HR Carnival: 46 Early Presents

How can you turn down 46 early Christmas presents? (Yes I know, not everyone celebrates Christmas, but would you turn down 46 presents just because of a technicality? Really?) These presents come in the form of blog posts featured on the mid-December HR Carnival, hosted by Lance Haun at Rehaul. Lance sorted through all these and put them in categories to make it easy to find a subject of interest. These categories included:

• His Favorite Five
• General HR
• Recruiting
• Calling BS
• How To
• Inspiring Stuff
• Learning, Development and Training
• and Careers

Many a great blogger can be found here and you will one educated HR pro by the time you finish reading this stuff.

When you are reading to do some learning then click on REHAUL HR Carnival – It’s All About Content.

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.

The Carnival of HR: The Jukebox Edition

I have a vague memory of an email that told me I needed to get a post in for the August 18th edition of the Carnival of HR. Well guess what, that is what it remained .... a vague memory. But that does not stop me from promoting it. The blog Welcome to the Occupation  is hosting this Carnival. You will find in it a creative assortment of blog posts described as a musical genre. Interesting and of course it includes many of my favorite bloggers. Haun, Eubanks, VanDervort, Elkinberry, McCarthy, Boese, Stelzner, McFarlane, Ruettimann, Martin and many more.

So click the link, put in a nickel (well that is what it still costs at Waffle House) and "play" some good blog posts. Enjoy!

Is HR the Eunuch of the Corporation?

(Note: On Thursday, April 15th I will be the guest on the Internet radio show DriveThruHR, hosted by Bryan Wempen each day at 12 pm Eastern time and 11 am Central time. I will be talking to Bryan and the audience on the value of Twitter to HR. It is not a play toy. It is a serious tool for the leading edge HR professional. So join us by clicking on the link above.)



According to Wikipedia a Eunuch is "...is a castrated man; usually one castrated early enough to have major hormonal consequences. ...The term usually refers to those castrated in order to perform a specific social function...they have performed a wide variety of functions in many different cultures such as: courtiers or equivalent domestics, treble singers, religious specialists, government officials, military commanders, and guardians of women or harem servants...."

The meaning of the term "eunuch" has come to take on a more general meaning of "unempowered or powerless". It implies weakness and it is in this vein that I ask the question in the title. And in this vein it applies to both men and women in HR. My answer to the question is a resounding "it depends." It depends on the leadership of HR. The words from which eunuch is derived are "...from the Greek eune ('bed') and ekhein ('to keep'), effectively 'bed keeper'." In some organization HR plays a very servile role. Keeper of the files, doing the bidding of the management team, often in ways that cause many HR people to lose sleep at night and develop ulcers. I have personally worked for someone who was very much the "corporate eunuch." As with many eunuchs of history he used position power and intrigue to his advantage. Those of us that worked for him had no respect for him. And he let the company executive management get away with too much. The company collapsed not too long into its history.
 
Today I am encouraged however, with the growth of HR leadership. There are many in the profession who have shrugged off the mantel of eunuch and stepped up to the role of trusted and valued partner. They are trusted, respected and valued by their peers and company leadership. They have power, not because of intrigue and guile, but because of knowledge, foresight and courage. They are transforming HR in their organizations, as Dave Ulrich and his colleagues suggest in HR Transformation: Building Human Resources From the Outside In. By reading blogs and having conversations I have had the good fortune to meet several outstanding newer leaders in HR. They are the face of the "NEW" HR. They have both book "smarts" and "street smarts." They have trust, they have respect, they have courage and they have a "voice." This latter trait is important. That is what spreads the "word" and encourages others to adopt their ways.

I hope many of you have meet someone who falls into this catagory, but I want to name a few of the ones I have met who fall into this catagory. These include Kris Dunn, Trish McFarlane, Jessica Lee, Lance Haun and Laurie Ruettimann. A couple of up and comers to watch include Ben Eubanks and April Dowling. If you feel you have been labled the "corporate eunuch" then study these people and learn.

I am sure I am missing some great HR people. I did not mention the many great consultants I know that are helping lead the charge as well. If you know someone great let me know! Publish their name here so we can all get to know them.

Top 5 Monday "Reads" for the HR Professional

It is hard to keep up with reading blogs. There are just too many good ones. So to help you out here are 5 that I consider a good way to start off a new week.

1. Ann Bares writes on Mission Critical Skills: The Haves & The Have Nots. She talks about realities of the marketplace today and what skills are necessary for a company's success. She offers insights into the importance of communicating those skills to the employees that don't have.
2. In my opinion business is under assault. One way is in the crackdowns the US government has instituted. One of these is the crackdown on independent contractors. Dennis Westlind of World At Work, talk about this in Federal Government to Crackdown on "Misclassified" Independent Contractors? He talks about the IRS' increased attention and provides a link to a handy guide.
3. My favorite consulting guru Alan Weiss talks about the pursuit of perfection and how useless that can be. Lance Haun, a great HR blogger, echos the same sentiment in The Useless Goal of Perfection. He takes it on a personal level, but it has lessons galore for all of us.
4. One of the primary strategic skills of an HR professional is environmental scanning. The Human Markets blog provides us an opportunity to exercise that skill by discussing Long-Term Unemployment and the implications to our companies and our future recruiting. Exercise some foresight and read this. Food for thought.
5. Paul Herbert, in a Fistful of Talent post, tells us that our core values as an organization do not have to suffer in the name of diversity. His post, called Looking for Diversity? Look for a Difference of Opinion Not Value shows a variety of opinions will introduce productive diversity in your organization.

Well there you have it. Start of your week with a BIG dose of learning in small amount of time.

Revolution: Breaking Down the Wall of Old HR?

This past weekend an event occurred that probably most HR people did not know about. It was the HRevolution conference that was held in Louisville. I was unhappy I did not have a chance to attend. I wish I had. Some of the best of today's "young" HR thought leaders were there. These are people who carry sharp sticks and like to poke the "beast" of current HR thought. They ask the hard questions we should all be formulating answers for. Lance Haun (thelance on Twitter) talks about this at his blog Rehaul in his post "You say you want a revolution?" Although it has passed you can find out more about HRevolution by visiting here.

I love the name, it has so much meaning for me. First CHANGE. I think change is good and it is time to make the "beast" move. I like the word evolution in it. It also means CHANGE. But unlike most peoples conception of evolution as slow change there is the theory of PUNCTUATED EVOLUTION or Punctuated equilibrium. This theory means that not all change occurs gradually, that some evolutionary changes can occur rapidly. (That is the short version.) I think we can make HR change rapidly.

I come back to the word revolution in meaning turning. I think we need to keep this movement going. I appeal to Trish McFarlane, Ben Eubanks,  Crystal Peterson, Steve Boese, Laurie Ruettiman, Jessica Lee, Kris Dunn and other "beast stickers" to keep the momentum going. I think it may be fortunate happenstance that this occurred the weekend just before the 20th anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1987 Ronald Reagan, in a speech at the Berlin Wall, said "General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"

Let me pharaphrase that famous speech. "If you seek prosperity for employer and employee alike, if you seek great people, great systems, effective teams, employee dignity then come here to this gate. Open this gate. Tear down this outdated and stale way of doing things." Make this past weekend a clarion call for action. Take up your hammers and chisels and begin chipping away at old ideas, stale ways of doing things. Question the "tried and true" and get away from "that is the way we have always done it." Make the old guard of HR take notice.