Just Joan

Posts Tagged ‘HR’

If you have read this blog before, you know that I like to tell stories. At my advancing age there are so many of them, and social media connections help me remember and revisit them to see if I learned anything at the time, or can still learn now.

So when a Facebook friend posted this comment (about a picture of an alligator), it reminded me of my own time at the police academy.

When I attended the academy, candidates were required to meet certain standards in the following areas – academic, physical agility, and marksmenship. Each area had a minimum score that the candidate had to reach during a final test in order to pass and become certified. If you weren’t certified, you could not work as a police officer.

The physical agility test was a series of tasks, like running a mile in a certain time, and doing a minimum number of push-ups and sit-ups. When it was my turn, I did whatever minimum number it was to pass, and then stopped.

“Hey!” yelled one of my instructors as I was getting up after doing my minimum sit-ups. “I know you can do more!”

“Sure, ” I replied, “but what for? I’m not going to win any agility award, and I passed. I don’t see the point in doing any additional.”

Then I walked away, leaving the instructor scowling.

HR pundits and bloggers often discuss how important it is to try, and how people shouldn’t stop themselves from achieving more.  But I’m not sure if it’s necessary to always try to be on top. It may be just as important to minimize your effort in some area in order to shine brighter in another (I did win the academic award with the highest score in my academy class).

Sometimes, I think, good enough really is just that.

Do you?

(Friends – some of you know that I am starting a new life chapter. I am in the process of moving to Florida, where I hope to meet and work with a whole new group of HR and social media people. But packing and moving is time consuming, so I am going to apologize for not posting my blog for the next month or so. Bear with me – I’ll be back!)

www.someecards.com

Some of you may remember that I poked fun at SHRM a while back for booking Michael J. Fox as a keynote speaker. He’s a purely inspirational speaker, and my argument at the time was that there were more pressing issues concerning the field of human resources to be discussed, and that he wasn’t the person we needed to discuss them.

This week, while looking into Transform, the new conference hosted by TLNT, I sadly discovered another reason to argue against the use of  high-end motivational or inspirational speakers: they drive the cost of conference attendance too high for the average HR practitioner to attend.

Now, to be fair to TLNT, I can’t say for sure that their speakers are purely inspirational in content, and maybe they all will have some real world, practical solutions that a practitioner can take back to work and immediately implement.

Okay, the moon is made of cheese.

I know this for sure, though – their 2 day conference cost is a whopping $1200-1600. That’s as high as SHRM’s national conference, with far fewer sessions and speaker choices. They don’t even have Hall & Oates or Keith Urban.

I don’t need to pay a huge sum of money to be inspired. Inspiration is all around me, cost-free. Here are some examples of every day people who have inspired me recently:

• Jennifer DuRocher – a flyball and Facebook friend who recently lost over 140 pounds. Her incredible story was recently featured on a local news station.
• Bryan Wempen – as the host of Drive Thru HR he is familiar name to many of you. Bryan (a grandfather!) decided to get fit and start running, so he could participate in a memorial race for a friend. He recently completed his first 1/2 marathon.
• Branden Ginsberg – yes, he’s related (stepson), but after a long battle with drug addiction and a prison term, he is drug-free, healthy, and has kept his job for over 2 years.

All of these people motivate and inspire me to do better things. I don’t have to pay a cent or pack a suitcase.

What about you? Is there someone in your life that you find inspirational? Leave a comment and share the story.

Today my blog is 2 years old.

My first blog was the typical “I’m gonna try this blogging thing”, but my first substantive content blog came a few days later with “What HR Can Learn From Good Pet Ownership”.  It was about my dog Freckles (far left in the picture), who had just died.  Thinking about that first post made me realize that this blog has become a big part of my life, just as my dogs are.

If  Just Joan were a dog, it would be leaving the clumsy-uncontrolled-spontaneous-lots of accidents phase, and settling into a more adult behavioral pattern. Energetic, but not spastic. Curious, but not destructive.

I think I have made it past the puppy stage and into the big girl pants. Part of the reason for this is that I have had some great trainers along the way. They are HR pros, bloggers, friends and others who I admire, and who have encouraged me with comments, fellowship, and advice. If you have ever left a comment on my blog or Facebook, or tweeted, re-tweeted, liked, or +1′d me, then you are a person who has helped me come this far, and I am deeply grateful to you.

Woof.

(I am also posting today for the Human Resource Association of Greater Detroit – www.hragdblog.org – “Do You Have A Paul Revere Or A William Dawes Network?”  It would be great to hear from you there, too!)

HR people love to write about customer service. I’ve blogged about it before, and so have many others. TLNT blogged just last week about the importance of customer service to the business bottom line, and why ensuring that employees have the proper customer service skills is ultimately the responsibility of HR.

But while HR is quick to discuss how important customer satisfaction is to employee satisfaction, someone else is telling a lot of companies that good customer service means continually and meaninglessly apologizing to the customer.

A couple of weekends ago the power in my house went out for 5 hours during a wind storm in the metro Detroit area. Maybe not exactly a wind storm, because winds were about 16 mph, with gusts up to 40 mph. Call that “medium windy”, at best. It’s not unusual for me to lose  electric power when the weather is windy. Or snowy. Or rainy. Or just about anything, because I lose power all the time.

The next day I received a pre-recorded call from DTE energy. The recorded voice said she “hoped my power was back on”, and apologized for any inconvenience that was caused. Does that mean their company doesn’t even know if they’ve fixed the power, but it’s okay since they apologized?

I don’t even care if they apologize (especially with a pre-recording) for causing me inconvenience, I just want them to fix whatever is causing my power to go out so frequently.

Other companies have the same “tell them you’re sorry and they won’t be unhappy” attitude.

About a month ago I began experiencing difficulties with AT&T U-Verse, after a couple of years of pretty exemplary service. It took several phone calls and 4 different technician visits to finally fix the problem. One of those phone calls took almost an hour, during which time I was placed on hold several times. Each time the customer service rep apologized profusely to me for placing me on hold. Each technician that visited my home was apologetic for the one who came before and for the multiple mistakes that were made. The AT&T employees were exceptionally c0urteous.

Call me crazy, but I don’t think that the multiple apologies from those employees were helpful at all, given the inability of this company to fix a service problem over a month’s time, several phone calls, and several visits to my home. In fact, those apologies are annoying when you have heard them 4, 5, or 6 times without results.

HR, tell your employees to apologize to customers once, and then spend the bulk of their time cheerfully fixing the problem.

Unless your employee sings like Brenda Lee.

Of all the HR conference sessions and workshops I attended this fall (I wrote about couple of them here and here), the one that spoke to me the most loudly was the Talent Anarchy HackLab at HRevolution. As facilitated by Jason Lauritsen and Joe Gerstandt (the team that is Talent Anarchy), session participants were asked to hack an existing HR system.

Wait . . . what?

If you are anything like me, you think that hacking into a system means sneaking and subterfuge in order to create some type of chaos or perform an illegality. On a computer. Not so, explained Jason.  He briefly discussed the evolution of the hack, which in its basic form means to take an existing system and stretch it beyond its original bonds to create a better system. As succinctly explained by The Recruiting Animal while I was live tweeting the session:

So TA offered the group an opportunity to choose and hack one of a pre-approved list of HR systems, accepting the presumption that they were all broken. The group was informed that they would discover some hacks or tweaks that they could take back to their jobs and implement immediately. No asking for approval, no developing a budget.

Despite an impassioned plea (which I fully endorsed) by China Gorman  to choose exit interviews (the whole group had to work on the same system), the class voted – by a narrow margin – to tackle performance evaluations.

So 4 groups of 5 people started discussing performance evaluations – what they should be, what they could be. Groups were instructed to break up and reform 3 times, so everyone could hear and use the ideas from all of the previous discussion. I can’t recreate those discussions here, but I can restate what I found amazing about the process and the end result.

At the end of our time, the whole gathering had essentially agreed on what performance evaluations should and could be. In summary, we found that performance evaluations should

• be a conversation, not a check mark
• be in the moment or in real time, not on an annual or semi-annual basis
• involve managers, customers, co-workers, not just an immediate supervisor or manager
• be owned by the employee, not HR or their boss

On Monday I walked into my nearby United States Post Office to mail a package. Yes, it was a federal holiday (Columbus Day), and yes, I knew the post office was closed. I went there because they have a cool little self-service center that is open 24/7, so one can always mail smaller packages and buy stamps.

This self serve center is located directly in front of the door of this particular post office. But because I was a police officer for many years, I don’t like to sit or stand with my back to the door in public places. So while I was touching the screen and entering all of the information necessary to mail my package and buy stamps, I was actually standing sideways so I could simultaneously keep an eye on the entry door.

Sure enough, during the few minutes it took me to complete my transactions, three different people walked into the building, then abruptly stopped right behind me. Then their jaws dropped, because this was what they saw:

Yes, the post office was CLOSED.

Now, I’m not faulting these people for forgetting (or maybe not even knowing) that it was a federal holiday and that government offices and banks were closed. I’m pretty sure I have done that myself. What surprised, and ultimately irritated, me was that after I smiled and told each one that the post office was closed for Columbus Day, each of those three people complained about these workers having the day off.

Really, people? Whatever you are holding in your hand that needs postal attention is far smaller than the package I’m mailing – so why don’t you just wait for me to finish and do it yourself?

Given the independent status of  the USPS, I’m not sure if their employees are technically government workers or not, but why do people think that they have a right to complain about the worker benefit package?   When I was a working police officer, people who didn’t like my service would say, “I pay your salary.”  No, you don’t pay my salary. It’s paid by the City of Garden City. You, citizen, elect officials who hire administrators who determine my salary after negotiations with my union. If you have a grievance, it’s with your elected official, not with the government worker. Otherwise, I would ask you for a raise.

Also , if the government  believes so strongly in the importance of an event that it creates a holiday to commemorate it,  why not give its employees the day off? If it doesn’t, is the creation of a “holiday”  just a meaningless gesture?

At the end of the recently concluded HRevolution conference unconference  event, Steve Boese asked the audience for their thoughts and insights. Two different people made comments that essentially said that they wished there had been less HR content. One person asked for other disciplines (such as marketing) to be represented, and one asked for more tech-related content.

Those comments peeved me a little bit, perhaps because these comments came not long after I read this tweet from an attendee:

The thing that bothered me the most about this tweet is the assertion that the term “engage” is somehow an HR word that no one else uses.  Apparently the tweeter has never read The Unmarketing Blog (“Stop Marketing. Start Engaging”), or the Brian Solis book Engage!, or heard of the digital technology event “Engage!”

The verb engage has several different definitions, but HR pros, marketers, and others use to word to mean an emotional, interactive experience between people. Thesaurus.com lists the terms “involve” and “engross” as synonyms for this particular meaning, but nowhere does thesaurus.com list the word “participate” as a synonym for engage.

This is obviously because HR pros know that there is a vast difference between an employee who “participates” and one who is “engaged”.  While I understand that buzzwords (or buzz-phrases, like “seat at the table”) are overused, and have myself written against using jargon, sometimes the reason a particular word achieves buzzword status is because it is the only word that definitionally fits the situation.

She may be right about people/talent,  although it seems to me that both are used pretty frequently by HR pros, making “talent” less of a buzzword and more an alternative.

Right after I left HRevolution I attended a workshop in Phoenix, where I spoke on using social media to communicate employee benefits. The terms SPD, SBC, wellness, and compliance were thrown around the room with aplomb. No one complained that the people in the workshop should use words that people outside of HR (or benefits administration) do. No one tweeted that attendees should say, “can’t understand this paper, not  SPD”, or “don’t  get sued, not compliance”.

If you don’t want to hear about HR at an HR event, perhaps a marketing, finance, or technology event will better fit your needs. You may hear some buzzwords, though.

My friend Tammy Colson calls Steve Browne an “insane genius”.  She is correct.

As the Director of the recently concluded Ohio HR  conference, he chose a fun theme – HR Rocks – and then had vendors, presenters, and attendees spend their time immersed in the theme, listening to, looking at, and even dressed like rock stars. Steve himself opened the show in wig and with guitar in hand. (See the video of his opening act here.) There was no way to confuse this conference with any other.

I spent most of my conference time sitting in on sessions that focused on HR as a business function, not as a compliance, benefits, or health care administration department. The best of these sessions were “Making A Business Case To the C-Suite”, by Mark Stelzner, and “Transform From HR Leader to Business Leader” by Jennifer McClure. Both speakers were excellent as they discussed HR pros as business people first and foremost, and how speaking business language, not HR language, was one of the keys to strategic business success.

The most important thing I heard during my 2 day experience came during Jennifer’s session. She was discussing the need for HR pros to look at themselves as business functionaries. She used Steve Browne as an example:  ”Ask Steve what he does for a living. He won’t say, “I’m the Executive Director of HR for LaRosa’s. He says, ‘I make pizza.’ ” Jennifer’s point was, of course, that Steve helps run the business – which is a chain of pizzerias. Making pizza is the main function of LaRosa’s, and Steve’s function in the long run. That kind of thinking is what HR needs more of.

It also shows that Steve is a genius, with or without the insane.

Right after I graduated from law school I went to work for a large, “silk-stocking” law firm, where all of the lawyers were stressed and overworked, and large corporate clients paid big bucks to keep them that way.

One lawyer I met in my early days at the firm was different from most of my colleagues. He was bright and cheerful; always ready with help and advice. It was surprising and refreshing, given that he practiced environmental law, one of those practice areas where you deal with unreasonable clients and extensive, obtuse government regulations.

So I asked him one day how he maintained his positive attitude around colleagues and clients, something others in the firm couldn’t manage.  His answer?

“I’m a can-do lawyer.”

He went on to explain that he preferred to tell his clients what they could do, and how to go about doing it, instead of telling them what they could not do. For a lawyer, that’s a pretty radical approach. But his clients loved him for it, and it clearly made him more successful.

I have been reminded of the power of this approach several times in the past month as I make the rounds of HR conferences. Some of those reminders come from speakers, and some come from smart and valuable conversations with other attendees. The message needs to be made to all HR pros, no matter the source:

• Tell employees what they can do, not what they can’t.
• Tell yourself what you can do, not what you can’t.
• When someone gives you an idea, tell yourself how to make it work, instead of telling the giver why it won’t.

( While I am in Florida closing on our new house – more on that later – I am happy to turn this week’s post over to friends at Bisk Education/Villanova University. See their info at the bottom of the post. Back next week with news from Mid Michigan Human Resources Association and OHSHRM.)

It is inevitable that you’re going to run into a problem employee at some point in your career. How you handle the situation will determine whether a problem is minimized or becomes an ongoing struggle. A good suggestion is to identify the who, what, where, why and how of the matter. Only then can you start finding the best solution.

1. Head problems off at the pass

Problem employees often have the same sense of entitlement as a toddler. When a two-year-old realizes she isn’t getting what she wants, the pouting starts. After a short five minutes with no results, she turns on the waterworks. If that doesn’t seem to work, she ups the stakes again with a shrill scream until her parents give in, or she wears herself out and comes back down to reality.

Employees will often work in the same way. What might start as a low grumble to a co-worker can quickly escalate to a big problem involving multiple employees, managers and HR. Be proactive and try to rectify the situation before it becomes a screaming situation.

2. Don’t fight anger with anger

It’s natural to feel angry when someone is being unreasonable, but fighting anger with anger isn’t going to fix any problems and will often only create more headaches. If the problem employee sparks your temper, take time to gather yourself before handling the issue. Two angry parties are likely to talk over one another and aren’t often inclined to listen. Talk with the employee after giving him or her some time to cool down. Only then will you start to fix whatever issue is at hand.

3. Don’t ignore the rebel with a heart of gold

It is easy to root for movie characters that are a mix of rebellion and kindness (think Ferris Bueller). Rebelliousness may work in Hollywood, but it can get everyone in trouble at the office.  A lot of companies have that employee who may do a great job and perform well, but also can’t help themselves from breaking company rules.

While looking the other way might seem like a good answer, it’s merely like putting a piece of gum over a leaky pipe…sooner or later it’s going to fall off and start gushing. The problem employee will start breaking more rules and other workers will see that corners are being cut and be apt to follow suit. Your mouth is going to get really tired trying to chew all that gum to cover up the leaks!

As soon as you see a rule being ignored, address it with the employee. Explain that procedures are in place for a reason and that no one is above following them. By giving them a warning and handling the situation with respect, you’ll send the message that you’re aware of what’s going on and that you won’t tolerate rules being broken.

4. Inconsistent attendance might be caused by a problem

Do you have an employee who is always calling out of work? Are the excuses getting more and more stretched from the truth every time? Your employee may have a serious problem that they’re trying to deal with at home. It’s important to sit down and try to find out what might be going on. Try to work out a plan of action (from a work standpoint) to help the employee with the issue and get them back on track. If it seems to be a personal problem that isn’t going to go away, action may need to be taken to ensure the company is running at its greatest capacity.

5. Know your limits

Not every problem can be solved by you. Understand when professional help might best serve everyone involved, especially the well-being of your employee and co-workers. Some problems won’t ever be solved, often because the person refuses to make the necessary changes required. Termination may be the only alternative.

No matter the problem, treating everyone involved with respect should help relieve tension and move toward fixing the issue at hand.

University Alliance submitted this article on behalf of Villanova University’s online programs. Villanova offers online human resources training courses in addition to a masters in human resources development program. For more information please visit their site at http://www.villanovau.com.