Monday Inspiration: Posts to JAZZ You for the Week Ahead

I have a confession to make. I am not one of those people who jump up on a Monday morning raring to go, at least not all the time. So sometimes I need some inspiration to get my day going. Today was just such a day. (Too much baseball too late) So I headed to my reading list to see what could get me going. Here is the list, hope it gets you going too. (The nice thing was that apparently some of my stuff was on other peoples lists. http://www.maximizepossibility.com/employee_retention/)

1. First out of the chute is HR Plays Too Much Defense written by Paul Herbert on Fistful of Talent. Paul's premise is that too often HR acts out of an abundance of caution and says "no" instead of considering alternatives. It is a good read, and even better are some of the comments made. (I weighed in on this one.)
2. Next up is Bosses: Give Frequent and Usable Feedback written by Wally Bock at his Three Star Leadership Blog. Wally is dead on about how and when bosses want to interact with employees and he provides great advice on how to help them  overcome their reluctance to provide constructive feedback.
3. Ann Bares, a favorite of mine, offeres up The Immeasurable Value of Being Needed. What a great title. I have had some interactions with people along these same lines and it was nice to be reminded of my stories.
4. My good friend Cathy Martin, the metrics maven, offers up 7 Ways to Tell If Your Metrics Matter. If you are struggling with instituting metrics and are wondering why you are mired down these seven questions may provide you with some clarity. READ AND HEED.
5. Lastly is a profile found on Rehaul, written by Lance Haun. Lance profiles Ben Eubanks in HR Star: Ben Eubanks. Ben is an up-and-comer in the field of HR. He is creative and hardworking and you need to pay attention to him and his blog. He represents THE generation that will be doing all of the HR in our organizations and they are going to change things and he will be one of their thought leaders.

So there you have it. If you need a kick in the fanny this today, do some reading, get inspired and then get to work.

Report from the SHRM Atlanta 20th Annual Conference: Metrics and Legislation

The 20th annual SHRM-Atlanta conference is running full bore. I have attended two sessions this morning. Both have provided some scary news.

The first session was part of the Business Acumen & Leadership track. The session was entitled The Most Important Organizational Performance Metrics: What Every HR Organization Should Be Measuring. It was presented by Dr. Lepora Manigault (and was sponsored by Intellectual Capital Consulting.) She presented the Top 15 Metrics to Share with Your CEO. The list was mixed. Some were good, such as the Dollar Value of the Increased Workforce Productivity between This Year and Last. I can see a CEO being interested in this and perhaps Incentive Compensation Differentials between high performers and low performers. However, I don't see CEOs being interested in Time to Start figures or the percent of performance appraisals completed on time. These are HR activities and CEOs are not going to be interested in these. They will however be interested in the fact that you are not doing them, but they don't want to know the details.

The scary thing from this session was the fact that almost NO ONE in the packed room was measuring anything. Or at least they were not willing to say so.

The second session I attended was Contingent Workers & Independent Contractors: Avoiding Misclassification Pitfalls. It was presented by David Long-Daniels of Greenberg Traurig LLC. It was a general knowledge session of what makes for an independent contractor and what doesn't. He did have some interesting insights to dealing with temporary agencies and reminding everyone of the doctrine of "joint employer responsibility." He also let everyone know that the IRS has a  program to encourage your employees and your competitors to report your mis-use of Independent Contractors. They are offered a financial incentive of 15 to 30% of what you have to pay to the IRS. Nice.

The scary news that came out of this session was pending legislation, that is likely to pass. This legislation is called The Fair Playing Field Act of 2010. Among other things it will require you the company using an independent contractor to inform the IC, in writing, of the Federal Tax obligation they will have to pay and also a written statements of the employment laws that do NOT apply to them.

Stay tuned for further conference reports. More great sessions and a great exhibitor hall to spend time in.

The HR Ratio Or "How Many Employees Does It Take to Screw Up an HR Department?"

Ok, ok, I know this title made some of you bristle with outrage. But calm down, it was more to get your attention. What is the proper HR-to-Employee Ratio is a question frequently asked by people new to HR. Sometimes it is even asked by people not so new to HR. And if you ever get it asked by your CEO you had better know the answer.

This is the calculation. Though it is seldom expressed in terms of this calculation. It is generally experessed in terms of 1:100 or 1:250 or 1:400..... you  get the idea.

But knowing that calculation is not the answer to the question. Because the answer is "It depends." But if the CEO is asking you the question that is not what you say. Because you should know what the "DEPENDS" factors are for your company, your company size, your leadership, your industry and your sophistication. For example in The HR Scorecard: Linking People, Strategy, and Performance authors Becker, Huselid and Ulrich talk about research that shows that companies that had low quality of HR leadership had a ratio of 1:253.88. Companies that had high quality HR leadership had a ratio of 1:139.51. Research as also shown that the ratio also depends on these following factors:

• Company size. Smaller companies may actually have a smaller ratio because much of the process are not automated and therefore require more people to get them done. (Either that or the person works themselves to death. A situation often expressed to me.)
• Sophistication. Companies that are technologically adept may have smaller ratios due to automation, such as self-enrollment or online performance evaluation.
• Level of Outsourcing. Obviously the more funtions of HR you have outsourced the fewer HR people you need on staff.
• Service model. Your model for delivering HR services to your "customer" base will require different levels of staffing and hence a different ratio. A company I once worked for had 30 HR members for 1000 employees. A ratio of 3:100. That was because we had a "high touch" service model. The more complex or sophisticated your employee perhaps the higher the ratio.
• Dispersion of the employees. If you have a decentralized structure and want to have a decentralized HR department you will probably have a larger ratio than will a centralized structure.

You do have to be careful, regardless of the reason, to not have HR people for the sake of having HR people. You must remember that there needs to be an appropriate Return-on-Investment (ROI) for the number of HR people you have on staff. So that requires you to be able to determine what that ROI is and if it is desirable in your organization.

So gather your information. One source of information, and the inspiration for this post, was SHRM's benchmarking reports . They are available to both members and nonmembers. (I get no compensation for suggesting them.)

If you want to read another blog post that does an excellent job of talking about this subject click on HR Ratio versus HR Contribution. This is a well written post by Magdelena Meller of breakpoint HR from about a year ago.

By the way, the answer to the question of "How many employees does it take to screw up an HR department?" is "IT DEPENDS." It is your call.