Mid-Summer Carnival of HR: Education for HR

The mid-summer edition of the Carnival of HR is being hosted by Jennifer McClure of Unbridled Talent in her Online Degree edition. There are some very interesting and educational posts to be found and you can get a semester's worth of learning in a few hours just by reading these blog posts.

You can find learning material on leadership, corporate culture, diversity, technology, performance management, psychology, recruiting, social media, talent and much more.

So, if you want to be stimulated, educated, elucidated, and just made plain 'ol smarter then trot on over to Unbridled Talent and grab yourself some learnin'.

The HR Carnival: Summer Time Edition

The summer time edition of the HR Carnival was published yesterday at Mark Stelzner's blog site called Inflexion Point. It is a great collection of HR related articles. If you are on vacation it will make some good beach reading (unless you follow my advice). If you are not on vacation it a good way to spend an hour and get some extra information and education.

There is NO BETTER WAY to stay current than reading professional blogs. And there in no better way to find them than walking down the midway of the HR Carnival.

Good reading.. and if you are on the beach wear your sunglasses and make sure you are using sunscreen unless you are on the Gulf Coast, in which case you are already covered in Sunblock 5000. (Anyone know what movie that is from?)

Social Media as a School Subject: Guest Post from Ben Eubanks

The following is a guest post from Ben Eubanks.

Newsflash: social media still isn't being taught in college

 

Sure, some people get a little bit of education in that area, but most of us must go forward learning what we can freestyle. But just because I didn't get it doesn't mean nobody else should.

 

The changing (social) world

 

There are some different ideas that are changing our world on a daily basis. Here are a few that could be helped with some social media education.

• Education is not over when you get a degree-it's just the beginning. Use social tools to continue a lifetime of learning.  
• One of the greatest tools that hardly anyone is taught in college? Networking. And social media has completely revolutionized the arena of networking.  
• Free is not going anywhere. For the most part, the available tools are completely free. You no longer have to have buckets of money to get access to top-shelf tech. 
• Branding (whether corporate or personal) is one of the hottest topics today. Knowing how to use social media means you can significantly influence how people view you or your organization.

 

My Story 

 

Social media wasn't taught in my school. In one of my earliest posts I talked about how school didn't seem to teach me much about what a job in HR would be like. If they, as I mentioned in that post, didn't even mention some of the more traditional HR tools like the HRIS, ATS, etc., then they certainly didn't talk about innovative new tools and technologies like social media. 

 

When Mike reached out to me for this guest post, I was surprised. Why? Because I didn't have much to share on the topic. I didn't hear a single mention of anything social media related in my entire four years of college.

  

Since then, I have learned an incredible amount simply by allowing my natural curiosity and need to guide my exploration of the social tools available. I don't know how things would have been had I learned some of it in my formal education, but I think it's turned out pretty well so far.

  

What do you think? Should social media be taught in college? If so, should students be taught based upon their major/focus or just as a general group?

  

Photo credit: Oversocialized

 

Ben Eubanks is an HR professional from Huntsville, AL. He pretty much lives online, and you can connect with him on Twitter or LinkedIn. He also writes a blog for the entry level pros, seasoned veterans, and zombies in the human resources space.

 

Ben Eubanks is the author of UpstartHR. He brings a new perspective to the field of HR.

Putting the "SOCIAL" into Social Media

There is a great deal of material on social media being produced on a daily basis. There are millions of people tweeting, linking, posting, "booking" each day. Some are personal connections, some are business oriented. Generally in the personal connections there has at sometime in the past been some "in-person" connection, albeit some may be in the distant past, as in connecting with a high school classmate from 30 some odd years ago. Even some of your business connections through LinkedIn may have had an in-person connection at some point. But we get caught up in the connection mania and start adding people like crazy and as a result we often forget the SOCIAL part of social media. I am a light-wight tweeter following just over 670 people and an even lighter-weight LinkedIn user with about 180 connections. But even with these numbers the social aspects can get lost.

I had a fellow tweeter ask me if I would be interested in a phone conversation, as she had noticed I was in the Atlanta, Georgia area as was she. I suggested rather than a phone call I would like to meet in person. So we fit it into our schedules and I had the good fortune to meet Beth A. Miller of Executive Velocity (ExecVelocity on Twitter). Not only was it a very pleasant hour, but it now has the potential for being a relationship that may help both of us in our businesses.

Given that encounter I wanted to encourage people to take their social media relationships and put the in-person social contact in there as well. Here are some tips for doing this.

1. Many people are skittish about meeting in person. Learn from the professional networkers. Harvey Mackay is the "old dog" of networking (no offense to Harvey, he is actually a personal role model for me). He has written numerous books including Swim With the Sharks Withour Being Eaten Alive . He gives excellent advice on establishing, maintaining and effectively using your network. The new generation of super networker is Keith Ferrazzi. He is incredible. He has written two book, Never Eat Alone and Who's Got Your Back.
2. A second good way to meet face-to-face is to go to a Tweet-Up or a Blogger event. Meet those people you have been exchanging information with or have been following or will want to follow. Generally these are held in a pleasant social environment (I go to one held at Pizzaria Venti) and people get relaxed and put a person to the tweet.
3. Meet other people at conferences. I have not had the luck to go to one yet, but I read that they are getting bigger and bigger. Recent ones have been held in NYC and Louisville. But you can also go to other association meetings and get to know the bloggers, tweeters and "facers" in the group.
4. Lastly, if there is someone you truly want to meet then send a message, make a call and suggest a meeting. Takes some guts (what if they don't find you as interesting?) but it won't happen if you don't do it. Take the leap.

Well those are some of my suggestions. I hope readers who are better at this will suggest some other ways to put the SOCIAL into social media. Let's hear from you.

The Carnival of HR: Great HR Reading

The Carnival of HR, June version, is up at Inflexion Point. Some great reading here. Posts include the topics of employee engagement, hiring freezes, use of social media, selling HR, trademarks, executive pay, using your employees as guinea pigs and of course the ever popular putting lipstick on a pig. So for these interesting topics and more head on over to the Carnival by clicking the link in the first line.

Some Interesting Read: Pointing You To Some Other Blogs

There are some very interesting writers and blog topics that have been posted in the last couple of days. I thought I would point you to some of them (that way I don't have to get creative myself.)

1. First is "Who Wants to See a 56-year-old stripper?" written by the Ohio Employers Law Blog. The question is asked if attractiveness should be a BFOQ. Well it is for clothing models.... sooo.....


2. We Need a Way To Measure "People." FAST! Jason Seiden at Fistful of Talent talks about the challenges of measuring the impact of culture and people.


3. Driving by HR offers up Social Media Policy advice. For those of you struggling with this you may want to read up.


4. The HR Capitalist, Kris Dunn, writes Want to Keep the Job and Maybe Get Promoted? Don't Be A Victim... Kris is always a good read.


5. Lastly, for those of you still struggling with salary budgets Ann Bares at Compensation Force offers great information in 2009 Salary Budget Increases: The Latest.

Within an hour or less you will be educated in 5 different areas and have usable knowledge in HR. Check them out.

Card Check, Email and Social Media: A Clash of Interests

If you have been reading these posts at all, you know by now that the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) contains a provision allowing unions to organize using a method referred to as "card check." Wikipedia defines card check "...as a method of organizing employees into a labor union in which employers enter into an agreement to recognize the unionization of its employees if a majority of employees in a bargaining unit sign authorization forms, or "cards". " What most people do not realize is that the signed "card" does not need to actually be a card, that is a holdover from the days when it actually was a card, back in the days when there was nothing like email and electronic signatures. Many experts feel today that union organization will be done in large part by use of email and to a lesser extent through the use of social media, such as FaceBook, MySpace and Twitter. Their recommendation to employers is to severly restrict the use of email to business only purposes and eliminate access to social media from work computers.

Unfortunately, this butts heads with the increasing trend of (primarily) younger workers using email and social media for personal communication throughout the day. In fact many recruiters are using social media for recruitment purposes. People access and read blogs throughout the day. Web 2.0 use is a mix of work and personal that becomes almost impossible to limit. If you try you may have push back from younger workers who complain that this makes the workplace too stifling, which is the opposite type of workplace you want to have to remain union free.

It will be a fact that unions will use your email system to try to organize workers against you. Expression of interest through an email response may very well count as having "signed the card." So what do you do? You need to educate your workers. Educate them on:

• The company position on remaining union free. Let them know how the company will be harmed economically.
• Educate them on how unions may try to organize them, forewarning them about emails and contacts on social media. Letting them know not to respond to these contacts without first checking out the facts that may be presented.
• Encourage open communication with your employees about the economy, unions and the continued well being of the company.

You can draft tighter non-solicitation policies, which includes the use of email. But it may be difficult to totally control email use. But there is software to monitor email traffic if you want to do so.

I would like to hear from some of you who have email policies that restrict use of email. Please leave a comment and let us know how you do it, monitior it, and how effective that has been.

As a closing note, the card check provision is getting alot of attention. This attention may be a diversion to keep our attention away from the second provision of EFCA, Interest Arbitration and enforced contracts, which is the much BIGGER EVIL of EFCA.

Job Hunting in the 21st Century

I was going to post about HR and using social media, since Twitter has been big in the news yesterday and today. But in reading Twitter this morning I came across this article, the link to which, was posted by Jim Stroud on Twitter. The article is entitled "7 Secrets to Getting Your Next Job Using Social Media" and points out the various segements of social media that you should be aware of and using. Since this focuses on job hunting pass it on to your friends who are looking or use it yourself if needed. Either way learn the lessons and become "savvy". It is important and will be even more so in the very near future.