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Archive for April, 2007
Victimized by Choice
Apr 18We offer employees choices — and lots of them. Choice in healthcare. Choice in pay mix. Choice in training. And choice in career planning. Choice is good, right? Not really. In fact, employees are victimized by choice.
Professor Barry Schwartz’s research for The Paradox of Choice shows that having too many choices can make people miserable. You can watch him talking about being victimized by choice and how to achieve personal happiness on a 19-minute TED Talks video. If you’re in HR program design business, it’ll be the best 19 minutes you’ll spend today.
When designing your next benefits program, remember the words of Mies van der Rohe: Less is more.
Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success
Apr 17
Don’t trust anyone over 40.
Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success, provides a no BS, straight-talking, tell-you-what-to-do and-how-to-do-it twist on the 1960s counterculture phrase, “Don’t trust anyone over 30.” The book’s advice is aimed squarely at workers under 40.
It’s a career manual, a hip, irreverent What Color is Your Parachute for those who were born into the workplace with parachutes on their back and who never had to deal with the shock of layoffs in the 1980s, pension terminations, and the surprise of medical co-pays. For them, uncertainty is a gimme.
Written by Penelope Trunk, career columnist at the Boston Globe and Yahoo Finance, Brazen Careerist is a book that should be read by everyone under 40 who wants to know the real deal in corporate America. And it should scare the crap out of those over 40.
Job Loyalty is So 1997
You take a job, do well, get promoted, and stay for a long time, even to retirement. Those are the rules, right? Not anymore. Ms. Trunk cites Bureau of Labor statistics that say the average twentysomething will have an average of 8.6 jobs before age thirty-two. That works out to be about a job a year. This isn’t your father’s Oldsmobile, kids. If you’re over 40, you might bristle a bit, but just because you do doesn’t make what Ms. Trunk says any less true. It’s the new rules, and if you don’t know them, the kids in your shop sure do.
The New Rules for Success
The Brazen Careerist is filled with advice for the modern worker — and managers, too. It’s written in a snappy and succinct style. Want lots of fluff and passive language? Maybe this isn’t the book for you. Want direct advice in an active voice? Pick up Brazen Careerist.
Here’s a sampling of the 45 new rules in the book:
- Rule 4: If You’re Stuck, Take an Adventure
- Rule 11: There Are Stupid Questions, So Don’t Ask Them
- Rule 20: Being Likable Matters More Important Than Being Competent
- Rule 25: Stop Using Adverbs
- Rule 32: E-Mails Will Be Your Epithet: Five You Should Never Send
- Rule 37: A Long List of Ways to Dodge Long Hours
- Rule 41: Title Schmitle, You Can Lead Without One
Brazen Careerist is coming out in May and is available for pre-order now. Buy it. I won’t tell anyone you’re over 40 if you don’t tell them that I am. And yes, even though I’m over 40 by a good seven years, you can trust me on this one…Brazen Careerist is a book you’ll want to read this spring.
While You’re At It
Penelope also writes a highly-regarded blog that’s called Brazen Careerist. Hmm, coincidence? Since you followed my advice about using Google Reader, you can add her to your reading list with this RSS feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/BrazenCareerist.
Just One More Thing
Brazen Careerist is the book that all HR people should be reading. The rules have changed, and what we “know” about employees and their motivations no longer holds. If you want to move ahead in HR, here’s the roadmap that a lot of people will be following. NB: Gen X and Geny Y don’t work for money, but it’s not for the reasons that you think.
Who Does It To Whom
Apr 17Who does it to whom. That’s the rule of when to use “who” and “whom.” It’s as simple as that. Dan Santow, whose (another “who” word) Word Wise is a fun read, summarizes the who/whom “controversy”:
Okay, enough qualifying. Who is a subject. Whom is an object. Who does something. Whom has something done to it. In other words, who does it to whom.
Simple enough. Write clearly. Say what you mean. And don’t worry about who/whom taught you twisted English in 8th Grade. As Winston Churchill once said to a civil servant objecting to ending sentences in prepositions:
This is the kind of tedious [sometimes "pedantic"] nonsense up with which I will not put!
Would You Stay if Your Vested Options Were Worth Millions?
Apr 16Google’s employee stock options have come due. Bigtime. To the tune of $2 billion already vested and ready for cashout. That means there are a lot of Google employees who are moving from paper millionaires to real millionaires. That brought to mind the Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” What would you do?
Loading ...A Little Survey Sensibility
Apr 15Let’s see…you conduct an annual employee survey. It’s filled with happy-happy-joy-joy questions like, “I like working here.” You collect up all the results. And wait. The you wait some more. Finally, you publish the survey results. And they’re met with an orchestra of the world’s tiniest violins playing “I Don’t Care.”
Sound familiar?
Employee surveys can be a heckuva lot more effective. Susan Healthfield offers ways to make your surveys work for you and your employees in “Five Recommendations for Employee Satisfaction Surveys.” Here’s the summary of her sensible approach (please click over and read her whole article):
- Communicate the fact that while employee responses are confidential, the data gathered will be used to improve the workplace
- The questions asked really do matter
- Hold employee focus groups or survey processes at your work site
- Never lose control of your data
- Never allow employees to self-select for participation in surveys and focus groups
I’m not a great big fan of employee surveys because too many of them don’t make a link between the survey and actions. Those that do are winners, and I’ve seen that work, too. But if you don’t intend to do something about your employee survey results I have a recommendation of my own: Don’t do it. Step away from the survey.
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