Index of Human Resources

As of late I seem to get theinspiration for our blog posts from the local signs on churches of alldenominations. The other day I passed one that said “Don’t be too open minded,your brain might fall out.” Really is that what they meant to say? Take a moment and consider yourorganization. I am not concerned whether you are a small to medium sizedenterprise or a member of the Fortune 1000, I...  Read More

Almost every college career services department in the country pushes to area employers the benefits of using their internship program. On the first look it is a no brainer for the corporation. They get added manpower during heavy workload times and they can usually get it without any financial impact on the corporation. For the student it provides them with some work experience in the real world...  Read More

Turn to almost any organization in the country and a familiar thread is going to be heard - What is the ROI (Return on Investment) for this project? Human Resources is no different. Through the works of Bersin & Associates, who in their 2011 report " The Best Practices for the High Impact HR Organization " determined that the top challenge for HR Management was the ability to measure HR programs...  Read More

Over the past week I have been going through some family issues which began with a medical emergency last Friday. Everyone we talked to from our family practitioner to the ER medical team believed that the signs pointed towards one thing. When the surgeons went in to operate on Saturday morning, they found an entirely different problem was manifested in the same environment. Upon reflection we do...  Read More

While we all see, read, and scan countless blog posts on a daily basis, how many stand out? And why does a certain post stand out? Recently, I read an excellent post on Google Plus (link provided at the end of this post), and not only the title but the message have remained with me. The question posed by the post was, should we banish the word “boss” from our business vocabulary? There are so...  Read More

In the LinkedIn groups (TLS-TOC Lean & Six Sigma in particular) there has been an ongoing conversation about when you merge the three. In the course of the discussion we posted a comment regarding an output from a seminar we were facilitating which talked about an organization in which the job requisition was reviewed and approved three times by the same person in a hiring effort. One of...  Read More

For the past two months there has been a running discussion in the Linked:HR group on LinkedIn regarding why more HR professionals do not have a degree or background in Business. It has been a lively discussion to say the least. However we were struck by one of the latest responses in which the member stated "HR nowadays is an organizational "warm and fuzzy" atmosphere. No need for business...  Read More

Interesting pronouncement, but I assure you you that it did not come from my mouth to heaven's ears. Several years ago when I thought about trying to return to the full time corporate side of HR, a seasoned recruiter made the comment after looking at my resume. He was basing this on the fact that since graduating from college I have been in a number of positions within a number of industries. But...  Read More

For those in the Christian faith today is Good Friday, the day we recognize the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. I am not sure why we call it Good Friday, but that is a discussion for another day. It does represent for me a good day to contemplate, to look forward and backward at what I have achieved and what I still aspire to achieve. Over the last week or so a number of things have happened that...  Read More

Over the past almost 7 years that we have been blogging int he HR space we have made much about the bad decision by corporate management to rely solely on the recruitment of passive candidates to fulfill their talent management needs. Now Yahoo has reportedly taken this to a new level - Not only can you not work outside the office, you have to have ivory tower credentials to boot. Lets get some...  Read More

It has been an interesting week, between Marissa Mayer's clamp down on telecommuters at Yahoo and Sheryl Sandberg's pitch that women sabotage their own careers. In both arenas there seems to be a criterion missing: how do you view your human capital in your organization? Are they a liability or are they an asset? Let's look at the two events separately. Marissa Mayer contends that in order to...  Read More

Every once in a while you read an article or see a post that makes you say “did someone really say that out loud or put that in print?” That was my reaction when I read an article quoting the CEO of the American Management Association regarding a survey of American corporate leaders that concluded that U.S. workers just don’t have what it takes. They specifically focused on areas like...  Read More

Awhile back we posted a blog entry in this space based on the marque of a local church. When I drove by it the other day the announcement of this Sunday's sermon was on the marque and is the title of this post. I hear everyday people telling me that they know things need to change within the organization, but it will take time and they will wait it out until the organization gets around to...  Read More

We had in one of the first posts here asked you to define what you thought HR Excellence was. From the level of responses I am assuming ( I know the problems with assumptions) that you are having a hard time coming to some sort of consensus. So let me tell you what I feel the components of the definition of HR excellence are: Achieving HR EXCELLENCE is the result of: CARING more about your...  Read More

One of the blogs I read each week is that of Ben Eubank's Upstart HR. In his post for the week he posed the question shown in the title above. For your consideration here is the text of his latest blog. After the text of Ben's post we will add some after thoughts of our own on the topic. So maybe you read half a dozen human resources blogs, or maybe this is the only one you follow. Why do...  Read More

The Wrong Paradigm Over the last week or so I have seen three different discussions from colleagues that I really respect that cause me to believe that much of our society and especially the business sector are still chasing what I fervently believe to be the wrong paradigm. In the first instance a colleague posed the question of whether or not an organization should focus on its ...  Read More

While checking my LinkedIn groups this morning I found this post from Seth Godin At a recent seminar, a woman who helps run a community college stood up to ask a question. "Well, the bad news," she said, "is that we have to let everyone in. And the truth is, many of these kids just can't be the leaders you're describing, can't make art. We need people to do manual work, and it's those...  Read More

To my HR purist friends I apologize if you think I believe that HR does not have a vital role within our organizations.I am in no way equating HR to playing the child game of house. What I am suggesting is that there is a new visitor in the neighborhood. For some time I have had some elementary interest in a new tool to increase employee engagement called gamification. It came to the forefront...  Read More

On two separate times in the past week, my inbox contained entries which centered around the image that the corporation puts forth to the marketplace. In each one to some degree the organizations involved forgot what their purpose is -- to acquire and maintain customers. To do that we need to have the "right person, in the right job, at the right time and in the right place." Consider these...  Read More

http://www.editorialaresta.com/autors.php?autor_id=66&lang=es McCann, R.M. (2012). Ageism at work: The role of communication in a changing workplace , Editorial Aresta, Girona, Spain. (book published in English, Spanish, and Catalan) McCann, R.M. (2012). Discriminació laboral per raons d'edat (2012). ISBN : 9788497886130. Editorial Aresta, Girona, Espana. (Catalan version).  Read More

I read a recent blog post by author and leadership expert Erika Andersen. The title of the post was “Why It Feels So Terrible to Be Managed.” Andersen shared two recommendations but one has stayed with me: Be the manager you’d like to have. How often do you wonder why your boss does the things he or she does? Why does the person show his or her anger and yell at employees? Why doesn’t the boss...  Read More

Those of you who are old enough to remember the 1960's TV Show Mission: Impossible will remember that every show began with the following phrase: Good morning, Mr. Phelps..... Your mission, Jim, should you decide to accept it, is to make XXXXXXXXXX. As always, should you or any of your IM Force be caught or killed, the secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions. This tape will...  Read More

So, today is January 10 of a new year. If you put any credibility into the information collected by Gallup (and I do), we have so far this year lost $10 billion in potential productivity from the direct and indirect effects of employee disengagement based on their estimate that disengagement costs the U.S. economy $350 billion per year. Is it just me or does that seem like a pretty significant...  Read More

Every year my wife and I have a tradition of attending the supposed "final tour" for B.B. King, and as usual last night he sang his hit "The Thrill is Gone." In listening to it last night I began, based on some comments from some of my HR peers, to wonder if that is HR's problem. Have the majority of our peers - deep down inside - lost that thrill about the role HR plays within our organizations?...  Read More

New Years is always interesting. You look forward and you look back, or at least I do. My mentor, Freya, has taught me a lot about spending more time looking forward and less looking back. Her philosophy is incorporating the valuable lessons and leaving the rest behind. Every day represents a new opportunity so you should embrace it. I don’t know about the rest of you, but 2012 seemed like a...  Read More

I admit it - I have an addiction. Back in 2001 I was introduced to the writings of Kathleen O'Neal Gear and her husband W. Michael Gear, who have written a series of 23 historical fiction books centered around the lives of the North American Native Americans (http://www.gear-gear.com ). They are fast reads but full of twists and turns. Their latest one is called People of the Back Sun in which...  Read More

Here we are on the weekend before Christmas and the Iowa Supreme Court handed us an early "gift" Before I explain what the gift was, let me take you back in time to when Bobby Darin was still performing and he sag the following words: "WelI … I don’t know what you got But it’s got me and baby I’m hooked Like a fish in the sea. You make angles call from above. You could make the Devil fall in...  Read More

Here we are on the weekend before Christmas and the Iowa Supreme Court handed us an early "gift" Before I explain what the gift was, let me take you back in time to when Bobby Darin was still performing and he sag the following words: "WelI … I don’t know what you got But it’s got me and baby I’m hooked Like a fish in the sea. You make angles call from above. You could make the Devil fall in...  Read More

This afternoon we continued our family tradition and attended a performance by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, who introduced a new show entitled the Lost Christmas Eve. The center piece of the performance was a story of a business man who years earlier had the unfortunate luck of losing his wife during child birth and having a supposedly disabled child who he essentially disowned. It was a fitting...  Read More

That statement is from the young man in the embedded video from a U.K. based movement called Engaged for Growth, a national employee engagement initiative. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqO3sfRZDAE I was intrigued by the elegant simplicity of the message. I was also impressed that the U.K. has recognized the importance of this phenomenon and strategy in making a difference. The young man...  Read More