.
Who doesn’t want to be more productive? In fact, if you have been looking at things like mobile optimization-this is likely a good place to start.
Video Interviewing convenience has arrived!
Here’s another gem for productivity, rivs.com. Rivs.com is a Chicago-based company that is getting into the video interviewing game. With this product, you can conduct written, recorded or live interviews with candidates. Candidates can schedule themselves to suit their schedules and interviews are easily shared with hiring managers for their review. I can see this as a great pre-screening tool especially for those of you that work in high-volume industries like retail. As a recruiter, this has me swooning, because it would cut the time I spend on in-person interviews down by more than half.
Let’s talk rewards and recognition
If you haven’t looked at your rewards, recognition and performance initiatives lately, chances are you haven’t noticed that employees aren’t impressed with the diamond encrusted watch or gold-plated pen you’ve been giving them in return for their efforts the past three decades. I know you mean well, but it is well documented that most performance practices are failures and rewards and recognition aren’t doing much for rewarding or retaining your employees.
Instead, why not check out Achievers. They have created a system that connects your performance indicators with rewards, recognition and engagement metrics. It allows you to socialize the recognition of your employees by allowing for transparency in your recognition initiatives while also allowing for things like peer-to-peer recognition. Essentially, your performance program will no longer be a once a year, bane of everyone’s existence task. With Achievers, it becomes a year long spree of recognition and the added bonus is your employees can choose gifts that meet their needs. The gifts are vast as they have relationships with everyone from restaurants to charities.
Why not make performance and recognition fun while being able to provide valuable analytics to senior management?
Social Branding/Jobseeking
How do you know what your former employees are saying about you? Yes, you could just do a google search, but why not check out Glassdoor. Glassdoor can be used from the perspective of both the job seeker and employer. For jobseekers you can get a real account of what a day in the life is like at a prospective employer. For employers it is a great opportunity to manage your online presence and message. Glassdoor like its name gives both the jobseeker and employer a transparent view of the good, bad and indifferent. From anonymous salary information to reviews of company culture this tool is fantastic for improving how you serve your most important customers- the prospective hire/applicant and your employees.
Depending on who you speak to technology is either helping or hindering HR processes. I believe that good vendor choices, proper implementation and a decent understanding of how technology can enhance what you do can go a long way in improving your value proposition to the business.
I hope you will check these vendors out and see what they can do for you.
Janine Truitt
